The advance of more collaborative, transparent, and participatory government must embrace all of society’s values, including privacy. Open government will succeed only if it appeals to the widest possible audience, including skeptics of government, opponents of any given administration, and people who do not trust technology.
The heart of privacy protection in open government is data minimization, requiring citizens to reveal the least amount of information required for any given transaction or relationship. Open government systems should be designed with their precise goals in mind. Under these circumstances, they can minimize the data they collect.
Permitting citizens to deal with the government anonymously will foster participation. Carefully planning backup strategies and establishing thoughtful data retention and decommissioning policies can reduce the risk of unintended disclosure and misuse of personal data.
When it is appropriate to share information, minimal disclosure techniques can minimize the loss of privacy even in that context. And, of course, when it is appropriate to share personal information, there are techniques to ensure that this does not degrade data quality and cause errant decisions that could deny people rights or benefits.
Accountability can be enhanced by active audit and immutable audit systems that deter and expose wrongdoing. And transparency in open government data systems can educate and empower a public that too often today remains indifferent to how data is used by the government and throughout society.
For all of the promise of open government to come to fruition, systems must be designed with basic values such as privacy in mind.[210] With luck and lots of hard work, open government systems can fulfill the privacy imperative.