THE Policy Council has reassured islanders that all data protection issues would be carefully looked at if a proposal for an electronic census is accepted.

Last week, data protection commissioner Dr Peter Harris (pictured) raised concerns over having a central database allowing departments to share citizen information.

However States economist Dr Andy Sloan said there had been some misinterpretation over the Billet proposal and the ‘rolling electronic database’ would be no such thing.

‘What is proposed is a central spine of limited data: name, age, address, sex, creating a unique identifier number for each citizen,’ he said. ‘Departments would then be able to link to the central spine using the identifier number so they can profile their own information across the island spatially.’

• Read the full story in the Guernsey Press. See below for subscription details.