Data benefits? Attitudes and aspirations of recipients towards social security administrative data sharing

This paper outlines benefit recipients’ views towards the sharing of data that is collected about them when they routinely interact with social security services. Sharing this administrative data between public bodies promises to transform the delivery and evaluation of social security. However, there remains a lack of research into public attitudes, understandings, and aspirations for the sharing of this data, particularly from those whose data would be shared. Drawing on discussions from deliberative focus groups with 41 individuals, we reflect on the scope for increased data sharing to deliver improvements for recipients.While participants were aware of how their data is currently shared and how increased data sharing might have advantages, they expressed strong distrust in government agencies to manage their data and concerns about being placed in a position of increased vulnerability. We argue individuals’ views towards data sharing cannot be separated from their lived experiences of data systems – their data realities – which are often markedly different from system designers. We conclude by offering considerations against data systems re-introducing paternalistic policy, unintentionally, via automation – which we term ‘automated paternalism’.