Using Mobile Data For Health Monitoring: A Case Study of Data Sharing Between Ghana Statistical Services, Vodafone Ghana, and Flowminder Foundation

A data collaboration in 2018 between the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Vodafone Ghana, and Flowminder, enabled the GSS to access insights from mobile phone data to plan public health and sustainable development policies. Using Mobile Data For Health Monitoring: A Case Study of Data Sharing Between Ghana Statistical Services, Vodafone Ghana, and Flowminder Foundation demonstrates how a government and a private company were able to work with an intermediary partner to gain insights from sensitive data. As part of the collaboration, Vodafone Ghana provided access to pseudonymized telecommunications data free of charge, and Flowminder aggregated and analyzed the data on behalf of GSS. Initially, the parties had planned to form a non-binding agreement, but national regulators requested a formal agreement that addressed various data concerns. From the initial draft of the agreement provided by Vodafone Ghana to the final approval, negotiations took some 13 months. The negotiations were made especially challenging because GSS did not have its own legal counsel, and the process overlapped with the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Among other issues, the agreement addresses how the data will be aggregated, the parameters for the exchange of the data between the parties, data use limitations, data deletion, and the publication of analysis results. After signing the agreement in December 2018, the parties have since enjoyed a successful collaboration, and the mobile data being used by GSS has proven especially valuable during the current Covid-19 pandemic to document the impact of restriction measures in Ghana.