Transparency and Privacy Review announced
7 December 2010
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude has today announced a review of the impact of transparency on privacy.
The review will help to shape the Government’s approach to the release of data as part of the transparency agenda.
It will also enable Government to ensure that on-going releases of data are done in a way that provides maximum transparency of data while applying the appropriate data protection safeguards.
The review will:
- support the Government in striking the right balance between transparency and data protection safeguards, and between the interests of wider society and the interests of the individual or corporate body
- identify the nature of the risk to privacy of the individual posed by transparency of public data, in particular the potential for ‘jigsaw’ identification
- advise the Government on practical approaches to take.
The review will be led by Dr Kieron O'Hara, a Senior Research Fellow in electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton, with research interests in privacy, trust and web science.
It will be supported by a team based in the Cabinet Office’s Transparency Team. Findings from the review are set to be published in March 2011.
