Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will publish the accounts of the data ethics and compliance issues that her Department produced for the cross data tracking of Gov.uk users.

The Government Digital Service (GDS), based in the Cabinet Office, is implementing end-to-end performance monitoring so that GOV.UK can be designed to ensure that people can access the information and services they need as easily as possible. Government departments are enabling GDS to centrally collect data on site usage across the GOV.UK estate, to provide an end to end, anonymised view of how people interact with government online. The data being analysed does not include any Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and GDS have put and technical and procedural controls in place to prevent personally identifiable information from being included by accident or malicious intent.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have been working with colleagues in the Government Digital Service (GDS) to ensure that any legal and ethical issues are considered and addressed. In developing the project, GDS have taken into account both the data protection regime and the Data Ethics Framework published by DCMS last year.