GDPR Week #15 - Shhh! It's Data Portability

One of the 8 rights of data subjects (that's prospects and customers to you and me) is that of Data Portability
www.ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-to-data-portability/
In simple terms it requires that you support and allow the easy transfer of the personal data you hold on a data subject to a new service or product provider on their instruction. This right has generally got less coverage in the lead up to the implementation of the GDPR and new Data Protection Act than two other closely related rights - to Erasure (to be forgotten) and the right to Access (Subject Access Requests).
Why is that? Well, in my opinion it's because for most organisations enabling Data Portability will be a big, complex undertaking, with as yet no indication of either the likely 'real world' consumer demand or how the regulator will require the right to be processed.
For some sectors - banking, utilities - data portability has already become a reality. This is because those industries' regulators have demanded and defined it, in order to encourage and facilitate competition in what have been doggedly inert markets. However, in those areas data portability was worked on for years, became mandatory and benefited from a world in which the data points required for portability were easily and precisely defined - retail banks will utilise the same basic personal data as each other; as will electricity or gas providers in their sectors.
So, in terms of your preparations for the GDPR and new Data Protection Act there are probably more pressing issues to be tackled. But don't totally forget about Data Portability which, when it becomes a reality for your business sector, is likely to both require a lot of costly technical preparation and diminish customer retention.