Guidelines for public administrations on location privacy

Public administrations increasingly use location data to deliver public services, including location-enabled tools, apps for tourists, toll collection services and cadastral web applications. Location data, such as addresses, GPS coordinates or camera images, is key to many public services and can also be linked to all sorts of other data, generating new information that was not available before. Despite the increased consumption of location data, its potential to reveal personal information is often underestimated, especially in comparison to other sensitive data, for instance in the financial and health domains. Location data not only say where an individual is, but it also says who he/she is and what his/her interests and preferences are. Therefore, location data privacy is of paramount importance for public administrations dealing with location data. While location data privacy has many aspects in common with general data protection principles, it also has unique characteristics that require specific consideration. The goal of this guidance document is therefore twofold: to outline the key obligations that public administrations should comply with when handling personal location data and raising awareness about the importance of location data privacy, highlighting key implications and risks associated with the processing of location data. It does so by guiding the reader through concrete scenarios that public administrations might face when processing personal location data and provides a set of effective and practical recommendations that can help ensure the adequate protection of personal location data. The guidance has been updated following the introduction of GDPR, taking into account market research in the location industry of the impact of GDPR. The updated document includes new models and concepts as well as using examples throughout to illustrate changes and potential approaches. It is a guide to practitioners and while touching on the key relevant parts of GDPR, it is not a legal document or legal advice.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom

European Union Location Framework Blueprint (4.0)

Location data is fundamental to digital public services and the wider economy, delivering value in combination with other data, and supporting innovation through ‘location intelligence’. In this context, there is a need for interoperability supporting these services across Europe, and an important role for both government-authorised core location data and sector-specific location data. The European Union Location Framework (EULF) project, which was part of the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) programme took action to tackle these challenges. The EULF vision is to create and promote a coherent European framework of guidance and actions to foster cross-sector and cross-border interoperability and use of location information in digital public services, building on national SDIs and INSPIRE , and resulting in more effective services, savings in time and money, and contributions to increased growth. The EULF Blueprint is a guidance framework for a wide audience to implement the EULF vision. It is based on an extensive EU survey and consultation with stakeholders and therefore embodies a wide range of views and experience. The EULF Blueprint has been updated periodically to keep pace with developments. This updated version (v4) has been produced by the European Location Interoperability Solutions for e-Government (ELISE) project, which is part of the ISA2 programme. The document has six main readers: Policy Maker; Digital Public Service Owner, Manager or Implementer; ICT Manager or Developer; Data Manager or Data Scientist; INSPIRE Data Publisher; and Private Sector Product and Service Entrepreneur / Developer. Readers can also use the Blueprint’s role-based approach to explore the document. The blueprint has five focus areas covering Policy and strategy alignment, digital government integration, standardisation and reuse, return on investment and governance, partnerships and capabilities. For each focus area, the ‘current state’ assessment and ‘vision’ are outlined. The key points for progressing from the current state to the vision are then expanded into a series of 19 recommendations, each describing the rationale and expected benefits (why?), a checklist of associated actions (how?), potential problem areas in implementing the recommendation (challenges), a variety of best practices across Europe where this has been done successfully, cross-references to related recommendations in the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), and further reading related to the recommendation.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom