PROVISION OF SERVICES FOR: PRIVACY ENHANCING TECHNOLOGIES: MARKET READINESS, ENABLING AND LIMITING FACTORS

The Royal Society's Data Programme is developing policy and promoting debate that helps the UK safely and rapidly realise the growing benefits of data and digital technologies. In 2019, the Royal Society launched the report Protecting privacy in practice: The current use, development and limits of Privacy Enhancing Technologies in data analysis. One of our activities following from this report is an exploration of the status and role of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs): technologies or conceptual approaches that allow the derivation of useful insights from data without requiring full data access. The Society launched a refresher project to update the 2019 report, which shall be published in late 2021. This will include an updated review of PETs applications, legal / regulatory concerns, and an illustrative set of use cases. The Society seeks to engage a Supplier to undertake this commissioned research as a keystone of our evidence gathering for this project; and it shall inform our understanding of the current state of PETs usage and identifying key user needs with regard to PETs. The Society seeks to engage a Supplier being a researcher or team of researchers, to undertake market research that will outline the uptake of PETs in a range of organisations. This includes the enabling and inhibiting factors that encourage or prevent the use of PETs in various contexts. Industries to be reviewed include finance, health and life sciences, defence, telecommunications, and the public sector. The findings of the successful supplier shall elucidate what kinds of PETs or privacy enhancing approaches are in established use (including but possibly expanding on those listed below in 3.2), and the 'market readiness levels' (as opposed to 'technology readiness levels') in different sectors. See Brief for more details in attachments.