Introduction
The StatCan Professionals Network (SPN) (formerly the Statistics Canada Young Professionals Network) periodically holds various challenges and events to bring together experts and students from a variety of fields. The events are designed to engage participants with Statistics Canada data with the goal of creating innovative products to increase data accessibility among Canadians and increase public awareness of Agency programs and services.
Description
The objectives of these events are: to raise public awareness on the importance of statistics in the economic and social development of Canada; to engage experts and students with new technologies; develop solutions to concrete Government of Canada business cases; recruit talented individuals; and/or, develop new partnerships across the public service and academia.
Participants register online and are asked to provide basic personal information, strictly limited to registration purposes. In some cases, participants’ images could be captured for promotional purposes.
Objective
A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for these events, including the online registration process and promotional activities, was conducted to determine if there were any privacy, confidentiality and security issues, and to make recommendations to resolve them.
Risk Area Identification and Categorization
The PIA identifies the level of potential risk (level 1 is the lowest level of potential risk and level 4 is the highest) associated with the following risk areas:
| Risk scale | ||
|---|---|---|
| a) Type of program or activity | ||
| Administration of program or activity and services. | 2 | |
| b) Type of personal information involved and context | ||
| Only personal information, with no contextual sensitivities, collected directly from the individual or provided with the consent of the individual for disclosure under an authorized program. | 1 | |
| c) Program or activity partners and private sector involvement | ||
| Within the institution (among one or more programs within the same institution) | 1 | |
| d) Duration of the program or activity | ||
| Long-term program or activity (ongoing) | 3 | |
| e) Program population | ||
| The program's use of personal information for external administrative purposes affects certain individuals. | 3 | |
| f) Personal information transmission | ||
| The personal information is transmitted using wireless technologies. | 4 | |
| g) Technology and privacy | ||
| This activity involves the implementation of new software which is a secure platform developed by Statistics Canada using Orchard. The platform is hosted on Microsoft Azure Cloud, which is an approved Government of Canada cloud infrastructure. | ||
| h) Potential risk that in the event of a privacy breach, there will be an impact on the individual or employee. | ||
| There is a very low risk of a breach of some of the personal information being disclosed. The impact would be minimal as the information is not very sensitive. | ||
Conclusion
This assessment of the events held by the StatCan Professionals Network did not identify any privacy risks that cannot be managed using existing safeguards.