On Thursday, 18 July 2024, Matjaž Drev successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled “The impact of a conceptual model of privacy by design on the protection of personal data”.

The defence committee consisted of Assoc. Prof. Ph.D. Simon Vrhovec and Prof. Ph.D. Dejan Dinevski.

His doctoral dissertation was supervised by Asst. Prof. Ph.D. Boštjan Delak.

Doctoral thesis abstract:

The dissertation attempts to determine whether it is possible to design a conceptual tool that can be used to improve compliance of personal data processing operations with legal requirements. Part of this is finding out if the model works by testing it on several case studies. The first part of the dissertation focuses on reviewing and analysing the literature on surveillance and privacy. The goal here was to thoroughly understand both concepts, how they influenced the development of personal data protection, and how this is related to the increasing use of information communication technology. The analysis includes key legal documents, specifically GDPR, as well as established international standards on information security and personal data protection. This is followed by an extensive meta-analysis of existing studies on privacy frameworks, comparing those frameworks and finding commonalities between them. Those commonalities are then merged into new building blocks used for developing a conceptual model of privacy by design. Finally, this model is empirically tested on four case studies, including eHealth, the term for Slovenian central healthcare information system, which is in itself a very complex system of personal data processing operations. Based on theoretical and empirical findings, the dissertation tries to answer research questions and confirm or disapprove hypotheses. Furthermore, it also represents an attempt to develop a conceptual tool that can be implemented in real organizations to achieve more effective compliance with GDPR requirements.

Congratulations!

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