Conference supported by Together (Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights)

This conference will take place online. 

Emergency planning, resilience, business continuity and risk reduction are the activities we plan, practice and train for in the hope they will never be needed.  They mitigate the worst when it happens and bring assurance and stability when it does not.  However, the threats presented to normal order are magnified by local, national and international events which can bring instability to our own front door. So how do we plan for the unexpected, ensure that we learn from every opportunity, collaborate to maximise best practice and keep our emergency planning and resilience practitioners, and our responders at every tier, well-resourced and able to prevent and react?

This conference will take place online.

Freedom of Information in Scotland has become both an effective tool for public accountability in Scotland and a growing demand on the resources of our public sector bodies. However, questions over compliance, scope, operation and cost have increasingly come to the fore. What do Scottish bodies covered by FOI – and others that may be pulled into its reach – need to know about where we stand and what may be coming next?

This conference takes place online.

Data protection requirements for all organisations in the UK and Scotland are governed by law setting out what needs to be complied with and how.  However, the new Data Protection and Digital Information (No2) Bill now moving through Parliament is expected to conclude in early 2024.  It contains a range of changes with implications for all data practitioners and data protection officers, impacting on when, how and why compliance is needed.  What do data practitioners and their organisations need to understand about the new Act, what changes and responses will be required and what are the other latest and next broader drivers of change in the data environment?

This conference takes place online.

Effective regulation in the public, private and third sectors is essential in guaranteeing the quality services and products Scottish consumers receive. However, public sector budgets are under threat. Private sector businesses are competing for consumers who have increasingly tight budgets. Third sector organisations face another period of acute funding uncertainty. How can bodies across all three sectors deliver compliance in regulation and scrutiny in challenging circumstances? The challenge is to comply with current expectations, prepare for what is coming next and still deliver what consumers expect. The question is, how?

This conference will take place online.

Providing protection against discrimination is a legal requirement for all organisations.  Age, disability, race, gender, religion, cultural background and sexual orientation are all covered by legislation. Supporting the rights of people with protected characteristics is an obligation in equality law and a characteristic of successful organisations.  However, failure to do so is potentially reputationally damaging for both organisations and individuals.  In the worst cases, it can be career – or even organisation – ending.  While compliance is one thing, actively and successfully promoting equality, diversity and inclusion is another.  What do you need to know?  Where is current good practice heading?  How do organisations get it right?

This conference will take place online.

The Scottish Government will publish its Legal Services Regulation Reform Bill sometime between now and June 2023. However the 2021 consultation on reform revealed striking differences of opinion on the way forward, particularly - though not exclusively - between practitioner and consumer interests. So how will the new Bill seek to deliver open, transparent regulation and enhanced accountability and consumer rights? How can this be balanced with concerns about avoiding political interference in the legal profession and legal services and perhaps higher costs to consumers? Most importantly what will this mean for the way the legal profession, legal practices and all those fall within the definition of legal services are scrutinised, regulated and held accountable in future?

This conference will take place online.

All organisations need to be aware of their data protection obligations. They have to be organised to comply with those requirements, be proactively engaged with the evolving contexts in which they are operating and they should be supporting their data practitioner staff in their roles and in their professional development. However the context in which organisations store, share and use data is fast evolving - both in terms of law and best practice and in respect of how public and private sector organisations operate. How therefore do organisations need to respond in order to remain agile in an ever changing data world so that they support the development and constant upskilling of their critical data protection professionals, ensure the organisation is always learning from best practice and collectively react swiftly to the planned and unplanned changes that can threaten data security?

This conference takes place online.

Organisations in the public, private and third sectors all need to be able to communicate effectively with government and MSPs.  Often that communication can go badly due to misunderstanding of how government and MSPs work.  In a post pandemic world many voices will be seeking to influence what happens next.  Will yours be heard?

Online

This webinar discusses the challenges organisations continue to face in meeting their data protection obligations during the COVID pandemic, examines how organisations have reacted and adapted to the crisis and looks at what needs to be done in respect of reviewing systems and processes to ensure acceptable levels of compliance in ‘new normal’.

Online