Christopher Graham calls for adequate resources for DPAs
Hosting the EU DPAs’ Spring Conference 18-20 May in Manchester, Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, called for a more practical approach to data protection regulation.
“The European Data Protection Board, for example, is coming - and it is going to be a reality within the next two or three years. That means we in the Article 29 Working Party family have to learn to co-operate and work together better.”
“By pooling our efforts, we not only address more effectively the challenges that come from outside our individual jurisdictions, but we also make better use of the limited resources of money and people we have at our disposal.”
The EU Commission will itself need to compromise in order to secure a final text of the EU DP Regulation that is practicable, Graham said. He said the Commission and the Parliament must not insist in the Trilogue on processes that can only render small, under-funded DPAs ineffective.
Graham emphasized that the DPAs must not get left behind as technology changes how personal information is used.“The digital revolution has implications for every aspect of our lives – as citizens, as consumers, as individuals. We communicate. We consume. We transact. And, unless we are very alert, we are also tracked. Shopping in the supermarket or online, our purchasing habits are recorded and analysed. We live in a world of Big Data and the Internet of Things. And that’s where we need to get practical. Because the challenges are to how we do things, not what we are there for. If we want to be effective doing what we do, we are going to have to learn to do some things differently.”