The government's Information Commissioner has launched a series of
free online seminars to help organisations understand and comply
with the Data Protection Act.
The move will be welcomed by businesses, public sector bodies and
voluntary organisations, but it is also a tacit admission that many
organisations have failed to meet the 24 October deadline for
compliance with the Data Protection Act (DPA).
The Information Commissioner, Elizabeth France, is refusing to
speculate on compliance levels across the UK, but some experts
believe four in five organisations are at fault in some way.
Small businesses often struggle to cope with government regulations
and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) told CW360.com that,
while the content of the Information Commissioner's online seminars
was welcome, some of the most needy organisations lacked the
software to take advantage.
Peter Scargill, national IT chairman for the FSB, said: "I was
impressed by the use of audio-visual technology, but then I began
to wonder how this would work for the majority of users who have
56k modems or worse. I suspect the audio content would
suffer.
"I think a text-only document should be available. They are making
a lot of assumptions about users, including a requirement for Flash
5 playback and the ability to read PDF documents."
Scargill also found technical problems with a "page not found"
message occurring on several occasions.
William Horley, the Information Commissioner's Web site manager,
admitted that there are currently no plans to have text-only
documents of the seminars on the site. Moves are being made,
however, to make the seminars available to those who cannot view
them online.
"We have had feedback from people who have difficulty viewing the
online seminars. We are looking at the possibility of putting the
seminars on CD-ROM so they can be available to all," Horley
added.
The Information Commissioner was keen to listen to the views of
SMEs during the run-up to the DPA compliance deadline. As a result,
the Government decided against making it statutory for all
businesses to have a data protection officer. "We feel it is unfair
on small companies, and the businesses we discussed this with were
generally not in favour of it," said France.
The first online seminar covers notification, the process by which
a firm is added to the information Commissioner's public register
of data controllers. Others cover the transfer of personal data to
countries outside of the European Economic Area and the fair and
lawful processing of personal data.
Further information:
Data Protection seminars:
www.dataprotection.gov.uk/seminars.htmIt is
not too late to test your own compliance >>