Data governance, ownership and trust in the use of monitoring applications in Mexico in the context of COVID-19

Abstract

The global health emergency caused by COVID-19 has made it urgently necessary to find mechanisms to control the speed of contagion and reduce the risk of exposure of the population to the sick. In the search for options to manage the health crisis, different countries have resorted to technologies such as monitoring applications to track and in some cases confine citizens who are sick or at risk of infection. The use of these types of applications has provoked global discussions on the use of personal information, confidentiality and ownership, among many other aspects. Together, this refers to data governance, understood as the set of norms, principles and values that mediate the interaction between various actors.

The objective of this article is to analyze data governance in Mexico, based on the QR-COVID19 application implemented by the Mexico City government to monitor people exposed to the risk of contagion, as well as the process of appropriation of this technology and the trust of users. For this purpose, an online user perception survey has been applied to the open population. The questions guiding this work are: what type of information governance is involved in the QR-COVID 19 CDMX monitoring application; and what perceptions does the population have about the use of this technology?