The ROPA "State of the Nation" Report

During 2019, Digital Rights Ireland co-ordinated a team of volunteers to request copies of the Registers of Processing Activities from a number of Irish Public Sector organisations and Semi-State bodies.

Castlebridge provided researchers to review and assess the fitness for purpose of these Registers of Processing Activities. The review focused on the structural completeness and detail recorded in the Register of Processing Activities. It was outside the scope of the study to perform any form of qualitative analysis on the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the data recorded in the Register of Processing Activities provided. This study was originally to be be published in early summer 2020, but disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the conclusion of the write up of the analysis.

Pie Chart showing Percentage of reviewed ROPAs and their qualitative assessment

Summary of the State of the Nation

The vast majority of the ROPAs reviewed were generally adequate and met most of the requirements of the legislation, but could be improved by the organisations in question. However a number of organisations failed to meet the requirements of the legislation, and some were unable to provide a Register of Processing Activities when requested.

This report:

  1. Sets out the requirements for a Register of Processing Activities.
  2. Assesses on a simple Red/Amber/Green scoring matrix the ‘fitness for purpose’ of the 30 Registers of Processing Activity that were reviewed.
  3. Provides an overview of an approach to compiling Registers of Processing Activities that can be more useful to the organisation.
  4. Shares the Castlebridge Top 6 ROPA Mistakes based on our review of these ROPAs and our experiences working with clients on ROPAs and similar Data Governance tools over the past few years.

Get the REPORT:

Fill out your details below and we will send you links to download the report. As a bonus item we are including a copy of the Castlebridge ROPA template that we use with clients and in our Register of Processing Activities training courses.

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    Learn about ROPAs!

    Castlebridge runs regular public and in-house courses on our methodology for ROPA development. Contact us for details of upcoming courses (or check out our Events Schedule)

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    Source Materials

    The ROPAs analysed in this report can be download as a zip file if you want to review them and understand the basis for the assessments contained in the report. Please note that these ROPAs are as of 2019 and the organisations involved may have updated their current internal ROPAs as part of their Data Protection Governance processes.

    Get Source ROPAs

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