Privacy impact assessment

A privacy impact assessment is:


 * an analysis of how information is handled: (i) to ensure handling conforms to applicable legal, regulatory, and policy requirements regarding privacy; (ii) to determine the risks and effects of collecting, maintaining, and disseminating information in identifiable form in an electronic information system; and (iii) to examine and evaluate protections and alternative processes for handling information to mitigate potential privacy risks.”

The E-Government Act of 2002 provides additional protection for personal information in government information systems or information collections by requiring that agencies conduct privacy impact assessments. Agencies must conduct a privacy assessment (1) before developing or procuring information technology that collects, maintains, or disseminates information that is in a personally identifiable form or (2) before initiating any new electronic data collections containing personal information on 10 or more individuals. Among other actions that should require a privacy assessment, according to guidance from OMB, is significant merging of information in databases, for example, in a linking that “may aggregate data in ways that create privacy concerns not previously at issue” or “when agencies systematically incorporate into existing information systems databases of information in identifiable form purchased or obtained from commercial or public sources.”