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Data protection legislation relating to research activities and outlines the actions required to achieve compliance with the Data Protection Act (DPA).
International research collaborations involving the transfer of personal data may not be transferred to countries outside the EEA unless that country has adequate data protection regulations, or the explicit consent of the data subject has been obtained, or there is an appropriate contract with the recipient of the data, specifying appropriate data protection requirements that must be upheld. Thus, researchers must be exceptionally careful when contemplating the transfer of research data overseas. In most cases, the safe option will be to ensure that data subjects give explicit consent for overseas transfer during data collection.
You may be able to transfer data to other countries outside of the EEA if you have the subjects' explicit consent (which can be requested on the consent form) or a contract with the recipient of the data, which provides the data with suitable protection.
In view of the recent European Court of Justice ruling on the validity of the US Safe Harbour agreement and the implications for UCL, further information is available from: