Data Protection, EU citizens and Digital Transition: A Communication from the European Commission
On the 24th of June 2020, the EU Commission transmitted to the Council and the EU Parliament the first extensive report on the evaluation of the GDPR.
Since 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation assures for all EU citizens the right to data safeguard providing for each individual safer conditions within the digital ecosystems. The GDPR represents also a very strong and incisive person-centric paradigm to innovation, technologies and IT development, sustaining the transition from analogic to digital societies while empowering at the same time regular citizens with concrete and tangible opportunities to protect their digital identities.
So far, the GDPR implementation proved to be highly efficient: significant results have been achieved also from the SMEs and entrepreneurial perspective – the most impacted target from the Regulation itself. In fact, at inception, one of GDPR’s priorities was also the dissemination and mainstreaming among SMEs, companies and firms of the guidelines and “to DOs” to comply with the new protection mechanisms and the overall codes of conduct.
At page 9, the report highlights also the great contribution played by several EU level initiatives implemented by EU funding beneficiaries. In other words, the EU Commission has indirectly acknowledged the work carried on so far by the DataPRO Consortium.
DataPRO is a project co-funded by the Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Commission: since 2018, the partners (ten organisations from four EU countries), committed their expertise and energies in the design of a toolbox that aims to harmonise the certification system in the field, a specific priority still on-going and under development as clearly addressed by the mentioned report.
To date, the DataPRO consortium produced:
- A Joint Occupational Profile for DPOs
- A Joint DPO VET Curriculum accompanied by a detailed WBL Scheme
- An Awareness raising Curriculum on Data Protection for current and future employees
- Data Protection and GDPR Learning Resources for learners and wider audiences and WBL Employer Manual
- On line web platform for “Data Protection Ready” Employees
- A new Certification Scheme for Data Protection
- Concrete Methodology for Quality Assurance and Licencing of DPO VET Curricula
For further information on DataPRO and other IHF asbl initiatives:
