Spain was the first European country to guarantee a series of digital rights related to the internet through the Organic Law on the Protection of Personal Data and Guarantee of Digital Rights, approved in December 2018. Now, a series of entities are concerned that the freedoms that citizens enjoy are equally protected in offline life and in the online have come together to create the Digital Rights Observation Space.
Among the members supporting this observatory are lto General Foundation of the UMA, the University of Comillas, Navarra, León, Castilla La Mancha, etc. A project that is promoted by the Hermes Institute, a non-profit foundation dedicated to identifying, disseminating and defending these rights, in which, among others, the La Caixa Foundation, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Carlos III University or Pompeu Fabra University.
With the Charter of Digital Rights, Spain was at the forefront in the protection of citizens’ rights and is a pioneer in some of them, such as those related to artificial intelligence, which is talked about so much and which can violate privacy or freedom of expression, which is why initiatives like these that offer avant-garde responses are necessary.
Digital Transformation Observatory
The University of Malaga already has a track record in this area. In 2021, he created together with Malaga Tech Park the Digital Transformation Observatory ‘Digital Eye‘whose purpose is to concentrate efforts on digital transformation, as well as train and advise in this area to achieve better strategic positioning and decision making by companies and institutions with implications in the sector.
In addition, this year a technology-based company called ‘Digital Educa’ was born. Its objective is to promote training in digital skills and is aimed at training centers. The research group that promotes it, ‘Innoeduca’, brings together the ideas and training experiences of the experts that constitute it to improve training processes with digital technology.
On the other hand, the UMA is also a reference for specialized university education in this sense. Thus, the Faculty of Law offers the Title of University Expert in Digital Law, the first in Andalusia to train these specialists.
Finally, the FGUMA organized within the 2023 Summer Courses, at the Marbella headquarters, the seminar “Digital rights and artificial intelligence: beyond Chat GPT”, directed by José Luis Piñar, professor of Administrative Law, patron of the Hermes Institute Foundation and former director of the Spanish Data Protection Agency.
