In this podcast episode, Professor Donrich Thaldar and Dr Dusty-Lee Donnelly discuss the meaning of ‘responsible party’ in POPIA (the South African Protection of Personal Information Act) and its impact on the research community.

Summary

In the research context, a ‘responsible party’ as contemplated in terms of POPIA is typically the research institution as well as the individual researcher involved. Given the potential civil liability that individual researchers could face, we suggest that the Code of Conduct for Research should place a duty on research institutions to indemnify their researchers from civil liability. While this measure will limit individual researchers’ personal financial risk in the extra-institutional legal sphere, it will in no way shield individual researchers from intra-institutional accountability and disciplinary action. