[Community-Discuss] AFRINIC and the GDPR

[Andrew Alston]

Hi Abibu,

Considering that the board is facing a tabled and accepted motion of no confidence in Dakar – which has been accepted to the Agenda – and considering the GDPR comes into force on the 25th of May – is it not prudent of the board to do investigations and conclude them before the Dakar meeting – coming with fixed and concrete and agreed actions to the meeting - so that in the event that the motion does indeed pass – the outgoing board would have at the very least left AfriNIC in a strong position to deal with the potential issues created by the GDPR.

I can also say – I really hope that in sending this – the board will not come with an argument that the vote places AfriNIC in a precarious position because of the GDPR situation and the fact that meetings with RIPE were only happening at the meeting – since such an argument would be predicated on the board creating a negative situation for the company in order to potentially save themselves.

Andrew


From: "Abibu R. Ntahigiye" <abibu at tznic.or.tz>
Date: Wednesday, 11 April 2018 at 14:36
To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com>
Cc: "members-discuss at afrinic.net" <members-discuss at afrinic.net>, "community-discuss at afrinic.net" <community-discuss at afrinic.net>, AFRINIC Board of Directors' List <board at afrinic.net>
Subject: Re: [Community-Discuss] AFRINIC and the GDPR


Dear Andrew, Members and the whole Afrinic community,

Andrew has raised a very important issue for Afrinic operations - Thanks so much Andrew.

The Board would like to inform you that the issue was discussed within the Board at the Afrinic 27 meeting in Lagos and the Management was tasked to work on the issue.

The Board has also been made aware that the Mauritius Data Protection Act 2017 is already in effect and is aligned with the EU GDPR regulations.  The Board believes that these regulations are not a barrier to publication of the WHOIS data, and it has noted the RIPE NCC study that made such a finding.  The Board further believes that the biggest changes required by AFRINIC are in documenting how personal data is used, and in informing people at the time data is collected.

The AFRINIC management will provide further updates on the issues at AIS 2018 in Senegal.
Further to the above, the Board expects to receive more insights on GDPR  related issues at the joint Boards (AfriNIC and RIPE NCC) meeting planned in Senegal.

Kind regards

On 11/04/2018 08:42, Andrew Alston wrote:
Hi AfriNIC Board,

Can this board please *urgently* inform this community as to what preparations they have made as regards to compliance with the General Data Protection Regulations passed by the European Commision and the board will be in a position to give this community a full and complete report as to their GDPR compliance status and what will be changing before the 25th of May to ensure that when the GDPR comes into force AfriNIC is compliant.

Considering that the regulation comes into force on the 25th of May 2018 – and AfriNIC is 100% holding data of EU Citizens, which makes them subject to the regulations irrespective of the fact that they are domiciled in Mauritius – this is an urgent and critical issue.  It has direct impact on the whois database, abuse contact information, handling of data submitted during application process and potentially even the proposed review policy, just to name a few things that I can think of off the top of my head – and cannot be ignored.  I would in fact have liked to have seen discussions by the board in the minutes that have been published about the GDPR long before now – considering the impact – but failing that – the question is now being asked.

Andrew



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--

Abibu R. Ntahigiye



CEO, tzNIC / Interim Chairman, Afrinic.
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