Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie, Jakarta – Communications and Information Minister Johnny G. Plate has said the government enjoyed a "swift and dynamic" session with lawmakers at the House of Representatives while deliberating the data protection bill.
The minister said the government and lawmakers had agreed on 66 inputs in the so-called problem inventory list (DIM) during the recent meeting. The House aims to complete the bill by November.
Johnny expressed his gratitude to House Commission I, which oversees communications and information affairs, for the "swift and dynamic" deliberation of the bill.
"The government is ready and the public is waiting for us to produce adequate legal protection to safeguard their personal data," Johnny said during Monday's meeting with lawmakers, according to a statement from the ministry.
House Commission I deputy speaker Abdul Kharis Almasyhari, who also led the meeting, confirmed Johnny's statement on the 66 inputs.
The data protection bill has fewer inputs than other recent bills under deliberation, such as the omnibus bill on job creation, which has at least 6,000 inputs, and the recently passed revision of the 2009 Coal and Mining Law that had 938 inputs.
The data protection bill, a draft of which was assessed by the ministry in 2014, reportedly adopts several principles from the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which focuses on five main areas: data collection, data processing, data security, data breaches and the right for individuals to have their personal data erased.
The country is lagging behind much of the world in terms of data protection, with numerous countries having already adopted their own version of the GDPR, including neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.