Privacy Guide for Cities

Privacy Guide for Cities is a 14-page guide, developed by the Open Mobility Foundation, to aid cities in developing policies and procedures for managing sensitive mobility data, particularly data collected using the Mobility Data Specification (MDS).

While MDS data, as well as most shared mobility data collected by public agencies contains data about vehicles, not individuals, there are risks that this data could, in combination with other data, be used to re-identify individual users and violate their privacy. 

This Guide 1 provides specific recommendations on factors, policies, and techniques to consider for protecting privacy.

After explaining why MDS and similar shared mobility data should be considered sensitive, the guide then addressed five major topics, most of which are further broken down into subtopics: 

• Planning Your Implementation
  • Identify Your Use Cases
  • Review Applicable Laws and Regulations
  • Assess Your Readiness
  • Consider a Mobility Data Solution Provider
  • Provide for Transparency
• Managing Risk
  • Minimization
  • Retention
  • Access Controls
  • Obfuscation and Aggregation 
• Working with Mobility Service Providers
• Sharing MDS Data
  • Sharing Through Open Data Portals
  • Sharing with Mobility Data Solution Providers
  • Sharing with Academic Institutions or Researchers
  • Sharing with Other Agencies
• Disclosure Based on Public Records Requests

• 1Open Mobility Foundation. (2020, September 15). Privacy Guide for Cities. Retrieved from github: https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/governance/blob/main/documents/OMF-MDS-Privacy-Guide-for-Cities.pdf