The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has called for views on how the UK should use the “derogations” (i.e. opportunities and requirements for national legislation) contained within the General Data Protection Regulation. The main area where derogations, or the lack of them, could affect the Jisc community is in the application of the GDPR to research data. We have therefore recommended that the UK Government should:
- use the Article 89 (Research and Archives) derogation to reproduce the current regime under s.33 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), which has enabled long-term research studies and data sets, including in health and social sciences;
- in particular, and as suggested by the European Data Protection Supervisor, apply that derogation to the forthcoming ePrivacy Regulation to permit suitably protected research on electronic communications data;
- use the Article 85 (Free Speech) derogation, as required by the GDPR, to give academic expression and information the same free speech protection as journalistic expression has under section 32 of the DPA.
Further details are in the full version of our response.
