With the introduction of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) hitting the headlines, and our inboxes (many times), NHS organisations have been focusing on the process of managing patient data. Yet, it would appear that critical employee data might be quickly ticked off the GDPR list without truly understanding the importance of long-term safeguards for this information.
Data may be held on a secure server and you probably have procedures in place to update the data, or manage a breech, but can your siloed systems cope with the level of employees in organisations and the number of changes to guarantee GDPR compliance of your personnel data? Only by introducing an automated system can the NHS effectively and compliantly manage staff data.
Data privacy toughens up
Data privacy has gained much attention across all sectors in recent months. How people are communicated to, as well as how their personal data is managed and stored has been prioritised by businesses. For the NHS this focus is critical, as it manages very personal patient data.
Yet, the regulations cover all types of personal data, including employee information, which for the NHS is a significant dataset and is constantly changing.
Central to effective management of staff data is ensuring that you have clear data visibility; identifying where it is stored, that it is easy to process and update, and have appropriate measures for security. The challenge faced by the NHS is that its personnel data is held in a number of systems – NHSmail, ESR and Active Directory.
Automating privacy
Only by creating automated links between these systems, can the NHS be confident that it is compliant to the new GDPR requirements. Automation removes the possibility of human error between the systems and speeds up the process, ensuring that accurate data is held across all systems.
Equally, it enables the NHS to meet its obligations to delete data immediately after a person leaves the organisation, so data is removed efficiently from all systems. For many NHS organisations, this task is still very time-intensive, relying on various people for different systems.
BDS Solutions’ Directory Manager has proven to reduce administration time spent on these tasks, building an efficient approach to managing data. By linking together ESR, Active Directory and NHSmail, the NHS can effectively safeguard itself against GDPR violations for the management of staff data, as well as freeing up valuable time spent on administration.
GDPR has created a significant amount of hype over external personal data, but it is important to remember that the legislation requires better management of your entire data-estate, covering internal personnel too. For employee information, this can only be effectively achieved by automating the interface between the various systems that house the data to ensure efficient and secure data management.
Find out more about BDS’s Directory Manager or get in touch.