[MyData & Open Data] [open-government] Examples of dates of birth being published as part of the public record?

Mon Sep 2 12:53:59 UTC 2013

The Parliament of Canada [1] publishes date and place of birth, previous occupation and biographical notes. In jurisdictions with French content, even without an explicit gender field, it is possible to determine gender based on gender agreement of the nouns and adjectives used to describe the person.

Many officials at various levels of government use a personal address and phone number as their "constituency address".

In my experience, lobby registries don't give much personal information about either the official or the lobbyist. If a person registers as a lobbyist on a personal account (not sure this ever happens), the registry would publish their personal address and phone number. In other cases, it's the organization's address and phone number.

Many interest registries require financial disclosures that may allow you to determine an official's income bracket and the source of their wealth.

In general, the amount of personal information published by the public sector on its officials is fairly limited - you can find out more about the person through search engines and social media.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/ParlInfo/Files/Parliamentarian.aspx?Item=bc2e82f3-02f1-46e2-b9be-7d5f04ddddc9&Language=E&Section=ALL

James

On 2013-09-02, at 7:52 AM, Jonathan Gray wrote:

> I was wondering whether anyone might know of any examples of where personal information about living persons - such as dates of birth - have been published as part of the public record by public sector bodies?
> 
> For example in relation to interest, lobby or political registries?
> 
> While generally personal information needs to be carefully protected, we'd be interested to hear of examples of where there might be broader public interest arguments or exceptions for publishing this kind of data.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> -- 
> Jonathan Gray
> Director of Policy and Ideas  |  @jwyg
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
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