What Do The Big Data Guidelines Mean For Employers?

On May 17, 2017, the office of Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner released its Big Data Guidelines for organizations that engage in the collection, use and analysis of increasingly large-scale bodies of data.

Questions arising for employers

For employers, the two immediate questions arising from the release of the Guidelines are:

1. What is "big data"?
2. Why should I care?

The Short Answer

In brief, "big data" refers to the tools for collecting massive amounts of information and then analyzing that information in a manner that enables organizations to make meaningful predictions and decisions. The increased availability of a wide variety of massive data sets and complex analytical software programs to interpret them has served to make "big data" tools into an increasingly important — and perhaps even essential — means for businesses across a wide variety of sectors to remain competitive. At the same time, the wide variety and rapid