Subject Access Requests in Sims

Under data protection leglislation an individual has the right to ask to see a record of information an organisation holds about them, this is commonly referred to as a Subject Access Request.

In order to assist schools with subject access requests Capita have made a Person Data Output report available in Sims. Student PDO’s were introduced in the Autumn 2017 release and Staff and Contacts were added in the Spring 2018 release of Sims.

A new permission group called Data Protection Officer in System Manager has been created for this purpose and only those added to this group will be able to run the Person Data Output reports.  The permission to run the report isn’t added to any other existing group so that the school can correctly control who should produce these reports.

Once a user is added to the Data Protection Officer permission group in System Manager they’ll be able to generate a PDO through Routines / Data Out/ Person Data Output.  The screen will show an audit log of all previously generated outputs.  The user can search for a select a student, employee or contact and must select an appropriate and secure location to run the report to.  The Audit log note can be used to record how the SAR was received.

Some of the information in the PDO is summarised – such as attendance, and if in use Dinner Money and Fees Billing.  More detailed reports can be produced such as attendance certificates or dinner money transactions from Sims to supplement the PDO.

Click here for more information on Subject Access Requests and PDO reports in Sims.