On January 28, the annual Dutch Privacy Awards will be presented during the National Privacy Conference organized by ECP and Privacy First. These awards provide a platform for organizations that view privacy as an opportunity to distinguish themselves positively and that demonstrate how to do business and innovate in a privacy-friendly manner.
Stimulansz offers municipalities expertise in the social domain through practical training courses and advice. They developed the Privacy Quartet for their privacy awareness training courses. This simple but effective intervention makes privacy literally tangible for participants. Thanks to the playful design, initial resistance disappears, making participants more open to seriously addressing privacy and the GDPR.
The jury of the Dutch Privacy Awards has therefore nominated Stimulansz for this award.
At Stimulansz, we provide privacy training to anyone who works for or with a municipality in the social domain. The social domain processes a huge amount of personal data that directly affects the privacy of all residents. It is therefore important that knowledge about privacy and the GDPR is up to date, that you familiarize yourself with it, and that you put it into practice.
We created the Stimulansz Privacy Quartet for our privacy training courses. The quartet game consists of nine quartets about privacy and data sharing, including facts, examples, and legal information.
The quartet does not so much solve one specific privacy issue: it is much broader than that. It promotes positivity and acceptance of knowledge and rules about privacy. That is the basis for successful training and application of these rules in one's own practice.
During training sessions on privacy in the social domain, we noticed that participants were primarily negative and resistant:"Get rid of the GDPR," "The GDPR says no," "I'm here because I have to be." This attitude is detrimental to the participants, but also to us as trainers. We emphasize the positive aspects of privacy, how important privacy is, and which European and national rules tell us how to handle other people's data responsibly.
So we went looking for a working method that could change attitudes and enthusiasm about the content. That became the Stimulansz Privacy Quartet.
An unexpectedly big impact. The Privacy Quartet does even more than we had hoped: it makes people curious and positively enthusiastic. It fits in your hand, is a familiar and clear game about the content, and has a touch of humor. This combination surprises people.
As soon as the quartet is placed on the table, you can see the participants' attitude change from closed or reserved to open and enthusiastic. Participants enjoy it and spontaneously give examples of something that has happened to them, for example when they have the Data Breaches category in their hands.
With the quartet, we have succeeded in generating positivity, enthusiasm, and curiosity about privacy. This is very important because it encourages participants to take the knowledge they have gained with them, share it, and use it in their own practice.
The quartet has now become an indispensable part of our training courses, workshops, and sharing sessions.
The most important thing is the awareness that everyone who works for a municipality deals with residents' privacy on a daily basis. Residents' privacy is always an issue, every day. This responsibility means that all employees must have up-to-date knowledge about privacy.
We also notice that resistance to the GDPR is making privacy issues unnecessarily complicated. This creates a need for clarity and simplicity. So we had to go back to basics. And we have incorporated those basics into the different categories of quartets, together with the simplicity of the pack of cards. You don't need a QR code or a digital environment. Just a quartet game."
Our greatest wish is that the Stimulansz Privacy Quartet is available in all municipalities. For example, on the table during a team meeting or centrally located in the department. Visibility is just as important as the substantive impact it has. It keeps you aware of it.
We now use the quartet in our training courses, workshops, and knowledge sessions. We are currently exploring various options for expanding its reach. For example, whether it is possible to order the quartet from Stimulansz.
We are also considering further developing the quartet by creating a separate privacy quartet for specific social domain laws, such as the Social Support Act 2015 and the Youth Act.
