The Student Union of the University of Eastern Finland
23.05.2018
The EU law on data protection is being reformed and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will become enforceable after the two-year transition period on May 25 2018. However, the individual’s rights to view, amend or remove unnecessary personal details is not a new thing, since the Data Protection Directive has been in effect for about the past 30 years. The GDPR reform, which supersedes the Data Protection Directive, is more precise and more in agreement with the EU laws of personal data processing.
With the reform comes responsibilities which also concern ISYY. Therefore, ISYY has already taken actions, most important of which is the designating of the Data Protection Officer. Helena Eronen has acted as ISYY’s Data Protection Officer since March 2018. With Helena’s guidance ISYY has investigated where personal data is being stored, how it is being processed and who has access to it. In addition, ISYY has created guidelines on usage authority and data protection policies. These guidelines give information on, for example, how to process and archive data legally.
The GDPR aims to give control to citizens and residents over their personal data and to make data collection more transparent. For instance, ISYY has made a caption about their membership register for the members. ISYY has also prepared for the amendment of personal data. Moreover, ISYY organized a GDPR training on March 3 for all student organizations.
The GDPR affects also the administration of ISYY’s newsletter (Wiikko-Ärsyke and Weekly Feed) mailing lists. Due to the regulation, all email addresses except students’ who have joined the list themselves, will be removed from our mailing lists by the end of May. ISYY’s members will be added to the lists in September, but if you want to make sure you receive the first Weekly Feed newsletter of the autumn semester, you should join the mailing list. In the same form you can also remove yourself from the mailing list.
The GDPR reform preparations are well on their way in ISYY and the staff is working hard to be as prepared as possible. All preparations are not ready yet, but in general, the status quo looks good.
Read more:
ISYY’s data protection
General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679