ICO wants 200 more staff for GDPR , but its Board think there’s a risk it will instead be losing them
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is, without doubt, a major reconfiguring of European data protection law. And quite rightly, in the lead-up to its becoming fully applicable on 25 May next year, most organisations are considering how best they can comply with its obligations, and, where necessary, effecting changes to achieve that compliance. As altruistic as some organisations are, a major driver for most is the fear that, under GDPR, regulatory sanctions can be severe. Regulators (in the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)) will retain powers to force organisations to do, or to stop, something (equivalent to an enforcement notice under our current Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA)), but they will also have the power to levy civil administrative fines of up to €20 million, or 4% of annual global turnover. Much media coverage has, understandably, if misleadingly, focused on these increased “fining” powers (the maximum monetary under the DPA is £500,000). I use the word “misleadingly”, because it is by no means clear that regulators will use the full fining powers available to them: GDPR provides regulators with many other options (see Article 58) and recital 129 in particular states that measures taken should be
appropriate, necessary and proportionate in view of ensuring compliance with this Regulation [emphasis added]
Commentators stressing the existence of these potentially huge administrative fines should be referred to these provisions of GDPR.
But in the UK, at least, another factor has to be born in mind, and that is the regulator’s capacity to effectively enforce the law. In March this year, the Information Commissioner herself, Elizabeth Denham, told the House of Lords EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee that with the advent of GDPR she was going to need more resource
With the coming of the General Data Protection Regulation we will have more responsibilities, we will have new enforcement powers. So we are putting in new measures to be able to address our new regulatory powers…We have given the government an estimate that we will need a further 200 people in order to be able to do the job.
Those who rather breathlessly reported this with headlines such as “watchdog to hire hundreds more staff” seem to have forgotten the old parental adage of “I want doesn’t always get”. For instance, I want a case of ’47 Cheval Blanc delivered to my door by January Jones, but I’m not planning a domestic change programme around the possibility.
In fact, the statement by Denham might fall into a category best described as “aspirational”, or even “pie in the sky”, when one notes that the ICO Management Board recently received an item on corporate risk, the minutes from which state that
Concern was expressed about the risk of losing staff as GDPR implementation came closer. There remained a risk that the ICO might lose staff in large numbers, but to-date the greater risk was felt to be that the ICO could lose people in particular roles who, because of their experience, were especially hard to replace.
The ICO has long been based in the rather upmarket North West town of Wilmslow (the detailed and parochial walking directions from the railway station to the office have always rather amused me). There is going to be a limited pool of quality candidates there, and ICO pays poorly: current vacancies show case officers being recruited at starting salary of £19,527, and I strongly suspect case officers are the sort of extra staff Denham is looking at.
If ICO is worried about GDPR being a risk to staff retention (no doubt on the basis that better staff will get poached by higher paying employers, keen to have people on board with relevant regulatory experience), and apparently can’t pay a competitive wage, how on earth is it going to retain (or replace) them, and then recruit 200 more, from those sleepy Wilmslow recruitment fairs?
I write this blogpost, I should stress, not in order to mock or criticise Denham’s aspirations – she is absolutely right to want more staff, and to highlight the fact to Westminster. Rather, I write it because I agree with her, and because, unless someone stumps up some significant funding, I fear that the major privacy benefits that GDPR should bring for individuals (and the major sanctions against organisations for serious non-compliance) will not be realised.
The views in this post (and indeed all posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
informationrightsandwrongs 