The Data Protection Act has often been accused of adding to the bureaucratic nightmare imposed by government on businesses and other organisations - but is that a fair assessment?

Anne Jones, Assistant Information Commissioner for Wales, will set out to show that the principles at the heart of the Act are based on a common-sense approach to personal information handling, and that compliance with those principles can in fact be good for business. A quick look at the newspapers shows how often mistakes are made, and how those mistakes can damage corporate reputation - for example, only a couple of months ago a major UK bank had to pay out hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation to its clients after a breach involving a mass emailing.

The talk will briefly outline the requirements of the Act, but will focus on the risks of getting it wrong, and measures that can be taken to reduce those risks.

(The Information Commissioner is the independent regulator for the Data Protection Act, Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations)