MG492      Half Unit
Data Governance: Privacy, Openness and Transparency

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The course provides a detailed consideration of the key elements of the concept of informational privacy, the open data movement and transparency. These topics lie at the intersection of diverse contemporary issues including, public sector reform, human rights, digital ecosystems and social networking, and the global and national regulation of business. The course content is international in focus, and reviews contemporary issues arising from new technologies, new policies of governments, new practices and business models in the private sector. Topics include personal privacy and identity systems; motivations for information sharing and transparency and its potential for driving beneficial change; transformations in the management of government information and processing practices; the technological and regulatory challenges faced by public sector and business; the protection of sensitive personal data including medical and financial information; data-mining in the context of national security and anti-terrorism policies; communications surveillance policies; behavioural studies of privacy attitudes and the evolution of trust and consent in online environments. The course enables students to develop their understanding of the challenges presented by new informational regimes, their regulatory development and emerging governance structures.

9 hours of seminars and 20 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

In its Ethics Code, LSE upholds a commitment to intellectual freedom. This means we will protect the freedom of expression of our students and staff and the right to engage in healthy debate in the classroom.

Classes are based around reading and discussing selected journal articles. Formative feedback is provided on class participation. In addition, students will complete a formative essay plan on which feedback will be provided.

• Elliot, M., Mackey, E., O’Hara, K., and Tudor, C. (2020). The anonymization decision-making framework (Second edition.), UKAN Manchester (available at https://ukanon.net/framework/). 
• ENISA (2015). Privacy and Data Protection by Design, (available at http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/identity-and-trust/library/deliverables/privacy-and-data-protection-by-design). 
• van Maanen, G. (2023). Studying open government data: Acknowledging practices and politics, Data & Policy 5. 
• Kaye, J., Whitley, E. A., Lund, D., Morrison, M., Teare, H., and Melham, K. (2014). Dynamic Consent – A Patient Interface for 21st Century Research Networks, European Journal of Human Genetics 23(2), 141–146. 
• Murray, A. (2023). Chapter 22: Data protection, in Information technology law: the law and society (5th ed.), Oxford University Press Oxford.
• Solove, D. J. (2008). Privacy: A concept in disarray, in Understanding privacy , Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mass., 1–11. 
• Whitley, E. A., Gal, U., and Kjergaard, A. (2014). Who do you think you are? A review of the complex interplay between information systems, identification and identity, European Journal of Information Systems 23(1), 17–35. 

Course participation (10%)

Essay (70%, 5000 words)

Blog post (20%, 800 words)

For detailed assessment information, including all deadlines and timings, please see the relevant course Moodle page. Assessment timings will be available at the start of each term.