European regulators not ready for GDPR – Reuters

A survey conducted by Reuters has indicated the majority of regulatory authorities will not be equipped to enforce GDPR when it come into effect this month.

The General Data Protection Regulations will impose a lot of new rules on how digital information should be managed. Being a pan-European initiative GDPR is Byzantine in its complexity and is likely to be enforced with draconian severity, which is causing widespread panic among all companies that accumulate data, which is pretty much all of them.

But this Reuters survey may slow down the pulses of European CIOs because it looks like the people in charge of dealing out the GDPR pain are nowhere near ready to do their dour duty. 17 out of 24 authorities who responded said they either lacked the funding or the power to get the job done.

Drilling down further only five respondents said the necessary laws and funding were in place but most of the rest expected to get their acts together eventually, which is nice. It seems quite plausible that the European executive branch is struggling to keep up with the legislative branch but then again it’s hardly unprecedented for bureaucracies to call for more money and power. This seems to be a case of regulators covering themselves for failing to do their jobs in advance which, ironically, might just be the best result for everyone anyway.