Hard law and soft law on data protection: what a DPO should know to better perform his or her tasks

Abstract

The paper aims to describe the sources of law needed to solve issues in data protection, with particular regard to DPO tasks. In order to elaborate this work, two preliminary steps have been carried out. The first one is focused on the critical analysis of the European and Italian law in the field of data protection. The sources of law include both hard law and soft law, with particular regard, for the second one, to the code of conduct. The second step is to define the relevant topics for DPOs, which are the matters that a DPO has to know to better perform his or her tasks in compliance with the GDPR, explaining the reasons underlying their selection.