It is generally agreed that personal information should be handled with care; and, when used for research purposes, ethical guidelines should be followed.
Nevertheless, when responding to requests for information for use in academic research, the government has in recent years adopted an increasingly conservative attitude, usually rejecting the request without providing any legal basis for doing so. Not only does the government’s stance fail to safeguard the rights of the public, it also serves to protect those in power. Perhaps the most pertinent example is when information on businesses that violate labor laws is not released.
The labor insurance system contains information on nearly 10 million people, including details on compensation for work-related injuries and occupational hazards.
This information makes it possible for researchers to make general estimates about which industries present a higher risk to employees’ welfare. It also allows them to identify which companies have repeated workplace injuries and inform government officials as to where labor inspections and health checks should be carried out.
I recently experienced a host of problems when contacting the officials responsible for these matters at the Bureau of Labor Insurance. In order to achieve certain research goals, it is necessary to gather data on insured individuals, including their position, insurance provider, insured salary, age, sex and any identified occupational injuries.
To calculate probabilities for each industry, this information has to be linked to National Health Insurance Administration data and be compared with data for employees who have not become ill or encountered an occupational hazard.
This means researchers have to connect data from different government departments and then remove personally identifiable information. Clearly, this requires high-level clearance from the Executive Yuan. In its absence, lower-level civil servants do not release data to researchers unless it is explicitly required by law. The result is that researchers are unable to proceed with their research, and that protection against work-related injuries or occupational hazards will have to continue to be carried out on a case-by-case basis.
A similar situation took place in relation to airborne pollution and respiratory diseases. Recent research by National Taiwan University public health professor Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) suggested that exposure to sulfur dioxide emissions from the Mailiao naphtha cracker increased the likelihood of children developing allergies or asthma.
To carry out his research, Chan had to link data from the Environmental Protection Administration and the National Health Insurance Administration. However, due to restrictions on sharing labor insurance data, Chan was unable to study the health of naphtha cracker employees.
In order to resolve the problem of how to safeguard personal information, while at the same time making data available for academic research, two things should be done.
First, a review needs to be carried out into the degree of transparency that is attached to government information relating to polluting businesses and occupational hazards. This would prevent unscrupulous businesses using data protection as an excuse to withhold information and to ensure that responsible businesses are rewarded.
Second, where research requires the use of personal information, researchers should liaise with the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics to formulate a plan so that personally identifiable information is removed from the data, which can then be provided to researchers as randomized samples.
Lin Thung-hong is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology.
Translated by Edward Jones
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