In the very first episode of Practical Privacy, Orla Dormer sits down with Dave Evans, Data Protection Officer at AlterDomus, to unpack a challenge many privacy teams quietly struggle with:
You have a ROPA.
It technically exists.
But it does not help you answer real operational questions.
Dave shares his experience of inheriting a paper-based ROPA, rushing into a large and expensive privacy platform, and realising that the real issue was not the format or the tool. It was the quality of the questions being asked.
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What we cover in this episode
This conversation explores:
- Why buying a “big” privacy solution too early can create more problems than it solves
- How compliance tools fail when they are treated as checkboxes instead of operational assets
- Why there is no one-size-fits-all privacy solution
- The value of reusing and retrofitting existing ROPA work instead of starting from scratch
- What Dave would do differently if he could start again
One of the strongest takeaways from this discussion:
A compliance solution is never just a compliance solution. If it does not help you understand your data, answer internal and external questions, and operate with confidence, it is not doing its job.
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If you want more real-world conversations about privacy operations, AI governance, and scaling compliance without unnecessary complexity:
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New episodes are released regularly as part of the Practical Privacy series.