Q&A

Do you have a question? What do you need to know about the Prospect Brixham project or Brixham Data Trust, about data or what data can do for us? We love questions and we are all ears.

Just email questions@prospectbrixham.org  We’ll always do our best to reply within two days. 

We’ll keep building this page from your questions and answers throughout the project, as an open resource for everyone. (We won’t publish your name without your permission.) Your questions will help to decide what events and workshops to run, responding to your interests and priorities. Your Q&A might grow into an article on the website or bring together a team to enter the Data Challenge competition.

Thank you for taking part.

Question

I don’t have a smartphone and I’m not great on computers. Can I take part in
Prospect Brixham?

Answer

Yes! Prospect Brixham is not just about digital technology.

If you’re interested in data discovery, there are lots of ways to record data and get interesting results with traditional tools. Paper and pencil for field recording, for example, or knitting a scarf coded in colours to record weather and temperature (read about this on our Stories page).

If you have a great idea for a data collection project, put it forward for the Data Challenge competition, and you could win mentoring and support to develop your idea into a real dataset to share with others.

Prospect Brixham is all about working together for the collective benefit of the community, so whatever your experience and skills you’re welcome to come on board.

Question

What do you mean by local data, and why is it important?

Answer

Local data (or information) is data about a place and data about the people that live and work there. This includes data about housing, transport, the local economy, the natural environment, tides and weather, leisure, energy, where food comes from, where waste goes to, and the personal data of our everyday lives. These are the things that make the place tick, and every place has its unique patterns and story.

Insights from this data could help our community to make better decisions for the future, to build an evidence base for changes that people want to see and to reveal new insights about what makes our place work.

The problem is that the value and benefits of local data are not held within the local community, because there is no mechanism for this. And the protection offered by statutory personal data rights is easily lost when we are so used to ‘giving away’ our personal information to companies and multi-nationals online without a second thought.

Prospect Brixham aims to turn the tables and to show how a community-led data trust in Brixham could hold the benefits of securely managed collective data and data rights within the community.

Question

What are the benefits to me of signing up for a Personal Data Store?

Answer

Prospect Brixham is offering citizens a free Personal Data Store, through Mydex CIC, to enable them to take part in the proposed data collection research project for the Brixham Data Trust.

The main benefits of a Personal Data Store are:

  1. Privacy. Nobody (not even Mydex itself) can see your data, unless you decide to share it.

  2. Control. You are in complete control of what data you decide to share with who, for what purposes.

  3. Convenience. Your PDS enables you to collect and store any and all data you use in your life from Prospect Brixham research data to your National Insurance or NHS number to your passwords - and it’s easy to access this data when you want, via your mobile phone or other digital device. (Thanks to Mydex CIC for confirming these details)

Question

I’m interested in taking part in the Personal Data Store project but how do I
know my data will be secure in the PDS?

Answer

All Mydex CIC’s operations are audited annually by experts under international standards for Information Security and Management (ISO 27001). Mydex has held this accreditation for nine years.

All data held in a Mydex Personal Data Store is encrypted. This means it is never visible to anyone not authorised by you to see it or access it.

Unlike traditional approaches to data storage, your data is not stored in a big central database where, if hackers manage to get in, they can steal all the data it holds. Instead, each PDS is separately and individually encrypted. It is this unique encryption which makes it more secure.

Unlike traditional databases where the organisation can look at what data it holds about you, Mydex CIC cannot see inside the PDSs it provides. That is because each individual holds their own Private Key to their PDS which Mydex does not have. (Thanks to Mydex CIC for confirming these details)

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