Data Protection Training - Are you doing it for your staff (and Volunteers)?

The Information Commissioners Office has reprimanded the Alzheimer's Society for a number of breaches of the Data Protection Act, including failing to provide regular training to staff and volunteers on Data Protection Compliance.

The enforcement notice states that the charity has failed to comply with two data protection principles and has issued a set of ten action points which need to be complied with within a period of six months.

The key issue is that the charity has not been training its staff or volunteers on a regular basis with regard to the requirements of the Act. This has led to breaches of the Act, probably due to lack of knowledge. So what do you need to do to avoid the wrath of the ICO?

All organisations should be regularly training their staff (and volunteers) in the requirements of the Data Protection Act at least every two years. 

So what should your training cover? As a minimum you would want to inform all staff:

• Who the Data Protection Officer
• What personal information is
• How information should be collected, stored and destroyed
• The time-scales for destruction (i.e. a retention policy)
• An awareness of the checks they should be undertaking before providing information to someone (Subject Access Requests)
• How to ensure that sharing information via email is carried out securely
• The constraints on using their own devices for work purposes.

An organisation should also have policies and procedures to support these elements. Remember, these are THE BASICS! 

Any training undertaken should be recorded as to what the training covered, who attended and the date. You will need to keep these records in case of an issue with the ICO at a later date. Showing that you have trained the staff (and volunteers) on a regular basis shows a commitment to compliance with the Act.

If you have any questions or want to run a training session for your staff, we run in house courses tailored to your needs, so please contact me.

Email, your biggest problem? - it could be!

I had a query from a client this week regarding a subject access request from one of their employees. The employee had resigned and subsequently put in a subject access request for emails mentioning them in the previous six months. The client's belief is that the employee is hoping to find something in the emails which will show some prejudice against them by their manager.

As knowledge of the Data Protection Act increases, the many uses of it are being explored for lots of different reasons. It is increasingly being used by disgruntled employees to seek information which would support a claim for unfair treatment.

Regardless of whether the employee is right or not, every business should consider the consequences of staff putting comments (an opinion) of any sort into an email, unless it is a professional opinion which can be backed up.

So what's the upshot of this case? If there is anything that is contentious in the emails, the employee may have a case against the organisation and resolving that could be a costly exercise both in terms of time and money. How many organisations can afford to defend a claim in these circumstances?

Ultimately, this is about ensuring that staff have adequate training to ensure that they are not putting themselves or the organisation at risk of litigation. The amount that it costs to get the staff trained with regard to email etiquette as opposed to the amount that will need to be paid out in compensation or legal defence costs is minimal. Contact me if you would like to talk about our training programmes.