The protection of Personal Information is gathering momentum in South Africa in much the same way as it has in various other jurisdictions (most notably in the EU where GDPR is an important requirement for all businesses. While these additional compliance requirements have been criticised, the reduction of “spam” related calls and emails will be welcomed by most individuals. In any event, compliance is mandatory and businesses owners will need to start looking at information differently. There are limited options available to business owners when it comes to compliance. Larger corporates would have appointed legal teams at great cost to ensure that they are compliant. For small to medium size businesses, compliance poses a real challenge.

Contractzone provides a unique solution for business owners who need assistance but don’t want to spend a lot of time and money on compliance. Our online solution includes a Compliance Checklist and a Personal Information Impact Assessment, both of which form the foundation for compliance. In addition, based on the input data, a range of compliance documents are prepared for your business, even including a training pack to ensure that the Information Officer has the tools to complete the process.

In addition to helping you with the required documents, we now also offer online legal training. Read more below.

Section 55 of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 ("POPIA")  sets out various obligations that an Information Officer must discharge. These requirements must also be read in conjunction with the Regulations issued under POPIA.

Regulation 4(e) obliges an Information Officer to conduct  internal awareness sessions with staff in relation to the Act, the regulations, codes of conduct or information obtained from the Regulator.

Many Information Officers do not themselves have the knowledge to conduct training for staff. In addition, with staff availability changing (as well as staff composition) it is difficult for Information Officers to be compliant. Our online training product has the answer.

In 2021 the team at contractzone partnered with Elantis to produce an online training course that meets the requirements of Information Officers and assists in getting POPIA compliance.

Our online courses are unique. Staff are assigned to the course and must go through an interactive process to course. Once complete each staff member will receive a certificate which serves as proof that the Information Officer has provided the required training.