At a Panel discussion held during the 9th meeting of the United Nations Global Geographic Information Management (UN-GGIM), the World Geospatial Industry Council (WGIC) and its Policy Committee briefed Member Countries, the UN-GGIM Private Sector Network (PSN) and other observers on progress to date, surveying existing regulations and legislation governing geo-location and personal privacy in selected jurisdictions around the world.

There is a growing global recognition of protecting personal privacy information, and WGIC is interested in broadening its efforts to gain a more comprehensive view of related current and planned legislation and regulations globally.

Participants to the Roundtable were very interested and engaged during the discussion, and encouraged WGIC to continue its efforts, particularly with reaching out to other regulatory and legal professionals who are in positions of responding to, and/or implementing, these policies and regulations.

The Policy Committee also received valuable feedback and encouragement related to the strategy to have more impact on policy-makers, and the specific role that WGIC could play in this important policy domain.

The WGIC will be developing a white paper compiling the results of the survey, as well as the inputs obtained from this event.

For additional information on WGIC’s efforts, please visit: www.wgicouncil.org. WGIC Policy Committee: Chair: Arnout Desmet (TomTom); Members: Zaffar Mohamed Ghouse (Spatial Vision), James Steiner (Oracle), and James Van Rens (Riegl); Support: Barbara Ryan and Seth Sharmishtha (WGIC Secretariat). For further information, please contact Barbara Ryan at [email protected]