Tim Almond

I had a comment on a post from Ellee Seymour, uber blogger from Cambridgeshire, which I thought I’d post a reply as it’s a subject that I wanted to do something wider on…

I love data too, it’s great for basing stories around. But how willing will the Government be to share their data with us? Perhaps they are afraid it will reveal too much? How much of it, in fact, is protected?

First off… government sharing data. The Freedom of Information Act was a weak piece of legislation that guaranteed no right of access as politicians were involved in the filtering process (unlike the US version where judges preside over such decisions), and the government is now trying to reign back in.

With regards to data protection, this gets complicated. First off, you must protect data in terms of individual identities. Government should not reveal individual information. The easy answer to that is that you remove things like names and addresses. But, even if you do that, it may that data that other factors in terms of location and behaviour could lead you to understand something about individuals. It has to be thought through with this as a priority.

Now, the thing that I also want to cover is how I view "information" and "data". To me, information is the result of processing data. This may be a database solution provider-centric view on things, but bear with me… If the government says "Waiting lists are 4 months", that’s information. Data is the granular information that gets processed that means that you reach that conclusion. It’s the list of all patients and when they got on the list.

Having data as raw as possible creates more open government. It allows for more scrutiny and more empowerment of individuals.

Tags: Information //