The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has published a data protection code of practice on managing the risks related to anonymisation to help organisations stay within the law when pursuing open data agendas.

Christopher Graham, UK Information Commissioner, warned: “Failure to anonymise personal data correctly can result in enforcement action from the ICO. However we recognise that anonymised data can have important benefits, creating the transparency of government and aiding the UK’s widely regarded research community.”

The code, published this week, is designed to help organisations understand why and when they need to anonymise data as well as providing examples of some techniques such as removing names, using pseudonyms and analysing the data as totals (aggregation) so that no individuals’ data is shown.

Increasingly organisations, including charities, are adopting ‘open data’ approaches as a way to share information and improve accountability. Essentially this means making information freely available (usually on a website) and can include data about the charity itself and providing the raw data from research into or about service users or stakeholders.

The Data Protection Act 1998 requires organisations publishing data to ensure that personal data is converted into a form that does not identify the individual and in a way that the person cannot be re-identified. This is known as anonymised data.

The ICO also announced that a consortium, led by the University of Manchester, with the University of Southampton, Office for National Statistics and the government’s new Open Data Institute, will run a new UK Anonymisation Network (UKAN).

Over the next two years the network will receive £15,000 from the ICO to share examples of good practice related to anonymisation through a website, case studies, and seminars. A website will launch in early 2013.

Click here to view the code.