Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 1 October 2019 to Question 291339 on Cabinet Office: Data Protection, (a) who the decision-maker was and (b) when the decision was made to create a separate account to hold centralised data collected from GOV.UK services; and was that decision reviewed by the Information Commissioners Office.

The work to create a centralised anonymised analytics account is part of the Government Digital Service’s wider strategy for GOV.UK. It has been GDS’ intention to move towards this model for a while. This is standard practice for industry, and is how a modern government should operate.

The GDS takes the privacy of citizens’ data extremely seriously. In developing this project, GDS have taken into account both the data protection regime and other guidance like the Government’s Data Ethics Framework. Holding the anonymised cross-domain data in a separate account is just one of a range of technical, privacy and information assurance measures put in place before the start of the project.