New privacy program promotes best practices

Ohio State made huge strides in the development of an Ohio State Privacy Program in 2018.  First, the team worked diligently to tackle a new European privacy regulation by training dozens of Ohio State staff members, launching a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) working group, and creating and piloting a new GDPR Inventory Tool. 

GDPR is a new data protection privacy standard for individuals within the European Union (EU) that went into effect on May 25, 2018. It also applies to the transfer of personal data to organizations outside the EU, including Ohio State.

All of this great work revealed the need to hire a dedicated professional in a Privacy Officer role to help craft and implement a privacy program across Ohio State.  In October of 2018, Holly Drake joined the OCIO as the Chief Privacy Officer. Since her arrival, she has met with Ohio State faculty, staff, and students to learn more about all of the privacy activities already in place at Ohio State.

Drake partners with teams across the university to ensure that we are following values such as transparency, ownership, and creativity. We expect privacy activities to expand dramatically in 2019. For more information about how we adhere to the new GDPR privacy, read our interim policy.