Data protection 2021 requires privacy professionals to have focus in an environment where focus is near impossible. For example, today’s employee issue is privacy and contact tracing while tomorrow’s issue may be the privacy implications of required employees’ vaccine passports. The second issue may occur even if the first hasn’t been solved yet. While currently struggling to describe data collection and use policies, trust soon may require us to explain the logic behind analytics. Policy makers want to discuss individual control, while demanding data driven answers to complex questions that require universal participation. During three two-hour sessions the IAF community will first consider the resources needed by all stakeholders to make an accountability-based system work, then second will examine the hard operational choices leaders must make when new requirements overwhelm old ones, and finally third will debate whether glass breaking legislation is possible in an incremental world, and if not, whether innovation and fairness can function if glass isn’t broken. The summit is virtual on a digital first platform. Join us for one or more sessions. Make your voice heard.
Abrams has also provided leadership in other policy areas. He worked on multilayered privacy notices, which changed the way policymakers and organizations thought about privacy transparency. His work is generally reflected in new laws and regulatory guidance in jurisdictions from Asia, across Europe, and in the Americas. He has led educational seminars on almost every continent and has been a key advisor to four International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. He has been deeply involved in the development of the APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules and has also been involved with the OECD Working Party on Information Security and Privacy. He is an advisor to numerous benchmark corporate privacy programs.
Abrams was the co-founder and President of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton & Williams LLP, which he led for 13 years. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Information Policy at Experian and Director of Information Policy at TRW Information Systems where he designed one of the early privacy impact assessment tools. He also chaired their Consumer Advisory Council. Abrams began his consumer policy work at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland where he was Assistant Vice President and Community Affairs Officer. At the Federal Reserve Bank, he drove collaboration by helping banks and the communities they serve find their intersection of self-interest.
Abrams continues to seek practical solutions to assure information-driven innovation with personal dignity at the Foundation.