Data Protection Officer at an East Midlands Borough Council tells us how CycFreedom is used at the Council

CycFreedom is the essential solution that an East Midlands Borough Council uses to manage all its requests

CycFreedom is used to log, process, respond and report on much more than just Freedom of Information, Environmental Information and Subject Access Requests. The wide variety of requests and processes it can be used for includes;

• Data Protection exemption enquiries (Sch2’s)
• Data Protection Breaches and Investigations
• FOI Challenges through to ICO appeals and Tribunals
• General personal data enquiries and advice

CycFreedom processes and data tables can easily be adapted to allow internal and external service delivery records to be held including gifts and hospitality, RIPA authorisations, declarations of interest, data sharing agreements. We currently have CycFreedom set up for over 20 different processes, request types and information and data storage. 

In the current climate of austerity it is important to source systems and solutions that provide value for money. The more processes you can get out of a system the more added value and stronger the business case.

With CycFreedom we have a fantastic knowledgebase of every request received. It saves time having everything to hand as all the documents and correspondence is stored in one place rather than a number of different systems. The various search functions allow fast look up of past cases making responding to similar requests months apart quick and easy. Tasks can be assigned to different users and cases can be worked on by multiple users.

So many functions are integrated into the system like templates, direct scanning, redaction software, pdf response builder, time recording and charging, that it’s difficult to imagine what responding to a request without CycFreedom would be like.

Unlike many other solutions CycFreedom does far more than you bought it for.

Data Protection Officer

East Midlands Borough Council