Guide to LA FOIP-Chapter 6

Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to LA FOIP, Chapter 6, Protection of Privacy. Updated 27 February 2023. 304 As local authorities get on the “Big Data” bandwagon, the push to amass enormous volumes of personal information for yet undetermined purposes has never been greater. The capacity and desirability to retain massive amounts of personal information indefinitely increases the risks and consequences of a potential data breach.733 For more on “Big Data” see Big Data in the Focus on Issues in Privacy section later in this Chapter. Control over the disposition of recorded information is an important aspect of records and information management that is critical to LA FOIP administration. Records retention and disposition schedules are a local authority’s legal authorities on how long recorded information must be kept and how it is to be disposed of, e.g., by destruction or archival preservation. Retention means to continue to have, hold, or keep personal information.734 Records schedule means a formal plan that identifies the public records that are subject to the plan, that establishes a classification system and retention periods for those public records and that provides for their disposition.735 LA FOIP does not specify how long a local authority should retain personal information. However, a specifically identified purpose is often a clear indicator of how long this information needs to be retained. There may be legislative requirements to keep information for a certain amount of time. In other instances, there may be no legislative requirement, and an organization needs to determine the appropriate retention period. Check for a record retention and disposal schedule created by the Urban Municipal Administrators Association of Saskatchewan (UMAAS), the Rural Municipal Administrators’ Association (RMAA), the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) and the Principles and Best Practices - Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Accessed December 19, 2022. 733 Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Personal Information Retention and Disposal: Principle and Best Practices. June 2014. Available at Personal Information Retention and Disposal: Principles and Best Practices - Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Accessed December 19, 2022. 734 Government of Manitoba, FIPPA for Public Bodies – Resource Manual, Chapter 6, Protection of Privacy at p. 6-106. Available at Chapter (gov.mb.ca). Accessed December 17, 2022. 735 The Archives and Public Records Management Act, SS 2015, c A-26.11 at s. 2.

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