Facilities and powers of the data protection officer
Access to a data protection officer
Communication with the data protection officer must be easy because of the nature of his work, i.e. as a contact point with the data subject and with the Data Protection Authority, but also within the company in question.
To ensure access to the data protection officer, contact information (network address, telephone number, location) must be available, both to employees and to outside parties. This can be achieved by publishing contact information on the internal and external website.
Ease of access to the data protection officer is an essential prerequisite for the data subjects to contact him and therefore it is important that communications are made in the language(s) of the data protection authorities and the individuals involved.
In order to be able to access the data protection officer, the data protection officer must at least be located within the EEA, regardless of whether the operation is located there or not.
However, it is not impossible that in certain cases there may be circumstances where neither the controller nor the processor has a place of business within the EEA and therefore it is better for the data protection officer to perform his work outside the EEA.
If an individual is unhappy with the processing of personal data by a particular institution or company, the person concerned can seek information from the data protection officer regarding his/her rights before applying to the Data Protection Authority, however, this is not a condition for the possibility to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority.
