Is Privacy Impact Assessment necessary for all projects?

Privacy impact assessment is an assessment of privacy risks that may be associated with a project and ensuring that privacy legislations are not breached, and sensitive personal identifiable data (PID) are not compromised, too.

Privacy risk assessment is an assessment of risks associated with - failing to comply with state or federal privacy legislation - protecting personal information data of individuals, and satisfying privacy requirements of information systems, that may need to be redesigned or retro-fitted at considerable expense.

This means that privacy risk assessment should be carried out on all projects to ensure that:
1) They comply with privacy legislations or regulations;
2) They provide adequate safeguards to manage, handle, share, store or transport sensitive personal data or personally identifiable information (PII), and
3) Finally, they comply with project-specific information systems’ privacy requirements.

Managing privacy risks can be challenging, not because of the numerous issues of concern, but also because each project is unique and utilizes fundamentally different technologies and mechanisms to deliver its own service. While the steps involved in carrying out privacy impact assessment are the same for any project, but each assessment of privacy for any project is different.