🌐 Examples

A successful example of such a collaboration is the 2018 partnership between the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Telecel Ghana (previously Vodafone Ghana), and Flowminder, officially signed in 2018. This project enabled GSS to leverage mobile phone data for disaster management, public health, and sustainable development planning. However, the negotiation process was lengthy, spanning 13 months, due to challenges such as the absence of in-house legal counsel at GSS and the concurrent implementation of the GDPR. Despite these challenges, the agreement successfully addressed key issues such as data aggregation, data exchange parameters, data use limitations, data deletion, and publication guidelines. This collaboration has proven invaluable, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, where mobile network data has been instrumental in documenting the impact of restriction measures in Ghana.

The Central Bank of Estonia, a pioneer in operator data utilization since 2008, has obtained explicit authorization from the data protection authority to access inbound and outbound roaming data under its statistical mandate. Subsequently, a data sharing agreement was signed with a major operator. This agreement, recognizing the Bank's authority as the "data processor," allows for the sharing of raw data directly under the framework of the statistical law. The Bank then announced a public competition to determine a third party authorized data processor to implement data processing. This model demonstrates how a clear legal basis and a strong data protection framework (European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR) can facilitate the ethical and responsible use of mobile network data for statistical purposes.

❗Tips

✅ Make sure the legal framework for entering into the data sharing agreement is clear by involving regulators early in the process. Once all the necessary discussions on the main contractual points have taken place, it can be wise to quickly circulate a draft version of the agreement.

✅ Concerns about government access to sensitive data can be addressed by having a trusted technical provider assist with the data analysis – this can be either an expert private company, academics or a research institute. Note that the third party is held to high data privacy and security standards as an authorized data processor.

✅ For products of national statistics, the terms should not limit the NSO’s independence to make decisions about publishing results. At the same time, for publishing experimental and data products outside the national statistical programme, the data provider can have more say.

✅ An additional measure for protecting confidentiality is to require that individual level data can only be accessed on the data provider’s or regulator’s servers by approved members of staff from NSO or approved third parties.

📖 Resources

Contracts for Data Collaboration (C4DC) is an initiative that aims to improve understanding of the legal conditions that can enable effective data collaboration by doing research in the area and organizing a library of data sharing agreements between parties (often across sectors). A case study of data sharing between Ghana Statistical Services, Vodafone Ghana, and Flowminder Foundation was produced by SDSN TReNDS for C4DC. 

⏩ Next actions

  • Based on previous technical conversations and examples of similar contracts, create and circulate a data sharing agreement draft early on in its development.

  • Engage the parties that need to sign the agreement and organize signatures.

  • Start planning for data transmission based on the agreement.

  • Celebrate the success of having entered the ranks of countries with robust data sharing agreements in place between the NSO and mobile network operator(s).

  • Communicate the successful signing to the public.