Last updated: 
3 days 8 hours ago
Blog Manager

One of Jisc’s activities is to monitor and, where possible, influence regulatory developments that affect us and our customer universities, colleges and schools as operators of large computer networks. Since Janet and its customer networks are classified by Ofcom as private networks, postings here are likely to concentrate on the regulation of those networks.

Postings here are, to the best of our knowledge, accurate on the date they are made, but may well become out of date or unreliable at unpredictable times thereafter. Before taking action that may have legal consequences, you should talk to your own lawyers.

NEW: To help navigate the many posts on the General Data Protection Regulation, I've classified them as most relevant to developing a GDPR compliance process, GDPR's effect on specific topics, or how the GDPR is being developed. Or you can just use my free GDPR project plan.

Blog Article

Recently I've been doing some work with Niall Sclater on how education organisations might inform students about the use of learning analytics, and when they might seek students' consent. The resulting blog post is at https://analytics.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2017/02/16/consent-for-learning-analytics-some-practical-guidance-for-institutions/

Blog Article

The European Commission has now published draft texts that could be used to implement an EU/US Privacy Shield to replace the previous Safe Harbor agreement. It appears that the new scheme would only cover "commercial exchanges" of personal data between the EU and US so it is unlikely to be appropriate for export of personal data to US universities or non-profit organisations.

Blog Article

The Article 29 Working Party of European data protection supervisors had hoped to make a full statement on the EU/US Safe Harbor agreement at the end of January. However this has now been postponed, probably until mid-April. The European Court of Justice declared last October that the original Safe Harbor did not guarantee adequate protection when personal data were transferred from Europe to the USA.

Blog Article

The European Court's declaration today that the European Commission's fifteen year old decision on the US Safe Harbor scheme is no longer reliable is another recognition that Data Protection requires continuing assessment, rather than one-off decisions. European regulators have been recommending for years that neither data controllers nor companies to which they export data should rely on Safe Harbor certification alone. The U.K.

Blog Article

The Information Commissioner has published updated and extended guidance on the use of the Data Protection Act's "section 29" exemption, based on cases and wider experience. This exemption is often used to release personal information (such as computer or network logs) to the police or other authorities investigating crimes, so sections 33-52 in particular are worth reading as a refresher.

The points I'm most often asked about are:

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