What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on Art.36 Prior consultation?

The decision record for each impact assessment that concluded on residual high risk, showing whether consultation was triggered and on what reasoning; The consultation submission carrying all six information items Article 36(3) requires; The authority's written advice and the changes made to the processing in response, tracked to closure; Evidence that the processing did not begin before the consultation concluded; Where national law requires prior authorisation for public interest processing, the authorisation obtained.

What is the most common gap auditors find on Art.36?

Residual risk written down to medium in the assessment precisely to avoid the consultation trigger, with no measure actually added to justify the reduction

GDPR · Chapter IV - Controller and Processor

`Art.36` Prior consultation

Consult the supervisory authority prior to processing where a data protection impact assessment under Article 35 indicates that the processing would result in a high risk in the absence of measures taken by the controller to mitigate that risk. When consulting, provide the respective responsibilities of the controller, any joint controllers and the processors involved, the purposes and means of the intended processing, the measures and safeguards provided to protect the rights and freedoms of data subjects, the contact details of the data protection officer where applicable, the impact assessment itself, and any other information the authority requests. The authority has up to eight weeks to provide written advice where it considers the intended processing would infringe the Regulation, extendable by six weeks with notification of the extension and its reasons, and may use its Article 58 powers. Member State law may additionally require consultation and prior authorisation for processing carried out for a public interest task.

Source: GDPR, Art.36. 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

The decision record for each impact assessment that concluded on residual high risk, showing whether consultation was triggered and on what reasoning · Document repository
Evidence that the processing did not begin before the consultation concluded · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

The consultation submission carrying all six information items Article 36(3) requires · Document repository
The authority's written advice and the changes made to the processing in response, tracked to closure · Document repository
Where national law requires prior authorisation for public interest processing, the authorisation obtained · Document repository

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

Residual risk written down to medium in the assessment precisely to avoid the consultation trigger, with no measure actually added to justify the reduction
Processing launched while the consultation is still open, which defeats the word prior in prior consultation
The consultation submitted without the impact assessment attached, so the authority cannot assess what it is being asked about
Authority advice received and filed without tracking whether the recommended changes were made

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.35 Data protection impact assessment · Art.37 Designation of the data protection officer