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Cabinet office announces transparency and privacy review

Transparency remains firmly on the agenda for the Coalition Government. Many public sector bodies have been busy publishing data on the data.gov website.

The push towards greater public sector transparency is, however, also highlighting tensions between the prime minister's transparency requirements and existing laws such as privacy, intellectual property and confidentiality laws.

The tensions between transparency laws and the individual's rights to privacy are the subject of the Cabinet Office review announced on 6 December 2010. This review will be led by Dr Kieron O'Hara, a senior research fellow in electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton. Findings from the review will be published in March 2011.

This tension between transparency and privacy has been a high-profile battle, with the first major skirmish back in 2008 when a freedom of information case, triggered by Ben Leapman, led to disclosure of MPs expenses. In more recent freedom of information cases, such as that of the Vale of Glamorgan Council in May 2010, we have seen how the 'right to data' is outweighing the 'right to privacy,' even when it comes to personal data of consultants. These cases demonstrate that this is not just an issue for MPs and highly paid public sector officials, but also for public sector suppliers and contractors.

The lack of clarity around where to draw the line between transparency and privacy is illustrated by two guidance notes issued on very specific privacy versus transparency topics. The Information Commissioner's Office has issued guidance on "crime-mapping" - the process of producing a geographical representation of crime levels, crime types or the locations of particular incidents. This is because it is a process likely to pose significant privacy risks. The other new guidance issued in November 2010 is supplementary to the Department of Health's code of practice on confidentiality and specifically tackles the issue of weighing up the public interest against individual patients' rights to privacy.

It remains to be seen whether the outcome of the review will result in wider-reaching guidance for the public sector on how best to walk the thin line between transparency and privacy. We also want to see whether the Information Commissioner and Information Tribunals will take the same view as the Cabinet Office when balancing freedom of information against data protection laws in the future.

More information on the new transparency requirements is given in our previous alert.