European Union’s (EU) new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR for short) regulates the processing by an individual, a company or an organisation of personal data relating to individuals in the EU.
GDPR comes into effect on 25/05/2018. It does not apply to the processing of personal data of deceased persons or of legal entities.
The rules don’t apply to data processed by an individual for purely personal reasons or for activities carried out in one’s home, provided there is no connection to a professional or commercial activity. When an individual uses personal data outside the personal sphere, for socio-cultural or financial activities, for example, then the data protection law has to be respected.
Examples
A) When the regulation applies
A company with an establishment in the EU provides travel services to customers based in the Baltic countries and in that context processes personal data of natural persons.
B) When the regulation doesn’t apply
An individual uses their own private address book to invite friends via email to a party that they are organizing (household exception).
What applies to Learning Management Systems
The upcoming GDPR implementation introduces additional technical requirements in terms of learning management systems, with relevance to data collection and processing. Moodle software, on which SQLearn’s LMS is based on, is configured in order to support GDPR, through plugins incorporated into the core of the software for each installation.
The purpose is to obtain the consent of the user in order to store and process his/her personal data for educational purposes, as well as to support additional requirements, such as the right to erasure (right to be forgotten).
In order to comply with GDPR and the related operations, the update of the eLearning platform to the newer version is required.
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