Here’s the report from Futuregov Asia
http://www.futuregov.asia/articles/2014/jul/02/singapores-new-data-protection-law-comes-force/
Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act goes live today: organisations must now get the consent of individuals when their data is collected. Although public agencies are exempted from the Act, the government has told FutureGov that it has introduced its own set of rules which are based on the same principles as the new law.
From 2 July 2014 “organisations will have to notify individuals of the purposes for which their personal data is being collected, used or disclosed, and obtain their consent to do so”, said a statement by the Personal Data Protection Commission.
“To ensure that the data is properly managed and protected, the public sector has its own set of data protection rules that are based broadly on the same data protection principles as the Personal Data Protection law. In some cases, these rules are even stricter than the requirements under the Personal Data Protection law,” Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Communications and Information, said.
“As long as you have the consent of the individual, you can typically use the information to provide more customised, personalised services,” Amos Tan, Director of Strategy and Innovation, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore told FutureGov. Tan is a member of the Personal Data Protection Commission.
Singapore also ensures that data released by agencies is not “personally identifiable” Tan continued, even if datasets are combined. Countries like Taiwan have raised concerns that open data could violate individuals’ privacy if it is combined with other datasets.
Open data and citizen collaboration has been a key focus of the latest five-year e-government masterplan, eGov2015, which was published in 2011. “Data.gov.sg is a great initiative. Today, we have more than 8000 datasets available for citizens and businesses to use,” Tan said.
“If you look at international rankings Singapore has been doing well. We’ve been commended for our push for co-creation, and collaboration with individuals and private sector,” he added. Singapore was ranked 6th in the world and 1st in Southeast Asia for online citizen participation in the recent United Nations E-Government Rankings 2014 .
