Data Driven

An archivist from British Columbia is now one of the world’s most powerful information regulators.

- Leah McLaren

Elizabeth Denham, information commissioner for the UK, sits in her office on the top floor of a bland low-rise tucked in back of a drizzly car park in Wilmslow, just south of Manchester. Unassuming in a simple sheath dress, she has a habit of pushing a pair of rectangular spectacles up the bridge of her nose as she talks. It is a librarian’s gesture, which is fitting: the Vancouver-born Denham worked for years as a professional archivist in Victoria, BC, before moving into what she now describes as the “sleepy, technical” world of data regulation back in the 1990s. Since then, the information and tech worlds have become utterly unrecognizable, and Denham has become arguably the most powerful data regulator on the planet.

Charged with protecting the UK’s data, Denham is responsible for ensuring that corporations and political parties are transparent in their use of personal information. Her office also has sweeping prosecutorial powers: Denham has the ability to seize servers with little notice, shut down companies, issue subpoenas, investigate political parties, and levy significant monetary fines. For corporations, the ceiling on those fines was recently lifted to 4 percent of global revenue — a dollar figure that’s currently in the low billions for Facebook and Google. “It’s a big beast of a job,” she says. “But what I care about most, at the end of the day, is the fair and ethical use of data.”

Denham was recruited for the role in late 2015, after serving in several privacy commissions in Canada, just a few months before the UK voted to leave the European Union. She laughs ruefully at the memory. “Everyone said, ‘Yeah there’s this referendum vote, but don’t worry, it’s going to be status quo.’”