Act Now, or Pay the Price

Data protection in an organisation is a legal mandate to be executed and companies are expected to appoint data officers. These and other data challenges are being debated and dealt with by experts

- Na Vijayashankar

INDIA is on the threshold of entering the data protection era. The Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 is ready to be cleared by a Joint Parliamentary Committee, after which it is expected to be passed and notified during the Budget session sometime in February 2021.

While there are several views on the provisions of the Bill, the sheer momentum building globally on the need for an “Indian Personal Data Protection Act” is too strong to resist and the Bill will have to be passed with whatever compromises that may be accommodated.

There is a need for the industry to have a national debate in the form of a “Data Protection Summit”. This need was fulfilled by the Foundation of Data Protection Professionals in India (FDPPI) in the form of a virtual summit—“Indian Data Protection Summit 2020” (IDPS 2020)— from November 19-21. This was the first of such events that will be regularly held in the years to come.

IDPS 2020 represented a new generation of conferences which are conducted entirely on the virtual platform with speakers and delegates coming from different parts of the country or abroad. FDPPI has many experts on its forum and hence, putting together an event like IDPS 2020 with a treasure of knowledge became feasible.