MANILA City-  The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) MIMAROPA through the Listahanan recently conducted the first Data Protection Officers (DPO) regional conference on February 6-7, 2019, along with the department’s data sharing protocols.

The regional DPO conference, in coordination with the National Privacy Commission (NPC), aims to orient the LISTAHANAN MIMAROPA partner stakeholders on salient provisions of the Data Privacy Act of 2012, enhance the data sharing mechanisms of LISTAHANAN, and assist the Listahanan partners in registration to the NPC DPO register.

Atty. Ivy Grace Villasoto of NPC emphasized that “Data Privacy Act or Republic Act No. 10173 protects individual personal information stored in information and communications systems of the government and the private sector. It aims to protect the fundamental human right to privacy while ensuring the free flow of information to promote innovation and growth”. NPC clarified that this does not limit the mobilization of people, instead, it inculcates the value of privacy in the government setting in the county.

The Regional DPO Conference is the first in the entire DSWD to call all DPOs for massive registration for the increased buy-in of Listahanan Database through the enhancement of Data Sharing Agreement, in which appointing of Data Protection Officer or DPO is one of the pre-requisite requirement in compliance with the privacy act.

RA 10173 defines personal information as any recorded information that would reveal the identity of an individual while sensitive personal information refers to an individual’s race, ethnic origin, marital status, age, color, and religious, philosophical or political affiliations, health, education, sexual life of a person, offenses, government-issued identification cards/numbers, and other classified information due to legal pronouncement.

Being one of the government agencies that process various sensitive and personal information of Filipinos benefitting various social protection programs, the DSWD wants to ensure the security of its systems.

“We at the government would like to preserve all information in the principle of confidentiality. Thus, the Listahanan Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) is our mechanism to safeguard sensitive and personal information in compliance with the data privacy act,” said former DSWD MIMAROPA Director Wilma D. Naviamos.

Listahanan MOA is a requirement in the data sharing guidelines to all partners who wish to access the list of poor households.

The NPC also cited other five requirements in order to become privacy compliant (1) Appoint a Data Protection Officer who will ensure the organization’s compliance with data privacy and security laws and regulations and also plans, implements, and evaluates policies for data privacy and security.; (2) Conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment; (3) Create a Privacy Manual; (4) Implement Privacy and Data Protection Measure; and (5) Exercise Breach Reporting Procedures.

The Listahanan DPO Conference was attended by representatives from different national government agencies, MIMAROPA local government units, people from the academe, and civil society organizations. ###