These are the winners of the 2021 Dutch Privacy Awards!

Today – on European Data Protection Day – the 2021 Dutch Privacy Awards were handed out during the Dutch National Privacy Conference, a joint initiative by Privacy First and the Dutch Platform for the Information Society (ECP). These Awards provide a platform for companies and governments that see privacy as an opportunity to distinguish themselves positively and to make privacy-friendly entrepreneurship and innovation the norm. The winners of the Dutch Privacy Awards 2021 are STER, NLdigital, Schluss, FCInet and the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security.

Consumer solutions

Winner: STER

Advertising without storage of personal data, contextual targeting: proven effectiveness

The Dutch Stichting Ether Reclame (Ether Advertising Foundation), better known as STER, was one of the first organizations in the Netherlands to abandon the common model of offering advertisements based on information collected via cookies. STER has developed a procedure that only uses relevant information on the webpages visited. No personal data are collected at all (data such as browser version, IP address and click-through behaviour). Advertisers submit their advertisements to STER, which are then put on the website in conformity with the protocol developed by STER, which is based on a number of simple categories. These categories are linked to the information that is shown, such as a TV program that someone has selected. The protocol has been built up and refined over the past period and now works properly.

In this way, STER kills several birds with one stone. Most importantly, initial applications show that this approach is at least as effective for advertisers as the old cookie-based way. Secondly, the approach removes parties from the chain. Data brokers who played a role in the old system are now superfluous. Apart from the financial gain for the chain, this also prevents data coming into the possession of parties the data should not end up with. And thirdly, STER stays in control of its own advertising campaigns.

This makes STER a deserved winner of the Dutch Privacy Awards. The concept developed is innovative and helps to protect the privacy of citizens without them having to make any effort. STER is also investigating the possibility of using the approach more broadly. This too is an innovation that the expert panel applauds.

In that sense STER’s approach is also a well-founded response to the data-driven superpowers on the market as it demonstrates that the endless collection of personal data is not at all necessary to get your message across, whether it is commercial or idealistic.

STER could perhaps also have been submitted as a Business-to-Business entry, but the direct interests of consumers meant that it was listed in the category of consumer solutions.

Business solutions

Winner: NLdigital

Organisational innovation and practical application: Data Pro Code

Entries for the Dutch Privacy Awards often relate to technical innovations. At NLdigital it is not the technology, but the approach that is innovative. It has given concrete meaning to GDPR obligations through agreements and focuses mainly on data processors, not on the responsible parties. This enables processors to make agreements more quickly, practically and with sufficient care – agreements which are also verifiable in this regard. Many companies provide services by making applications available which involve data processing. And that requires processing agreements, which are not easy to apply for every organization. Filling in the corresponding statement leads to an appropriate processing agreement for clients.

NLdigital’s code of conduct called Data Pro Code is a practical instrument tailor made for the target group: IT companies that process data on behalf of others. With the help of (600) participants/members, the Code is drawn up as an elaboration of Art. 28 of the GDPR. It has been approved by the Dutch Data Protection Authority and has led to a publicly accessible certification.

Public services

Winner: FCInet & Ministery of Justice and Security

Ma³tch, privacy on the government agenda: innovative data minimization

FCInet is innovative, privacy-enhancing technology that was developed by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security and the Dutch Ministry of Finance. It is meant to assist in the fight against (international) crime. Part of FCInet is Ma³tch, which stands for Autonous Anonymous Analysis. With this feature the Financial Criminal Investigation Services (FCIS) can share secure and pseudonymized datasets on a national level (for example with the Financial Intelligence Unit-Netherlands and the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service), but also internationally. Ma³tch is a technology that supports and enforces parties concerned to make careful considerations per data field. This is possible with regard to the question of which data these parties want to compare and on the basis of which conditions. This ensures that parties can set up the infrastructure in such a way that it can be technically enforced that data are exchanged only on a legitimate basis.

Through hashing, organization A encrypts (bundles of) personal data in such a way that receiving party B has the possibility to check whether a person known to organization B is also known to organization A. Only if it turns out that there is a match (because the list of known persons in hashed form of organization B is checked against the list of persons in the sent list) does the next step take place whereby organization B actually requests information about the person concerned from organization A. The check takes place in a secure decentralized environment, so organization A does not know whether there is a hit or not. The technology thus prevents the unnecessary perusal of personal data in the context of comparisons.

