Few people feel in control of how the Government uses their information, ministers say.

The Government is appealing for outside help to win the public trust it needs to make more use of personal data.

It will set up a Data Futures Partnership comprised of "40 influential credible individuals" to help broker a new social contract between the public sector, businesses and the public on the use of information.

The body will champion the innovative use of data at the same time as helping determine the ethics that will govern its sharing and use.

Announcing the partnership, Finance Minister Bill English said the volume of data held by the public and private sectors was "growing exponentially".

"The partnership will be a driving force behind the safe use of data to innovate and tackle real-world problems like child poverty and crime. Having a collective voice to guide the safe, productive and trusted use of data data is vital," he said.

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards said he had only just found out about the announcement and it was too soon to comment on what it might mean.

A Cabinet paper said the partnership would operate at arm's length from the Government, and many of the individuals who would make up the partnership were expected to be volunteers.

But decisions would be made by a smaller working group of four to six people who would report to ministers, it said.

The Cabinet paper said fewer than a third of people reported feeling in control of how government agencies used their information and that "public trust in the data-use ecosystem is tenuous".

It also said there was a risk the partnership might be viewed as a "talk fest".

The body was likely to cost $1.6 million a year to run, it said, while citing research that the more effective use of data could contribute $4.8 billion a year in economic and social gains.

United Future leader Peter Dunne sounded a note of caution on data privacy issues on Thursday, ahead of the release of the Cabinet paper.

While technology, information sharing and data-matching offered "many possibilities", a citizen's right to privacy was still paramount, and the expectation it would be safeguarded was justifiably strong, he said.

"Weakening the Privacy Act in the interests of wider social policy objectives is not acceptable, in the same way that weakening the Resource Management Act in the interest of economic development is not acceptable," he said.