Barbados’ data privacy regulator has launched an official investigation into the administration of a controversial survey in five secondary schools to determine whether any data protection laws were breached.A spokesperson for Lisa Greaves, the Commissioner of Data Protection, said on Wednesday that the matter surrounding the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)-administered questionnaire that was distributed to first-formers in select schools as part of a computer science test, had been drawn to the commission’s attention by the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training.The survey gathered information about the children’s sexuality, gender identity and home circumstances, among other things, without parental consent.The Ministry of Education and the IDB have both apologised, with the latter taking responsibility for including the controversial questions in the survey. Asked by Barbados TODAY if the survey had breached the Data Protection Act, the spokeswoman for Greaves said that now has to be determined.
