Strategies to help minimise risks

You can take many actions to help minimise risks, including:
1. Increase data literacy

Work with your stakeholders to increase data literacy in key areas such as:

  • data collection
  • handling personal and sensitive data
  • rights and permissions
2. Implement a data management plan

If you develop a good data management plan it can support the safeguarding of data. Your plan should set out the processes that support the policies including:

  • how to store and share data 
  • data lifecycle and retention/deletion requirements 
  • when and how risks, legal requirements and ethical practices are reviewed
  • how data users and external stakeholders are supported

    Use this guide to help you develop a data management plan.

    3. Use a variety of data licenses and data sharing agreements

    You do not need to license all data the same way. Different versions of the same dataset can exist at different places on the data spectrum.

    For example, if it is necessary to share a dataset containing personal data:

    • use a data sharing agreement,
    • make an anonymised version of the same dataset openly available in parallel
    4. Document and communicate openly
    You can lower risk by documenting and publishing:
    • policies and processes
    • impact assessments
    • known data quality issues
    • limitations of the data

    Being open and welcoming feedback are essential to help you build a healthy ecosystem around the data.