London Borough of Islington

Using data better has potential benefits for councils, public sector partners, and citizens. However, it requires infrastructure in terms of standards and guidance on methods, evaluation, and public engagement. As local government strives to make better use of its data, issues of data privacy, data security, and ethics continue to emerge, particularly around data linkage, analytics, and the use of predictive models.

For data linkage, a lack of transparent and shared agreement about how local government data can be internally linked for different purposes to meet new GDPR requirements, and lack of data quality standards, makes it difficult for the sector to confidently make progress.

For analytics and predictive modelling (and particularly compared to the NHS), there is a lack of agreed standards and guidance (e.g. around pseudonymisation) as well as insufficient debate around the ethical use of models, lack of transparency around the methods which prohibits intellectual challenge or learning from others, and insufficient evaluation of predictive capabilities. Across all of this, public engagement and acceptability is key.

We will:

• collaborate across local government to start sharing and aligning standards,
• engage with residents about the acceptability of analytics, particularly the use and ethics of predictive modelling in council settings,
• publish all methods and frameworks developed to promote transparency and learning.