Future Strategy of the ICO

As the final part of Pangloss's catch up of vital reports on privacy and DP that all seem to have emerged while I was on holiday (sigh), the ICO's own report on its future strategy on DP enforcement needs read. I refer you in the meantime to cogent comments at Naked Law.

Very broadly, the ICO propose that they "will not focus on enforcement, but on reducing the risk to UK residents of misuse of personal information about them. " This may of course however be all subject to change given the expectation that the current Commisioner Richard Thomas will retire in the not too far distant future.

Thanks also to IMPACT blog who (inter alia) drew to my attention to the large ICO survey on attitudes to privacy which preceded the issue of the strategy paper and came out March 19 08. It's all go :) One of the most remarkable and yet not unexpected findings is that after the HMRC data scandal the British public has officially lost faith in the public sector: "The ICO poll of 1,000 people found that 53% of those asked no longer had confidence in the way banks, local authorities and government departments handled personal information." See Beeb summary here.