We're back...

The Together Trust has been busy over the last few months preparing for its obligations under the new Data Protection Act, 2018. This is an important piece of legislation affecting everyone, which ensures that the personal data organisations’ hold is kept safe and held legally. Consequently, this blog has taken a back step as we’ve worked to ensure your data is compliant with the new Act. However, now we’re back and we hope you’ll be back with us. 

The age of technology

Of course, it was time for a new act to be put in place. The Data Protection Act 1998, is now 20 years old and reflects a world where paper was king and the internet was just in its early stages of development. In fact, 1998 was an interesting year in the expansion of the digital world, which now consumes our everyday lives. It saw the birth of the Google search engine, which changed the way users engage with the Internet. The year 1998 also saw the introduction of the Internet Protocol version 6, which was to allow for future growth of Internet Addresses. 

Privacy has evolved along with the invention of computers and information technology. The first semblance to a privacy act was in the 1970s with the publication of the Younger Report on Privacy (1972) and the Lindop Report on Data Protection (1978). Both reports examined the risks to privacy posed by the growth in the use of computers to process personal information. For the first time, there was a system, which could store, retrieve and transfer data in large amounts at low costs. 

Sweden was the first country to pass a data protection law in 1972. The UK followed this up along with other European countries in 1984. It allowed the public to access their own information and ensured their right to privacy. The 1998 Act updated and extended this and came in around the same time as other citizen rights laws such as the Human Rights Act, 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act, 2000. Still however, this concentrated on a manual world. Although the Act covered the more complexed computers that were being built, it could not have predicted the needs of a population about to enter the age of social media.

How much information is too much information?

Our information is now everywhere, held by organisations and sat on social media sites, amongst others. So we, as the general public need to know it is safe. The Together Trust of course, holds information about individuals, in order to provide its services or administer its staff. It also holds historic personal information, which is kept securely in our archive. Technically, once a person dies, data protection rules no longer apply to their personal data. However, with the type of work the charity does it still has a duty of care to those it has worked with, to protect their data and make sure it is not used for inappropriate purposes. Let’s look at our early case files for example. These are often accessed by individuals wanting to know more about their family history and therefore is an important resource. Although we no longer legally have to keep them, we have retained information on all those under our care for future generations to access and understand their backgrounds. This will continue into the future.

So, the Data Protection Act 2018 is a much needed new Act to ensure confidence from those who have information held by the Together Trust, that we will protect it in this new digital world. If you want to know more about your rights under this Act just visit our website. 

It's good to be back.