A half-day workshop to help organisations manage personal information access requests under Bermuda’s privacy laws will be held at Bermuda College on June 9.

It is aimed at corporate directors, senior executives, human resources teams, compliance officers, in-house counsel and privacy professionals as individuals begin to exercise their access and control rights under the island’s privacy law.

Bermuda College’s Athene Professional and Career Education Division will host the workshop, “The Complete Guide to Managing Pipa Access Requests”, from 9am to noon at the College’s campus lecture theatre.

It will be led by Duncan Card, one of Bermuda’s leading privacy and technology consultants and a widely published commentator on the subject. Mr Card has advised and trained more than 100 private and public sector organisations on Pipa compliance.

Mr Card, a retired partner at the law firm Appleby Global who specialises in IT and outsourcing contracts, privacy law and cybersecurity compliance in Bermuda, said the programme was “essential because Pipa has now moved from the planning and preparation stage into daily operational and compliance reality”.

“Pipa is no longer simply a matter of having policies in place,” he said. “Organisations are now receiving access and control requests from individuals who want to know what personal information is held about them, and are asking for it to be updated, corrected, used only for agreed purposes, or, in some cases, deleted in whole or in part.

“That creates very practical obligations for senior management, in-house counsel, privacy officers, HR teams and compliance professionals. They need to know how to respond properly, what the limits are, and how to avoid turning a request into a wider dispute.”

The workshop will cover individual access rights and rights of control over personal information; the limits on those rights; exclusions and exceptions under Pipa; when organisations may not be required to respond; record-keeping duties; reasonable access request fees; dispute resolution; document handling; and how privacy matters can become litigious.

Mr Card said his previous PIPA workshops in Bermuda had shown a consistently strong demand for clear and practical guidance.

“When PIPA was coming into force, many organisations needed help understanding what compliance meant in real terms,” he said.

“That was the focus of earlier sessions with lawyers, business groups and other professional audiences. This workshop is the next stage. It is about what organisations do when a request actually lands on their desk.”

He added: “The people who will benefit most are those who have to make decisions, manage records, deal with employees or customers, and protect the organisation from unnecessary financial and reputational risk.

“That includes directors and senior officers, but also HR, compliance, in-house counsel, privacy officers, administrative and IT professionals.”

Gavin Bishop, chairman of the Institute of Directors (Bermuda), said: “The recent emergence of privacy rights in Bermuda is now a vital corporate governance issue that requires all corporate directors, as well as C-suite officers, to be familiar with and to ensure that their organisations are in full compliance.

“That is why the Institute of Directors is pleased to recommend and endorse this half-day professional development programme by Bermuda College.”

Geoffrey Faiella, senior legal counsel at Butterfield Bank and a former Crown Counsel, will participate in the programme’s Q&A session.

Participants will receive a certificate of attendance from Bermuda College. Three hours of professional development credit from the Bermuda Bar will apply for attending members.

Attendance at the programme has also been formally endorsed by the Bermuda Health Council, the Association of Bermuda Compliance Officers, CPA Bermuda, and the Bermuda Bar Association, as well as IoD (Bermuda).

• For more information or to sign up for the workshop, contact apace@college.bm