SA has the benefit of being able to learn from Europe's tried and tested privacy laws when implementing its own version of the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act.
So says Francis Cronj'e, CEO of InfoSeal, an online information and privacy compliance seal provider.
According to Cronj'e, the European Union (EU) Information Commissioners' offices have faced under-staffing and under-resourced issues, making it difficult to enforce privacy legislation.
With the commencement of chapter 5 of POPI, which makes provision for the establishment of the Information Regulator, including its funding and resourcing, SA should take heed of the difficulties faced by the EU Information Commissioners, says Cronj'e.
In SA, where the legislation can be regarded as strong, a similar situation is seen with understaffing and insufficient funding of legislative oversight bodies, which has led to inadequate enforcement, notes Cronj'e.
To highlight the lack of resources of legislative bodies, Cronj'e gives an example of a comment made by the commissioner of the National Consumer Commission, Ebrahim Mohamed, who told reporters that the Commission would investigate relevant complaints, but had to do so within its constrained resources, thereby acknowledging its lack of adequate funding and resources, says Cronj'e.
He hopes the co-self-regulatory mechanism in POPI, that makes provision for codes of conduct with assigned adjudicators, will play a crucial role in ensuring successful implementation and subsequent enforcement of the Act takes place.
He notes that to make this possible, parliament will have to appropriate sufficient annual funding to ensure the Information Regulator does not end up understaffed, under-resourced and inadvertently ineffective.
"Everyone has a constitutional right to privacy. The associated right to have personal information processed and protected in a manner that is reasonable and justifiable, is a right that the state must respect, protect, promote and ultimately fulfil," concludes Cronj'e.
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