Changes to BC Privacy Legislation

Hat tip to Clint Lalonde who posted in ETUG Slack about significant changes to the BC public-sector privacy legislation (FIPPA) that will remove the data residency provision that requires personal information to be stored on servers located within Canada.

On the theme of privacy, it is looking increasingly like the BC government is going to make a massive change to BC privacy legislation. They are set to drop the data residency clause of FIPPA, meaning that BC organizations will be able to store personal information on servers located outside of Canada. This was temporarily suspended for COVID, but now looks like it will be a permanent change to the legislation.

What does this mean for edtech in our sector? Does the physical location of data still matter in our assessment of privacy risk? This would be a great topic to discuss between sessions at the Fall Workshop. Hope to see you there.

Times Colonist: Les Leyne: Bill would allow B.C. citizens’ personal data to be sent out of country The NDP government is dropping a legal requirement to protect citizens’ private data by storing and handling it in Canada, in a new bill that alarms the information and privacy commissioner. . .