Resident Block Management Software supports GDPR requirements

Given the looming May 2018 deadline and very weighty penalties if you fall foul of the legislation, it’s really no surprise that these new data protection rules are featuring in news articles and blogs on a daily basis.   Just yesterday Property Industry Eye reported that GDPR is the reason why ZPG’s Property Software Group (PSG) is shutting down older desktop software and has written to their customers to advise they have 6 months’ notice before support of these systems is removed.  While it may well be a sensible commercial decision for PSG to remove legacy software, this will no doubt be a cause of consternation for some of their customers who now have to decide which new estate agency software to purchase.

Resident Block Management software began our GDPR journey two years ago.  We recognised it as an opportunity to present ourselves at the forefront of compliance and a platform to demonstrate our accountability as a software provider to our customers and target audience.   It remains our ambition to help our clients apply best practice to the management of their block and provide them with the tools to stay compliant in the process. 

In GDPR speak, Estate Agents are data controllers, and have ultimate responsibility for the protection of personal data.  When choosing software for their business which handles Personally Identifiable Information (PII), they should consider whether that software follows, amongst others, the GDPR’s principles of Security by Design (SbD) and Privacy by Design (PbD). 

The Resident block management software licence agreement, in conjunction with Microsoft Azure, supports the GDPR requirements, including the above principles, and therefore provides the foundations for estate agents to fulfil the requirements of the GDPR.

It is worth noting that software cannot (or should not) claim to provide a GDPR compliant service.  This could be misleading and some agents may believe that installing certain software will be the GDPR solution which makes their business compliant.  The GDPR has many more regulations that an organisation needs to comply with. 

Whilst the May 2018 deadline is fast approaching, here at Resident we know compliance, along with innovation, is a continuous process.  Where our early adoption of compliant licence agreements has given us much momentum, we continue to evolve and improve our systems.  This is one of the reasons we are proud to be a member of the RICS Tech Affiliate Programme (TAP).  TAP is working to improve the awareness and confidence in data and technology solutions so that standards can be adopted more easily across the sector.  As part of this Resident is contributing to the RICS discussion around data handling and how this is affecting businesses, this will then feed into a professional statement the RICS are developing on data handling and cybercrime.

Kate Boyes
Founder, Resident Block Management Software