Managing Personal Information with a Workflow

Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Personal information can be a pain. Having access to even a little information requires you to go through a bunch of procedures. It would be great if we could just stay away from the issue altogether, but unfortunately we have to manage our client list, and sometimes handle other companies' client lists… and sometimes we just can't help having personal information in our possession.

"Managing personal information" means having a system for recording and being able to trace every instance of acquiring personal information, as well as when it is deleted.




In this workflow, every employee in charge of a list of personal information—whether it's for printing business cards, operating a client's web survey system, or handling a list of addresses for sending announcements—has to report this incident without fail. In reality, though, the timing of this report is not easily defined.

The below workflow allows employees to begin the process whenever they "expect" a job that involves personal information. Although it will cause some unnecessary work (in case the expected job doesn't go through), it should be beneficial in regards to promptness and reliability.


Tomorrow let's consider a way to keep work records during projects that handle personal information.