Friday, 3 March 2023

Data Protection Impact Assessment – European Standards and Recommendations for Georgia

ქართულენოვანი ვერსია ხელმისაწვდომია აქ.

Author: Ketevan Kukava

As a result of rapid technological development, the scale of the collection and sharing of personal data has significantly increased, which has posed new risks and threats to human rights. Technology allows both private companies and public authorities to make use of personal data on an unprecedented scale when carrying out their activities.[1]

European data protection law aims to create a uniform and consistent legal framework and to ensure the free and unhindered movement of personal data. In response to the increasing challenges in the age of technologies, the EU and the Council of Europe legal instruments established important mechanisms for the protection of human rights. Considering an unprecedented scale of data processing both in the public and private sectors, providing appropriate safeguards for the protection of data subjects’ rights and interests gains crucial importance.

A data protection impact assessment is one of the important novelties foreseen by European law, which enables data controllers to prevent human rights violations by identifying the risks in advance. Such assessment is mandatory when there is a high risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons.    

A data protection impact assessment is an important tool directed towards the accountability of the data controllers and protection of the data subjects’ rights. It can be considered as a form of monitored self-regulation.[2] It obliges companies to identify problems and find solutions, with internal oversight and some external input, accompanied by minimal regulatory supervision.[3]

The General Data Protection Regulation lays down the main requirements and criteria with regard to the data protection impact assessment. It includes only a brief description of this process and does not specify the methodology. Therefore, data controllers are given certain leeway and are allowed to determine the form and structure of the DPIA. What matters most is that the outcome of this process should be a real identification of risks.

Data protection impact assessment should not be regarded as a compulsory exercise but as a useful tool.[4] “The systematic identification of risks is a valuable basis for strategic action by implicated actors for the continuous improvement of products and services.”[5]

Georgian legislation currently in force is not fully compliant with the requirements of the European data protection law and does not foresee important novelties introduced by the Council of Europe and the EU legal instruments.

The Georgian legislation should respond to the challenges existing in the digital age and should provide appropriate safeguards for the protection of data subjects’ rights, freedoms and interests.  Harmonization with European standards and implementation of the novelties foreseen by the European data protection law will be an important step forward in terms of European integration and, at the same time, will facilitate strengthening human rights protection in Georgia.

The full study is available here.

 



[1] Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), Recital 6, available at: https://bit.ly/2vHVeNC (accessed 01.12.2022).

[2] Kaminski M, E., Malgieri, G., Algorithmic impact assessments under the GDPR: producing multi-layered explanations, International Data Privacy Law, 2021, Vol. 11, No. 2, p. 131.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Friedewald, M., Schiering, I., Martin, N., Hallinan, D. (2022). Data Protection Impact Assessments in Practice. In: Computer Security. ESORICS 2021 International Workshops. ESORICS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13106. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95484-0_25 p. 439.

[5] Ibid.

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Project "Assessment of the Transparency and Accountability of the Security Sector"

Donor Organization: Innovations and Reforms Center, European Union Budget: 14,000 EUR Duration: 3 June 2024 - 3 February 2025 Project aim:...