Access for outside companies

The problem: the board ends up as the messenger

Most associations do not run the after-school activities themselves: they hire them in. The language school, the sports club, the tutoring centre, the robotics workshop. And they all need the same thing: to know who is signed up to their activity, who has dropped out, who has joined halfway through the term and who turns up each day.

Without access of their own, that information can only reach them one way: somebody on the board exports a list and sends it over. And sends it again every time something changes. In practice that means spreadsheets with children's names and details going round by email and by WhatsApp, different versions in circulation at once, and a volunteer acting as a go-between for two parties who could deal with each other directly.

The usual alternative is worse still: giving the company the association's own login. That solves the list, but it opens the door to the members, the fees, the accounting and everything else.

How MiAMPA solves it

Each company gets its own access with the outside company role, which lets it into the after-school activities it runs and nothing else. It comes in, handles its own business, and that is as far as it reaches.

What the board no longer has to do

• Export and send lists of sign-ups every time something changes.
• Act as a bridge between the company and the families over every little thing.
• Keep an up-to-date copy of each activity to hand.
• Answer the company out of hours because the list does not add up.
• Carry the responsibility of having shared personal data through channels that were never meant for it.

Why this matters for data protection

The association is responsible for the data it handles, and much of it belongs to children. When that information is shared with a supplier as a loose file, the association loses control: it does not know how many copies exist, who else has received them or what happens to them when the contract ends.

With access limited by role, the supplier looks up what it needs inside the platform, and the day it stops working with the association its access is withdrawn and it sees nothing. There are no scattered files to get back.

How it fits with the rest of MiAMPA

• It draws on the after-school activity sign-ups, which the company consults directly.
• It fits with the association's data protection and its security and privacy.
• Charging the families is still the association's own job, through online sign-up.