I can’t believe it is nearly Christmas! Really looking forward to having a bit of downtime or at least time to focus on my PhD. Before we get to that, there is still so much on!
Over the last month or so it has been really busy on the training side – not just the scheduled courses but also some in house courses for CPD. These CPD sessions are always brilliant as there are so many good and committed people working in information governance, I think I always learn as much as they do, if not more. Brilliant for my own CPD as well as theirs!
We have also been delivering courses with our partners at Leadership Through Data. This time it was the Certificate in Managing Data Protection Compliance with a great bunch of people attending – it is such a good practitioner level course for developing your information governance skills. Do get in touch with them if you are interested in the next one.
At the end of November, I headed down to London to attend the NADPO conference. One of the speakers was the Information Commissioner, John Edwards. Really interesting to hear first-hand how the ICO is looking to become outcome focussed and is moving away from fines initially for public bodies instead preferring reprimands of which there are now a number on the website. Personally, I have yet to be fully convinced by this approach – while there may be little evidence that fines change behaviours within the organisations that are fined, as a DPO, fines can help get the attention of some boards. I have always been lucky with the organisations I work with but if there is a perceived reduction in the risks organisations are facing from potential fines, will this change their motivation to invest in the necessary cultural change and strive for continuous improvement in information governance? Only time will tell.
The NADPO conference was a really good day and I would highly recommend membership of the association – the monthly lunchtime webinars they run are, in my view, worth the membership fee alone. Great for CPD. I also took the opportunity to visit UCL, finally picking up my key to the postgrad room and unexpectedly caught up with several people I was studying with, which was a nice surprise. They are doing some amazing research – it was so fantastic to get the opportunity to talk about what we are doing and I must make sure I plan another visit soon.
In terms of legal updates and the new legislation, there is not a lot to update you on. While there was initially some indication the new bill was going back out for consultation, it now looks like that is not the case and only a select few are going to asked to provide further input. Looks like we are going to have to watch this space for a little while longer – something to look forward to for the new year!
Finally, I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and best wishes for 2023. I look forward to catching up with you all at some point soon.
Liz