The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) received Royal Assent on April 13, 2000 and came into force in stages between January 1, 2001 and January 1, 2004. When drafting Part 1 of the act – Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector – lawmakers didn’t have to contend with the widespread use of content
Some people say that the current BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend got its start in 2009 when it was widely reported that newly elected US President Barrack Obama refused to give up his Blackberry in favour of the phone supplied by the secret service. He wound up keeping both phones, but I wonder if
If you’re like me, you’re constantly reading articles that depict big data as the ‘next big thing’. Those articles also usually portray big data as something new. But is it really new? “No” says Bernhard Warner in a recent BloombergBusinessweek post. He claims a CIA Analyst named Orrin Clotworthy described “with eerie clarity the promise of data analytics and computer modeling to predict the future” in
The Toronto Star recently profiled Form-Mate, the last carbon paper manufacturer in Canada. Like most people, I haven’t used carbon paper for many years. In fact, many younger people have probably never encountered this relic from our typewriter generation at all, or experienced the original, pre-email version of “cc:” (“carbon copy”). Before we had the “print
Faced with increasing data storage costs and a data volume that was growing faster than the capacity of the hard drives used to hold it, Nick Goldman and Ewan Birney (two researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute in England) needed to find a way to store the massive volume of genomic data being generated by their
Traditionally, you’d show up to a meeting toting a paper notebook in which you’d jot down comments, ideas, decisions, and action items. Then, after most meetings, you’d return to your desk and transcribe your notes, issue e-mails re: action items, and maybe update some electronic resources (e.g. a wiki) with information from the meeting. And if you were the
A new year brings new resolutions such as losing weight, getting a new job, or – in my household – cleaning out the garage so you can (finally!) park a car in it. The Paperless Coalition recently announced its new year’s resolution to enourage individuals to ‘go paperless’ in 2013. According to the Coalition’s Paperless 2013 website, “Paperless
Police are investigating after some of the confetti at last week’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City was apparently produced from the confidential records of the Nassau County Police Department (NCPD).
Parade spectators reported seeing confidential information such as Social Security and license plate numbers, names of NCPD officers, information from arrest records, and even information about a motorcade for Mitt Romney when he was the Republican presidential candidate in the confetti that littered the streets after the parade. From photos in the many, many news reports on this topic, it appears the confidential confetti was in the form of paper shreds from a strip-cut shredder instead of the more secure paper particles that a cross-cut shredder would produce.
E-mail is a wonderful communication tool! A great way to communicate with numerous individuals simultaneously! So easy to use! All it takes is the push of a button . . . in this case to mistakenly fire 1,300 employees. Bloomberg reports that the HR Dept. of the investment unit of Aviva PLC (the UK’s second largest insurer
Sheila Taylor is a well known consultant, educator, speaker and writer with more than 25 years of experience in the information management (IM) field.
