South Africa is in the process of enacting specific data protection legislation. The Protection of Personal Information Bill (POPI) has been adopted by a Select Committee of the NCOP. What changes have been made and what is the process from here? When will it be enacted?
A few changes have been made to POPI, but they are largely technical in nature. For example, 2012 is changed to 2013. You can read all of them by downloading the Report by Select Committee of the NCOP. So, POPI is now really finalised. But it has some low administrative hurdles to jump before it becomes law.
- The full NCOP must adopt it,
- The National Assembly has to accept the changes made by the NCOP, and
- The President has to sign it.
Considering that the changes made by the NCOP are not significant, we think that POPI will quickly clear these hurdles and will be a law during September 2013.
If you want to find out more about POPI, we are currently running seminars, workshops and training on POPI.