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A Toolkit for Data Sharing

This Toolkit is aimed at service providers, such as local authority and other public sector employees, who have to grapple with data sharing issues. It provides comprehensive, up to date, information and guidance on information management practice. It also provides information and links to current practice developed by a broad range of public service providers.

Information Rights Division

Department for Constitutional Affairs

May 2004

We recommend that you first work through the Legal Guidance and covering letter, issued in November 2003, when considering any data-sharing project. It explains the existing powers available to public bodies to collect, use and share personal data. This will help lawyers and practitioners decide whether they have the power to share personal information information for legitimate and appropriate purposes. We have provided some case studies to illustrate how these legal considerations are addressed in practice.
The Legal Guidance is also available in PDF format
We are currently working on a Privacy Impact Assessment. It will allow you to determine whether data sharing is justified by helping you to weigh up the benefits of the project against any negative impacts on privacy and how to mitigate these. This will be available soon.
Also consider the data sharing Protocol Guidance. It contains recommended standards for formalising data sharing agreements and sets out the purpose, principles and commitments that organisations should adopt when they share data. A data sharing Protocol checklist has also been produced to supplement the Guidance.

The toolkit also contains:

Guidance on complaints procedures which sets out how to deal with complaints from members of the public about data sharing.
Guidance on producing codes of practice and management guidance, setting out good data protection and data sharing practices.
Guidance on privacy statements to help you develop privacy statements for your organisation, including Internet guarantees of privacy.
Once you have worked through our guidance documents, we recommend that you consult our Data Sharing Library for examples of current practice in your subject area. These include examples of protocols, codes of practice, management guidance and privacy statements developed by a range of public bodies and service providers. It also includes links to information sharing Toolkits developed elsewhere as well as to other data sharing initiatives being taken forward across the public sector. You can also access information and view examples of Privacy Impact Assessments completed by other jurisdictions.