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Greater safeguards and transparency needed for UK government's data sharing law, says information commissioner


Proposals to help public bodies share and use citizen's data more easily need additional privacy safeguards, according to a data protection watchdog.

The Digital Economy Bill, currently being scrutinised by the UK parliament, promotes greater sharing and use of citizen's data across the public sector. Under the plans data sharing arrangements provided for under the Bill would be governed by codes of practice.

UK information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said the Bill was "an enabler" of "data sharing for the improvement of government services". She said the public "expect seamless government services in some cases" and that it "does not make sense" for data to "stay in ivory towers or silos … when building digital delivery services".

However, Denham, who was providing evidence to a parliamentary committee which is scrutinising the Bill, said more focus is needed on "transparency and trust".

"The transparency that needs to be clear in the Bill is on two levels," Denham said. "First, at the point of data collection and in ways that are easy for citizens to access, they should understand the purpose of and how their data will be shared, and they should have the ability to challenge that."

"Secondly, there needs to be another layer of safeguards and transparency scattered throughout some of the draft codes of practice, but not in the Bill. That is the transparency that comes from privacy impact assessments, from reviews by our office, and from parliament looking at revised codes of practice. It is really important that we pay attention to both those levels. Civil society is going to pay attention to published privacy impact assessments; but right now there is no consistency across all the codes of practice for those kinds of safeguards. I believe that some improvements are needed to the Bill," she said.

"My recommendations are to up the safeguards and improve the transparency. Breaking down the data sharing by type, function and purpose of data is a good way forward. There are some draconian data-sharing regimes in other parts of the world, which are concerning to data protection commissioners. I generally think that the approach here is right, but there could still be some strengthening of the Bill. That would go a long way to assuring more public trust and therefore more buy-in and participation in the digital economy and digital services," Denham said.

The Digital Economy Bill contains draft legislation designed to implement proposals which the Cabinet Office held a consultation on in March this year. At the time the Cabinet Office said new data sharing laws would be established to ensure data can used for purposes such as improving the welfare of citizens, aiding research and combating fraud, in line with specified data privacy safeguards.

In her evidence session before the Public Bill Committee, Denham also described proposed new laws in Australia, which would make it a criminal offence to re-identify anonymised government data in the country, as "an excellent idea" and said that the ICO recommends similar provisions are built in to UK law.

Denham also said she was in favour of "extending liability and accountability to directors" to help combat unsolicited marketing.

Although the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) can fine companies up to £500,000 for engaging in unsolicited marketing in breach of e-Privacy regulations, the watchdog has only "been able to collect only a small proportion" of the fines it has served, Denham said. This is "because companies go out of business and, as in a game of whack-a-mole, appear somewhere else", she said.

Denham said it is important that directors can be held to account by the ICO for "serious contraventions".

She said: "At the end of the day when it comes to list brokers and sharing the data, the source of the data is the problem. That is why I am very keen to see directors’ liability built into statute."

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