Data Protection in Practice: Protecting People's Privacy Rights During the Development of Essential Technologies

The ICO, a UK data protection regulator, worked with the DHSC and other government agencies to protect people's privacy regarding the NHS Covid Project. It provided advice and support to ensure that data protection laws would not be a barrier to the app's development and that people's data would be deleted once the app was no longer required. As a result, the project was successfully decommissioned in June 2022 across the four countries, making sure millions of people were protected. The same approach has been adopted when developing other new products and services, protecting users privacy and helping organizations to ensure data protection laws are respected.