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BiologicalRecordsCentre / UKBMS-online

Issue tracking for UKBMS online recording site
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Questions re confidential sites/records and verification #232

Open kitenetter opened 3 years ago

kitenetter commented 3 years ago

A county butterfly recorder has asked why he can't see or verify the records from a particular transect. It appears that this transect was mistakenly marked as "confidential" in the site details on Transect Walker. This seems to have resulted in the transect occurrences being flagged as "confidential" and thus being excluded from view both for public users and verifiers.

@IanMiddlebrook has changed the site details so that it is no longer confidential.

Various questions arise. For @Gary-van-Breda

  1. Now that the site is no longer marked as confidential, will that mean that previous occurrences for that site will be automatically changed so that they are no longer confidential? (I guess not.)
  2. If we are able to identify the sets of occurrences that need marking as non-confidential, are you able to run a database update to change them?

For @IanMiddlebrook and @MeganLowe

  1. Ian has suggested that verifiers ought to be able to see and verify confidential records. I can change verifiers' filters so that confidential records are included in their view; if I do so, they will also be able to download the confidential records (I think), which means that it will then be their resposibility to ensure the records don't get passed on inappropriately. That may be tricky to ensure if the confidential records are a small proportion of a much bigger set of downloaded records - it will rely on verifiers remembering to filter out the confidential records if they are passing on data elsewhere.
  2. An alternative might be to set up separate verifiers' filters that contain only the confidential records, so that they would have to make a deliberate choice to either view or download them separately from the bulk of 'normal' records.

Changes/additions to verifer filters are possible but quite time-consuming, There will also need to be some communication with verifiers to explain the implications if we do make a change.

Gary-van-Breda commented 3 years ago

1) No: there is no automatic flow down to the occurrences. 2) Yes, we can do that. Identification of which occurrences could just be as simple as "all the occurrences on sites XX and YY"

IanMiddlebrook commented 3 years ago

3/4. The purpose of marking sites as confidential was never to exclude their data from county datasets, just to prevent public identification of sites on private land or key sites for vulnerable species. So I certainly think verifiers should have access.

I would think that (3) was the best option, provided the 'confidential' flag is clearly visible to the verifier and part of the download. As you say, this will require some communication with the verifiers to ensure they respect the status of these records.

I'll bring in @zrandle at this point, as she is drawing up guidance for county butterfly recorders, so may have a view on options 3 and 4, as well as the best way to communicate any change.

Thanks, Ian

Gary-van-Breda commented 2 years ago

See also #251