UK’s ICO Publishes Guidance for GDPR Compliance During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Akin Gump published a client alert on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the U.K.’s data protection authority, publishing a Guidance for data controllers on their data protection compliance obligations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main take-away is that the ICO will take into account “the compelling public interest in the current health emergency” and will take a “reasonable and pragmatic” approach to enforce data protection obligations. The Guidance provides answers to six frequently asked questions about compliance with the GDPR during the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) Responding to data subject access requests (SARs); (2) Health care organizations contacting individuals about COVID-19 without prior consent (3) Security measures and homeworking arrangements (4) Informing employees that a colleague may have contracted COVID-19; (5) Collecting health data relating to COVID-19 from employees (6) Sharing employees’ health information with authorities. To read the full alert, please click here.