Privacy

Driven by calls for infallible corporate governance and regulated individual rights such as that of privacy, the resulting regulatory complexity has rendered black and white “compliance” impossible. More than ever before, the new “compliance” regime revolves around the concept of “reasonableness”, arguably because it has simply ceased to be possible to conduct an end-to-end compliance assessment of this magnitude.

The regulation within these key industries can be split into that with a front-office or back-office impact. Legislation such as the amended Privacy Act has an impact on both the front-office (customer-facing) and back-office (processing & support functions). In this context, workplace relations legislation is considered back-office, as it is largely transparent to the customers of the business.

While not all of the legislation is “customer facing” in the same way the amended Privacy Act can be considered to be, it all has an impact on how companies do business. The Financial Services Case Study on page 4 illustrates the magnitude of regulation within the national information infrastructure industries. A similar list could be put together in telecommunications, insurance, health, and no doubt many other industries.

Within this regulatory environment, how do you perform a comprehensive compliance assessment when proposing a technology implementation or a new product? Realistically, you can’t. This is where the elements of “reasonableness” and “governance” come into their own. Rather than attempting to create an unworkable hundred-page checklist of regulatory requirements, companies are required to establish internal standards consistent with the regulations, along with corresponding assessment and reporting mechanisms, to ensure the necessary processes and culture are in place to assure compliance.

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