Creating a culture of data protection within the university is one of the common objectives of the three public universities in the state - University of São Paulo (USP), Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) and Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) -, meeting this Wednesday - fair (9/8), during the “Permanent Forum: The General Personal Data Protection Law (LGPD) and São Paulo State Universities”. The event took place from 9 am to 17 pm, at Unicamp Convention Center.
According to professor Ricardo Dahab, from Unicamp's Computing Institute (IC), one of the organizers of the event, the first objective of the meeting was to clarify the various aspects of the law. “The forum was formatted to be a panel with aspects of culture, research and technology. He is very important in this activity of acculturating the community to data protection law,” said Dahab.
Without failing to consider the specificities of the structures and activities of each university, the forum proposed the exchange of information about the experiences of adapting to the LGPD (federal law of 2018) between the three public teaching and research institutions.
The case of Unicamp
As person in charge of Personal Data Processing at Unicamp, Dahab recalls that, from 2020, Unicamp established the Privacy and Data Protection Management Committee, during the covid-19 pandemic. “We started to form working groups in each unit of the University, to map the processes that deal with sensitive data. We hold several workshops. Only in the Health area, which at that time was fully committed to responding to the pandemic, we did not carry it out, but we are updating it now.” According to Dahab, this was the first phase of Unicamp's work on adapting to the LGPD, which also included the insertion of mapping into the system.
In the second phase, the units were visited so that specificities could be identified. “We started to be a little more specific in the law. Teaching and research have different concerns than administration, for example. This work resulted in the creation of a guide and a website, which are available to the community”
Now, says Dahab, the committee meets monthly to carry out risk analysis and examine requests for data requests that arrive at the University. “Sometimes these are requests about sensitive data. We are creating protocols, everything to mitigate risks”, says the professor, who sees the technological aspect as a challenge. “We are already working on this, which is trying to bring the law closer to people's daily lives and place it in our management systems.” Another challenge, he remembers, is taking care of the health sector. “There are thousands of people, with data that, in addition to being personal, is sensitive.” The Unicamp community is made up of around 50 thousand people.
USP: challenges in the areas of Law and technology
For USP professor Eduardo Thomasevicius Filho, in charge of Personal Data Processing in the area of Law at the University of São Paulo, the importance of the forum lies in the exchange of ideas. “We need to discuss, so that the three universities can find joint solutions.” He draws attention to the large number of people (students, staff and professors) at universities, in addition to the “absurd amount of data, considering that we produce science, that is, information, data, from all areas.” Thomasevicius says that each university is like a “micro-country”. “We have all sectors and we have sensitive data in large quantities.”
The coordinator of the USP Personal Data Protection Office in the technological area, professor Júlio Michael Stern, said that there are challenges both in the area of Law and in the technological area in adapting the LGPD. “In Law, we have to create a culture of awareness among people, to deal responsibly with data privacy and understand their rights and obligations, both service providers and users. In the area of technology, we have to map risks, the frequency and probability of occurrence of relevant events and the severity of these events”, he highlighted. According to Stern, USP has plans to develop work and study groups, with the aim of making standards permeate society and be incorporated into institutional culture. During the first table at the event, in which he participated, Stern said that USP was inspired by the website created by Unicamp to share LGPD information.
At Unesp, periodic meetings since 2021
For the Information Technology coordinator at Unesp, professor Ney Lemke, people are not aware that data privacy is a fundamental citizen right. “Our job is to make this clear, ensure that their privacy is respected and try to propose institutional policies.” He defends the holding of events such as the forum organized by Unicamp. “This type of event helps us understand how other universities are doing and allows us to try to incorporate good practices for our institutional reality, which is not always the same.”
After the presentation of USP's numbers by Professor Thomasevicius (115.366 people, including students, teachers and employees, in 89 units on 11 campuses), Lemke also highlighted that Unesp has a community of around 60 thousand people, distributed in 24 cities, marked by diversity. In contrast to the oceanographic ship belonging to USP, mentioned by Stern, the Unesp professor also mentioned “an alligator and a circus”, referring to the Alligator Breeding Laboratory at Unesp, in Rio Claro, and the Circus Arts Laboratory.
Lemke spoke about the different concerns regarding data protection that exist in Europe and Brazil. He recalled, for example, the use of lists of those approved in the entrance exam to carry out scams. “This is our reality. We are exposed to much more risk.” According to Lemke, Unesp also created a governance committee that has held regular meetings since 2021. One of the topics widely debated by the committee was the dissemination of research, and the most recent concern has been ChatGPT. “We are not clear on how we are going to protect ourselves from the use of data. This is a big challenge. I believe that privacy protection will grow in relevance and complexity”, concluded Lemke.
opening table
The Permanent Forums at Unicamp are directly linked to the Office of the Dean of Extension and Culture (Proec). The pro-rector Fernando Coelho was part of the forum's opening panel, alongside the rector, Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles, and the general coordinator of the University, Maria Luiza Moretti. The three highlighted the quality of the forum's programming, which involved several internal bodies of the University in the organization. They also praised the large number of people present at the event, which filled the Convention Center auditorium.
