Some analytics information is public, if you know where to look. You can add /info to the start of the URL path, and that might reveal some information about the page.
General statistics on site usage would be interesting. But what about all the other data that could be extracted, both on a personal and national level?
You could, for example, determine which areas are more likely to access HIV information on the NHS website. Insurance companies would like that but would it benefit the public or be in line with people's basic privacy expectations for government services?
(I'm sure Google claim that they won't add a user looking at cancer information on the NHS site to their data profile but I wonder what other insights could be generated.)
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It should all be public information in the first place.
Some analytics information is public, if you know where to look. You can add /info to the start of the URL path, and that might reveal some information about the page.
For example: https://www.gov.uk/info/find-coronavirus-local-restrictions
That's very cool, I had no idea! How did you find this?
A while back, I worked on the code https://github.com/alphagov/info-frontend
Nice! Do you know if historic data is available somewhere too? Or is it always just the last 6-weeks?
General statistics on site usage would be interesting. But what about all the other data that could be extracted, both on a personal and national level?
You could, for example, determine which areas are more likely to access HIV information on the NHS website. Insurance companies would like that but would it benefit the public or be in line with people's basic privacy expectations for government services?
(I'm sure Google claim that they won't add a user looking at cancer information on the NHS site to their data profile but I wonder what other insights could be generated.)
We can already do this. Have a look at the Public Health England "Fingertips" website.
https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/
https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth
https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth/data#page...
Not really, it will include who is accessing this data, which can be used to infer information on UK citizens.
USA has a dedicated website : https://analytics.usa.gov/
I don't know if the data is from GA or a custom made solution