Completion requirements
Identifying risks in data
You can identify risks in data by asking the following questions.
1: Think about the sources of your data:
- Do you have the rights to collect, access, use and share the data?
- Is there any third party data in the data?
- Is there an existing ethical or legislative context you need to consider (e.g. in country and funder policies)?
- Is the data properly described, including its limitations, gaps, inconsistencies or biases?
2: Look directly at the data and establish:
- Could the data directly, or indirectly, identify individuals?
- Does the data contain sensitive information?
- Does the data contain any confidential information?
- Does the data contain free text fields? Have these been analysed in respect to the above?
3: Think about impacts (e.g. impacts of national security, organisations, people and society):
- What are you trying to achieve by collecting, sharing or using data?
- What positive impacts might there be?
- What negative impacts might there be?