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Personal data protection bill faces further delay despite progress
The Personal Data Protection Bill could see a delay in its passage in the House of Representatives, despite a recent compromise on one of the main bones of contention.
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Indonesia has yet to join the club of nations from Brazil to China and India that have issued stringent regulations on personal data protection, modeled on the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which protects citizens from privacy and data breaches regardless of where the data is processed and which recognizes citizens’ “right to be forgotten”, so users can ask for data erasure and delisting from digital platforms and search engines. (Shutterstock/PopTika)
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eliberations on the highly anticipated Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill are now expected to carry over into the next House of Representatives sitting period, several lawmakers have confirmed, even as the commission in charge pushed through a week-long rally of secret meetings to get the legislation passed by the next plenary.
The House Commission I overseeing defense, foreign affairs, informatics and intelligence is currently fast-tracking the PDP bill after lawmakers and the government agreed on a sticking point that had been stalling progress since 2014.
Now both sides have come to a compromise regarding the establishment of a data protection oversight agency, which would be set up to answer to the president while offering legislators leeway in determining its scope of authority.
House Commission I lawmaker Rizki Natakusumah from the Democratic Party told The Jakarta Post on Thursday that a presidential regulation would be used to establish the agency, but that the House would ensure that it remained objective in the implementation of the PDP bill, whether it involved government agencies or private institutions.
"We have agreed that the agency should act objectively and report directly to the president," he said.
Previously, the two sides were at odds regarding the agency’s independence; the government wanted the entity to be placed under the Communications and Information Ministry, whereas lawmakers wanted it to be independent to prevent any conflicting interests.
With the real bone of contention out of the way, lawmakers have been speeding up deliberations of the bill, which many expect would provide clear guidelines for law enforcers to punish the illegal use of personal data.
