Information Privacy and Trust in Government: A Citizen-Based Perspective from New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Increasing use of e-government raises issues about the privacy of information provided by citizens to government. This paper explores the experiences and concerns of New Zealanders in relation to information privacy, and the impact of these concerns on the trust they place in government. A series of focus groups were conducted among community groups. The findings reflect a range of attitudes about information privacy and the trustworthiness of government, and center around two major themes: the use of technology and concerns about the competency of and practices of government employees. Most respondents were unaware of their existing protections; preferred face to face communication; had low levels of confidence in the privacy of online communication but made use of it for convenience sake; and had greater confidence in government than in commercial organizations but made distinctions between individual agencies. Breaches of privacy were shown to have a negative impact on trust in government.

KEYWORDS:

• Information privacy
• e-government
• trust

Notes

1. A full report of the complete project, Reilly, P., & Cullen, R., Information Privacy and Trust in Government: A Citizen-Based Perspective is available on the New Zealand e-Government Web site at: http://www.e.govt.nz/resources/research/trust-and-privacy. This report contains instruments and data pertaining to all parts of the project, but not the datasets of participants' responses: The informed consent procedure used in the project, as required under the Victoria University of Wellington Human Ethics protocols, did not include making responses freely available on the Internet.

2. For the purpose of the CPI, corruption is defined as “the abuse of public office for private gain. The surveys used in compiling the CPI ask questions related to the misuse of public power for private benefit, with a focus, for example, on bribe taking by officials in public procurement. The sources do not distinguish between administrative and political corruption, or between petty and grand corruption” (Transparency International, 2006, FAQs).

3. See the Web site of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner: http://www.privacy.org.nz

4. The questionnaire and the scenarios used are included in the full report at: http://www.e.govt.nz/resources/research/trust-and-privacy

5. The coding schema is available in the report of the full project http://www.e.govt.nz/resources/research/trust-and-privacy

6. New Zealanders of primarily European descent.

7. Regardless of whether participants were aware of the Privacy Act, many individuals responded to the question by saying that their privacy is supposed to be protected based on which “boxes they tick” on the various forms they fill out.

8. Although we did not ask specifically about the banking sector, individuals in most groups noted that they felt banks were the most trustworthy organizations with regard to privacy.