Access rules needed on youth database

When it is anyone’s guess where the next leak of personal information will come from, a proposal to collate the data of 1 million Hongkongers under 18 in a new base bears close scrutiny to safeguard privacy. Subject to advice to the government from a consultancy study to be launched soon, the new database may be online as early as 2021. It would pull together child-related statistics from across government agencies. Welfare minister Law Chi-kwong said in principle it would help government and non-government agencies make sound policy and set priorities on family and youth issues. It may also alert authorities to child abuse and poverty.

The government-appointed Commission on Children agreed that setting up the database should be a priority. Billy Wong Wai-yuk, of the pressure group Committee on Children’s Rights, said access to relevant data centrally stored and documented would be a first step to better understanding children’s needs. But Law rightly warned that the scale and complexity of the task presented challenges.

Hong Kong’s plan for a central database on children

Care needs to be taken over the distinction between socioeconomic statistics and data on personal contact with the legal or health systems. In this respect it is worth noting Britain’s experience with a child database called ContactPoint, set up in 2003 after the death of an eight-year-old whose mother and her partner were jailed for cruelty and murder, but shut down after a change of government in 2010 amid claims of invasion of privacy and state intrusion in people’s lives. And it is worth remembering it took seven years’ study and law drafting to digitalise this city’s medical records.

The collating of data on under-18s held by government departments would create a family and youth policy resource bound to be coveted by government advisers, consultants and professionals in the area as well as the bureaucracy, not to mention its marketing value to business. Strict guidelines should be laid down on who is to have access to what kind of data, and how access is to be monitored. Anyone even remotely likely to be identifiable individually or collectively by sensitive personal data, and their guardians, should have the right to be informed.