Glad to have participated on September 26th, 2019, to a highly specialized expert meeting on Digital Democracy organized by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Greece and Cyprus.

The panel I spoke at was specialized on data protection and I presented the topic “Democratic governance and parliamentary development in the digital world​”. Panelists included also Frederick Richter, Director, German Federal Foundation for Data Protection, Lilian Mitrou, Professor, University of the Aegean-Greece, Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering and Prodromos Tsiavos, Chairman Hellenic Industrial Property Organization. Tassos Telloglou, Journalist, Kathimerini, moderated.

Abstract of my presentation

Parliaments are representative institutions. As such, they should frequently debate on state-of-the-art topics of societal change, such as digital transformation and algorithmic regulation. The latter is of particular significance as advanced algorithms may disrupt traditional political discourse, e.g. through propagation of fake news. In addition, parliaments should follow the respective general trends in organizational change, through digitization of information and process digitalization, for example. In this regard, open source technology solutions and open data should be endorsed by parliaments, not only as low-cost technology options but also as unique opportunities to directly engage with their major stakeholders, the citizens. In view of the latest legal developments in the field​, personal data protection within the eGovernance and eParliament spheres were discussed.​ Finally, the capacity of parliaments to single-handedly tackle the above challenges was screened and a series of proposals presented. The slides from my presentation may be accessed here. Below is a couple of photos from the event.

Getting ready for action….

…and during presentation.

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