What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.1.2.2 Identify and document purpose?

Purpose register at the level of the processing activity, not the system; Evidence the documented purpose text is the text actually used in notices and consent; Review record showing purposes are updated when processing changes.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.1.2.2?

Purposes written as business objectives such as improving service, too vague to test any later processing against

ISO/IEC 27701:2025 · Annex A Table A.1 PIMS controls for PII controllers

`A.1.2.2` Identify and document purpose

The organization must pin down and record the particular purposes its processing of personal data will serve, written clearly and in enough detail to be reused in the information given to individuals, when seeking consent and in its policy and procedure records, so that individuals can understand why their data is being processed.

Source: ISO/IEC 27701:2025, A.1.2.2. 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 ISO/IEC 27701:2025 in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

to go live

Policy repository / GRC workspace

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

Review record showing purposes are updated when processing changes · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Purpose register at the level of the processing activity, not the system · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Evidence the documented purpose text is the text actually used in notices and consent · 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

Purposes written as business objectives such as improving service, too vague to test any later processing against
Purpose documented internally in different words from the notice given to individuals, so the two can drift
One purpose recorded for a system that in fact serves several
Purpose register produced for a certification and never maintained

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

10.2 Nonconformity and corrective action · A.1.2.3 Identify lawful basis