Again, There Is Pressure For The Government And The House of Representatives To Pass The Personal Data Protection Bill

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JAKARTA - The pressure on the government and the Indonesian House of Representatives to immediately ratify the Personal Data Protection Bill (RUU PDP) has re-emerged. Previously, the urge had emerged several times after cases of data leakage from a number of government agencies.

Now, the urge to ratify the PDP Bill has been raised again after the Chair of the Indonesian Parliament, Puan Maharani, said that there were 13 priority bills to be finalized by the DPR, including the PDP Bill. This statement was made by the lady in the context of the opening of the fourth trial period for the 2021-2022 trial year.

This push was driven by the Personal Data Protection Advocacy Coalition (KA-PDP) consisting of ELSAM, AJI Indonesia, ICT Watch, PUSKAPA UI, ICJR, LBH Jakarta, AJI Jakarta, LBH Pers, Tifa Foundation, Imparsial, HRWG, YLBHI, Forum Asia, Kemudi, Pamphlet, Medialink, IPC, ICW, Perludem, SAFEnet, IKI, PurpleCode, Partnership, IAC, YAPPIKA-Action Aid, IGJ, Lakpesdam PBNU, ICEL, PSHK.

"KA-PDP urges the DPR and the Government to immediately reschedule the process of discussing the PDP Bill, so that it can be ratified in the near future, while still ensuring public participation, and presenting good quality legislation," said coalition member from ELSAM, Wahyudi Djafar in his statement, Thursday, March 17.

Wahyudi explained the reasons for the PDP Bill to be ratified immediately. He said, so far, the sectoral regulation of personal data protection has had an impact on the legal uncertainty of personal data protection, which has implications for the low level of trust in data protection in Indonesia.

In addition, the various international agreements related to the flow of data that are followed by the Indonesian government, compared with the development of domestic regulations related to data protection and data flows, also show the ambiguity of the government's position and attitude.

"The low level of trust in Indonesia, in the flow of cross-border data, which is expected to be reciprocal, can be seen as a result of overlapping legislation related to the protection of personal data currently in effect," he explained.

In addition, Wahyudi continued, for citizens themselves, the legal equality of data protection from the ratification of the PDP Bill will play an important role in ensuring data protection for Indonesian data subjects, wherever their personal data is processed, due to the implementation of the human-centric approach of the PDP legislation.