The amended Municipal Debt Assistance Act (Wgs) provides clarifications on what is allowed and what is not when are processed personal data for debt assistance purposes. Anyway, there are more and more practical questions. For this reason, the Personal Data Protection Authority (AP) has made up a guideline with some key points. Municipals and social assistants shall keep it in mind in order to respect the privacy legislation.
The Wgs provides that people with (threatening) problematic debts can turn to municipalities for, among other things, advisory, debt mediation or for the debt restructuring loan.
Which is the problem?
During these last years AP has received a lot of complaints, questions and reports on the debt assistance.
The problem is that frequently it is not clear which data shall be shared among parties and upon which conditions. And practically personal data are shared without a legal basis.
Some of these uncertain are faced into the amended Municipal Debt Assistance Act, which has been entered in force on the 1st of January 2021.
The Wgs guideline
The Wgs guideline provides for the first time a short overview of changes, it discusses the highlights for municipals (including district teams) and experts affected into the implementation.
As the Wgs, the guideline is base on different steps of the debt assistance (early detection, access to debt assistance, action plan and implementation of assistance).
In addition, the guideline includes extra points for the compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These points include outsourcing/mandating, professional secrecy and informing citizens.
In addition to the Wgs guideline, AP has made a summary of the points for attention.
How to proceed?
The amended Wgs has clarified some points. Anyway, a specific number of important (legal) requests are still practically unanswered.
For this reason, the same municipals shall made up concrete guidelines for the practical implementation of the Act. For this purpose, they can use the frameworks and points for attention from the Guide. Only when these tools are in place will it be possible to help people out of their problematic debts while respecting their privacy.
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