The POPI Act / Sections / Section 17
Section 17
Documentation
Chapter 3 · Conditions for Lawful Processing · Condition 6, Openness
A responsible party must maintain the documentation of all processing operations under its responsibility as referred to in section 14 or 51 of the Promotion of Access to Information Act.
Source: justice.gov.za, Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (official PDF), cross-checked verbatim before publishing.
Beyond the text
What this means for your estate
- This is the section that requires an estate to maintain the equivalent of a PAIA manual documenting what personal information it processes and why, a single sentence in POPIA, but it cross-references directly into PAIA's own documentation duties (ss.14/51), which is why the two Acts have to be read together for this one.
- A Personal Information Register isn't just good practice for this section, it's close to what the section is literally describing.
Relevant tool
PopiGuard's Personal Information Register is built to serve as this documentation, one place that answers “what do we process, and why” for both POPIA and PAIA.