Personal Data and Privacy WG logo

Welcome to the webpage of Personal Data and Privacy, a Working Group (WG) dedicated to exploring the problematic intersection of personal data, open data and privacy. This collaborative project (between the Open Knowledge and the Open Rights Group) seeks to connect with a community of privacy experts, data publishers, policymakers and developers to:

1. explore the issues around the rights of individuals to choose what happens to the data held about them.

2. develop clear principles to guide data publishers when making decisions on opening up datasets which may contain some personal elements.

3. develop and make available a database of resources (of clear language, shared terminology, and documented best practices) to guide stakeholders when communicating and working around these topics (of privacy, personal data, open data, big data, and shared data).

However, the project would work at connecting with the larger community of related activities and projects about open data and privacy.

Current collaborators include the Open Notice and the Responsible Data Forum.  See full list on the Wiki page.

If you would like to be involved in future activities or hear about our plans we welcome you to join our mailing list or visit our Wiki page today.

Follow the discussions/insights from the Expert Workshop here.

Join the working group

From our Blog

Why privacy considerations matter in the current open data environment

In a little under 2 months, experts in open data, privacy, and personal data management will gather in London to spend two days deliberating on issues surrounding the privacy concerns of opening up data systems that might contain elements of a personal nature.This meeting could not have come at a better time. This group of […]

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What do they know about me? Open data on how organisations use personal data

This post is by Reuben Binns, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Southampton, Web Science Institute. His research interests include ethical and legal aspects of personal data and open data. Find him on Twitter and GitHub. When open data and personal data collide, attention is quite rightly drawn to the negative implications for privacy; […]

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Open Data Privacy

“yes, the government should open other people’s data” Traditionally, the Open Knowledge Foundation has worked to open non-personal data – things like publicly-funded research papers, government spending data, and so on. Where individual data was a part of some shared dataset, such as a census, great amounts of thought and effort had gone in to […]

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My Data & Open Data

The Open Knowledge Foundation believes in open **knowledge**: not just that some data is open and freely usable, but that it is **useful** – accessible, understandable, meaningful, and able to help someone solve a real problem. A lot of the data which could help me improve my life is data about me – “MyData” if […]

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