Data, trust, democracy and Covid-19: the first parliamentary assessment of the UK government’s approach to data during the pandemic

Ferry, L.; Hardy, C.; Midgley, H.

doi:10.1080/09540962.2021.1946311

Data, trust, democracy and Covid-19: the first parliamentary assessment of the UK government’s approach to data during the pandemic

Ferry, L.; Hardy, C.; Midgley, H.

Authors

Professor Laurence Ferry laurence.ferry@durham.ac.uk
Professor

C. Hardy

Dr Henry Midgley henry.c.midgley@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Abstract

There is a challenge with the collection, storage, use and archiving of data by government, especially regarding upholding trust in democracy. A gap in our knowledge exists with the use of data during crises. To address that gap, this article considers the UK’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s (PACAC) report on data and transparency during the Covid-19 crisis. This affords an initial insight into how the UK government used data to legitimate policy and support implementation. The data connected the government to the governed in two ways. First, it enabled democratic accountability. Second, it also helped persuade citizens to act in ways that the government wished them too. As a result, this dual function of the data published made it even more important than normal for the government to fulfil its democratic objectives with data.

Citation

Ferry, L., Hardy, C., & Midgley, H. (2021). Data, trust, democracy and Covid-19: the first parliamentary assessment of the UK government’s approach to data during the pandemic. Public Money & Management, 41(8), 676-678. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2021.1946311

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jun 18, 2021
Online Publication Date	Jul 12, 2021
Publication Date	2021
Deposit Date	Jun 21, 2021
Publicly Available Date	Dec 20, 2021
Journal	Public Money & Management
Print ISSN	0954-0962
Electronic ISSN	1467-9302
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	41
Issue	8
Pages	676-678
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2021.1946311
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1241141

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Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.