August

"A recent Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decision in the UK demonstrates the risks of employment references, both for those who issue them and those who rely on them. In this case, Ms. X suffered from a ""disability"" and had prolonged periods of absence throughout her employment with Company A. Company A mentioned Ms. X's absence in her employment reference and also commented that it felt she was unsuitable for the role with Company B. As a result, Company B withdrew the job offer it had made to Ms. X. The EAT found both Company A and Company B were guilty of discrimination. Although the case was in the UK, had the same facts come before the Workplace Relations Commission in Ireland, a similar outcome may have resulted. In Ireland the Employment Equality Acts, 1998-2015 (the EEA), prohibit discrimination on nine grounds. Employers need to be mindful of what they include in employment references, whether in writing or verbal."

"Daniel Therrien used his opening keynote address to announce a new sweeping consultation on the nature of consent and to call for an update to the ""archaic"" Privacy Act that covers the handling of citizen data. The consent consultation is an ""important exercise,"" Therrien said, because PIPEDA ""predates smart phones, cloud computing, and business models predicated on unlimited access to information and automated processes that use algorithms to make decisions. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner released a position paper that presents a sort of state of the state for consent, identifying troubling issues for the current consent model in PIPEDA and offering up a suite of possible solutions. Many are calling, Therrien noted, for accountability frameworks and ethics boards and other methods for organizations to assess privacy risk and make use decisions without the explicit consent of the data owners. ""We have a fundamentally changed privacy landscape. We are at a critical point where action is needed."""

The Jamaica Constabulary Force 's (JCF) criminal records system is now computerized at a cost of approximately $98.1 million. Established through funding from the Government of the United Kingdom (UK) the electronic database replaces the manual format of documentation at the Criminal Records Office on Duke Street in Kingston. The facility now enables the JCF to streamline the collation and storage of new and existing data, and their retrieval for use in investigations and court hearings, among other proceedings. The collaboration between Jamaica and the UK also facilitated training in the use of the technology by several JCF officers. Installation of the electronic database is the first of two phases of support being provided through the UK-based ACRO Criminal Records Office. The second will entail further development of the JCF 's fingerprint database for which over $134 million in additional financing support will be provided by the UK Government 's Home Office Conflict, Stability and Security Fund.