BackOn September the 10th, 2015, a webinar on “Open Governance and Privacy in a Post-Snowden World” sponsored by the OGP Support Unit, the Open Government Guide, and the World Bank will be held from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. Carly Nyst, Independent consultant and former Legal Director of Privacy International and Javier Ruiz, Policy Director of Open Rights Group will present and discuss the chapter “Privacy and Data Protection” which they contributed to the Open Government Guide.
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 open government 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 the privacy of individuals – both rights must be balanced in a case-by-case basis.
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.
To JOIN the session on Thursday September 10, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. EST, please go HERE and login 5 minutes before the webinar is scheduled to start
Source: Open Governance Partnership
