Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

GDPR: guidance on consent, profiling, breach notification and data transfers to be issued in 2017

18 Jan 2017, 9:53 am

New guidance on the issues of consent, profiling, data breach notification and data transfers under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be issued by a body of EU data protection watchdogs during 2017, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said.

The Article 29 Working Party, which is made up of all the national data protection authorities in the EU, will also issue guidance on the topics of transparency, high risk processing, certification and administrative fines under the GDPR, the ICO said. The GDPR was finalised last year and will come into force across the EU on 25 May 2018, including in the UK.

The ICO said it would supplement the Working Party's guidance with two further sets of GDPR guidance for organisations operating specifically in the UK. Those guides will address consent and children's personal data, on which the GDPR sets out new rules for businesses, it said.

The ICO has already produced general GDPR guidance to help companies understand what their duties are under the new legislation. It also said that businesses that adhere to its revised privacy notices code of practice, which it published in October 2016, will be well-placed to comply with GDPR.

Late last year, the Working Party published its first tranche of GDPR guidance. The three sets of guidance concern the right to data portability, data protection officers and the identification of a data controller or processor’s lead supervisory authority.

Jo Pedder, interim head of policy delivery at the ICO, said the watchdog is "committed to helping organisations to improve their practices and prepare for the GDPR".

"Consistency across the EU is one of the key drivers of the GDPR, and the Article 29 Working Party – the body that currently brings together the [data protection] authorities across Europe – is leading the way developing guidelines on some of the key aspects of the law," Pedder said. "As the UK member of the Article 29 Working Party, we’re inputting into this process and taking a lead role on a number of priority guidelines aimed at organisations."

"The update explains the work that we will be contributing in the coming year as part of the Article 29 Working Party, as well as the guidance and policy development we have opted to prioritise ourselves," she said.