The ICO has published its annual report and financial statements for 2012/2013

Jun 20, 2013 11:44 GMT  ·  By

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has released its annual report and financial statements for 2012/2013.

At the launch of the ICO’s latest report, Information Commissioner Christopher Graham explained that this year, organizations will come to realize how important it is for them to properly handle customer data.

“Education and empowerment have been two of the key areas we’ve focused on in the past twelve months. That work is having real benefits: consumers’ awareness of their rights remains strong, and that is empowering people to demand more in return for their data,” Graham said.

Hopefully, he’s right, because a study conducted recently by the ICO has showed that 97% of consumers are concerned that organizations pass or sell on their personal details.

But despite these concerns, only 10% of businesses are aware of how they could legally use their customers’ personal data.

“The result is consumers expecting organisations to handle their personal data in a proper way, and in a legal way. Businesses that don’t meet that basic requirement are going to quickly find themselves losing customers,” he added.

“I think 2013 is the year that organisations will realise the commercial imperative of properly handling customer data. The stats we’ve seen about public concern around personal data show that, as does a company the size of Microsoft choosing privacy as a theme of a national advertising campaign.

“The message to business is simple: consumers understand the value of their personal data, and they expect you to too,” the commissioner said.

The latest annual report shows that 23 organizations have been fined with a total of £2.6 million ($4 million / €3 million). In addition, the number of data controllers audited in 2012-2013 increased by 38%.

The complete ICO report can be found here. A summary presentation of the report is available here.