Data Privacy Global Conference 2023: an overview

The second edition of the Data Privacy Global Conference brought together professionals from more than one hundred civil, business and government organizations in a two-day event in the city of São Paulo, between November 27th and 28th, 2023. With more than 20 sponsors, the 2023 DPGC edition was a public success, with more than 250 participants.

As a conference focusing on the Global South, we had the participation of professionals from India, Colombia, Nigeria, Bolivia and Iran. This allowed for a fruitful dialogue with professionals from the Global North, such as professor Anita Allen, who gave a talk on privacy and civil rights, and Gregory Smolynec, Deputy Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who addressed strategies for applying personal data protection standards. It is precisely the exchange between local and global, and between North and South, that makes the Data Privacy Global Conference a unique event on the international agenda of events in personal data protection.It is important to highlight the centrality of diversity in DPGC 2023. 

All panels had at least one person considered a minority (a black, brown or indigenous person). We did not have any panel with only male speakers. We seek gender diversity on all panels. This is part of an ethical commitment to diversity in all events we hold at Data Privacy Brasil.We also carried out an inclusion work, distributing scholarships to professionals who came from the five regions of Brazil. 

Thanks to the sponsorship of our partners, we were able to provide flights and hotels for a group of young people who will return to their regions with knowledge, new ideas and energy to lead their own projects.Three elements are characteristic of the 2023 edition of the Data Privacy Global Conference.The first is that this is not just a personal data protection conference. We debated topics such as AI governance, public data infrastructure, access rights and transparency in environmental regulation, for example. Despite the name “data privacy”, the conference addresses broader issues of digital rights and democracy.

The second characteristic is that diversity makes up the richness of the discussions. The best panels are those that can bring together diverse voices, allowing a dialogue between a peripheral reality and a central reality, for example. We believe that diversity is crucial for democratic analyses, with voices that are capable of analyzing the same problem from asymmetric and distinct realities.The third characteristic is that the DPGC has highlighted the emergence of a Global South agenda, which has been strongly manifested in the G20, especially in the transition between India and Brazil. The combination of social justice with inclusive digital transformation programs is a common element in countries like India and Brazil. In countries with colossal equity and inequality challenges, the task of building national strategies focused on the digitalization of public services, national data infrastructures and incentives for national economies to develop, generating decent jobs, becomes central.

All of this with an orientation focused on fundamental rights. We hope that, in 2024, Brazil will continue to be a stage for important democratic discussions. DPGC 2024 will take place in November 2024, close to the G20 Summit, which takes place in Rio de Janeiro. We are sure that 2024 will be a decisive year for the regulation of artificial intelligence, for articulating views from the Global South on inclusive digital transformation and for democracies that put digital technologies at the service of people and their rights.

Bruno Bioni, Mariana Rielli & Rafael Zanatta
Directors of Data Privacy Brasil