Privacy Commissioner Responds to the Report of the Public Accounts Committee on the "Value-for-money" Audit Report on PCPD issued by the Director of Audit


1.    The Privacy Commissioner thanks the Director of Audit for spending six months in carrying out a value-for-money audit of the PCPD and for his recommendations.  He also thanks the Public Accounts Committee ("PAC") for its consideration of the Audit Report and its recommendations made after the public hearing.

2.    In its report, the only area where the PAC expresses dismay and serious concern is about PCPD’s complaint management, mainly on its inability in many cases to serve refusal notices within the period of 45 days as provided in the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (“the Ordinance”).

3.   When presenting the PAC report to the Legislative Council, the Chairman of the PAC, Dr. Hon Philip Wong described the situation as a failure to abide by the regulations.  The reasons contributing to the situation are, as pointed out in the PAC report, are the strict time limit set by the Ordinance  and the shortage of manpower which the PCPD has been suffering from.  The PAC notes that the PCPD had alerted the Home Affairs Bureau in 1998 to the practical difficulties of complying with the 45-day requirement and proposed to relax the requirement.  While the government agreed to and supported the proposal it has not implemented any amendment of the Ordinance up to now.

4.  At the public hearing, the Privacy Commissioner pointed out that the 45-day requirement has been his top concern since he took office.  He was also dismayed by the fact that the problems mentioned in the last paragraph have so far not been solved.

5.    At the public hearing before the Legislative Council, the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau (“CMAB”) said that it would allocate additional resources to assist the PCPD on complaint management, and consider augmenting the PCPD’s general reserve to 20% of the annual subventions from the Government.  The CMAB had also included the proposal to amend the 45-day requirement in the public consultation document on the review of the Ordinance published last August.

6.   The Privacy Commissioner said, “I am gladdened by the Government’s offer of assistance.  In the past, the PCPD had, on average, only 13 officers to handle personal data privacy complaints from the public in a city of over 7 million people.  This has been patently inadequate.  I hope that the problem surrounding the “45-day requirement” could soon be solved with the prospective amendment of the Ordinance and the additional resources promised by the Government.

7.   The Privacy Commissioner said, “The recommendations of the Audit Commission have either been implemented or are in the process of implementation.  I will now proceed to work with the CMAB to implement the recommendations of the PAC.”

8.   Lastly, Roderick Woo, the Privacy Commissioner thanks the PAC for the positive comments, which are rarely made in reports of this kind, that, “The Committee affirms the efforts made by the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data to reduce the expenditure of the PCPD” under the Chapter, "Conclusions and Recommendations” of its report.  Mr. Woo says, “I promise to continue my efforts to utilize the public funds at my disposal in a prudent, effective and responsible manner. 


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