FOI - SafeStats data platform [Mar 2022]

Your request

1. Please could you provide any and all documents that outline the purpose of SafeStats, its aims and objectives.
2. A complete list of all agencies with access to SafeStats.
3. A complete list of all categories of data shared on SafeStats, for example, age, gender and ethnicity.
4. The names of all datasets held on SafeStats and a description of what they include.
5. Please could you provide me with any and all Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs)for SafeStats. Please ensure that any documents referred to in these EIAs are also provided.
6. For each of the EIAs please advise who completed them. Please give their name and role or job title.
7. Please provide a complete list of people and organisations consulted on for the EIA ('the consultees'). Please further provide me with any documentation given to the consultees to assist them in responding to the EIA consultation. Additionally, please advise the medium by which consultees responded and please provide their responses, for example, emails and notes of calls.
8. If the EIA(s) identified that SafeStats would disadvantage or disproportionately impact a particular group or groups please advise who made the decision for the operation to go ahead and provide full justification and reasons for why the operation went ahead. This may be contained with the EIA or in separate documents. If no such justification or reasons exist, please explain why.
9. Please provide me with any and all Data Protection Impact Assessments carried out in relation to SafeStats.
10. Please provide me with any and all Terms of Reference related to SafeStats.

Our response

Please find our responses to each question in turn below:

1. Please refer to the SafeStats webpage, SafeStats blog and GLA published Director’s Decision for information around the purpose, aims and objectives of the SafeStats data portal. Further examples of the type of work that has been undertaken using SafeStats data can be found on the Information Sharing to Tackle Violence (ISTV) page. SafeStats is overseen by a Steering Group that is comprised of individual representatives from the data providing and data receiving organisations, as well as the chair of the London Heads of Community Safety Council and a member of the ISTV team.
2. Access to SafeStats is limited to organisations who have a clear remit under Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998; this includes those working within local government, emergency services and health for the purposes of crime reduction and prevention. Currently, the authorised organisations that have at least one user with an active SafeStats account are: Hertfordshire County Council, City of London Corporation, Greater London Authority, HomeOffice, Barking and Dagenham Local Authority, Barnet Local Authority, Bexley Local Authority, Brent Local Authority, Bromley Local Authority, Camden Local Authority, Croydon Local Authority, Ealing Local Authority, Enfield Local Authority, Greenwich Local Authority, Hackney Local Authority, Hammersmith and Fulham Local Authority, Haringey Local Authority, Harrow Local Authority, Havering Local Authority, Hillingdon Local Authority, Hounslow Local Authority, Islington Local Authority, Kensington and Chelsea Local Authority, Kingston upon Thames Local Authority, Lambeth Local Authority, Lewisham Local Authority, Merton Local Authority, Newham Local Authority, Redbridge Local Authority, Richmond & Wandsworth Local Authority, Southwark Local Authority, Sutton Local Authority, Tower Hamlets Local Authority, Waltham Forest Local Authority, Westminster Local Authority, Mayors Office for Policing and Crime, Metropolitan Police Service, Transport for London. Each of the authorised organisations listed above have a signed Data Sharing Agreement with the SafeStats team, within which the GLA (SafeStats) and the authorised organisation are ratified as independent data controllers. Further, each user within the accessing organisations formally agrees to the SafeStats conditions of use upon every system log in.
3. The data shared on SafeStats differs between the various datasets. The data consists of limited individual incident records with common fields across most of the hosted datasets, such as the record time and date, geographical data relating to the record, and a classification or category type. The only dataset that contains any demographic data is the London Ambulance Service (LAS), which contains age and gender data only. None of the datasets (including the LAS) hold any disclosive data along the lines of names, home addresses, date of births and places of birth, work or education.
4. Currently, SafeStats hosts data from nine different datasets:

• British Transport Police offences for recorded crimes on the rail network
• City of London Police for recorded crimes
• Hospital attendances at the Emergency Departments for walk-in victims of violence (ISTV data)
• London Ambulance Service for ambulance dispatches
• London Fire Brigade for all vehicle dispatches
• Metropolitan Police Service for recorded crimes
• National Drug Treatment Monitoring System for numbers receiving treatment from either a drug or alcohol misuse service in London
• Royal National Lifeboat Association for launches to incidents along the River Thames
• Transport for London for Driver Incident Records (bus and bus route incidents).

SafeStats is to be used for the prevention and reduction of community safety issues through informing interventive and preventative work. It is not to be used for informing enforcement or prosecution-related work.

5. A completion of an Equality Impact Assessment was not deemed necessary for the SafeStats data portal. The system contains no information about perpetrators of crime or disorder. There is no information on the system at all which falls under the race or disability equality legislation. There is no victim or aggrieved party’s data other than the gender information provided for the patients of LAS. However, the SafeStats team and the GLA
Information Governance team assessed that the negative impact upon either males or females as a result of this information being supplied, would be minimal and would not impact upon the fairness of policies, practices, events, decision-making processes either of the GLA or organisations accessing SafeStats, nor would it present barriers to participation or disadvantage any protected groups from participation.

6. Not applicable (see our response to Question 5).

7. Between 2018 and 2020, the GLA (via the SafeStats team), participated in the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) legislative Sandbox programme. This was undertaken as a means of supporting the information governance elements of SafeStats and demonstrating the GLA’s commitment to transparency, governance and fairness. This programme provided an opportunity to draw upon the ICO’s expertise and advice around mitigating risks as well as providing them full access to all the SafeStats information governance documentation. Any suggested refinements or potential improvements highlighted by the ICO were successfully undertaken by the SafeStats team. Full details can be found in the GLA’s Sandbox Exit Report, published by the ICO.

8. Not applicable (see our response to Question 5).

9. Please see the attached Data Protection Impact Assessment. We have redacted a small amount of text. Please note that some names of members of staff are exempt from disclosure under Section 40 (personal information) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This information would identify specific employees and as such constitutes as personal data
which is defined by Article 4(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable living individual. It is considered that
disclosure of this information would contravene the first data protection principle under Article 5(1) of GDPR which states that personal data must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.

10. The SafeStats platform has been in existence for many years. SafeStats is a data-sharing portal, not a project or programme. There is no specifically drafted Terms of Reference document aligned to it.

If you have any further questions relating to this matter, please contact us, quoting
reference MGLA230222-5243.