Art.31 Cooperation with the supervisory authority
The controller and the processor and, where applicable, their representatives must cooperate, on request, with the supervisory authority in the performance of its tasks. In practice that means responding to the authority's requests for information, access and assistance within the time it sets, completely and accurately, whether the request arises from a complaint, an investigation, an audit or an own initiative inquiry, and ensuring the records the authority is entitled to see can actually be produced.
Source: GDPR, Art.31. 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.
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
- The log of authority contacts, complaints and requests, with the response given and its date against any deadline set · Regulator portal / correspondence
periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review
- Evidence that requested information was assembled from source records rather than asserted, including the underlying records provided · Regulator portal / correspondence
- Where a deadline was missed or an extension sought, the record of the request and the authority's response · Regulator portal / correspondence
governing documentDocuments that govern the control
- A named owner and a documented route for handling correspondence from a supervisory authority, covering local languages and absence cover · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Contractual and operational arrangements binding processors and representatives to cooperate through the controller · Policy repository / GRC workspace
First move
Common gaps auditors find
- Authority correspondence arriving at a general or legal mailbox and sitting unactioned past the deadline, which is an infringement separate from the matter under inquiry
- Responses drafted to minimise disclosure, which converts a procedural request into a finding of non-cooperation and aggravates the eventual penalty
- No owner for the relationship, so each request is handled from scratch and successive responses take inconsistent positions
- Records of processing and impact assessments not held in a state where they can be produced on request, so cooperation fails on evidence rather than on intent
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 sheetArt.30 Records of processing activities · Art.32 Security of processing