Leonardo da Vinci Partnership project
The Office has received a grant from the Lifelong learning program/Leonardo da Vinci – Partnership to implement the project “Raising awareness of the data protection issues among the entrepreneurs operating in the EU”.
The project is devoted to the protection of personal data and privacy at workplace. Employers gather and process huge amount of information on their employees, often very sensitive. To control and assess their staff they use technologies that have impact on the privacy of the workers themselves and also individuals who they meet (for instance clients, business partners). Within international companies employee data are transferred from time to time towards countries that don´t provide appropriate level of data protection.
Employers and employees have low awareness about their obligations and rights in the area of privacy protection. They often don´t realize that they collect and process data at variance with the principles laid down in the law. This fact along with the endeavour to make this unsatisfactory situation better were the main motive for the preparation of this project.
The objective is to prepare a comprehensive, universally applicable, handbook and to raise awareness through information materials, internet and specifically aimed actions among employers and employees from different sectors in the partner countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary).
On 6 November 2009 the project partners met for the first time in Warsaw. They laid down the structure of the handbook and agreed on the work plan as well as on the administrative and financial mamagement of the project.
Leonardo da Vinci Partnership project meeting – Prague, 4 – 5 February 2010
Works on the project aiming at raising awareness on data protection among entrepreneurs doing business in the EU has been proceeding since last August when our Office and our partners had received a grant from the European Commission.
The project partners from the Polish Bureau of the Inspector General for Personal Data Protection, Hungarian Data Protection Authority and the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection met in Prague on 4 – 5 February 2010 to draw an interim account of activities and to plan for the follow-up activities.
As informed earlier, the main project output shall be a handbook offering entrepreneurs useful information about protection of personal data and privacy at workplace. During the Prague meeting partners have agreed on detailed structure of the document. Further, they have set working goals for the next three or four months. In this time experts shall draft four of the eight items of the structure:
- introduction
- European and national law in the area of employment
- principles of legitimate processing of data
- personal data as goods
Leonardo da Vinci Partnership project meeting – Budapest, 26 – 27 May 2011
Partners on this working meeting agreed upon the final English version of the data protection guide (vademecum) for entrepreneurs. Next step will be translating the material into national languages (Czech, Hungarian, Polish). Then, selected experts will be asked for their opinion. To this end short questionnaire will be drafted. The project partners will meet for the last time in Warsaw, 20 July. This last meeting under the project will take form of a seminar open to the public.