Professor Ulrich Kelber, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI), presented the 29th Activity Report for Data Protection and Freedom of Information to the President of the German Bundestag.
The BfDI notes that during the pandemic, data protection issues were the dominant subject: While Corona confronts us with new challenges every day, the rest of the world does not stand still. Even without the pandemic, my authority would have had its hands full with work. For example, with the Schrems II judgment, Brexit, the digitisation of the healthcare sector and the reorganisation of supervision of the Federal Intelligence Service.
Kelber, however, also wants to focus the public’s attention on good developments: There are many positive points to report, especially concerning the projects in which I was involved at an early stage and could provide advice. For example, following my advice, the intelligence services inform applicants about the derogations under the Security Checking Act, and my controls under the Freedom of Information Act at the Federal Agency for Political Education and at the Federal Agency for Technical Relief have produced encouraging results. For the next activity report, I hope that we will only deal with Corona in retrospect and that the list of positive examples, especially for major topic areas, will be longer.
As of this year, a joint activity report is issued on the topics of data protection and freedom of information. The current activity report and activity reports of previous years can be downloaded as a pdf-document in German. An English translation can be downloaded here.
