Judith Rauhofer co-authors a major review of Commonwealth Model Laws on data protection

Judith Rauhofer, Associate Director of the SCRIPT Centre, was one of two authors of a major research policy paper that compared two Commonwealth Model Bills on Privacy and the Protection of Personal Information with other international data protection instruments. The report will be presented to a Commonwealth Expert Working Group tasked with the revision of the Model Bills during a meeting in London on 20th/21st June 2019.

The 200 page "Review of Commonwealth Model Laws on Data Protection”, commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat, was led by Edinburgh Law School’s SCRIPT Centre and written by a small team comprising Ms Rauhofer and Dr Orla Lynskey, an Associate Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The report examines differences between the existing Commonwealth Model Bills and a range of other regional and international data protection instruments, including the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Council of Europe’s Convention 108 on for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, the OECD Privacy Guidelines, the APEC Privacy Framework and the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection. The aim of the report was to identify gaps or areas of significant divergence in the current Model Bills, and to suggest alternative regulatory approaches that would better align personal data protection in Commonwealth countries with international standards.