The Registration of Persons Department has taken the initiative to enhance its services by providing an ID card with a database through an amendment to its Act. This will enable other government entities to verify details of citizens, Convenor, Data Protection Legislation Committee, Jayantha Fernando said.
Fernando was speaking at a public discussion on the proposed data protection legislation at the Galle Face Hotel last week.
“We also have the Telecoms law which the telcos stringently follow,” he said.
The law is based on international practice. Practices in countries such as Mauritius, Australia, Singapore, and India were considered in drafting the law. Fernando said the law is malleable to future changes to make it better suited to the domestic context.
Legal Officer SLT, Sanduni Wickramasinghe said, “Purpose limitation is where you collect information for a very specific or explicit purpose. It would prevent a controller from using that information for a purpose that was not initially communicated to the data subject. We collect information in the guise on one thing and we end up using that information for something completely different which the data subject is unaware of. What we advocate is explicit content.”
Head of Cooperation, EU delegation to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Frank Hess said, “Electronic commerce requires more than just contractual certainty. There is a need for modern consumer protection legislation to enhance consumer confidence.
The EU regulation is likely to become the defacto global standard much as the previous European data protection standard because it would apply to any organisation that collects or processes the data of EU citizens.”
International Trade Centre (ITC) coordinator, Dayaratna Silva said, “ITC under the new Sri Lanka trade project are ready to provide support as and when needed to align our work with the Ministry policy initiative.”
Lukas Bühlmann, an ITC expert, said that he had a positive view of the new data laws. He said the new laws would provide confidence to companies within the EU that were planning to do BPO business in Sri Lanka. He said that such laws were not seen as being in contravention of the open data initiatives operational within the EU.