Sample letter to refuse permission for a child’s data to be transferred into POD
The Department of Education has issued a new circular accepting it cannot defund the education of children whose parents do not want their kid's data to be in POD. They'll only accept a written request as the basis of that refusal, however. So, here's one you can use that meets the requirements (Now in English or Irish, thanks to an enterprising parent).
POD complaint to go to the European Commission
There has been a pretty significant exchange of correspondence with the Data Protection Commissioner over the Primary Online Database since my last post. The result is that I am copying all of the documentation to date and will be forwarding it to the European Commission as part of a complaint regarding Ireland's failures to ensure that Article 8.
The Dublin InQuirer- A City Desk for Dublin
I only recently became aware of The Dublin InQuirer and have become facinated by it. It started as a website and then, to fend off financial instablity, began offering a monthly print newspaper on a subscription and (limited) retail basis.
What really makes a civil servant quit?
Between 1996 and 1999 the rate of resignations from the civil service rose by 34%. The civil service had been under resourced and demotivated, while subject to an embargo on hiring staff. Staff careers and earnings had stagnated.
The PODcast: An interview giving the story so far
The benighted story of the Department of Education's perennially unraveling Primary Online Database of 5+year olds has been bouncing along for over a year now. If you were to scroll through a year's worth of this blog's posts you'd have a pretty good picture of what happened when, but you might also expire with tedium. It'd be a race to see which would happen first.
Department throws in the towel on a compulsory POD
As longstanding, longsuffering readers will be aware, for the past year and a bit, I have been arguing that the Primary Online Database (POD) was illegal. Though that argument has not come to a conclusion (and I expect it to be successful) the Department of Education has been forced into a series of climbdowns along the way.
The Department of Education and the Data Protection Commissioner’s exchanges on POD
The documents below were withheld by the Department of Education following an FOI request. The Department produced an array of reasons for their refusal to release the below docs, which the Office of the Information Commissioner ultimately decided were invalid.
Information Commissioner orders release of POD documents
The Information Commissioner’s office has now published their binding decision in my appeal against the Department of Educations and Skill’s refusal to release certain documents relating to POD to me on foot of an FOI request. With the exception of one document (of which more shortly) all of the Department of Education’s refusals have been overturned.
A collage on election 2016
Hey, wake up, there's a really annoying election campaign. One that everyone wishes would just leave them alone. The vote is on Friday, which is a blessed relief after the longest short election campaign in history.
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