Inpatient census 2017: guidance and documentation for data suppliers

Guidance and documentation for data suppliers for the 2017 Inpatient Census.


What is a Privacy Impact Assessment?

Any project that involves the collection of personal information inevitably gives rise to privacy concerns.

A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) helps to identify privacy risks, anticipate problems and propose solutions. It is a relatively new self-assessment process for evaluating a proposal:

  • to identify its potential effects upon individual privacy and data protection compliance
  • to ensure that the project complies with the data protection principles and
  • to consider how any negative effects might be overcome.

 

What is privacy?

Privacy can be defined as follows;

'Interpreted most broadly, privacy is about the integrity of the individual. It therefore encompasses many aspects of the individual's social needs.' (Taken from the Information Commissioner's Office's PIA Handbook)

For the purposes of completing a PIA, the handbook identifies four aspects of privacy:

  • the privacy of personal information
  • the privacy of the person
  • the privacy of personal behaviour and
  • the privacy of personal communications.

Contact

For technical queries relating to the uploading of data to ProcXed, please contact:

Colin Gallacher
0131 244 0317
colin.gallacher@gov.scot

Keith McFerran
0131 244 2365
keith.mcferran@gov.scot

 

For any other queries relating to the census (e.g. with definitions or guidance notes) please contact:

Ellen Lynch
0131 244 4093
swstat@gov.scot

Guy McGivern
0131 244 5523
swstat@gov.scot  

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