FOREIGN direct investments (FDI) surged in January, the central bank reported on Tuesday, saying it expected inflows to keep rising this year amid upbeat domestic activity and positive market sentiment. Read the full story.
THE Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra culminates its 35th season, billed “Romancing the Classics,” with a finale concert featuring trumpet player Raymond de Leon as guest soloist on April 13, 8 p.m., at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’s Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo (Main Theater). Under the baton of its music director Yoshikazu Fukumura, the orchestra will perform F. Delius’s “A Walk to the Paradise Garden” and “Summer Evening,” F. Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, and M. De Falla’s El Sombrero de Tres Picos (Complete Ballet). For inquires and subscription, call the CCP Marketing Department at 832-1125 local 1806, the CCP Box Office at 832-3704, or TicketWorld (891-9999, ticketworld.com.ph).
THE renowned Drum Tao group of Japan is bringing its dance, martial arts, and percussion show to Shangri-La Plaza mall on April 15, 7 p.m., at the Grand Atrium. Drum Tao will be performing its famous Samurai Drum Rock for the first time in Manila, with Shangri-La Plaza as one of their stops. It’s a unique theatrical experience featuring an eclectic mix of dance and martial arts and flawless movements. For inquiries, call 370-2597 to 98 or visit www.facebook.com/shangrilaplazaofficial.
THE feel-good musical Mamma Mia! makes a return to Manila and will play at the Theatre at Solaire for a strictly limited season from Sept. 29 as part of the show’s International Tour which features a cast from the United Kingdom. Tickets go on sale on April 11 through TicketWorld (891-9999, ticketworld.com.ph). Described as “the sunniest of all musicals” by the UK’s Sunday Express, Mamma Mia! is Judy Craymer’s staging of ABBA’s timeless songs around a story of family and friendship unfolding on a Greek island paradise. On the eve of her wedding, a daughter’s quest to discover the identity of her father brings three men from her mother’s romantic past back to the island they last visited 20 years ago. Visit the Mamma Mia! website for more information at www.mamma-mia.com.
STAR Workshops, which features lessons in various fields of arts and promotions which are open to the public, will be offered by the Office of Culture and Arts (OCA) of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB). Available courses are Creative Theater for Kids, Teens, and Adults, Baby Ballet, Creative Movement and Contemporary, Hip Hop for Kids, Teens, and Adult, Shadowplay, and Painting. Sessions on Stage Productions and Operations, and Cultural Promotions are likewise open. Sessions will be on Saturdays, from May 5, to June 2, with rehearsals on June 28 and 29, and the concluding recital on June 30. Download the application form at https://bit.ly/2q4jy9n, and submit with two 2×2 ID pictures to the OCA Office. A 5% discount will be granted for those who pay in full by April 16, while a reservation fee of P500 secures a slot for a chosen course. For inquiries, e-mail culture.arts@benilde.edu.ph, or call 0917-832-0721 or 230-5100 local 1528.
Here’s a quick glance at how PSEi stocks fared on Tuesday, April 10, 2018.
Recently, the Stratbase-ADR Institute hosted a multi-sectoral roundtable discussion on Dr. Mahar Lagmay’s Special Study, entitled: “Open Data Law for Climate Resiliency and Disaster Risk Reduction.”
To stress the importance of having open data law, Dr. Lagmay opened his presentation by recalling the circumstances of the 2006 landslide in Guinsaugon, Southern Leyte that resulted in a total of 1226 fatalities.
As he recounted, a teacher was still texting that she was with around 400 children in an elementary school buried after the landslide. What is horribly disturbing is that these people were not given a fighting chance to survive because the key to locating them got entangled in our bureaucratic processes. According to Dr. Lagmay, the only hope for the rescue team to get to the buried school was through GPS coordinates, which were then not readily available. As if no lives are at stake, hundreds at that, crying for help beneath the massive mud, the GPS coordinates were secured on the 7th day from request of data.
This sparked Dr. Lagmay’s initiative to advance the passage of a law that will ensure availability of all government data related to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction such as: weather data, aerial photos, satellite imagery, LiDar, exposure data, flood maps, landslide maps, storm surge hazard maps, fault, earthquake data, GPS, gas measurements, leveling measurement, volcano hazard maps, and other earthquake hazard maps.
Dr. Lagmay posited that the prospective open data law must mandate compliance to the key elements of Open Data, which are: “1) availability in digital format of data, downloadable via the Internet in bulk for ease of use; 2) amenability to intermixing with other datasets through interoperable format structure and machine-readability of digital files; 3) freedom to use, reuse and redistribute, even on commercial basis; and 4) a ‘no conditions’ rule on the use of Open Data, except for appropriate citation for due credit.”
Essentially, the argument for making government data open is said to be “based on the concept that goods and services that should be freely available to everyone as determined by society, must be made available as free data for ‘the public good.’” Dr. Lagmay stressed that, “While these services to collect and make available the data are not actually free, they are, nonetheless, funded with public money.”
After presenting the paper, the reactions made by government officials from relevant agencies were both encouraging and enlightening.
In particular, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Kris Ablan, of the Presidential Communications Operations Office, divulged that the government is trying to attain a goal of proactive disclosure and sharing information from the government to the public.
In navigating said direction, however, Asec. Ablan described the main challenges to be both cultural and technical.
For one, he observed the seeming reluctance of agencies to share data. It became apparent that reasons range from protecting intellectual property to apprehension over data being “misinterpreted” to the detriment of the general public.
For another, Asec. Ablan indicated the incapacity of government websites to hold significant amount of data, such as the Freedom of Information’s limited space of only 10mb per file for uploading.
