But if you work for a private sector organization and haven’t yet signed up for the federal Privacy Commissioner‘s e-newsletter entitled Privacy Perspectives, I’d suggest you do.   It contains great information and helps to stay on top of things.

If you’re in Manitoba and work for a public body, the Winter 2009 Issue of Manitoba OmbudsNews was published last Friday on the Manitoba Ombudsman‘s website.  It’s also a great resource.

If you’re still in need of ongoing assistance and aren’t already a member of the Privacy Forum, you may want to touch base with me to learn more.  It has been a super venue over the last 6 years for information sharing and the current members are an excellent group of individuals and first rate privacy professionals.

The important thing is to develop a culture of privacy within the workplace.  Fostering a workplace culture where privacy is valued and respected contributes to good employee morale and mutual trust.  It also helps employees to identify privacy issues before they become privacy complaints (which can result in costly grievances, lawsuits or settlements).  After all, it’s employees that are on the front line with customers and how employees respond to privacy related questions or concerns can make a big difference. 

When I conduct privacy training sessions for clients, I always remind employees that while privacy compliance is the law, it’s also important because good privacy practices can improve customer relations, increase efficiencies and mitigate time-consuming and costly privacy complaints.  I also try to make privacy compliance fun!  No, this is not a misprint…I said “fun”.  Privacy Forum members had some great suggestions on how to make privacy compliance fun and, in doing so, help to get staff “buy-in” on privacy compliance. 

Please post a Comment below on ways that you or your organization tries to get staff “buy-in” on privacy.

In a recent speech to the 10^th Annual Privacy and Security Conference in Victoria, B.C., Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart commented, “Polling for my Office in 2007 found that only a third of all businesses reported having trained staff about their responsibilities under Canada’s privacy laws.  This is a huge concern!  We recently conducted an analysis of 86 breaches reported to my Office and found that employee awareness and training was the most important contributing factor.  It was an issue in more than half of the spills we examined! We found that very basic mistakes – human errors – often lead to breaches. Breaches are caused mostly by employee misconduct and human error, not technological weaknesses.”  The full speech is entitled, “A Privacy Check Up For Canadians: Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?” and is definitely worth reading.

Privacy chief important role in modern firm

My August 18, 2008 column in the Winnipeg Free Press provides a definition of the position of Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) as well as some tips to help determine the scope of the role in particular firms.