On Friday 22 March 2022, Cambridge’s Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) is holding a Spring Conference on the topic of Data Protection Reform.
As Director of CIPIL, I am confident that this will be an informative, topical and interesting event and warmly encourage you to come along and take part.
Since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into application in 2018, it has widely been seen as setting the “gold standard” for the protection of personal information. Without doubt, it has consolidated or sometimes even established a set of theoretically high benchmarks in areas such as transparency and control rights, the definition of consent and sensitive categories and contexts of data processing. Nevertheless, various concerns have always been present and have grown more insistent, leading to concrete reform initiatives.
Firstly, there is a widely shared belief that the GDPR’s enforcement and supervisory regime has often proved ineffective and fuelled a low-level of compliance in practice. In an EU/EEA-context, these concerns have focused on the operation of its regulatory one-stop shop and led in July 2023 to the European Commission proposing a new Regulation to amend this.
Secondly many, especially but far from only in post-Brexit Britain, have argued that the GDPR imposes an overly prescriptive, one-size-fits-all model which is ill-suited to the very varied scale, risks and technological, economic and social contexts of personal data processing in today’s environment. These concerns led to the UK Government introducing (initially in July 2022) a wider Data Protection and Digital Information Bill which is now well through its parliamentary passage.
The CIPIL Spring Conference will explore the current and future landscape of both EEA/EU and UK data protection and examine whether the GDPR model requires reform and, if so, in what direction.
As you can see from the programme, we have a fantastic line-up of speakers including from Data Protection Authorities (Claudia Berg from the UK and Dr Luca Tosoni from Norway), civil society (Jim Killock from the Open Rights Group and Johnny Ryan from ICCL), business (Vivienne Artz) and academia (including Professors Bert-Jaap Koops, Nadja Purtova and Gloria Gonzalez Fuster from the EU). As in previous years, we have also done our best to keep delegate charges reasonable and have a reduced rate for academic and non-commercial (including public sector) persons and a further reduction for students. So please do register and come along – we look forward to welcoming you to Cambridge on Friday 22 March!
David Erdos is Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law and Professor of Law and the Open Society in the Faculty of Law and WYNG Fellow at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge. He is also an associate member of Matrix Chambers.
Odd, inscrutable title?