Results of the data protection survey

_About the survey

In order to understand the importance of data protection in organisations from the education sector and their employees, an anonymous online survey was conducted between December 2022 and the end of March 2023. The survey was aimed at employees and staff in adult and vocational education and training, children’s and youth work as well as in education and training in general.

Despite several efforts, unfortunately only 85 responses were received. The survey is therefore not representative, but the results nevertheless give a good first impression of the importance of data protection in the education sector.

Most of the feedback came from Germany and Greece and from people in children’s and youth work as well as adult education. These were private providers, NGOs as well as public and state providers.

__Results

The results show that employees in the education sector also see data protection as an important topic in their private lives and consider the protection of their own data to be important. However, only half are concerned about the protection of their own data.

With regard to the GDPR, a large proportion are in favour of the fact that there are regulations on data protection for companies. However, there is a mixed view on the GDPR itself. The sustainable effect of the GDPR is certainly doubted and the GDPR is classified by one third of the respondents as unrealistic.

Basically, respondents associate the term “data protection” primarily with terms such as “security” and “privacy”. In addition to many positive terms, people also associate negative things with data protection. In the feedback, terms such as “complicated”, “bureaucracy”, “obstacle”, “strenuous”, “encroaching”, “onerous” or “obstruction” appear.

A large majority of respondents privately use online services to store their own data. Nevertheless, only 20% are convinced that their data is kept safe with the respective providers and this despite the fact that the vast majority of respondents consider their data to be worth protecting. The country in which the provider is based is also irrelevant for the majority of respondents.

In the professional context, data protection plays an essential role in the majority of organisations. The majority of companies have technical and organisational measures in place to implement the GDPR, as well as work instructions and guidelines for handling personal data for employees. However, awareness-raising measures are only carried out by just under half of the companies through employee training.

The majority of products from Google and Microsoft are used in a professional context. Alternative solutions (such as Nextcloud or BigBlueButton) are definitely in use. However, mainly in Germany. This is also evident in the use of alternatives to WhatsApp. Although 36% of respondents from Germany still use WhatsApp, the use of alternatives such as Signal and Threema is already at 42% here.

When asked what respondents would like to see in the future, the desire for “training” and more education is very strong. Likewise, the terms “safety”, “simpler rules” and “clear rules” frequently come up, as do “sensitivity”, “protection” and also topics such as “practical relevance”. However, the desire for more “control” as well as “enforcement of existing rules” or even “stricter rules” is also expressed quite frequently.

The survey can be downloaded as a PDF file:

_further information

The survey will continue to be available online for the duration of the project. It is available in German, English and Greek and can be completed completely anonymously.

You can access the survey via the following link: http://umfrage.gdprism.eu/