May 18, 2020

The Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has posted a blog piece reformulating the ICO’s priorities during the Covid-19 outbreak.

In April 2020, the ICO set out its regulatory approach during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ICO has now reshaped its priorities for the coming months, having closely monitored the current trends, recent complaints and requests for support. Ms Denham says that her Office has “looked ahead to assess where and how we should narrow our focus on the areas we can have the greatest impact to protect the public interest and support economic growth and innovation”. These areas are:

• protecting the public interest: focusing on the information rights issues that are likely to cause the most harm or distress to citizens and businesses;
• enabling responsible data sharing: ensuring that data can be shared responsibly and with confidence for the public good, including responding to the risk arising from a failure to share; and
• monitoring intrusive and disruptive technology: protecting privacy while enabling innovation and supporting the economy.

Ms Denham says that over the coming months the ICO’s work is aligning to the following priorities:

• protecting vulnerable citizens;
• supporting economic growth and digitalisation, including for small businesses;
• shaping proportionate surveillance;
• enabling good practice in AI;
• enabling transparency; and
• maintaining business continuity: developing new ways of working in readiness for recovery.

To read the blog post in full, click here.