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39 Section IV: Duties Relating to Right of Subjects • entity cannot refuse to give a data subject access to private or public data about her/himself just because not public data about other people are maintained in the record or file. When an individual data subject requests data that include not public data about other individuals, the proper action for the entity is to remove from the requested data all private and confidential data about other individuals. After the subject has reviewed data about her/himself, the entity is not required to show the data to the subject for six months unless: • The entity collects or creates more data about the subject before six months have passed. If more data have been collected before the passage of six months, the subject has the right to inspect the data s/he originally viewed, as well as the newly-collected or created data; or • The data subject has challenged the accuracy and/or completeness of the data, or is appealing the results of such a challenge, as described below. Under certain circumstances, data about a minor data subject may be withheld from a parent or guardian. A minor has the right the request that the entity withholds private data about her/him from the parent or guardian. The entity may require that the request be in writing. A written request must include the reasons for withholding the data from the parents and must be signed by the minor subject. • Upon receipt of the request, the responsible authorit must det y ermine whether honoring the request is in the best interests of the minor. In making this decision, the responsible authority must consider, at a minimum: • Whether the minor is old and mature enough to explain the reasons for the request and to understand the consequences of making the request; • Whether denying access to the data may protect the minor from physical or emotional harm; • Whether there is a reason to believe that the minor's reasons for denying access to the parent(s) are reasonably accurate; and • Whether the nature of the data is such that disclosing the data to the parents could lead to physical or emotional harm to the minor. If the data concern medical, dental or other health services provided pursuant to Minnesota Statutes sections 144.341 to 144.347, and the data meet, at minimum, all of the above criteria, the data may be released to the parent only if failure to do so would seriously jeopardize the health of the minor subject. A public educational entity or institution may not deny a parent access to education records or special education records about a minor child. See MODEL EDUCATIONAL DATA SHARING/ACCESS POLICY, published by the Minnesota Department of Administration, December, 1999. The entity may not charge a fee for letting the subject see data about her/himself. • Looking is free. Even if the entity is required to produce a copy in order to permit the subject to view the data, it cannot assess a fee for doing so. July, 2000 Model Policy: Access to Government Data & Rights of Subjects Data