Research Data Management ANONYMISATION

Transcription

1 ANONYMISATION

2 Sensitive Data Sensitive Data is information overing: The raial or ethni origin of the Data Subjet Politial opinions Religious or other beliefs of a similar nature Membership of trade unions Physial or mental health or ondition Sexual Life The ommission of any offene or riminal reords Sensitive data must be olleted using an opt-in and should be arefully handled. Other lasses of data whih might be regarded as sensitive are data relating to hildren and finanial information, and also data related to national defene. Sensitive data also inludes any information that is proteted by University poliy from unauthorized aess. This information must be restrited to those with a legitimate business need for aess.

3 Personal and Confidential Information (PCi) Personal data Personal data are data whih relate to a living individual who an be identified from those data or from those data and other information whih is in the possession of, or is likely to ome into the possession of, the data ontroller and inludes any expression of opinion about the individual and any indiation of the intentions of the data ontroller. This inludes any other person in respet of the individual (Data Protetion At 1998). Confidential data Confidential data are data given in onfidene or data agreed to be kept onfidential, i.e. seret, between two parties, that are not in the publi domain suh as information on business, inome, health, medial details, and politial opinion. The University UPR12 sets out the aeptable pratie for managing PCi.

4 Anonymisation A person's identity an be dislosed from: diret identifiers suh as names, addresses, postode information, telephone numbers or pitures indiret identifiers whih, when linked with other publily available information soures, ould identify someone, e.g. information on workplae, oupation or exeptional values of harateristis like salary or age Diret identifiers are often olleted as part of the researh administration proess but are usually not essential researh information and an therefore easily be removed from the data. UK Data Arhive

5 Anonymisation Assign eah partiipant an anonymity ode, whih would be their identifier in a SPSS or Exel database. Only the PI an math an individual to their ode and eah partiipant an be given their own ode in ase they wish to withdraw from the study. Most data are used en masse so individuals are diffiult to identify, it is the grouped responses that researhers are interested in. When publishing the data, information that identifies partiipants annot be published suh as name, address, telephone and ontat information. Apply this same anonymisation to the data sets, what doesn t need to be shared? You an ask the partiipants for permission to publish ertain dislosed information when you re ready to arhive it if you did not do so when it was olleted.

6 Ethis approved sharing Your sensitive data is most at risk when you share it between devies and people. If you are working with the NHS, you will be provided with an enrypted aount that you need to use to ontat them. In your everyday environment, you an; enrypt your s using Outlook; this also enrypts the attahments but you will need ensure the reipient an derypt it. enrypt your data and files using TrueCrypt before attahing them to your or using the file exhange.

7 Open Aess with restritions The term "Open Data" is unsettling and an have different onnotations depending on who you talk to. Generally, it means that data is aessible by everyone. With respet to repositories, it is unreasonable and unlikely that all data is available without restritions. If data is disoverable, then it is open to the publi and aessible. It may not be downloadable by everyone You an restrit aess to professionals, members of a partiular group i.e. NHS workers. Arhives will offer different levels of aess so your data is proteted against misuse.

8 NHS Data arhives Sensitive data has to be anonymised before being preserved in an arhive; however, this is not a new onept as data must be anonymised for publiation. Databases with sensitive information tend to have aess ontrol so that data is not misused. The National Institute of Health and Care Exellene (NICE), provide an evidene searh whih is aessed using NHS Athens. The University of Hertfordshire is a member of Athens, so if you are supporting NHS patients, you an get a NHS Athens aount for free. NHS approved databases are reviewed by their ethis ommittee and meet their requirements for the preservation of researh data.