Monday, April 3, 2017

GDPR - More Than Just Another Regulation

It has become all too common that business initiatives targeting infrastructural improvements such as Enterprise Architecture & Business Modeling, Data Governance & Master Data Management, Privacy & Data Protection are put on the back-burner or are totally suppressed in favor of endeavors that promise monetary benefits in the short term.

Accordingly, few organizations are really prepared for a timely response to requirements imposed by law or by industry-specific regulatory authorities. Considering the usually moderate fines for non-compliance and potentially little other consequences, delayed reaction and acceptance of the risk to eventually be hit by the proverbial stick have become an element of business calculation.

When conceiving the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union (EU) obviously anticipated that a non-negligible number of organizations would be reluctant to comply rather than making reasonable efforts. EU lawmakers have therefore replaced the penalty stick with a sledgehammer right out of the gate (May 2018). In plain English, the EU's powerful message says: 

"If you, the organizations of the world, process personal data of our people, you have to respect the provisions of the GDPR, otherwise we will hold you accountable with fines of up to EUR 20 million, while in return we apply the same rules to our organizations when it comes to processing personal data of your people."

Not emphasizing nations or ideologies, but simply putting people first, is not only a strong political statement, but a directive that will change the way how business will be done in the foreseeable future. It is a contemporary way of saying "the customer is king" while forcing organizations to prioritize the long-due overhaul of their informational infrastructure. 

Too bad that we need lawmakers to remind us of what should have been common sense in the first place.