Introduction
In January 2013, Statistics Canada launched a blog on its website. The purpose of the StatCan Blog is to inform Canadians of Statistics Canada's major projects and priorities and give them an opportunity to comment and ask questions.
Objective
A privacy impact assessment for the StatCan Blog was conducted to determine if there were any privacy, confidentiality and security issues associated with the web application, and if so, to make recommendations for their resolution or mitigation.
Description
The StatCan blog provides a venue for comments and input to Statistics Canada's data users, ranging from key stakeholders to the general public. The blog will be moderated by a Statistics Canada employee to ensure that only appropriate and relevant content is posted on the website.
Participants will be asked to provide a user name (alias) and their e-mail address, which may be used to correspond with them. Participants will be informed that their username will be displayed along with their comments, and that Statistics Canada will not disclose their e-mail address.
Conclusion
This assessment of the StatCan Blog did not identify any privacy risks that cannot be managed using existing safeguards.