The open source code technology of FCInet offers broader possibilities for application, which is encouraged by the expert panel and was an important reason for the submission: it can be reused in many other organizations and systems. The panel therefore assessed this initiative as a good investment in privacy by the government, where, clearly, the issue of privacy really is on the agenda.

Incentive Award

Winner: Schluss

Schluss applied for the Dutch Privacy Awards in 2021 for the third time. That is not the reason for the Incentive Award, even though it may encourage others to persevere in a similar way.

The reason is that it is a very nice initiative, focused on the self-management of personal data. In the form of an app, private users are offered a vault for their personal data, whether they are of a medical, financial or other nature. Users decide which people or organizations gets access to their data. The idea is that others who are allowed to see the data no longer need to store these data themselves. Schluss has no insight into who uses the app, its role is only to facilitate the process. The technology, which is open source, guarantees transparency about the operation of the app.

Schluss won the prestigious Incentive Award because thus far the app has had only a beta release. However, promising projects have been started with the Volksbank and there is a pilot in collaboration with the Royal Dutch Association of Civil-law Notaries. With the mission statement (‘With Schluss, only you decide who gets to know which of your details’) in mind, Schluss chose to become a cooperation, an organizational form that appealed to the expert panel. With this national Incentive Award the panel hopes to encourage the initiators to continue along this path and to persuade parties to join forces with Schluss.

Nominations  

There are four categories in which applicants are awarded:

1. the category of Consumer solutions (business-to-consumer)

2. the category of Business solutions (within a company or business-to-business)

3. the category of Public services (public authority-to-citizen)

4. the incentive award for a ground breaking technology or person.

From the various entries, the independent expert panel chose the following nominees per category (listed in arbitrary order):

During the National Privacy Conference all nominees presented their projects to the audience in Award pitches. Thereafter, the Awards were handed out. Click HERE for the entire expert panel report (pdf in Dutch), which includes participation criteria and explanatory notes on all the nominees and winners.

National Privacy Conference

The Dutch National Privacy Conference is a ECP|Platform for the Information Society and Privacy First initiative. Once a year, the conference brings together Dutch industry, public authorities, the academic community and civil society with the aim to build a privacy-friendly information society. The mission of both the National Privacy Conference and Privacy First is to turn the Netherlands into a guiding nation in the field of privacy. To this end, privacy by design is key.

These were the speakers during the 2021 National Privacy Conference in successive order:
- Monique Verdier (vice chairwoman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority)
- Judith van Schie (Considerati)
- Erik Gerritsen (Secretary General of the Dutch Ministery of Health, Welfare and Sport) 
- Mieke van Heesewijk (SIDN Fund) 
- Peter Verkoulen (Dutch Blockchain Coalition)
- Paul Tang (MEP for PvdA)
- Ancilla van de Leest (Privacy First chairwoman)
- Chris van Dam (Member of the Dutch House of Representatives for CDA)
- Evelyn Austin (director of Bits of Freedom)
- Wilmar Hendriks (chairman of the expert panel of the Dutch Privacy Awards).

The entire conference was livestreamed from Nieuwspoort in The Hague: see https://www.nieuwspoort.nl/agenda/overzicht/privacy-conferentie-2021/stream and https://youtu.be/asEX1jy4Tv0.

Dutch Privacy Awards expert panel

The independent expert Award panel consists of privacy experts from different fields:

• Wilmar Hendriks, founder of Control Privacy and member of the Privacy First advisory board (panel chairman)
• Ancilla van de Leest, Privacy First chairwoman
• Paul Korremans, partner at Comfort Information Architects and Privacy First board member
• Marc van Lieshout, managing director at iHub, Radboud University Nijmegen
• Alex Commandeur, senior advisor BMC Advies
• Melanie Rieback, CEO and co-founder of Radically Open Security
• Nico Mookhoek, privacy lawyer and founder of DePrivacyGuru
• Rion Rijker, privacy and data protection expert, IT lawyer and partner at Fresa Consulting.

In order to make sure that the Award process is run objectively, the panel members may not judge on any entry of his or her own organization.

In collaboration with the Dutch Platform for the Information Society (ECP), Privacy First organizes the Dutch Privacy Awards with the support of the Democracy & Media Foundation and The Privacy Factory.

Pre-registrations for the 2022 Dutch Privacy Awards are welcome!

Would you like to become a sponsor of the Dutch Privacy Awards? Please contact Privacy First!