Datamask

Haarlem city council

Algorithm recognises and anonymises (personal) data and confidential data in documents before they are published.

Last change on 15th of July 2024, at 7:15 (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 anonymisation software is used to give substance to transparency, on the one hand, and the necessary protection of the individuals and companies to whom the documents relate, on the other.

Considerations

The municipality of Haarlem has to deal with various laws and regulations that require information to be disclosed both actively and on request. This information may contain privacy-sensitive information, where it is important that this information is anonymised before disclosure. Anonymising data by hand is a time-consuming task where there is also a risk of human error resulting in potential data breaches. Anonymisation software enables users to anonymise personal and confidential information themselves in an efficient manner.

Human intervention

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

Risk management

DataMask creates a proposal for anonymising data and information. An employee of the municipality always does the final check whether a document is correctly anonymised. As a result, the risk is minimal.

Legal basis

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

Impact assessment

Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)

Operations

Data

This depends on the document being anonymised. Examples include personal data such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, bank account numbers, address details and signatures.

Technical design

Smart features, such as set rules or templates, make it possible to anonymise per document or as a bulk. In this way, the method and degree of anonymisation of commonly 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 recognises these and makes suggestions to mask or anonymise them fully automatically.

External provider

Datamask