5 Years Down the Road of GDPR
Do you remember the panic everyone felt during the spring of 2018 before the GDPR came into force on May 25th? We’ve never seen such focus on Privacy, and we can only hope we will get the same kind of attention again. Maybe not the spam in our inboxes, but the fact that data privacy was mentioned everywhere was great. At least I think so.
Interestingly enough, on May 26th the buzz completely crashed. I heard of people staying up until midnight to catch any happenings when the GDPR came into force, but of course, nothing happened. And the buzz died. Maybe that’s a consequence of the state of panic, but in hindsight we can conclude that we were not working in a sustainable way. We did what we thought we had to do to be compliant according to the legislation, not with keeping personal data private in the long run.
A few years later the buzz started humming quietly, but consistently. The supervisory authorities were becoming more and more active, internal audits showed red reports and the legal issues became more complex and challenged.
Today we are on the threshold of a completely new reality with AI and within the privacy community, the buzz is loud and clear again. We need to maintain personal integrity parallel with the new technology and work with privacy issues in a sustainable, long-term manner.
Five years from now, I strongly believe that we have a completely new game plan, where privacy matters are a natural part of every tech development. Personal data is the new gold and we will simply have to understand how to cherish valuable resources.
5 Years of GDPR
May 25th, 2023, marks the five-year anniversary of the enforcement of GDPR. This spring we reflect and review on the first comprehensive privacy regulation in a series of publications and events. Stay tuned for insights and perspectives on expectations vs. realties of a sustainable privacy arena, the legal ecosystem of GDPR, the future role of tech and much more.