It depends: 2040 Data Protection / FOI Advice Service

Being a DPO / FOI Officer is a lonely business. You know what you’re doing, but you’re surrounded by colleagues and commentators who might give you doubts. Would you like some backup?

There’s a more obvious phrase involving phones and friends but a) the service I offer is email-based and b) copyright.

I offer an advice service to DPOs and FOI officers. You sign up for a year and in that year, whenever you have an awkward question, you email it to me and I answer it. It’s very simple. I sign your NDA or I provide one (the former option is much more in your interests). You pay me and we’re in business.

It starts at £250 + VAT for three months. You nominate one person and we communicate by email. Send me a question and I will respond to it in 24 hours. If you want a quicker answer occasionally, that’s not a problem  but if it happens often, we may need to rearrange.

And just in case inspiration and inconvenient reality gets in the way, if you manage not to ask me a question in any given month, you can watch one of my Quick Topic videos instead.

If you want me to deal with more than one person, it will cost more. Phone calls / meetings can happen sometimes; things like this get smoothed out once we’re up and running.

This is not DPO as a service; I usually provide it to in-house DPOs. A DPOaaS asked me to do a similar arrangement last year where they’d ask me the questions but then feed the answers back to their clients in their name. They didn’t like the quote.

This benefits you because you have a guaranteed, objective second opinion even if it’s only the reassurance that someone experienced agrees with you. But I won’t lie, it also benefits me. I get random questions fired at me and it keeps me on my toes.