Could you tell us a bit about Association Française des Correspondants à la protection des Données à caractère Personnel (AFCDP)?
AFCDP is an association founded in 2004 following the modification to the Data Protection Act which made the Data Protection Correspondent position official. AFCDP’s purpose was to create a forum for Data Protection officers to share, discuss and meet. Today, the association has 650 member organisations and 1 900 individual members participating in its work. It is representative of the diversity of French organisations with large corporations, as well as associations, hospitals, small companies, etc. Its members also have very diverse profiles: in addition to Data Protection Correspondents, there are also DPO (Data Protection Officers), legal experts and lawyers, human resource specialists, IT specialists, etc.
What are the Association’s main activities?
There are many! AFCDP is a clearinghouse for good practices and resources. We have cross-disciplinary working groups and regional groups that meet on a regular basis. We organise one meeting every week on average in Paris and throughout France. The AFCDP university in January draws close to 500 people. We also produce many deliverables for our members such as an annotated version of the GDPR in order to better understand the regulation. We’ve also created a document explaining to our members how to present the regulation to their management committees. We've succeeded in creating an atmosphere of mutual aid among people dealing with similar problems.
What are the Association’s goals for coming months?
AFCDP wants to increase its visibility for the arrival of new members. With the creation of the DPO, the association will likely grow quickly. We will focus on assisting members in their new position as DPO and in welcoming new DPOs who don’t know each other. We also offer information for the people – like corporate officers – who will be appointing DPOs. And, naturally, we will continue to work with CISOs. Their worlds are similar with obvious overlaps.
