The Who, What, and Why: Data Transparency Notices in the UK

Data protection laws require organisations to be transparent about how they use personal data. This article explores the potential of machine-readable privacy notices to address this transparency challenge. We analyse a large source of open data comprised of semi-structured privacy notifications from hundreds of thousands of organisations in the UK, to investigate the reasons for data collection, the types of personal data collected and from whom, and the types of recipients who have access to the data. We analyse three specific sectors in detail; health, finance, and data brokerage. Finally, we draw recommendations for possible future applications of open data to privacy policies and transparency notices