January 23, 2017

The ICO has published an update setting out what guidance organisations can expect and how to plan what areas to address over the next twelve months.

Consistency across the EU is one of the key drivers of the GDPR, and the Article 29 Working Party is developing guidelines on some of the key aspects of the law. As the UK member of the Article 29 Working Party, the ICO is inputting into this process and taking a lead role on a number of priority guidelines aimed at organisations.

The update explains the work that the ICO will be contributing in the coming year as part of the Article 29 Working Party, as well as the guidance and policy development it has chosen to prioritise itself.

The central pillar to its guidance is the Overview of the GDPR. The ICO is developing the Overview as a living document, adding content on different points as more guidance is produced by both the ICO and the Article 29 Working Party.

The ICO will be making monthly updates, which will be clearly flagged in the “what’s new” section. Where the ICO is working on guidance, or planning events or consultations on a particular issue during the year, these will also be flagged in the Overview.

As reported in last week’s N2K, the Article 29 Working Party has published guidelines on the role of the Data Protection Officer, the new right of data portability and how to identify an organisation’s main establishment and lead supervisory authority. They are open to comment until the end of January. The ICO has added links to the guidelines into the Overview and it is considering what, if any, key messages it needs to draw out and explain in more detail. To read the ICO’s press release in full and for links to the relevant documents, click here.