Today, 7 September 2016, the South African National Assembly voted in favour of the appointment of the Information Regulator for POPI and PAIA. Parliament voted for the five nominated candidates to run the newly-formed office of the Information Regulator. This is not the first time Parliament has had this vote, but, this time, the vote was successful. This recommendation will be referred to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services.
The office of the Information Regulator will be made up of Adv Pansy Tlakula as the chair, Adv Cordelia Stroom and Mr Johannes Weapond as full-time members, and Prof Tana Pistorius and Mr Sizwe Snail as part-time members.
What can we expect from the regulator?
We are excited that Parliament has confirmed their recommendations. The office of the Information Regulator is an important office that could very well be the difference between whether Government and business respect the privacy rights of data subjects or not.
What is their first order of business?
One very important issue is the POPI commencement date.
What actions you can take:
- Be alerted to any new developments by subscribing to our newsletter.
- Find out more about the regulator and how to comply with POPI yourself by attending a POPI Act Workshop.
- Get specialist subject matter expert support to empower you to implement POPI by joining the Michalsons POPI Compliance Programme.
- Comply with POPI by getting Michalsons to do some action items for you.
Watch highlights of what happened in Parliament
Whilst we disagree with some of the introductory comments, this short video gives you the highlights of what the various political parties said in Parliament before the vote.
