When talking about data protection it is often associated with requirements that businesses, who use personal information, must follow. The Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 (DPJL) was created to ensure that every person is treated equally and fairly where their personal information is concerned.
This year the Jersey Office of the Information Commissioner is working to raise awareness that alongside our role as a regulator, we’re also here to protect individuals. In February 2021 we launched our #ItsAllAboutYou survey with the aim to find out, how aware islanders are of their rights in relation to the law?
In total the survey was completed by 381 respondents. To gain feedback, we asked people from varying age groups from the under 16s right through to the over 65s.
Here is a snapshot of some of the results;
When asked ‘How important is it to you that organisations keep your personal information safe and secure?’ 81.75% of respondents said that they felt it was very important.
In addition to this, the results showed that just under a third of the survey respondents felt that their knowledge of their rights was fair, and just under a third said their knowledge was either poor or very poor.
Following on from asking how much knowledge of the DPJL respondents had, we asked them to rate how valuable they found specific types of personal information. What we discovered from this was that the information people found to be most valuable was held in a tangible form. Information that’s held in a passport or on a credit/debit card was considered to be more valuable in comparison to information such as religious beliefs or sexual orientation.
Whilst details like this may not be considered as higher risk in terms of identify theft or scams they could, in some cases, leave people vulnerable to discrimination. Each type of personal information is valuable to us in its own way, what one person considers their most valuable information others may not worry who they share it with. We discuss this further in our recent blog ‘Valuing Personal Data’
When asked how aware people were of our office and our role, the results were mixed. As we continue with our annual campaign to raise awareness of information rights and how we can help. We hope to see these figures change.
When asked whether they’d be interested in learning more about their rights the results were positive with just under half of the respondents, 49.34% saying they’d be quite interested and 20.16% saying they’d be very interested.
So, what are we going to do to ensure more islanders are aware of the DPJL, their rights under it and how our office can assist?
Some of the suggestions we received were;
We found this survey to be a highly informative fact-finding exercise for our office. The results showed that there is a good level of knowledge among those surveyed and there is a desire for further knowledge on the subject.
Make sure to keep your eyes peeled to see what's coming from the JOIC team next!