More Data Protection Act delays

ON TUESDAY, the acting Leader of Government Business, Paula Gopee-Scoon, asked the Senate for more time to amend the Data Protection Act, successfully winning an 18-month delay in the full proclamation of the legislation.

Ms Gopee-Scoon is correct to note that there are aspects of the act which need revision since the legislation was partially proclaimed in 2011.

Over the 12 years that have passed since then, the scope and reach of financial technology has advanced significantly as have expectations of data privacy protection.

Technology development is happening at a rate that even developed countries have difficulty keeping up with.

The laggardly local approach to addressing the issues that have stalled the proclamation of the act were surmounted in other Caribbean countries.

The Bahamas was the first to bring data protection legislation into law in April 2007.

Data protection legislation was adopted by Barbados in 2021 and Jamaica in 2020.

Promising changes to the country's unproclaimed data privacy laws in December 2020, former attorney general Faris Al-Rawi suggested that the landscape had changed with the revelations of the work that Cambridge Analytica alleges it did in this country.

While these threats are real, TT's legislation should align with the laws that are being brought into force in the Caribbean with a long-term view of uniting the islands of Caricom in regional unity of data sovereignty.

Most Caribbean data protection laws have been modelled on the European Union's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

But there are other important reasons for amendment.

The Media Association, prior to even the partial proclamation of the act, protested the phrasing of clauses in the legislation that will seriously limit the practice of independent journalism.

Communications Minister Symon de Nobrega alluded to the issue during Tuesday's Senate sitting, referring vaguely to "appropriate exemptions."

Is it possible that the Government still hasn't been able to amend legislation that acknowledges the role of the Fourth Estate in national discourse?

Without those changes, the State can expect robust pushback from journalists and advocates of freedom of expression.

That long hiatus also suggests that the Government is not prepared for the reality that laws related to digitalisation, fintech and other technologies must be managed as dynamic, living legislation, requiring amendment on a frequency that is, apparently, alien to state legal teams.

In the Senate sitting, Opposition Senator Wade Mark accused the Government of having a hidden agenda in calling for the 18-month extension.

More worrying is that the agenda of the Government is obvious.

That it has proven unable, over 12 years, to meet the pressing national need for a more responsive and capable approach to drafting and presenting amendments to national laws.