The South African Protection of Personal Information (PoPI) Act is getting a lot of attention due to the wide-reaching consequences of non-compliance.

In many ways, the PoPI Act extends 2011 National Consumer Protection Act (CPA) which remains in effect and has a number of clauses that affect data management.

Here are 8 quick facts about the CPA and its implications for data management:

1. Importance of Compliance

The rulings by the National Consumer Commission (NCC) have significant implications for both companies and their executive teams. The NCC will enforce these rulings and should they not be adhered to, non-compliant organisations will suffer severe consequences.

2. Minimum Requirements:

The Consumer Protection Act (CPA), which is enforced by the NCC, sets out the minimum requirements to ensure adequate consumer protection in South Africa.

3. Data Management Implications:

The CPA has significant data management implications, in particular legislating how information must be stored, how data privacy must be maintained and that data quality must be ensured.

4. Challenges with Customer Data:

For many organisations, the lack of a single customer view will make it difficult to comply with the requirement to properly manage “do not contact” demands from customers across multiple product lines or business units.

The lack of a single customer view makes it hard to comply with “opt-out” requests #CPA #PoPIA

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5. Data Governance Across All Sectors:

Data Governance, historically focused on traditional legislated sectors such as financial services, is now relevant across all sectors. Businesses need to implement appropriate levels of data governance in order to ensure legislated levels of data quality and data privacy are met across the enterprise.

6. Impact of Data Quality:

The quality, reliability, security, accessibility and usability of a company’s data dictate the effectiveness of the organisation in managing risk and compliance. This can be achieved through a well-orchestrated data governance program and quality master data

7. Path to PoPIA Compliance:

In many ways, compliance with the CPA puts us on the path to PoPI compliance too.

8.  Maximizing the Value of Data Governance:

The real value of an enterprise data governance program lies in gaining reuse from the efforts we put in place to manage data better, rather than simply allowing us to comply with individual legislation.[Tweet this]

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