You will be required to evaluate a range of systems, ensuring that information is captured and monitored. You also need to review whats happening within your company or organization on an ongoing basis in order not only to meet legal requirements but protect yourself from potential risk as well. This section will provide you with the knowledge to understand what you need to do to help keep yourself and your collected data accurate, compliant and reliable.

When the data is being collected, it should be accurate and reliable. Accuracy is a record of events or facts as they really are, while reliability means the accuracy is consistent. Data must be accurate and reliable, if it is inaccurate or unreliable this means that everything else before the data will be false too. Data can contain mistakes like typos. This shows how important accuracy and reliability are to the success of our organization.

The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) was created in order to protect everyones personal information by making sure that any private information is safe. It says that anyone who processes personal information has to comply with eight principles, which are:

1. The first principle is about fair and lawful processing. This means that the organization must follow the law when processing data. If they dont, this can result in fines of up to 500,000 or 2% of their annual turnover (whichever is higher).
2. The second principle is about being obtained fairly. This means that the data should be collected for specific purposes, it also mentions that people should be told about their rights to access information held about them before they are asked to provide any information.
3. The third principle is about the purpose of the processing. Data must only be used for the reason it was collected. This means that if the data subject agrees to provide their personal information for certain purposes, the organization must not use or process it for anything other than what they agreed to do
4. The fourth principle is about the accuracy of the information. It says that personal information will be accurate and kept up to date. Companies are responsible for keeping the data they hold about individuals up to date and accurate, if it is not then they can be fined.
5. The fifth principle is about keeping information for no longer than necessary. This means that a company should not keep data for longer than they need to, or else it will become pointless. The organization cannot store data indefinitely unless it can prove that it is in the public interest.
6. The sixth principle is about making sure that the data is processed fairly and lawfully, by people who have a duty of confidentiality. The organization cannot do anything with personal information unless it has their permission or they are acting in a legal role towards the company.
7. The seventh principle tells you that you cannot transfer data to another body without the persons consent. This means that if a company needs to send personal information to another party, they must get the persons permission first and tell them why it is needed.
8. The eighth principle tells you that all transactions and contracts should be clear and plain so people know their rights and any risks involved with the data or contracts. All contracts must be clear and simple so that if anything happens, people know their rights and what to do

The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is the independent authority for information rights in the UK. They ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations 2003 (PECR), and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

By implementing an internal quality assurance system, it is possible to monitor the collection of information and ensure that all data being collected has been recorded correctly. For example in one month several staff members were found recording their work time at different locations which led to inaccurate monthly reports because they did not contain complete details; however, by identifying this error we have been able to reduce Future Inaccuracies Going Forward (FIGN).