Ms Helena Kiely:

Data protection has been a massive part of the project. While people talk about the GDPR, justice agencies operate under the law enforcement directive which is Part 5 of the Data Protection Act. Getting that right, even before the data modelling was completed, was a big part of the design. We want to ensure the protections and obligations of all of the criminal justice agencies under Part 5 of the Act and the law enforcement directive are all accounted for at a very early stage. A data protection sub-committee is working as one of a number of sub-committees under the public board. I sit on the board, while our data protection officer is a member of the data protection sub-group. Data protection agreements were in place before any data modelling was done. Therefore, any member of the technical project team would know that we were data protection compliant. The legal office is obviously in tune with data protection requirements. Much of the data we possess is sensitive and we have obligations in that respect. The data protection directive and implementation of the Act have been a big project within our office. As there was heightened awareness of the issue last year, it was very much at the forefront of our mind in starting the project to ensure the data protection aspects would be correct.