Safe Harbour Illegal?

[GDProjects]

Hi Everyone

 

I'm a huge fan of Google Apps, and our school implemented it about six months ago. It was a breeze to be honest and I've not looked back.

 

Our staff are extremely happy with performance and functionality and we've not rolled it out to the pupils here at our school. We'd run it as a pilot scheme in our area as our LEA were considering moving to it from Office/OWA.

 

There has always been a few amber lights with regards to Safe Harbour, but some of you may be aware of a recent judgement that has deemed the Safe Harbour Agreement now invalid.

 

http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2015-10/cp150117en.pdf

 

Here is a recent article about what is Safe Harbour and the recent legal case that resulted in it becoming invalid: Facebook data transfers threatened by Safe Harbour ruling - BBC News

 

Any port in a storm – but not Safe Harbor!

 

We've been advised by or local council that due to this we need to further risk assess this now and consider whether we are going to continue using it going forward. At least until this goes to the high court for appeal and the dust cloud settles.

 

I know that this could quite a big issue as the UK Home Office, Cabinet Office and HMRC all use Google Apps and I am now being advised that we should consider falling back to our old email addresses and OWA system.

 

We are obviously not the only school to be in this situation as there are Academies using this as well as other schools... across the UK. But what are everyone's thoughts on this, except for "I told you so's"

 

TLDR; Safe Harbour is now illegal, should we just give up on Google Apps for now?

[localzuk]

Big discussion about it all here - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/160063-safe-harbour-not-valid.html

 

Outcome is basically that everyone is waiting on advice from the ICO, which will be out in the coming weeks.

[GDProjects]

Thanks - close this thread off then... no need to have this open then