Exercise: How will you store and safeguard responses?
Managing and storing data raises several key questions that a data governance framework can address. Consider the following thought exercise as you and your team plan ahead.
Imagine you have held the outreach activity (collected questionnaires and surveys, conducted focus groups, or interviewed community members and leaders), and now you will need to manage and store the data. What is the data’s format (hand-written notes, audio files, transcripts or filled-in surveys)? Are there privacy concerns, or was personal data collected? Is it necessary to transfer hand-written or hard-copy notes and surveys to digital formats and storage? If so, can these be safely stored on the local authorities’ computer systems? Will they need to be shared between departments for analysis? What will the protocols to access this information be (i.e., who will have access to view, edit or download these files)?
In the long term, what will happen to the raw data? Will you retain the original forms (or copies of them), or simply retain the analysis and anonymized compilation of responses (and destroy the original forms or raw data)?
In responding to these questions, you should be aware of your obligations under the law, your team’s capacities and infrastructure, and the expectations of residents (i.e., what would be the consequences if this raw data was made public?).