Objective Privacy First Solutions

While Privacy First focuses on changing privacy legislation, policy and practice through political lobbying, litigation and public campaigns, our Solutions division focuses on moving organisations and business towards privacy-friendly operations and innovation. Privacy First Solutions aims to hold organisations and business more directly accountable for their role by challenging them to contribute to a privacy-friendly Netherlands.

With Privacy First Solutions, we want to lower existing barriers to applying privacy-friendly solutions. In interaction with partners from various perspectives, we want to encourage different disciplines to jointly search for answers to questions such as: how can the Netherlands become a guide country for privacy protection? What methods and techniques are available, how are they applied and what stops application? How do business interests relate to protection of the right to privacy and how can we preserve and strengthen the right to privacy?

As a dot on the horizon, we aim for 'The Netherlands as Privacy Guide Country'. To achieve this, we focus on 3 objectives within Privacy First Solutions:

1. Through discussion and knowledge transfer, continuously explore how the right to privacy relates to current technological developments;

2. Encouraging organisations and businesses to incorporate privacy protection measures by default and put privacy on the map as an area of competition;

3. Developing a platform for organisations that provides a space for ideas and knowledge exchange on privacy-friendly operations and innovation, so that they can become leaders in this field, both nationally and internationally.

We see that organisations and companies are often internally focused when it comes to privacy protection: typically, privacy protection is limited to information security and some basic obligations. However, we see too few organisations actively embedding privacy protection measures in their offerings, such as privacy by design and privacy by default. This puts us at risk of function creep: a creeping wider use (and misuse) of data. In addition, privacy protection is often lacking in decision-making; people's privacy rights only come after business interests. Here, the lack of privacy protection measures is often dismissed under the guise of "the customer didn't ask for it". Also, many companies do not see positive business case for privacy protection and lack knowledge and a sense of urgency. They often take a risk approach to privacy violations, with a possible fine from the Personal Data Authority and reputational damage guiding the decision on whether or not to handle privacy with care, rather than reasoning from an intrinsic motivation to proactively protect the right to privacy (and other human rights).

Privacy First actually believes that privacy is an opportunity for companies to raise their positive profile. Many companies want to show that they care about their customers' privacy. Indeed, careful handling of personal data by companies is very important for consumers' trust in an organisation. The challenge now is to see privacy as an opportunity and seize that opportunity. Privacy First therefore launched the Solutions initiative with the aim of uniting companies and organisations on privacy issues. By sharing experiences and thinking about solutions together, Privacy First Solutions can contribute to a future Netherlands in which privacy-friendly innovation is the norm.

Read more about the Events which we organise, the Projects what we are concerned with, or the Solutions from others. If you want to participate in making the Netherlands more privacy-friendly, please become Part of the Solution and become part of our network!