While the Government gets set to enforce the Personal Data Protection Act, all involved should comply with the provisions of the Act now instead of adopting a wait and see' attitude.

SINGAPORE recently had the first reading of its Personal Data Protection Act in Parliament. Many in the republic were buoyed by the development, confident that the passing of the bill should be just around the corner.

Surprisingly, Singapore lags behind Malaysia in this matter; Malaysia is the first country in the South-East Asian region to draft such a bill way back in 2000. Our Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) was gazetted in 2010 after gestating through several public consultations and revisions.

Long overdue

However, now that the sunrise period before the law takes effect for the Information, Communications and Culture Ministry to train personnel and put procedures in place is fast fading, many are asking when our law will be enforced. Especially since it appears that the Ministry has just missed the deadline.

In February, Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim had announced that the Act would be enforced by the middle of this year.

We are now in the second half of the year and there has been no news of the impending implementation of the PDPA. When contacted, all that ministry sources would say is that enforcement details would be announced as early as next month.

Universiti Malaya's data protection law expert Prof Abu Bakar Munir says it is imperative that the Act is enforced soon as all our personal information is fast flowing out there, making its security a big concern.

With petabytes of data transferred and stored on a daily basis, personal data is the new oil of the Internet and the new currency of the digital world. That is why people are concerned about privacy, especially when they transact online, he said at a recent media forum on the PDPA's enforcement hosted by security firm Symantec.

Due to the growth of the social media network and mobile devices, users around the world send around 47 billion (non-spam) email and 95 million tweets daily. Each month, users share about 30 billion pieces of contents on Facebook.

Read more here:
Much to do to keep data private