Since I became LGBT officer I have been aware of issues about the way equalities monitoring information is held by Notts County Council. Last year the Council extended its monitoring to include sexual orientation and gender identity questions however this was simply added to information already collected on race etc without any consideration of the sensitivity and need for confidentiality to be assured. I discovered that information was held on staff personnel files and these files could be accessed by line managers.
I have raised this at a meeting of the Corporate Equalities Group LGBT subgroup and stressed the need for further confidentiality measures to be incorporated into monitoring information in order to ensure staff are not inadvertantly "outed" I also pointed out that the Council could in fact be breaching data protection requirements.
Following this meeting it was agreed that from 24th July paper copies of monitoring information would no longer be held on personnel files. It has also been agreed to build in extra password protection for the data which is held electronically, this is currently being investigated. However this is a big step forward and I hope to be able to report full success in this matter in the near future.
I have also asked for an investigation into the problem of school based staff where job applications are returned directly to the school involved as this clearly means that monitoring information will be seen by people involved in recruitment and this issue will need addressing in order to protect the individual's rights to privacy.
I will continue to update you as further news is received on this.
Let me know if you have had any problems with this type of monitoring or have concerns about confidentiality of your personal information.
Siobhan
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment