Prompted by a rather strange comment on LinkedIn, by someone who claimed they were the UK’s first DPO in 2007, and then claimed they meant “Data Privacy Officer” and not “Data Protection Officer” I thought I’d do some in-depth research into who might have been (you can thank Aaron Needham for setting the thought in my mind).
By, “in-depth” research, I mean half an hour or so on Google Books Advanced Search, so my findings are as authoritative as that would indicate. I would welcome others’ research.
As I mentioned on LinkedIn, NADPO, of which I am Chair, was founded in 1993, as the “National Association of Data Protection Officers”. The fact that its founder members thought it appropriate to create a national association of DPOs indicates that there were already a fair few of them around. And of course that was the case: the UK had had a Data Protection Act since 1984. Although that Act didn’t create a formal, statutory, role of DPO, it undoubtedly created the statutory scheme that gave rise to widespread adoption of the title, and the role.
And the UK was behind some other countries, in particular Germany. Although the person who might appear to be the world’s first DPO (or Datenschutzbeauftragter), Willi Birkelbach, is in fact more correctly characterised as the first Data Protection Supervisory Authority.
But who, you ask me, was the UK’s first DPO (and DPO proper)? Well, my friends, the earliest candidate I’ve so far managed to find, from an entry in the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook of 1979, was a certain “Halstead, J” of Lancaster University.
Therefore, unless or until someone comes up with a better candidate, I am going to bestow the title of the UK’s first DPO on J. Halstead.
It would be great to know more about them, as well, so if anyone has any info, I’d love to hear it.
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
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