Press meeting on effective education methods, 11 March 2010

The press meeting held at GIODO Bureau on 11 March 2010 was devoted to the presentation of the main objectives of the pilot programme „Your data –your concern. Effective protection of personal data”.

The pilot programme „Your data –your concern. Effective protection of personal data. Educational activity addressed to students and teachers” initiated by the Inspector General for Personal Data Protection is aimed at developing effective methods of educating children and youth on personal data protection and the right to privacy. The programme was launched in October 2009. The meeting with journalists organised on 11 March 2010 was a result of presentation of the programme on the international level.

This presentation was possible among others owing to the fat that GIODO was a co-organizer of two international visits in March 2010:

• visit of persons participating in the project "Personal data protection and privacy issues in education" realised by GIODO and financed from the resources of the European Union. In the project participated representatives of European Data Protection Authorities and educational institutions from countries such as Cyprus, Croatia, Greece, Italy or Spain,
• visit of representatives of the Hungarian Data Protection Authority visiting Poland within the framework of exchange programme between DPAs.

The details on performance of the programme „Your data –your concern” were presented by Ewa Fugowska – education counsellor from Gliwice Education Centre (Gliwicki Ośrodek Metodyczny).

She informed that the pilot programme was being realised by education centres in Gliwice and Kielce and covered in total 14 schools from these cities. The launch of this programme is connected with change of curricula basis, according to which each student shall gain adequate knowledge on personal data protection. In order to prepare teachers to education in this field the Gliwice Education requested GIODO for content-related assistance. They jointly agreed that realisation of the pilot programme might help in this regard. The latter will include:

• training courses (conducted by experts from GIODO Bureau) for leaders who will later on train teachers in schools,
• developing scenarios of lessons for middle schools students,
• developing a Poland-wide education programme for schools concerning personal data protection and the right to privacy.

However, the so far experience shows that not only teachers and students, but also parents should be educated in the field of personal data and privacy protection.

- Every step towards raising social awareness in this regard is extremely valuable – said Małgorzata Kałużyńska-Jasak, GIODO’s spokesperson. She reminded that Michał Serzycki, currently holding the post of the Inspector General for Presonal Data Protection recognized education as one of his priorities, which he was consistently realising inter alia by means of the following activities:

• launching eduGIODO education platform,
• issuing 8 brochures from „ABC of personal data protection” series,
• organising free of charge training courses for public institutions, during which a few dozen thousand persons have been trained since 2006,
• creating a special education section on Nasza Klasa networking site.

- These activities were among those which contributed to the fact that Poles show the biggest awareness of their rights to personal data protection in the entire Europe – said Małgorzata Kałużyńska-Jasak. – According to Eurobarometer survey we skipped from the 18th place in 2006 to the first place in 2008 – she added.