The objective of FDPPI is to create an organization that represents the community of Data Protection Professionals in India and to contribute to the welfare of the State besides enriching the community with better knowledge and skills.
The Main objectives listed in the memorandum are
- To build an empowered community of Knowledgeable, Efficient and Ethical Data Protection Professionals who contribute to the development of a Secure Information Society by lawful means without any profit motive.
- To enhance the intrinsic Value and Worth of the profession of Data Protection Professionals who are directly or indirectly engaged in the activity of generating, managing, preserving and protecting information without any profit motive.
- To bring harmony in the pursuance of Civil Rights of individuals such as Privacy and Freedom of Expression along with the Right to Information and Right to Cyber Security without any profit motive.
It may be noted that the central focus of FDPPI is to ensure that the community of Data Protection Professionals will empower themselves with necessary knowledge and enhance their skill set as Data Protection Professionals and for doing so would adopt ethical means to achieve the professional goals and also contribute to the National Security recognizing Data as as a national asset and ensuring the security of data for the benefit of the community.
The community of Data protection professionals would be including not only the IT professionals who work in the area of Information Security or Privacy in an organization but also the Legal practitioners, Law Enforcement Professionals, Academicians etc. We feel that all these professionals have a stake in Data Protection and should harmoniously blend their activities for the common goal of achieving acceptable standards of Privacy Protection through Protection of data in general whether the data is personal data or otherwise.
At present there could be differences in the perception of data protection between different entities involved in Data Protection and this creates a disharmonious data protection eco system where one is trying to fool the other. Such dishormony is considered dysfunctional to the society and we need to put in efforts to bring harmony with different entities.
For example,
Data Processing Companies (Data Fiduciaries) who actually add value to personal data are seen with suspicion by the Data Subjects/Principals.
The roles of Privacy Officers or Compliance officers and Information Security officers in the same organization may be looked at as overlapping and interfering.
Law enforcement persons may often be seen as enemies until we ourselves need their help for protecting our interests.
Academicians are often seen as impractical theoreticians until their research becomes the key to making any improvements in law.
Additionally there are companies themselves in Big Data and IoT area some times using personal data for marketing, profiling etc and some times adding value to raw data and creating business opportunities for themselves and others where none existed earlier.
All of the above are often at loggerheads with the regulators and Privacy activists.
FDPPI believes that we need to bring all these entities on a common platform so that differences can be understood and smoothened out.
We also believe that there are different organizations in the field now, some of them indigenous, some of them foreign, some of them private, some of them lead by Government and some Societies , Trusts. Companies etc all of them are interested in Data Protection but chart out different individual paths.
We believe that we should endeavour to bring together different representative bodies of these professionals and create a Federation of people and organizations with similar objectives and complimentary strengths. We will therefore reach out to such organizations in due course to make FDPPI also a Federation of all stake holders in Data Protection in India.
Towards meeting these objectives, the Company will conduct different activities and chart out its own path which will try to build bridges between different stake holders. The ancillary objectives in the memorandum describe other activities in support of the above objectives.
We believe that the objectives set out by FDPPI will be unique and make it an organization that is not just another company conducting seminars and workshops but an organization that will grow to be a Friend of all stake holders representing all their interests along with the interests of the Nation and the National Data Protection Regulator when it comes into action.
