The hi:project hosted a round-table this morning on the topic of the technological response to the General Data Protection Regulation. The corresponding issues lie at the heart of the hi:project.

The hi:project team believes:

• The GDPR tells organisations that the EU citizen takes primacy when it comes to personal data – and if personal data is the lifeblood of 21st Century organisation, these 500+ million people are now at the heart of your European operations
• The EU citizen cannot be best served by a panoply of enterprise IT solutions for her side of things (the clue is in the name, “enterprise IT”)
• The response is non-differentiating, requiring the formation of an open community and the development of open technology
• The best response is designed with a deeper and broader vision in mind, as we articulate here at the hi:project, in order to turn this regulatory challenge into an opportunity.

As one of our members puts it, we champion meaningful compliance to help (re)build trust and create mutual value. The alternative – meaningless compliance – is a box-ticking exercise that may only do more harm than good.

The round-table was held under Chatham House Rule so I won’t mention any of the participants by name or organisational affiliation. The types of organisation are described on our pre-event blog post.

If you would like to be involved in our open response to the GDPR, for direct and related reasons as discussed elsewhere on the hi:project website, please get in touch by emailing hi@hi-project.org.