5 MINUTE READ
Balancing data privacy while providing data-smart city solutions
Building Data-Smart City Solutions
Consultant: STEERING
Copyright: SSMIC
Acorn’s approach to privacy
Privacy considerations are part of any solution and should not be viewed as an insurmountable barrier, but as a normal step in solution design. Acorn thinks outwardly, focusing on solutions related to health and human services, public safety, improving service delivery to the community and supporting economic development so that benefits derived from accessing data are clearly defined as the first step. From here, appropriate measures are taken to protect privacy from the initiation of the project through to completion. This approach to privacy by design balances protecting data privacy and providing data-driven solutions.
Data-sharing agreements and data-sharing practices
Acorn’s data-sharing agreements are categorized by who is permitted to view or edit CIU data. Access levels are granted by Acorn to specific partners. Data access may be at the city level, ward level, Statistics Canada census tract level, Statistics Canada dissemination area level, postal code level or address level.
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Nearly all data received from Acorn partners does not contain names, addresses or identifying information - data is commonly received at a postal code level with no other identifier. To protect privacy, Acorn aggregates the postal code data to Statistics Canada dissemination areas. With aggregated postal code data, partners can suppress or expand geographic areas to extract essential, accurate data for projects.
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Most work that Acorn undertakes relates to planning and prevention and relies on location analysis. These projects include analysis to determine the best locations for social service programming, identifying areas where there is an economic development opportunity to encourage outside investment, epidemiology to improve public health, and pinpointing vulnerable populations to increase public safety. Neighborhood level data (Statistics Canada dissemination area level) used in this analysis can bring benefits to entire neighborhoods and also individual citizens. Some partnering agencies aggregate postal codes to the dissemination areas before sending the data to Acorn.
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All data transferred to and from Acorn is completed through password-protected, secure file transfer where the data is encrypted in the transfer.
Data-sharing agreements and data-sharing practices
For applicable projects, Acorn completes the following:
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A data-sharing agreement between partners: This document defines the data being shared, the data owner, data user and the data administrator as well as period of agreement, manner of collection, notice requirement and consent, method and security of data transfer, data access, data usage, terms for termination of agreement and method of data disposal.​
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Privacy policy: Acorn has a privacy policy that is applied to all data projects. The privacy policy was developed to comply with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronics Act (PIPEDA) and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA). MFIPPA applies to municipalities, police services, school boards and social service administration boards and other agencies associated with municipalities and municipal funding.​
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Privacy Impact Assessment: This document defines a project, details the data utilized, the role of data in the project, and outlines access security risk mitigations and data retention.​
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Statement of Sensitivity: This document is based on the standards developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce. This Statement of Sensitivity is intended to help determine the confidentiality, integrity and availability requirements of data or software solution. This analysis pertains to the information that is processed, transmitted, managed and/or stored.
Data and information systems security is based on three main factors:
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Confidentiality: A loss of confidentiality is the unauthorized disclosure of information.
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Integrity: A loss of integrity is the unauthorized modification or destruction of information
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Availability: A loss of availability is the disruption of access to or use of information or an information system
These factors can be classified by potential impact as per the table below:
Security categories for information and information systems
National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, 2008
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