Marketing managers must often feel that data-protection law is the
root of all evil: a tiresome beast which threatens constantly to sink
its teeth into their proudest creations. But they should spare a thought
for Elizabeth France, keeper of the Data Protection Act 1984, and
otherwise known as the Data Protection Registrar.
This week France publishes her annual report, an event which coincides
this year with the Data Protection Bill passing through its final stages
in Parliament. Thus, at the same time as organising the publication of
her report, France has also been lobbying for last-minute changes to the
Bill.
She is clearly looking forward to its implementation, due in October,
although she recognises that the direct marketing industry might feel
differently.
’There are two things that marketers are worried about in particular:
the fact that an individual can ask for marketing to stop (and also)
what we call the shorthand third-party notification, which says that you
have got to tell people what you’re doing with their information,’ says
France.
’We’ve had some marketers concerned that if they buy in lists they will
have to write to everybody on the list.’
Will they? ’We can’t imagine that it will ever be necessary, if you’re
buying a marketing list, where you’ve done everything right in terms of
buying the list, where the people whose names are on the list knew that
it was going for wider marketing in the first place,’ says France.
’What those people will have, if you’ve done it properly in the first
place, are the types of companies to whom (their information) will be
sold.’
Marketing managers can sleep a little easier then. But lifestyle survey
specialists may need to change their ways, she hints. ’They often, in
those lifestyle surveys, collect third-party information. They ask you
about your partner or your children. Those people don’t know their
information is being collected and being processed, and that’s something
where I think we would have concerns,’ says France.
’Lifestyle surveys might have to look again at whether they want to ask
for that information.’
France herself is not, one suspects, the sort of person who delights in
revealing her habits and opinions to the likes of ICD Marketing
Services.
If she were, she would say that she is 48, married with three children,
fond of squash and cooking and that she lives in Wilmslow in
Cheshire.
Neither does it seem likely that she enjoys receiving unsolicited
marketing communications.
Senders of unsolicited faxes and e-mails are also likely to be more
tightly regulated in future as a result of the Telecoms Directive, on
which Oftel is consulting and which must be implemented by October 24.
France hopes to produce a code of practice for internet marketers as
well.
’The reputable net marketers and internet service providers will sign up
and that means we can concentrate our resources and the power of the law
on the cowboys,’ she says.
Her staff are currently visiting company web sites in a bid to discover
just how many are collecting information about visitors on the sly.
Probably more worrying for marketers are France’s views on the use of
the electoral roll as a basis for ’snail mail’ campaigns, and the fact
that she is communicating them to a Home Office working party on
electoral procedures.
The register, says France, is now being used in a way that was never
envisaged. ’It seems to me that at the very least you should be able,
when completing your papers for electoral registration, to require the
electoral roll officer to suppress that data before publishing the list.
In other words, to keep it for electoral purposes.’
Direct marketers hate this prospect, she says, because they fear that
many people would be all too happy to dispense with direct mail. ’I
think that people should be asked an honest question.’
However, she seems convinced that there need not be all-out war between
her office and reputable marketers. ’The principles that we seek to
encourage them to apply go hand in hand with properly targeted
marketing. It’s the scattergun approach that upsets people most,’ she
insists.
Her first five-year term of office expires next September, before the
Data Protection Act is fully implemented. France’s dedication is such
that the betting must be on her seeking a second term.
’I’d like to see this legislation through its transition,’ she says
carefully.
’Then it depends what the world has to offer.’
BIOGRAPHY
1971-1977
Administrative trainee then higher executive officer, Home Office
1977-1986
Grade 7 in general and immigration and nationality departments, Home
Office
1986-1994
Grade 5 in police department, working on crime prevention initiatives,
Home Office
1994-present
Data Protection Registrar
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