Understanding data sharing and privacy

Open Referral UK (ORUK) is an open standard for the sharing of open data, making service directories more accessible and easier to reuse.

Data you can share

In line with the ethos of open data and the Local Digital Declaration, most data in a service directory should be open and available for reuse under an:

• Open Government Licence, or
• equivalent that allows free use for any legal (commercial or non-commercial use) purpose.

Data in most council directories is public - the ORUK standard makes reuse of this public information easier.

Data you must keep private

Data you should not expose in your ORUK data feed includes:

• Internal services - information about services that are exclusively for internal use and are not available to people outside your organisation
• Archived records - remove all data records that are no longer live, or clearly indicate that they are inactive
• Sensitive information - it is crucial to protect fields that should not be made public because of privacy or ethical reasons (for example the location of a refuge) and other sensitive service contexts
• Personal contact information - such as details for the person responsible for updating the record, or contact information for staff that is only intended to be shared among specific partners