Although the UK is leaving the European Union, the government has confirmed that this will not affect the commencement of the bloc's General Data Protection Regulations. Credit: Melinda Nagy

One third (34%) of public sector decision makers are not confident that will be prepared for the incoming EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) by the time they are enforced in May 2018, a new survey has found.

Although the UK is leaving the EU, the government has confirmed that this will not affect the commencement of the GDPR. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has suggested that all UK organisations should still comply with GDPR “ahead of May 2018 and beyond”. Those organisations that fall foul of the regulation risk being dealt with fines of up to €20m or four per cent of their turnover.

Despite this, the survey by the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) suggested that there remained widespread confusion and a degree of apathy among UK-based organisations about GDPR.

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CIF surveyed 50 public sector IT and business decision makers as part of a wider survey of 250 decision makers across the private and public sector.

Only 16 per cent of private sector organisations said they were completely confident that they fully understood what the GDPR meant for their organisation – but worryingly, respondents from the public sector were some of the least confident in their understanding of GDPR; just one in ten said that they were completely confident that they understood what it meant for their organisation.

And GDPR preparedness fared worse still; only six per cent of public sector respondents were completely confident that they were prepared for the GDPR, a further 44 per cent said they were ‘fairly confident’, 26 per cent said they were ‘not very confident’, 10 per cent said they were ‘not at all confident’ and 14 per cent said they didn’t know. 

“These figures are deeply troubling and indicate that many organisations, particularly those at the smaller end of the market and in the public sector, have a considerable amount of work to do before it is introduced into law,” the report reads.