POD no longer compulsory

Good news:

As longstanding, longsuffering readers will be aware, for the past year and a bit, I have been arguing that the Primary Online Database (POD) was illegal.

Though that argument has not come to a conclusion (and I expect it to be successful) the Department of Education has been forced into a series of climbdowns along the way.

Now, I have learned from a Freedom of Information request that since 29th February 2016 the Department has permanently given up on its threat to defund the education of children whose parents didn’t consent to their data being hoovered up into the POD.

They just haven’t told the schools collecting the data yet, because they don’t want to.

In a letter to the Data Protection Commissioner’s office on foot of a complaint I had made, the Department made the following through-gritted-teeth acceptance that POD couldn’t be compulsory.

More: http://www.tuppenceworth.ie/blog/2016/04/08/department-throws-in-the-towel-on-a-compulsory-pod/