Data mask

Municipality of Zandvoort

Algorithm recognizes and anonymizes (personal) data and confidential data in documents before they are published.

Last change on 15th of July 2024, at 7:16 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

• Publication category: Other algorithms
• Impact assessment: DPIA
• Status: In use

General information

Theme

Organisation and business operations

Begin date

2023-12

Contact information

[e-mail]

Responsible use

Goal and impact

The anonymization software is used to provide transparency on the one hand and the necessary protection of the persons and companies to whom the documents relate on the other.

Considerations

The municipality of Zandvoort has to deal with various laws and regulations that require information to be made public both actively and upon request. This information may contain privacy-sensitive information, and it is important that this information is anonymized before publication. Manually anonymizing data is a time-consuming task that also carries the risk of human error, resulting in possible data leaks. With the help of anonymization software, users are enabled to anonymize personal data and confidential information in an efficient manner.

Human intervention

The documents anonymized by the software are checked by an employee. The employee determines whether the document has been anonymized correctly.

Risk management

DataMask makes a proposal for anonymizing data and information. A municipal employee always does the final check to see if a document has been anonymized correctly. This minimizes the risk.

Legal basis

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Implementation Act General Data Protection Regulation (UAVG) and the Open Government Act (Woo)

Impact assessment

Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)

Operations

Data

This depends on the document that is anonymized. Think of personal data such as email addresses, telephone numbers, bank account numbers, address details and signatures.

Technical design

Smart features, such as set rules or templates, make it possible to anonymize per document or in bulk. In this way, the method and degree of anonymization of frequently used (standard) documents can also be set. The software then uses pattern recognition and Natural Language Processing to search for names, addresses, dates of birth, specific set words, signatures or regular expressions (such as e-mail, IBAN, BSN). The DataMask software recognizes these and makes suggestions to mask them or anonymizes them completely automatically.

External provider

Data mask