The complexity of legislation covering the use of data has led to the widespread adoption of protocols to control the sharing and use of data between organisations.
These protocols provide a way to help organisations understand and comply with their legal obligations, but they are usually bespoke and can become very complicated. If an organisation is active in data sharing this can result in it having to understand and administer a lot of different protocols.
Within the West Midlands, the research and analysis community recognised the benefits to everyone that comes from having a standard, straight-forward protocol that can be used in a consistent way in many different circumstances.
This simplifies the task of sharing data, encourages data to be shared and also allows other sharing considerations such as security and disposal to be easily dealt with.
In recognition of this need the Regional Data and Intelligence Network with assistance from the Observatory has developed and agreed a standard data sharing protocol.
Using this protocol organisations can:
- Have one easy to understand process that covers most data sharing situations.
- Understand and meet their legal obligations.
- Deal with intellectual property rights, data security and data formatting.
- Have a standard and consistent process across organisations and partnerships
The protocol itself is:
- Free
- Simple
- Maintained at a regional level
- Checked by the Information Commissioner
The protocol document set (ZIP, 158 KB) is available to any organisation in zipped Word format.