Intellectual Property Law

"Data protection and privacy have come of age": the Information Commissioner

Something that completely passed me by in January was a speech by Richard Thomas, the Information Commission, about his role. The speech was given to the Centre for Regulated Industries. The ICO talks very often, and so it's good that there is a copy of Thomas's lecture note on the ICO website.

The overall conclusion of Thomas was that there is an overall trend towards information rights being taken more seriously, with privacy, data protection and freedom of information now being important national issues. More significantly, he again signalled that changes the UK's data protection regime are on their way.

Here's a quick summary of key points/topics covered:

• The laws that set out the ICO's responsibilities and powers
• The independent status of the ICO
• The ICO's functions: promoting good practice, ombudsman, "strategic" regulator
• Common ground and tensions between the Freedom of Information & Data Protection regimes
• The UK Freedom of Information regime in its first few years: an overall perceived positive response to FOI from both the public and public sector bodies; FOI is "working well"
• The data protection regime: the ICO is not keen on the "bureaucratic" nature of the Data Protection Directive, which the Data Protection Act 1998 implements
• The ICO's data protection strategy
• The results of the recent high-profile data protection breaches: "There is at last a recognition that there needs to be much more seriousness towards data protection"
• Whilst data protection and privacy have "come of age", we must not be complacent. The ICO is reviewing data sharing and the strengths and weaknesses of the Data Protection Directive, and this may result in changes to the UK's data protection regime.
• A desire for a coordinated international approach to data protection.

Thanks to the UK Freedom of Information Blog for spotting this.

Full post as published by IMPACT on February 21, 2008 (boomark / email).