Meanwhile, Director Maria Teresa Garcia, head of the National ICT Governance Service of the Department of Information and Communications Technology, mentioned their efforts to pass of a law on open data, through the E-Government Bill. Dir. Garcia also propounded the challenge of being able to effectively communicate the concept of open data to legislators to gain full understanding of the policy.
From a civil society perspective, Engr. Ludwig Federigan, executive director of the Young Environmental Forum, expressed full support for Dr. Lagmay’s policy proposition. He underscored the importance of an open data law by citing studies showing how the Philippines is highly ranked as a vulnerable country in terms of climate change and climate risk.
For Engr. Federigan, legislating a law on open data in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction strengthens the commitment of the country to the Paris Agreement.
To address the issue of whether there is a need for a law to attain the disaster management objectives, institutionalizing open data, to begin with, will give flesh to two State policies, to wit:
“It shall be the policy of the State to enjoin the participation of national and local governments, businesses, nongovernment organizations, local communities and the public to prevent and reduce the adverse impacts of climate change and, at the same time, maximize the benefits of climate change”; (Climate Change Act) and,
“Adopt a disaster risk reduction and management approach that is holistic, comprehensive, integrated, and proactive in lessening the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of disasters including climate change, and promote the involvement and participation of all sectors and all stakeholders concerned, at all levels, especially the local community”; (Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act).
Moreover, an open data law is crucial, at least in this regard, to be able to surmount the challenges concerning technical capacity, culture in the bureaucracy and, more importantly, accountability. Vast resources of the government must be mobilized to improve the digital infrastructure and instill openness in handling data. Lastly, only a law can provide penal sanctions for lost lives due to withholding or practically making unavailable government data.
Lysander N. Castillo is an Environment Fellow of Stratbase ADR Institute and serves as Secretary-General for the Philippine Business for Environmental Stewardship (PBEST).
The National Privacy Commission (NPC) recently extended the deadline to submit the Annual Security Incident Report for all security incidents occurring in 2017, to June 30, 2018. The NPC had previously issued the Guidelines on Security Incident and Personal Data Breach Reportorial Requirements under NPC Advisory No. 18-01 (“Guidelines”) along with templates for the required reports.
However, the NPC is currently revisiting these Guidelines and templates and recently announced that it is planning to further simplify the requirements for the annual report and align them with those of other privacy regulations on international data flows such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and APEC-Cross Border Privacy Rules (CBPR).
Nonetheless, the NPC also noted that Personal Information Controllers (PICs) who already submitted their report based on present guidelines would be considered as sufficient for the year by the NPC.
Under NPC Circular No. 16-03 on Personal Data Breach Management, the NPC requires a company to document adverse events that have an impact on the availability, integrity, or confidentiality of personal data, even if these adverse events prove unsuccessful. These events are defined in the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (DPA) as security incidents.
Both the Personal Information Controller (PIC) and the Personal Information Processor (PIP) are required to document all occurrences of security incidents and personal data breaches (those covered by the mandatory notification requirements and those not covered by such requirements), and submit an Annual Security Incident and Personal Data Breach Report to the NPC. This is due by the end of the first quarter of the succeeding year.
While the NPC is in the process of simplifying the requirements for the annual report, its recently issued Guidelines may prove instructional for PICs and PIPs with respect to the contents of the Annual Security Incident Report as well as the mandatory notification and reports for Personal Breach.
Under the Guidelines, and as previously provided under NPC Circular No. 16-03, the Annual Security Incident Report consists of the following:
• Summary of Annual Security Incident and Personal Data Breach Reports containing the following information:
• The summary must contain the following information, collated at the end of every calendar year: (i) total number of security incidents and personal data breaches (reportable and non-reportable); (ii) total number of security incidents; (iii) total number of reportable personal data breach, i.e., mandatory notification required; and (iv) other personal data breaches, i.e., non-reportable breaches.
• Total number of Security Incidents that do not involve personal data, classified according to Attack Vectors, including, among others, denial of service, compromise information (which does not involve personal data), compromise asset, unlawful activity, internal hacking, external hacking, malware, e-mail, policy violations.
• Total number of Reportable and non-reportable personal data breaches, classified according to their impact on the Confidentiality, Integrity or Availability of the Personal Data affected.
• Summary Information of the incidents surrounding the personal data breach/es. The summary of personal data breach/es must be based on the entries in the Personal Data Breach Report/s.
What is interesting is that under the Guidelines, the NPC introduced for the first time the concept of attack vectors. While this term is not actually defined in the Guidelines, a simple internet search reveals that in the tech community, attack vectors are commonly known as techniques or methods by means of which unauthorized access can be gained to a device or a network by hackers for nefarious purposes (see https://www.techopedia.com/definition/15793/attack-vector).
Based on this definition, and as demonstrated by the attack vectors enumerated in the template for the Annual Security Incident Report, PICs and PIPs should not only be concerned with security incidents involving personal data.
Thus, the NPC has previously stated that “a cyberattack that successfully uncovers industrial secrets that do not involve the processing of personal data may be considered a security incident (NPC Press Release on “NPC sets March deadline for submission of 2017 Annual Security Incident Report of personal information controllers” dated Jan. 4, 2018).
What appears to be most important, apart from maintaining the security, integrity and confidentiality of personal data, is the overall security and protection of an entity’s systems and infrastructure, whether or not such systems process personal data.
This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and not offered as and does not constitute legal advice or legal opinion.
Maria Isabel M. Llave is Senior Associate of the Intellectual Property Department (IPD) of the Angara Abello Concepcion Regala & Cruz Law Offices (ACCRALAW).
mmllave@accralaw.com
(02) 830-8000.
