A serious effort is to be made by the government to set the tone for the private sector to follow in the protection of personal data, Helena Dalli told employers this afternoon.
The Civil Liberties Minister was addressing the Malta Employers Association during a seminar marking International Data Privacy Day.
Dr Dalli said that during similar seminars held for public officials in the past, she had noted that awareness and sensitivity to the issues of privacy and protection of personal data were “very much present in the day-to-day practices”.
Today’s seminar was the first where such issues were being openly discussed with the private sector and it was also being held in the run-up to the adoption by all EU member states of the General Data Protection Regulation, that would be replacing a Data Protection Directive.
This meant that while, so far, the EU directive could be interpreted differently by different member states, the new regulation would be implemented uniformly across all 28 states by 2018.
The need for this reform was mainly driven by technological development. One such issue was the fact that large organisations, such as Google and Facebook, processed the data of European citizens even though they were not based in Europe. The regulation would contain provisions of the processing of such data.
Meanwhile, another provision referred to administrative fines which could be as high as €10 million – substantially higher than the maximum fine of €23,000 under Maltese law.
Addressing the same seminar, Malta Employers Association President Arthur Muscat noted that, apart from accumulating data, employers sometimes needed to access particular personal data.
One such case in point was the obligation to employ at least two per cent of the workforce from among the disabled, but the list of disabled people held by Employment and Training Corporation was not being made available to employers.
Data was being withheld pending clarification of the law, however, the MEA was insisting this was required.
Meanwhile, in his address, Data Protection Commissioner Saviour Cachia expressed concern about the use of biometric data by several companies to verify the attendance of employees.
He also questioned the monitoring of employees at the workplace. Giving an example he said that while CCTV cameras on a production line were hard to justify, monitoring someone handling cash was acceptable.