Naavi.org

When Information Technology Bill was notified with effect from 17th October 2000, Naavi.org/Cyber Law College declared 17th October 2000 as the Digital Society Day to mark the day when legal recognition was first made available in India to electronic documents. Since then Naavi has been conducting some events on 17th October each year to celebrate the event.

In a similar vein Naavi in association with Foundation of Data Protection Professionals in India (FDPPI) along with Manipal Law School is now celebrating “Data Protection Day of India” to commemorate the passage of one of the most awaited laws in India namely the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023.

The Act was passed in Loksabha on 7th August and Rajyasabha on 9th August and is expected to get the consent of the President before the Independence Day. It is anticipated that the Presidential assent would be provided on 14th August 2023.

Simultaneously FDPPI has declared a “DPDPA Carnival” starting with immediate effect till the end of August 31 and would conduct many outreach programs on DPDPB 2023 to different organizations.

Some of the events already finalized are

1. 11/8/2023 to a group of one of the large Consultancy firm in India
2. 12/8/2023 to a group of Cyber Law Students
3. 13/8/2023 to a group of Technology professionals
4. 2o/8/2023 for publication in a national media house
5. 22/8/2023 for a group of industry professionals in Bengaluru
6. 24/8/2023 for a group of professionals in Chennai

Additionally a few more are in the final stages of finalization. More details will be shared in due course.

The fortnight is truly sparkling with activities in spreading the information about the new law across India. FDPPI is proud that it has also encouraged many other professionals to conduct similar events in different places and unlike in the previous occasions there will be no dearth of awareness building activities for this act.

Naavi

Rajyasabha has passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2023 which was passed by Loksabha on 7th August 2023 was passed in Rajyasabha today the 9th August 2023.

With this, the Bill is now an Act and will go to President for assent.

Naavi

Now it is the era of Data Protection in India. After a long wait the Government has passed the Digital Data Protection Bill 2023 in the Lok sabha and it should go through the Rajyasabha during the next week.

In the year 2005, Naavi had launched Karnataka Cyber Law Awareness Movement. Under this movement several initiatives such as conducting of Cyber Law Certification programs in different parts of the State had been undertaken. Naavi, the “Man with the Mission” is now interested in spreading the Data protection Compliance Culture across the Country.

In this context, Naavi along with FDPPI launches Indian National Data Protection Compliance Movement (IN-DP-CM).

As a part of this movement Ujvala Consultants Pvt Ltd will be offering an Online DTS evaluation for any organization through the MyDTS tool of Ujvala.Com. The offering involves a mentored online session on the MyDTS tool and going through a Gap Assessment evaluation based on the inputs to be provided by the Company.

This will be a self evaluation of the current status of the company in being compliant with DPDPB 2023 where the mentor will only explain the significance of each of the questions that will be raised on the compliance status. The end result would be a Gap Assessment with a DTS score as a rough indicator of the maturity of compliance. Additionally it should be a good self learning exercise on DPDPB in the context of the company’s business.

The self evaluation is being offered as a complimentary offering to all new Corporate members of FDPPI.

For others, Ujvala will be offering the self evaluation at a fee depending on the size of the organization.

During the mentor assisted self evaluation, the evidentiary documents would not be examined by Ujvala Consultants pvt Ltd. On request the documents may be evaluated for a summary assessment of the DTS.

On request, a full scale audit or implementation consultancy may be negotiated through the FDPC service exchange platform.

Naavi

Yesterday, Loksabha passed DPDPB 2023 in a quick discussion rejecting the amendments proposed. This was expected and hence is considered a routine event.

Now the Bill will be presented in the Rajya Sabha. This is relatively a non controversial Bill unlike the Delhi Bill and hence should sail through the Rajya Sabha also.

With this, India is entering a new phase of activity that will create a big opportunity for many professionals.

Many Companies have been talking of “Digital Transformation” in the recent days. Some of them are manufacturing companies which have been using Digital methods of operation. The advent of this law should be a matter of interest to such companies since they had so far not attended to Privacy Hygiene in their operations. Now suddenly they are forced to wake up and take action.

A situation like this presents opportunities to professionals to assist these companies who are scrambling to get themselves Privacy Ready.

Naavi and FDPPI has been repeatedly alerting the market that getting Privacy ready is a journey that takes time and an early start could always help. We hope things will change at least now.

FDPPI continues to be the one Institution that provides end-to-end services for Privacy and Data Protection Compliance from Skill development to developing opportunities for Skill utilization for professionals and from an indigenous framework for compliance to hunting for the professional resources for compliance related activities.

For example, FDPPI’s Certification programs with the current FDPPI-DNV program for DPOs FDPPI provides training on Indian law (the latest DPDPB 2023), the global laws (GDPR, CPRA etc) and Data Audit skills.

The program is open for registration for the online recorded version with periodical mentor faculty assistance. (Click here)

Additionally, the Module A program which is now offered as a part of the DPO program will be updated for the new requirements.

Those who donot want to go through the Module I and Module G may directly take the new Module A which will be be considered as “Lead Auditor Program for PDPCSI Audits” . The schedule for a new online interactive program for this module will be announced shortly.

Naavi

Chandrayan 3 completed a critical manoeuvre yesterday to leave the earth’s orbit and move towards the Moon’s orbit. In a few days, it will start orbiting around the moon a few times before finally landing on the moon. We are all excited and look forward to the success of this mission.

Simultaneously, Data Protection Professionals have been waiting for DPDPB 2023 to be successfully passed into an act even before the Rover lands on the moon.

The Bill has left the drafting orbit and is now in the Parliament. After being debated in the Parliament we hope it will successfully land for assent by the President into a law.

Many members of the Opposition wish both Chandrayan mission as well as DPDPB 2023 mission will get aborted. Hopefully their prayers will not be upheld by the almighty. Perhaps the opposition would wish the almighty is as obliging as the Supreme Court would perhaps do.

For the first time the industry is welcoming the draft and even many privacy activists have welcomed the bill as a good balancing act.

The simplicity of the Bill is striking and this time industry professionals are not feeling the need for “Privacy Law Experts” to de-cypher the bill since the tech professionals themselves can understand and interpret the Bill. This is a big boon for the quick adoption of the Bill in practice.

The next hurdle is of course from the Supreme Court since on some ground this will be referred to the Constitution bench and Kapil Sibal or Abhishek Manu Singhvi will try to convince the Court why the Bill should be scrapped.

Naavi.org hopes that Supreme Court will not become the stumbling block for the law to be passed since it is its own baby. May the baby is not of the gender that the Supreme Court wanted or perhaps not as healthy as it could have been in their view. But we can accept it as it is and try to improve it later.

Hope the Supreme Court listens to “We the People…..”

Naavi