ICO seminar on privacy and anonymous data

ICO news release
30 March 2011

Being anonymous ‘an ever increasing challenge’ in 2011, says Information Commissioner

Advances in the internet, the scale of personal information that is collected by public bodies and businesses, and the pressure to share data in the name of efficiency, make being anonymous in 2011 ‘an ever increasing challenge’ Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, will say today at a seminar the ICO is hosting on anonymisation.

Leading academics and experts from the public sector and business will gather at the Wellcome Trust in London today to consider different perspectives and approaches to anonymisation – the process of removing personal identifiers from information. Speaking alongside the Information Commissioner are Paul Ohm from the University of Colorado, Mark Elliot from the University of Manchester as well as representatives from the Cabinet Office and the Office of National Statistics.

The ICO will publish a report in the coming weeks that will summarise the seminar’s key discussion points as well as setting out next steps.

Full press release here.