The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has opened a consultation process about its ideas for a new code of practice for sharing personal data between companies and organisations.

The move comes in the wake of a number of high-profile incidents where personal data has been lost, leaked or stolen by among others local councils. In fact, the NHS is said to be the worst offender in the public sector.

“We want citizens and consumers to be able to benefit from the responsible sharing of information, confident that their personal data is being handled responsibly and securely,” it says.

The UK privacy watchdog has in response issued a draft of what it says could become a model for best practice on handling personal data by public, private and the Third Sector.

The ICO says organisations that handle personal data are invited to offer their comments on the draft code, which would be strictly voluntary if any suggestions go beyond the main UK legislation on the topic at the moment, the Data Protection Act.

Suggestions include criteria on when or if personal data should be shared at all, when and how individuals should be told about such sharing, the appropriate security and staff training measures that must then be put in place and spells out what rights an individual asking to access such data ought to have.

The draft code aims to clear up somewhat murky areas like one-off requests for data and how they should be handled – e.g. when a school passes information about a child to a social services department or a GP sends a patient's record to a hospital.

The priority must be that citizens' and consumers' rights under the Data Protection Act are respected, stresses the Commissioner. this can cause serious harm.

The consultation runs until the start of the New Year.

Source: http://www.publictechnology.net/sector/ndpbs/ico-looks-new-way-protect-our-data