Saviour Cachia.

Saviour Cachia had barely taken his oath as Data Protection Commissioner when two letters landed on his desk both asking him to look into the student data collection issue.

Mr Cachia, a civil servant for 38 years, was sworn in yesterday, filling the vacancy created when his predecessor’s term expired earlier this year.

An expert in data protection issues, Mr Cachia’s first task will be to look into the legal notice empowering the Education Minister to collect and process students’ personal data.

The two letters came from Education Minister Evarist Bartolo and the Nationalist Party.

Mr Bartolo asked for the legal notice to be reviewed a second time by the new commissioner – after having already consulted the previous commissioner – to determine whether it satisfied data protection parameters.

Mr Bartolo said that he had received “genuine” concerns about the legal notice and had asked for the commissioner’s feedback.

The government says it wants the information, including student ID card numbers, to be able to track the progress of vulnerable students and facilitate their transition from school to the workplace.

The Opposition has accused the government of seeking wide, discretionary powers that go beyond the scope of the exercise and this week tried to repeal the legal notice in Parliament.

The attempt failed but the Opposition has pledged to take the matter all the way to the European Court of Justice.

In Parliament, Mr Bartolo published a series of e-mail exchanges that his ministry had with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, showing that it was consulted at all stages of the drafting process since last September.

In its letter, the PN said the legal notice was published when the seat of Data Protection Commissioner was vacant and so the party could not formally lodge a complaint at the time.

The party insisted that the legal notice did not offer students and their next of kin adequate protection from abuse of power, raising question marks about the legal notice’s conformity with the Data Protection Act, the Constitution and the European Convention for Human Rights.