on demand sar services
At DPAS we understand that data subject access requests can place a significant burden on internal teams. Our DSAR support services are designed to provide you with the expertise and capacity you need to respond efficiently, lawfully, and in a cost-effective way.
We offer three flexible services that can be used individually or combined, depending on your organisation’s needs:
- Search Support – Helping your teams extract the relevant data required for the SAR, with live guidance to ensure accuracy and reduce the workload at later stages.
- Data Conversion & Deduplication – Converting raw data into a redactable format, removing duplicates, and organising the information so it’s ready for review.
- Redaction & Disclosure Support – Assisting with the secure redaction of data, with appropriate use of exemptions, ensuring the final disclosure pack is safe and compliant for release.
Each service is designed to reduce risk, improve efficiency, and ensure your organisation meets its legal obligations when handling DSARs. Don’t let SARs disrupt your operations. Contact DPAS today to discuss your needs and let us help you manage complex employee SARs, legal requests, client requests, and more.
Benefits
- risk reduction and compliance
Careful preparation, redaction, and quality assurance processes minimise the chance of accidental disclosure and help you meet your regulatory obligations under data protection law.
- scalability and flexibility
DPAS can scale our services according to your needs. Whether you have a sudden surge in SAR requests or require ongoing support, we can adjust the resources accordingly, providing you with flexibility and ensuring prompt response times.
- Accuracy with Human Oversight
Every stage includes manual checks by experienced caseworkers, ensuring important variations, contextual detail, and sensitive information are handled correctly, beyond the limits of automated tools.
- mitigation of bias and conflict of interest
Outsourcing SAR redaction services to DPAS can help mitigate potential bias or conflict of interest that may arise if the redaction process is handled internally. As an external consultancy, DPAS can maintain objectivity and impartiality during the redaction process.
- Cost Efficiency
Early removal of duplicates and irrelevant data reduces the time and resources needed for review, redaction, and final disclosure.
- clarity and usability
Complex datasets are transformed into a single, clean, redactable PDF format, making review and disclosure straightforward.
- reduced pressure on internal teams
We take on the heavy lifting of searching, filtering, converting, and redacting, freeing up your Legal, Compliance, IG, and IT teams for higher-value work.
- time saving
Our inhouse team are experts in their field, and so are able to work at an efficient pace in order to meet demanding deadlines. Resulting in a substantial increase in turn around time.
SAR REDACTION SERVICES
What can we help with?
We securely receive your data in various formats (.pst, .msg, and more), using a Goverment approved sharing platform, ensuring confidentiality throughout the process.
We efficiently prepare your data for redaction, removing duplicates to save you time and resources.
Our expert team utilises state-of-the-art redaction software designed specifically for SAR compliance.
Experienced data protection professionals meticulously redact all identifiable third-party information. We can offer redaction services for paper and electronic files.
Compliance with GDPR and other relevant data protection regulations, including consideration of any applicable exemptions.
We provide a Subject Access Requests redaction policy and process, agreed with you if you don’t have one internally. We will go by best practice guidelines.
An easy and effective onboarding policy that allows us to clarify and fully understand your requirements.
We offer assistance and advice from our in-house Data Protection Officers if required. See here.
CASE STUDY
REDACTION SERVICES
MUSEUM WALES approached DPAS, looking for Subject Access Redaction support.
DPAS carried out the conversion and redaction for Museum Wales ensuring they were provided with full explanations regarding the decisions made when choosing which data to redact.
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When faced with a complex Subject Access Request we went out to the market to look for a provider that had the knowledge and experience to complete the data conversion and redaction on our behalf.
We were impressed with the team at DPAS from the offset and entrusted them to deliver the required redacted documents within the legal timeframes and had every confidence in their advice. We wouldn’t hesitate using the team at DPAS again.
KRISTINA ENTICOTT
MUSEUM WALES
Meet Our sars Team
zack bellekom
subject access requests manager
jemma jones
senior subject access requests officer
bethany meredith
subject access requests officer
sophie costain
subject access requests officer
jack penaligon
subject access requests officer
We decided to use DPAS because we felt they were a good fit for the BOXPARK brand, being a boutique data protection advisory company. Since the commencement of the project, we have received fantastic service delivered by a great team - making a highly complex project easy to digest. They hit every deadline and continue to provide us easy-to-understand data protection advice and support.
They went out of their way to support me in a short timeframe, not only to fulfil my data privacy criteria - which included more complex special category data processing - but also with trusted legal support, which - being all under one DPAS roof - was easier to access and significantly more time and cost effective.
We enlisted DPAS to help with our journey to GDPR compliance, as we didn't have the resources and skills within our team. DPAS' approach was thorough, efficient and remarkably unobtrusive from an operations perspective. Post completion of the project, we had a clearer idea of the risks and issues that attend GDPR compliance directly, and could tidy up in-house data processing to ensure we are more efficient as a business.
On top of an already demanding workload, we had a new system integration, a merger to form a new Trust, and the impact of COVID to deal with. DPAS really helped to take the pressure off by assisting with complex SARs, and DPIAs. With no idea how many SARs you may receive, having the ability to flex by using additional resources can be quite useful. Knowing I can rely on Charlotte's support with DPIAs and data sharing agreements really takes the pressure off. It's really helpful having someone that can take the time out to review requests.
Bristol Airport have worked closely with DPAS for several years, and they have been instrumental in providing their services, helping us to deliver transformative projects across our airport.
DPAS have been hugely helpful in recent years, in ensuring that SWAST are doing our best and continuing to comply with information governance best practice and compliance. From our experience, every one of the team is knowledgeable and extremely competent. We have benefited from a range of services from DPAS and specifically with them acting as our Data Protection Officer. They have offered training and advice, and added to our Information Governance capacity, which was welcome and much needed.
We were looking for an independent review and audit of our data processing activities and policies across the Rhodes Trust and our partner programmes. When we went to the market, DPAS impressed us with the breadth and depth of the services they offered. We are a relatively complex organisation, but the DPAS team quickly understood how our work fits together, and throughout the audit process, I’ve appreciated the expertise of each member of the team that we’ve worked with. Their advice throughout has been reassuringly thorough, pragmatic, and tailored to our needs.
The University of Exeter Students’ Guild were keen to ensure we were delivering our GDPR commitment on time and on track. We therefore needed a qualified Data Protection Officer to monitor our progress, provide assurance that we were on the road to compliance, and maintain the role going forward. We sourced DPAS as they were local and have 20 years of data protection experience. We are very happy with the high standards of service received, and the training provided was not only delivered professionally, but completely tailored to our business type. I highly recommend Data Privacy Advisory if you have GDPR worries or you are considering having a Data Protection Officer look after your organisation.
DPAS provides us with excellent, responsive advice when we need to supplement our in-house resource – a great, reliable service when we need it most.
When faced with a complex Subject Access Request, we went out to the market to look for a provider that had the knowledge and experience to complete the data conversion and redaction on our behalf. We were impressed with the team at DPAS from the offset and entrusted them to deliver the required redacted documents within the legal timeframes. We found the team responsive and also accommodating when we needed tweaks to how the final information was presented – I wouldn’t hesitate using the team at DPAS again.
WE WORK WITH FTSE 100s Multi-National Organisations Schools Universities Councils Local Governments Agencies NHS Trusts GP Practices Retailers Charities Multi-Academy Trusts Housing Associations Ambulance Services Insurance Companies Sporting Associations Airports Retail Companies Hospitality Businesses
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