News

Commissioner Milan Marinović and Deputy Commissioner Sanja Unković are participating in the "Initiative 20i7" meeting, which this year is being held in Zadar on May 27 and 28, 2024, organized by the Croatian Personal Data Protection Agency (AZOP).

After the welcoming speech of the Conference host - the AZOP Director, Mr. Zdravko Vukić, and his deputy Mr. Igor Vulja, the Director of the Personal Data Protection Agency in Bosnia and Herzegovina Dragoljub Reljić addressed the participants and spoke about the challenges and expectations from the new Personal Data Protection Law, the AZOP representative Mrs. Marija Vujeva analyzed the possibilities of improving privacy in generative artificial intelligence systems, and a member of the Council of the Agency for Personal Data Protection and Free Access to Information of Montenegro Mr. Muhamed Đokaj spoke on the subject of personal data processing in the context of the population census in Montenegro.

Commissioner Milan Marinović and Deputy Commissioner Sanja Unković shared valuable experiences with their colleagues from the former Yugoslavia on strategies and tools for raising awareness of data protection among various interested parties, and Deputy Information Commissioner of the Republic of Slovenia Mr. Andrej Tomšič discussed the processing of sensitive personal data with a focus on biometric data.

"Initiative 20i7" is a forum for the cooperation of supervisory bodies for data protection from the region of the former Yugoslavia, following the Declaration on the Cooperation of Data Protection Bodies, which was signed in 2017 at the first meeting of the Initiative, at the proposal of the Slovenian Data Protection body.

On May 22 and 23, 2024, two more trainings for members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) were held in the Kraljevo Police Department and the Novi Pazar Police Department. 57 police officers and clerks attended the training in Kraljevo while 36 attended the training in Novi Pazar. The trainings were held by Marin Cetinić from the Commissioner's office from the Sector for Education and Certification and Dragan Obradović from the Ministry of Interior.

At the training, the focus was on non-compliance with the regulations related to the erasure of personal data from the MUP official records while pointing out individual cases of unauthorized personal data processing by MUP representatives through illustrative examples from the Commissioner's practice. The present MUP representatives were most interested in personal data processing that they perform when checking the person's identity, specifically what are the justifiable grounds for performing such checking. The trainings, held in cooperation with the OSCE Mission to Serbia, included six police departments so far on the Republic of Serbia territory.

In the period from May 13 to 22, the accredited lecturers of the Commissioner's Office, Nataša Mirjanić, Marin Cetinić and Marko Milošević, held five trainings for employees in Healthcare institutions in West Bačka (Sombor), North Banat and Central Banat (Zrenjanin), South Banat (Vršac), Raška ( Kraljevo) and Rasina (Kruševac) administrative district. 125 people from 56 institutions attended these trainings.

The aim of the training in the field of access to information was to eliminate doubts in handling requests that are often filed by information seekers through authorized lawyers, with special reference to the types of data that are provided, as well as procedural issues of handling these requests. In the area of personal data protection, as the Health Sector is planned for regular inspections, the emphasis was on getting familiar with the personal data protection provisions and how they reflect on the health regulations, the obligation to appoint a Data Protection Officer, keeping records and eliminating the most common errors in filling in checklists. In the discussion, questions were raised about providing health documentation copies to competent authorities, and persons who are abroad, as well as the handling of this matter when documentation is requested by insurance companies and authorized lawyers.

During April and May, 15 trainings were held for healthcare employees in different administrative districts of Serbia to raise awareness among this target group and prevent violations of regulations under the jurisdiction of the Commissioner.