At mWater all of your data is kept fully secured and can only be viewed by you or your organization. In the case that your organization has a group of managers and enumerators cleaning and working with sensitive, personal data there sometimes is a need to keep sensitive information confidential.
How to get started
In a survey's design tab, go to settings in the top right of the page, and turn on Confidential Data Mode by ticking the box for this option. Then, add a new question. In the new question's design popup, look for the bold word, Confidential. Tick the box next to that to make this question protected. If the question type is a location question, you will also see an option to enter a minimum radius in meters, within which the GPS coordinates will be offset. Leave this box blank to completely redact the location rather than offsetting where it appears on a map.
Note: You only have this option when beginning a survey that has not been deployed yet. Existing deployments' questions cannot be adapted to have Confidential Data Mode.
About Confidential Data Mode for surveys
When enabled, "Confidential Data Mode" allows new advanced options to choose when designing a new question:
Only admins will be able to see the answers
Location question - obscure map locations to only show details to admins
Any question type (non-location): Only admins will be able to see the unredacted answers
Location question: obscure GPS locations, only showing actual location details to admins
Warnings:
Enumerators will see their own answer to a confidential question when editing their own surveys. To protect enumerators from having access to information after a survey is submitted, make sure to keep the option in the deployment setting that allows enumerators to edit surveys after submitting unticked. If a submitted survey has been rejected to the enumerator, they will again see the actual answer.
Managers will not be able to see the actual data of a confidential question when cleaning the data. Do not use this mode if you need managers to have access to actual, unredacted data.
If GPS questions are made confidential, there will be a random offset to their location that will not exceed the number in meters that you specify. In the case that locations may stigmatize a household or site, be aware that you may be putting a random household that is actually located at the obscured location at risk.
Obscured GPS locations may affect the admin regions calculated in mWater for the point if the location is near the border of a region.
Admins can see the redacted data when exporting responses, but not when directly viewing responses in the Portal.
Why keep data confidential
Reasons to enable "Confidential Data Mode" in mWater can vary for users or organizations.
Some reasons might include:
Protecting the privacy of program participants or beneficiaries by limiting availability of personal information to those who have a specific need to access it
Complying with ethical guidelines in research, such as Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols
Preventing both intential and unintentional bias by staff
Avoiding stigmatization of specific households in mapped data
We are grateful to the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina for supporting the development of confidential mode. If you are interested in becoming an mWater investor and influencing the future development of our platform, please contact us at info@mWater.co!
