Data privacy compliance is a moving target.

Setting up your Records of Processing Activities is not a one-time project, but an ongoing commitment.

According to Article 30 GDPR, every business is required to keep written Records of Processing Activities (Short: “RoPA”). 

The RoPA quickly provides companies with an overview of their business processes and helps identify all areas where personal data is being processed.
This enables your business to deliver greater efficiency and greater value from your data, which ultimately creates trust with your customers. 

Setting up Records of Processing Activities might seem like a cumbersome task at first. However, it delivers many benefits beyond plain fulfilment of GDPR requirements. 

When preparing and maintaining your RoPA, keep these best practices in mind: 

• Carry out regular health checks: Conduct regular reviews of the data you process. Your business is ever-changing, and so is the data that you are processing. 
• Involve the privacy team: Your privacy team, whether in-house or external, should be involved at the very early stages of a new project in order to provide you with the necessary advice and guidance. This way you can ensure compliance when processing data. 
• Build a privacy awareness programme: Educate your staff about data privacy. This way, they will understand the steps that need to be taken before beginning a new project that includes a completely different data processing, when new suppliers are engaged or when they are changed, and when you decide to share personal data.
• Use a privacy software for easy management: The use of a privacy management software will support the visualisation of your data lifecycle, which is important as it will enable you to define how your data is treated, used, saved, and shared. This will save valuable time and ensure long-term compliance.