Reconsidering the 'Public' / 'Private' Divide to Realise Societal Welfare in Data Access and Governance

Infraethical theoretical accounts have exposed the limitations in seeing the individual decisions of data owners as a proxy for whether particular types of data access serve the ‘public good’. These limitations are all the more apparent in the post-C19 world, where public health objectives heavily rely on massive, timely and adequate data flows. Drawing on the UK and EU data protection legal frameworks, this paper interrogates the conventional, often rigidly observed, divide between the ‘public’ and ‘private’ interests as bases for lawful data processing. In doing so, it argues against treating the relationship between the two as a zero-sum game. A conceptualisation of the ‘public’ interest as not incompatible with private interests, as long as a contribution to societal well-being is made through data access, is offered in that regard.