Are you ready for business change? – What can preparedness for GDPR teach us?
Introduction
The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the latest hot topics for all organisations operating in Europe regardless of their headquarters location.
The broad applicability and wide requirements have brought into focus the challenges organisations face in coping with regulatory change and, in particular, the implications for information systems.
In complex, resource intensive industries where multiple additional tiers of regulation demand more frequent and onerous changes, the challenges can be even greater.
As a result, finding new ways to better cope with the demands is an increasing focus for business leaders who recognise the strategic, operational and economic advantages that change readiness can bring.
Fortunately, sophisticated resource management solutions such as OneView, can greatly enhance and enable change readiness through an architecture designed specifically to cater for dynamic operational and regulatory environments.
Lessons from GDPR
The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) represents a major change for all organisations operating in Europe. The new legislation which overrides National data protection laws seeks to broaden the scope of personal privacy laws and protect the data rights of EU (European Union) citizens.
Regardless of where an organisation is registered, all organisations whether government or private operating in Europe, employing European staff or processing EU residents’ (e.g. customer) personal data, are subject to the legislation. Fundamentally, under GDPR, individuals will have far greater control of who has their data and how it can be used and, since this spans customers and staff in particular, the implications and requirements for organisations can be considerable.
Where compliance is not maintained, the prospect of a ne of €20 million or 4% of annual turnover (whichever is higher) represents a major corporate risk. Arguably however, the reputational risk could be even greater.
Given the requirements and implications of non-compliance, organisations have been striving to adapt to ensure data is known, controlled, and built into the full governance of their organisations. The process has also highlighted the critical dependency on, and sensitivity to, corporate information systems.
Whilst the very nature of GDPR is focussed on information management and control, the core themes of organisational change, underpinned by enabling or often change constraining information systems, are common to nearly all regulatory change requirements. GDPR can therefore serve as an effective exemplar of many of the
requirements of other regulatory changes and thereby, also to highlight the opportunities to reduce future challenges through increased change-readiness.
The GDPR can therefore serve as an effective exemplar of many of the requirements of other regulatory changes.
