Scouts.Digital Article

Scouts.Digital was built with the POPI Act in mind and is 100% POPI Compliant. (South Africa’s Protection Of Personal Information Act of 2013). This article details how Scouts.Digital complies with the POPI Act.

POPI has 5 main requirements relating to any information (Not just electronic information). These are:

• Only collect information that you need for a specific purpose
• All Information collected is only collected for the specific purpose of managing Scout Groups, Districts or Regions and to provide exceptional and relevant Scouting Services to Scout Groups, Districts or Regions. The information collected is not used or processed for any other purpose.
• Apply reasonable security measures to protect it
• Scouts.Digital takes more than reasonable security measures to ensure the data is protected
• Ensure it is relevant and up to date
• This is the cornerstone of managing any Scout Group, District or Region and, as a matter of course, Scouts.Digital allows this collected information to be maintained, ensuring that it is relevant and up to date
• Only hold as much as you need, and only for as long as you need it
• All of the information required by Scouts.Digital is only a very small subset of information captured on physical AAM and Consent Forms. This minimal information requirement ensures that Scouts.Digital has the necessary information required to execute the task of managing Scout Groups, Districts and Regions efficiently and effectively.
• Information that is not required is optional and is, typically, completed by Adult Leaders, Rovers or Cub and Scout Parents if they wish to add to the data set. This is entirely at the choice of the Adult Leader, Rover or Cub and Scout Parent.
• As data can never be deleted from Scouts.Digital by any Adult Leader, Rover or Cub and Scout Parent, Scouting related information (Advancements, Badges, Awards, etc.) is retained indefinitely. This allows Scouts.Digital to provide Alumni services to the general public who were Cubs, Scouts, Rovers or Adult Leaders. (This functionality is due for release late in 2017)
• Allow the subject of the information to see it upon request
• As each Adult Leader, Rover and Parent can login to Scouts.Digital, requesting this information is as simple as logging into Scouts.Digital
• Parents can see and edit their associated Cubs or Scouts Personal Information

Scouts.Digital complies 100% with these 5 principles. This means that Scouts.Digital has better POPI compliance than most Scout Groups exercise with their paperwork (Most of which contains personal information).

The POPI Act was signed into law in November 2013, but no commencement date has been published. This means that while the Act has been promulgated, it is not currently enforceable. Once a commencement date has been published and compliance criteria has been determined, Scouts.Digital will apply for a compliance certificate (if this is required from POPI).

POPI contains 8 Principles

1. Accountability
2. Processing Limitation
3. Purpose Specification
4. Further Processing Limitation
5. Information Quality
6. Openness
7. Security Safeguards
8. Data Subject Participation

Scouts.Digital complies fully with these 8 principles

If you have any questions or require any further explanations around POPI Compliance on Scouts.Digital or a concept, please feel free to contact me on [email protected]