The Independent Commissioners Office (I. C. O)

In a health and social care setting protecting sensitive information is vital to good care practice. It is the duty of employers to ensure that their policies and procedures adequately cover Data protection and meet the Care Quality Commission standards. The laws that should be followed are the Data Protection Act 1998, and the Freedom of information act 2000. The Independent Commissioners Office (I.C.O) deals primarily with breaches of information should they occur. Below is a description of the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information act. It is also the duty of employers to ensure that employer’s policies and procedures adequately cover Data protection.

Data is any personal information held about an individual whether this be in

The UK Government was required to implement this directive set by the European Union. This came into force on 1 March 2000 although some provisions did not commence until October 2007. The basis of the Act was to control and protect how your personal information is used by organizations the government and businesses and is guided by eight principles (Data Protection Act 1998).

Failure to comply or breach of the Data Protection Act is a criminal offence and can render the Data Controller liable to certain levels of fines depending on the severity of the breach infringement. These infringements, according to the regulating body for Data protection the Independent Commissioners Office (I.C.O) are monetary penalty notices, Prosecutions, Undertakings, Enforcement notices and Audits( I.C.O 2015). They have recently been given greater powers and the highest monetary penalty enforceable by the I.C.O stands at

This was a story which was not denied by authorities and was uncovered by The Daily Mail (2011). The group hacked the database for no other reason other than altruism to highlight how easy it was to do. This was cited as troubling due to the Government wanting a central database for all N.H.S documents a project costing 11.4 billion pounds. According to a senior conservative member of parliament Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, 'This highlights a very serious problem which the NHS and Department of Health seem to have downplayed. 'It also points to further danger as we move towards centralised medical records. It will concern millions of people who want their records to be in safe hands’. According to The Information Commissioners Office (2015) regarding the trend in data protection breaches for the period from April till June 2015, of the 391 cases 193 were in the Health sector

An example of where a direct breach of The Data Protection Act has been tried in court, is the case of Stanton And Spencer who were, according to computing.co.uk (2014)convicted of conspiring to breach the Data Protection Act because they tricked other organizations into revealing personal details whilst working as private investigators. Stanton was fined over £13000 for the breach and Spencer at the time was waiting to be tried as a separate defendant in April