Well, it's Friday, and it's "out on a limb time"
I don't believe that the fact that you chose to put your system into
disorder can be used against the person issuing the SAR. It's almost
"wilful destruction of data" in a peculiar way. And, frankly, you'd have
been better with a documented "document destruction policy" and shredding
the records.
I think the individual will probably be right to press you to respond fully
and rigorously.
Upside of this response is an enhanced relationship with the ex employee.
Downside is hard work.
Tim Trent - Consultant
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-----Original Message-----
From: This list is for those interested in Data Protection issues
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Emma Chilcott
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 1:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [data-protection] Subject Access Requests - disproportionate effort
and relevant fili ngsystem
Hi all,
I'm dealing with a SAR where a former employee is looking for a copy of his
paper-based training record. The problem we have is that all training
records for this part of the business were sent to archive in what I can
only describe as a 'semi' structured filing system.
Rather than filing the training records by individual name, they were filed
according to the last office the individual worked in. We have computer
records that show the last office that they worked in so, in theory, the
information should be easy to retrieve . . . Problem is that for this
individual's office, there are approximately 266 boxes that are labelled as
containing training records. The only way of knowing the exact content of
the boxes would be to look inside each one (we then to pray that the former
employee's record is there!).
I know the archiving wasn't handled with a lot of thought for future SARs
(this was highlighted to the business at the time) but this is the
unfortunate situation we find ourselves in. My questions are:
whether our filing of the training records is sufficient to call it a
'relevant filing system' (I feel that we are halfway to it being one)?
if the answer above is 'yes', do we have sufficient grounds to say it
would be a 'disproportionate effort' to find the information (I'm not
hopeful as it was our decision to file the records in the way that we
did)?
I'd be grateful for your thoughts, comments, solutions . . .
Happy Friday!
Emma
Emma Chilcott
Compliance Adviser - Data Protection
Tel: 01733 471226
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