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Handley Gill Limited

Our expert consultants at Handley Gill share their knowledge and advice on emerging data protection, privacy, content regulation, reputation management, cyber security, and information access issues in our blog.

Data Protection Day 2023

On 28 January each year, countries mark Data Protection Day aka Privacy Day.

The tradition was started by the Council of Europe in 2006 to mark the anniversary of the opening for signature of Convention 108, the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data, which took place on 28 January 1981, and to educate the public as to data protection. To date, 55 countries around the world (not merely members of the Council of Europe) have ratified/conceded to the Convention.

After the US House of Representatives recognised Data Privacy Day in 2009, the US Congress adopted Senate Resolution 33 in 2014, designating January 28th National Data Privacy Day in the USA.

The themes for Data Privacy Day 2023 are ‘Data: The Story of You’ for individuals and ‘Respect Privacy’ for organisations.

Data Protection Day 2023 Poster 'Data: The Story of You'

As a Data Protection Officer (DPO) or data protection lead within your organisation, you can use Data Protection Day 2023 / Data Privacy Day 2023 to bolster your own compliance efforts. Here are 5 ideas to help you enhance your data protection management / privacy management programme:

  1. Use Data Protection Day 2023 / Data Privacy Day 2023 as a prompt to brief your organisation’s management on the status of privacy compliance in your organisation, the challenges and opportunities in the year ahead, and the role of compliance in supporting your organisation’s environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) agenda and building trust.

  2. Use Data Protection Day 2023 / Data Privacy Day 2023 as the catalyst to require staff to update their data protection training, to offer refresher and specialist knowledge training, and/or to review data retention and ensure that personal data that is no longer necessary and is held outside the applicable retention period is securely destroyed.

  3. Incorporate the free events and materials offered around Data Protection Day into your own knowledge and awareness campaign.

  4. Take the opportunity to review and refresh internal data protection policies, records of processing activities (ROPAs).

  5. Take the opportunity to review and refresh your privacy notices to data subjects.

Nicola CainPersonal Data, Data Protection, Privacy, Data Protection Day, Data Protection Day 2023, Privacy Day, Privacy Day 2023, National Privacy Day 2023, Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, Convention 108, the Council of Europe Convention 108, Data The Story of You, Respect PrivacyComment