Fine v Reputational Damage

The ICO continues to argue that it will not fine public sector organisations for major data breaches and that reputational damage will be a driver for improvement. As many people are saying, the problem is that if you have no choice but to use that organisation then they could lose all your data and their … Read more

Staff Subject Access Requests – you do not need to take a sledgehammer to crack a nut

I have to deal with Subject Access Requests (SAR) from members of staff across NHS organisations – where you receive one, you generally know they have issues with their employer. You also know that you are likely to receive a separate Freedom of Information Request (FOI) asking for copies of policies, procedures, certain decision making … Read more

Dinosaurs still exist

Not the royal family as some people believe but those people whose ways of managing things border on bullying, undermining people and generally have a world view that people or the organisation they work for exist to promote them. Credit to the person that wrote this and making things so clear/I will be using every … Read more

EIR…

…Environmental Information Regulations, the misunderstood cousin to the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). Coming out of the FOI24 conference I think a lot of people are going to try and understand them more. especially where the Information Commissioner is trying to get improvements in understanding across the public sector. EIR and FOI requests are not … Read more

All research is in the public interest…

…not really and that is why a lot of research has to have ethics approval. Don’t get me wrong, research should be pushing the boundaries but history has shown that what may be acceptable research to some as just “pure science” may challenge the moral and ethical values of others. That is why when dealing … Read more

What has been will be again,what has been done will be done again;there is nothing new under the sun.

Being a bit cynical quoting something from the Bible (no – I’m not religious) but it does state what seems to be happening at the moment. People are forgetting/not learning the basics, trying to reinvent the wheel, and ignoring lessons learned because they are an inconvenient truth. The NHSE push towards trying to simplify IG … Read more

A certain individual is going to the ICO

Just proves that politics says one thing, having some things supported by the law means that you benefit, even where you disagreed with the people who made it law. I’m not sure whether they are going to win their case but the problems they have faced has raised the profile of data protection.

Subject Access Requests are NOT a new requirement

The difficulty is the pressure it places on organisations because you cannot charge to provide a copy of what has been requested. For large NHS organisations that can be a significant cost burden with a lot of hidden costs, especially where you are asking clinical staff to take time out from their frontline jobs to … Read more

Meta Pixel

No reason why organisations should not use it but they need to understand what it actually does Revealed: Metropolitan police shared sensitive data about crime victims with Facebook (msn.com).