Data protection law changed from May 2018 with the passing of the Data Protection Act 2018 and taking effect of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Information and resources can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website. There is special provision in the new laws for the archiving of personal data in the public interest. Further advice and guidance is available for the archives sector.
Guide to archiving personal data
The National Archives, in conjunction with government archiving policy leads and the Archives and Records Association, has prepared a guide to assist those working with the provision and exemptions for archiving found in the new data protection law.
The guide has now been published in its final version following a period of public comment.
The guide to archiving personal data is also available in Welsh (PDF, 1.16MB).
Data protection toolkit for archive services
The National Archives has produced a Data Protection legislation toolkit to assist archivists dealing with data protection requests and issues arising from their collections.
You can sign up to access the Toolkit using enrolment key ‘Data Protection Toolkit’, and then login through TNA’s e-learning site.