Certification

On completion of the course, participants can take part in three examination elements. Upon passing all examinations, the ECPC-HA Professional DPO in Humanitarian Action Certification is awarded by Maastricht University, European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity.

The three examination elements consist of:

• Participation in group assignments throughout the week, under the supervision of tutors.
• A multiple-choice test, on the last day three of the programme.
• A final written examination. PLEASE NOTE: taking part in the final exam is OPTIONAL for those who wish to obtain the ECPC-HA Professional DPO in Humanitarian Action Certification.

The passing score for obtaining the ECPC-HA Certification is 65% aggregated result. You will need to pass each examination element with at least 60%.

Certificate of Attendance
All participants who attend the full five-day programme will receive a Certificate of Attendance.

Handling of exams
Maastricht University takes all available precautions to ensure the appropriate and secure handling of completed tests. In the rare and unlikely case in which the tests become lost or unreadable, candidates will be required to undergo re-testing, without being charged a fee. Candidates will be responsible for their own travel-associated expenses for any future testing.

Re-sit
Maastricht University offers you the possibility to do a free-of-charge re-sit within one year in case you did not manage to reach the set threshold and did therefore not pass the exam. You only need to re-sit the examination for which you did not reach the threshold.

Certificate validity
Privacy and data protection issues evolve continuously. For this reason, our training courses focus on providing you with the right methodology needed to perform professionally and effectively as a DPO. Nevertheless, it is important to keep yourself ahead and regularly update your knowledge. Therefore, the Maastricht University Professional Certificates are valid for an initial period of two years. After this initial period, you will need to prove one of the following every two years in order to maintain the validity of your certification:

• Completion of at least 10 hours of ECPC training on data protection related issues, seminars, workshops, or webinars*. Or
• At least 10 hours of academic teaching or speaking in public at conferences/events about data protection topics covered by the ECPC exam blueprint. Or
• Publication of at least 10,000 words of publicly accessible research-based material (e.g. papers, articles, newsletters) related to the data protection topics of the ECPC-HA exam blueprint.

* When choosing ECPC training, the extension of your certificate is included in the participation fee. When choosing one of the other options to maintain the validity of your certificate, we will charge an administrative fee of EUR 475.