It’s Data Privacy Week this week from 24 to 28 January 2022. This year’s theme is “Respect Privacy”.
The NSW Data Analytics Centre (DAC) supports Data Privacy Week. DAC, through the NSW Data Reform, aims to increase the safe use of data across NSW government in order to support data-driven decision making and deliver better outcomes for the people of NSW. It provides an open data platform and resources to support agencies across NSW government to share their data. Ultimately this will help NSW government to build better products and services for the community.
The DAC works with the NSW Privacy Commissioner to encourage and support agencies to embed privacy-by-design principles and ensure that data sharing processes preserve privacy where possible.
To drive transparency and openness, NSW government commits to:
- Communicate clearly about what we are doing with data
- Be open about how we are managing any risks
- Track the benefits that come from data sharing and promote good news
- Provide clear response lines for community concerns about government data use
- Be upfront about any problems that occur through government use of data.
The DAC uses tools such as the Personal Information Factor (PIF) Tool to safeguard privacy and assess re-identification risks in data. The PIF Tool, for example, has assisted the DAC in ensuring COVID-19 cases and tests data can be safely published as open data. A previous blog about the PIF tool can be found here.
NSW Government has resources to help NSW government agencies Respect Privacy when working with their data and datasets:
- NSW Government information classification, labelling and handling guidelines
- NSW Government Cyber Security Policy
- Data Governance Toolkit – Data Management
- Data Custodianship Policy
- Making Data Safe for Sharing
- Information and Privacy Commission NSW (IPC) website
- IPC Information Governance Agency Self-assessment Tools