Richard450

So many people happily use google, microsoft, hotmail, social networking etc in schools for school purposes, having made little or no check about where pupil and staff data will be held e.g. where the servers are. The Data Protection Act has rules about data going outside of Europe as I understand it, and most of these big corps could move data around the world. How do we know where our data goes and sits? If they do not have adequate provisions (e.g. in the US it's sometimes known as 'Safe Harbour' I think, the school could be breaking the law. The European Commission and Parliament are looking at all this as part of the NSA surveillance and there are calls for safe harbour to be withdrawn until it's all checked out. The new proposed EU Data Protection rules may put all sorts of new rues in about contracts with companies not based in Europe. I'm not quite sure how small schools are supposed to have any of the expertise needed to get through this legal and technical minefield tbh. As for Google ads. Are any of us remotely surprised at all? Probably not. Do any of us feel we have any power to stop it? Probably not.

Well this has certainly got people talking. The FOI and Data Protection community are so horrified at some of the advice given in this thread earlier, one of the country's FOI experts is running a competition to spot all the mistakes... COMPETITION TIME I work in a school, we receive a tiny handful of requests each year, unlike councils for example that receive thousands (my friend works in the LA's info team, it's amazing what they get asked). Our office manager and Chair of Governors deal with them quickly, and it certainly wouldn't be left to the IT person to do them. How would he/she be expected to know what to send out or not send out? If your school is asking you to answer these sorts of legal requests with no training you need to ask for help or you are putting yourself and the school at risk. It is not the responsibility of the local authority, or staff, it is the responsibility of governors to answer them. We've all been told that at our staff meetings. If you have problems with this, talk to your union reps if they are supportive.