Singapore has unveiled a competency framework and education roadmap to focus on middle-skills; it thinks facts protection officers need to higher guide a digital economic system. Its efforts here will include a 12 months-lengthy pilot schooling program, based totally on the new framework, to teach extra than 500 such officials in its first intake.
The Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), which oversees the us of an’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), stated its competency framework and training roadmap would provide “readability” at the kinds of capabilities and proficiencies data protection officials needed. 
Under the PDPA, organizations in Singapore are required to appoint at least one man or woman as their records safety officer to ensure their agency’s compliance with the rules.
Noting that records changed into a essential resource for organizations, the PDPC stated the status quo of robust data protection practices could guide business innovation and boom, with statistics protection officials gambling an essential position in making sure the responsible use of facts and to force facts innovation.
The PDPC was hoping that the framework would function a useful resource to assist organizations within the hiring and schooling of those officials, the use of competencies and talent ranges recognized within the framework as a foundation.
Alongside the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), and its subsidiaries Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) and NTUC LearningHub, the PDPC planned to launch a 12-month pilot program comprising statistics protection-related modules in the fourth area of 2019.
The fee stated it also could be working with different schooling partners, which includes the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants, National University of Singapore Law Academy, Singapore Management University Academy, and Singapore Polytechnic. More details of those publications might be launched at a later date, said the PDPC, adding that least 500 records safety officers have been expected to go through the schooling program within the first 12 months.
NTUC’s e2i CEO Gilbert Tan stated: “Data is a more and more essential resource wished for well-timed business selections, and this creates demand for emerging process roles and functions to manipulate statistics well. E2i, collectively with NTUC, will assist in operationalizing the brand new framework through attaining out to running professionals, whose process feature includes statistics safety, and equipping them with applicable skillsets to manipulate, guard, and govern statistics.”
Tan introduced that the vendor would work with the PDPC to curate content to assist the training programs, spanning access-level specialists to nearby senior control roles.
NTUC LearningHub CEO Kwek Kok Kwong stated: “As we leverage facts to propel groups forward, we need to strike a balance and ensure data protection and facts privacy. This is wherein this framework comes into play, and corporations need to have facts protection officers to endorse them and help them enforce statistics protection.”
Citing findings from its enterprise survey, the PDPC stated seventy-two % of organizations in Singapore had mentioned that good facts safety practices may want to aid business growth. However 39% had been concerned whether or not their statistics privateness officials had the know-how and skillsets to mitigate dangers and recover from information breaches.
IMDA to oversee APEC move-border privateness certification
Data protection officials also could need to manipulate cross-border records flows, which became more and more complex as regional and worldwide facts regulatory environments were inconsistent. This underscored the want for mechanisms to help make sure accept as true with that the information corporations obtained and shared have been secured.
In this factor, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has been appointed as Singapore’s Accountability Agent for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Cross Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) in addition to Privacy Recognition for Processors (PRP) Systems certifications. This meant that companies seeking to be APEC CBPR and PRP certified may want to observe to IMDA to do so.
Once certified, those enterprises could be able to change data with different licensed corporations in taking part in APEC economies, consisting of Japan and the USA.
In a bid to drive certification efforts among local small and midsize businesses, IMDA could waive software costs for each APEC CBPR and PRP for these agencies until June 30 next yr.
