Digital privacy act to increase security.

Protection of personal information is expected to become more assured with the development of a new programming language.

Being developed by IBM, the Enterprise Privacy Authorization Language (EPAL) is being used to bring Ontario's Freedom of Information/Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) into a digital format.

Ken Anderson, assistant commissioner of privacy for the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC), says the Act states there is information held by public institutions that should be readily available to the public such as their own medical information. That same information, however, needs to be protected from people who might use it for nefarious purposes.

EPAL has been developed for just that purpose. It is a programming language that takes legal documentation and converts it into a "machine-readable" format that can be used by a computer, says Anderson.

He says IBM and the IPC are working together to break down the legislation in such a way, programmers can develop a program that will let a computer can make decisions about who can access personal information, the information they can have access too and what information is off limits.

"We're right now at a testing stage," he says. "A computer wants to make decisions based on yes and no. What we are doing is taking the legislation and breaking it down into a sort of tree diagram so the machine, as it reaches certain points, can make the right decision."

The program will also result in an "audit trail" that will trace who accessed what information which will help the IPC investigate breaches of privacy, Anderson says.

He says businesses that contract to government to deliver a service and government agencies that handle people's private information are looking at the development of this language as a way to assist them in doing business. It will assure information that should only be available to those authorized to view it will not find its way into the hands of others.

Adopting EPAL will give business a competitive advantage in bidding for those contracts, says Anderson.

"The government will want to say, on the one hand, we want to load over this information to you. But we need you to abide by a set of privacy rules," he says. "How can that company obey those rules when it's holding that data inside its database and its machines? Part of the answer for them is to say that, if the government uses this EPAL language and if it proves out, we are going to use it, too."

Anderson says the IPC will be reviewing the program over the next several months. After that, it will be distributed to various government institutions that will try out the language in their systems. IBM also plans on making the program an "open" language and will submit it for international standardization.

He says IBM approached the IPC to develop this project. But why was something like this not available sooner?

"It takes time to develop these things," says Anderson. "Having our organization involved in this adds another element. Maybe organizations or companies on their own would not be able to develop a pilot on their own. We become a willing facilitator to make sure it happens in the marketplace."

www.ipc.on.ca

www.ibm.com/ca/en

By ANDREW WAREING

Northern Ontario Business