Anonymisation tool

Environmental Protection Agency Rijnmond

Recognising and anonymising privacy-sensitive information in documents

Last change on 4th of June 2024, at 14:53 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

• Publication category: Other algorithms
• Impact assessment: Field not filled in.
• Status: In use

General information

Theme

• Nature and Environment
• Space and Infrastructure

Begin date

12-2020

Contact information

https://www.dcmr.nl/contactformulier

Responsible use

Goal and impact

The anonymisation tool is used to give substance to transparency on the one hand and the necessary protection of individuals and companies to whom documents relate on the other. The impact of the algorithm on citizens and companies is low. The algorithm searches specifically for (personal) data and masks them regardless of the further content of documents.

Considerations

Using the anonymisation tool speeds up and simplifies the process for active and passive disclosure. Automated anonymisation is also less error-prone than human intervention. This reduces the risk of a data breach and better protects citizens' and companies' data.

Human intervention

The anonymisations proposed by the anonymisation tool are approved or disapproved by an employee in all cases when it comes to decisions to be formally published and also when it comes to WOO requests. Random checks are carried out for soil reports to be anonymised.

Risk management

An extensive testing process took place before the tool went live. New versions are tested before going live.

To mitigate the risk that documents are insufficiently anonymised, human verification takes place, depending on the type of document randomly or a full check.

Legal basis

Environmental Law (General Provisions) Act (Wabo) , General Administrative Law Act (AWB), Notification Act, Open Government Act (WOO) , Electronic Publications Act (WEP)

Operations

Data

Value lists are used: which data should not be visible and which data should be visible.

Technical design

The anonymisation tool works with Natural Language Processing (NLP).NLP is a part of Artificial Intelligence (AI) where language and artificial intelligence come together. For example, texts can be classified by recognising what the subject of the sentence is or what a verb or name is, for example. Through AI, the software recognises more and more terms.

External provider

OCTOBOX Netherlands B.V.