Striking a balance: Open data and privacy in the digital era
In today's digital landscape, maintaining privacy alongside open data
efforts is essential. It involves safeguarding personal information
from unauthorised access or sharing, ensuring individuals have control
over their data. However, as open data initiatives become more
widespread, managing the balance between privacy and data
accessibility presents new challenges.

Open data initiatives seek to make data findable and datasets
interoperable with a view to maximising their reuse both alone and in
combination with other datasets. However, these projects involve
sharing extensive datasets, some of which may include data about
identifiable individuals or even sensitive details. Despite attempts
to remove identifying information, if enough attributes about an
individual are released, it is possible that their identity can be
inferred. This can be accomplished by cross-referencing and connecting
data between different databases and datasets.

Addressing these challenges requires a delicate balance between data
openness and privacy protection. Several techniques have been used to
protect the privacy of the individuals, such as pseudonymous and
anonymous data
[https://www.privacycompany.eu/blog/what-are-the-differences-between-anonymisation-and-pseudonymisation#:~:text=Pseudonymisation%20is%20the%20process%20of,not%20subject%20to%20the%20GDPR.]
or data aggregation, through which detailed data are grouped and
released as statistics or metadata. Moreover, guidelines and
regulations have been published on both a European and national level
to ensure that open data initiatives are conducted ethically and
responsibly.

The European Commission's 'Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI
[https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/ethics-guidelines-trustworthy-ai]'
is an example of a guideline, establishing a bedrock of ethical
principles for AI development and usage that respect human rights and
ensure transparency and fairness. The well-known General Data
Protection Regulation
[http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/2016-05-04] (GDPR) enforces
controls over personal data handling in the EU, mandating explicit
consent for data collection and granting individuals significant
control over their personal information.

Incorporating these ethical guidelines and legal frameworks into open
data practices is essential. By harnessing privacy-enhancing
technologies and aligning with transparent, accountable data
governance models, we can leverage open data's societal benefits while
protecting individual privacy.  

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Publication Date/Time
2024-04-10T08:00:00+00:00
Promoting transparency while safeguarding personal privacy