Open Governance and Privacy in a Post-Snowden World

Speakers

Carly Nyst, Independent consultant and former Legal Director of Privacy International

Javier Ruiz, Policy Director, Open Rights Group

Description

The right to privacy, recognized as a human right and enabler of other individual freedoms, is regarded as pivotal to protect the privacy of citizens from infringement on behalf of their governments or a third party. Citizens have the right to choose whether to disclose and share their personal data and must be able to dictate under what terms to do so. With new technologies enabling personal data to be collected, stored and shared in greater quantities and ease as never before, privacy and data protections rights are of utmost relevance to opengovernment efforts. Governments must be transparent about the handling of citizens’ personal data, and citizens must have the ability to hold their government accountable in the handling of such.

Further, with more than 100 countries having enabled access to information legislations, it is important to balance the right to privacy and right to information so that privacy is not used as an excuse to prevent openness, and that the approach to openness does not infringe into theprivacy of individuals – both rights must be balanced in a case-by-case basis.

During this webinar, the authors of the Privacy and Data Protection chapter of the OpenGovernment Guide -Carly Nyst and Javier Ruiz- will provide an overview of the chapter and discuss some of the commitments included in it. The Open Gov Guide was developed by the Transparency and Accountability Initiative to serve as tool for governments and civil society at the time of jointly developing and implementing their OGP National Action Plans. It covers various cross-cutting topics developed by expert organizations, and is currently available in English and Spanish.

ACCESS THE RECORDED WEBINAR HERE:  http://worldbankva.adobeconnect.com/p1hkic88o6g/