What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on Art.10 Processing of personal data relating to criminal convictions?

Identification of where conviction and offence data is processed, including screening and vetting results and incident records; The Union or Member State provision authorising the processing, and the safeguards that provision requires; Evidence the required safeguards are actually implemented rather than merely cited; Access restriction and retention applied specifically to this data, tighter than for ordinary personal data; Confirmation that no comprehensive register of convictions is maintained outside official authority.

What is the most common gap auditors find on Art.10?

Background screening results retained on the personnel file indefinitely after the hiring decision is made

GDPR · Chapter II - Principles

`Art.10` Processing of personal data relating to criminal convictions

Process personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences, or related security measures, only under the control of official authority or where Union or Member State law authorises the processing and provides appropriate safeguards for the rights and freedoms of data subjects. A comprehensive register of criminal convictions may be kept only under the control of official authority. An Article 6 lawful basis is required in addition.

Source: GDPR, Art.10. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open GDPR in the compliance library.

Many articles apply only where their condition is met (a data protection officer under Article 37, an impact assessment under Article 35, a representative under Article 27); the condition is in each statement.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

to go live

Document repository

where the evidence lives

teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.

system holds itEvidence a system already holds

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Identification of where conviction and offence data is processed, including screening and vetting results and incident records · HR system / LMS
Evidence the required safeguards are actually implemented rather than merely cited · Document repository
Confirmation that no comprehensive register of convictions is maintained outside official authority · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

The Union or Member State provision authorising the processing, and the safeguards that provision requires · Document repository
Access restriction and retention applied specifically to this data, tighter than for ordinary personal data · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

No system holds this evidence for you: it is people and documents. Reminders and routing to the owner still save time. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date.

Common gaps auditors find

Background screening results retained on the personnel file indefinitely after the hiring decision is made
Reliance on the candidate's consent where national law, not consent, is the authorisation the Article requires
Offence data captured in incident reports or free text fields and never treated as Article 10 data
The authorising law identified but the specific safeguards it mandates never mapped to a control

Do this for your whole sheet

Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.

Build my evidence sheet

Art.9 Processing of special categories of personal data · Art.11 Processing which does not require identification