Comment by Greg Johnston, Senior Digital & Data Consultant at Energy Systems Catapult. 

As the energy transition accelerates, and the need to use data continues to grow with the sector’s digitalisation, the ethical use of such data is increasingly important. 

Data ethics is a branch of ethics that evaluates data practices with the potential to adversely impact people and society, and relates to the practices surrounding how data is collected, used and shared.

The Open Data Institute (ODI) has prior experience in the sector, embedding data ethics into UK Power Networks’ (UKPN) data triage process, and more widely into its overall data strategy, which shows that building appropriate data governance processes with due consideration for data ethics could help foster greater trust and enable data sharing while protecting individual privacy. This was done by implementing the use of the Data Ethics Canvas into UKPN’s data triage process.

With this successful precedent, we believe UKPN’s methodologies could be applied widely across the energy sector to yield greater synergy, and one of the ways that Ofgem can help enable the sector to consider data ethics is to include this proposed principle on data ethics in the Data Best Practice guidance.

The ODI worked alongside Energy Systems Catapult to develop a suggestion for a new principle around data ethics which we believe can support data practitioners in the energy sector to treat data ethically. This principle is partly derived from conversations that we had with stakeholders in our collaborative project for Innovate UK on the development of a data policy for their Net Zero domain. 

Our new suggested principle is:

Ensure that data assets, metadata and software scripts are collected, used or shared with due consideration for data ethics.

With this new principle, licensees must:

• ensure that where data assets, metadata or software scripts are collected, used or shared by the organisation, ethical implications of their collection, use or sharing are assessed. 
• document the ethical assessment, as well as any changes or mitigations made to the collection, use or sharing of data assets, metadata and software scripts, as a result of the assessment.
• include any relevant information for its ethical use or sharing by data users when providing supporting information regarding a data asset.

Through its adoption, the intended outcome could be:

• the licensee can demonstrate that data assets, metadata and software scripts held by the licensee will be collected, used or shared ethically by the organisation. 
• the licensee also provides sufficient information to data users to ensure they can also use or share the data assets, metadata and software scripts ethically. 
• stakeholders trust that data assets are respected by the organisation and that data ethics risks are avoided. 
• derived insights from data assets should be created and presented in such a way that ethical considerations of the data assets are understood by stakeholders. 

We encourage you to read and share this widely and to consider responding to Ofgem’s consultation, which closes on 14th April 2023.