In May 2021, the new General Regulation on Personal Data Protection (PDO) of the European Union will have reached the third year of its entry into force. During this period, companies, businesses, consultants, managers and their staff experienced how this new business framework affects not only traditional practices when it comes to working with personal data, but also their entire organizational culture.
The Mindthedata project, funded by the European Union’s Erasmus + program, and its partners are closely following trends in the business world, preparing a tool to support it that will soon be offered – free online training for business consultants can better help small and medium-sized enterprises to make this shift to the new normal ‘culture’ of doing business, putting data protection right at the heart of it.
Immediately after the start of the project at the end of 2019, the whole world experienced and continues to experience an unprecedented social and economic situation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The project partners managed to continue their activities, namely the development of training materials for business consultants, based on the results of research conducted in Bulgaria, Greece, Poland and Spain. The needs of 120 SMEs and business consultants, received through online questionnaires and interviews, were analyzed regarding the necessary support for the implementation of the General Regulation on Personal Data Protection / ORD / and its observance in the daily work procedures. The most urgent needs identified by both SMEs and business consultants are the following:
Understanding the specific requirements of the Regulation on Personal Data Protection / ORD /;
Providing information and training to staff;
Promotion of the Regulation for personal data protection / ORD / as a business priority for the purposes of SMEs;
Creating a culture of personal data protection beyond the aspect of “compliance or punishment”;
Understanding the benefits that come from creating a corporate culture for personal data protection;
The partners are currently completing the development of modular training for business consultants, meeting these and other needs, which were also identified during the study. The next step is to transform this material into an online tool for training business consultants, which in turn can be used by them in their cooperation with SMEs on issues related to the Regulation on Personal Data Protection / ORD /.
In the coming months, online learning tools will be available in 5 languages (English, Bulgarian, Greek, Polish and Spanish). The project will continue with their presentation and testing through small pilot seminars in each country, after which the training material will be added, changed and optimized taking into account the feedback received after the seminars.
You can download and read the full project study report (in English) here.
Read more about the Mindthedata project on their website.
Follow them on Facebook.
Contact MindTheData here.
The Mindthedata project is coordinated by the Yambol Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Bulgaria and is implemented jointly with Militos Consulting (Greece), Business Support Center for Small and Medium Enterprises – Ruse (Bulgaria), EQA HELLAS SA (Greece), Innovation Training Center (Spain) ), PAIZ Consulting Sp. z o.o. (Poland) and RNDO (Cyprus).
The European Commission’s support for this publication does not constitute endorsement of content that reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
