Happy March and welcome spring! The cherry blossoms are in full bloom, the legislative session wrapped up, and we are in full gear at promoting privacy in Washington.
In case you missed it, WaTech's Office of Privacy and Data Protection (OPDP) held a webinar this month on the Washington State Agency Privacy Principles. We went over the development of the principles and provided an overview of each principle and how they can help reduce risks for agencies. The recording and slide deck are available on the OPDP website.
Legislative Session:
The legislative session wrapped up with lawmakers approving several privacy related bills that are now before the governor. OPDP tracked 43 bills this session, with 11 that have either been signed or are awaiting signature. Bills sent to the governor include new public record act exemptions for health information of incarcerated individuals (HB 1956), and HB 1984 which protects privacy of address related to vehicle registration certificates. In addition, the aerial imaging bill (HB 1629), which included some interesting privacy debate, is with the governor. However, a comprehensive consumer data privacy bill in Washington still proves to be elusive. For a more complete review of the bills and the legislative session, you can watch my presentation to the Technology Services Board on March 22, 2022.
Presentations:
I'll be on a panel at the Washington Association of County and City Information Systems (ACCIS) conference next month with the City of Seattle Privacy Officer and King County Privacy Officer. We will discuss our respective programs and ideas for defining, building and maturing privacy programs for organizations.
I also participated in a panel with Ohio's and Utah's State Chief Privacy Officers in the Cybersecurity Modernization Summit presented by Statescoop on March 29. We discussed trends and challenges in our states and the importance of working with security in ensuring privacy for state residents.
Matt King of our office is presenting March 31 to the Washington State Association of County Auditors on Data Sharing Agreement Benefits, Requirements and Best Practices. Both Matt and I will be doing a similar presentation to the Attorney General's Office Contracts Law Forum later in April.
News items that caught OPDP's attention this month include:
- ACLU, NAACP sue over SC ban on "scraping" court records (Reuters)
- Utah becomes 4th US state to enact comprehensive consumer privacy legislation (IAPP)
See you next month with more updates from our office!
Katy Ruckle
State Chief Privacy Officer