As part of the Member Management System (MMS) project, Irish Sailing engaged the expert services of Ambit Compliance early in the process to provide dedicated Data Protection and GDPR advice. This partnership ensures that every architectural and design decision adheres to the principles of data protection by design and by default.
Following a comprehensive review of the Phase 1 requirements, it has been confirmed that Irish Sailing and its affiliate clubs act as Independent Data Controllers. This means there is no convergence of purpose; clubs determine their own purpose for processing local data, while Irish Sailing governs the national registry and ensures compliance with Sport Ireland requirements. To safeguard member privacy, the system will enforce strict data partitioning and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), ensuring that each club can only access data pertaining to its own membership.
With the assistance of Ambit Compliance, the Business Requirements Document (BRD) was finalised and a Request for Proposal (RFP) was issued to potential suppliers on 9th June 2026. Interested vendors have been invited to submit their proposals by 1st July 2026, after which a formal assessment and selection process will commence.
In the meantime, we continue to work with our pilot clubs (Howth Yacht Club, Arklow Sailing Club and Galway Bay Sailing Club) and training centres to ensure that only data that is required for the purposes of the MMS will be brought into the new system. This data is known as minimum viable data, and is the least amount of data that is required to ensure ‘a single source of truth’. This standard is vital for the de-duplication process – ensuring that a person record is accurately matched to a real world individual and not confused with another member of the same name – a fundamental GDPR requirement.
GDPR compliance is one of the key benefits to all affiliate organisations of the new MMS system. To ensure that all affiliate organisations have the information they need ahead of the data migration phase, we are working with the pilot clubs to produce a GDPR FAQ document that will address questions members may have.
We would like to thank our pilot organisations for their continued engagement and support. Further updates on the MMS project will be shared as development progresses.