Tuesday 15th May 2018 – Countdown to GDPR: Is Britain Ready?

Parliament Street CEO, Patrick Sullivan, chaired this topical discussion in Parliament

Tuesday 15th May 2018

With just eight working days to the implementation of GDPR, Parliament Street hosted a discussion in the House of Commons to discuss the impact on and readiness of organisations for the new General Data Protection Regulations.  With panellists Steven George-Hilley and Andrew Le Hegarat, and chaired by Patrick Sullivan, the event looked at some of the practicalities, as well as some of the intentions of the new regulations, brought in by the EU.

Andrew, a project manager implementing GDPR for a medium sized charity, highlighted the huge amount of work placed on an organisation, and the myriad of legal aspects to be considered.  Explaining why he believed that many organisations were not yet fully ready for GDPR, he felt that due to the sheer scale of the work to be done, many organisations had not yet fully grasped some of the key principles, including that consent was just one of six lawful bases that could be used by an organisation to hold and use data.  He highlighted that the Information Commissioner’s Office website was a mine of useful information and guidance, but that with so many questions coming their way, they could not provide all the support many organisations needed.

Steve, a PR professional supporting tech companies, looked at the impact on smaller groups, including schools and churches, as well as the research that Parliament Street had done with public bodies, with Whitehall organisations spending tens of millions of taxpayers’ money each on compliance with the new laws.

Many of those attending were small business owners, dealing for the first time with such complex regulations.  Questions included the use of consent, the retaining of information and the need to think about why data was used.  Looking from the perspective of a “data subject” – a person about whom information is used – one attendee commented on the importance of consent and the time that organisations had been given to implement the changes, rather than rushing to the deadline.  Attendees were invited to share their stories of how they had approached GDPR in their own organisatons.

It was felt though that whilst this had been coming for some time, knowledge about the need to make changes had been hampered by lack of media interest until much closer to the compliance deadline.

The event closed with the recommendation that advice should be sought by those who are unclear about their responsibilities under GDPR, starting with the ICO website at https://ico.org.uk

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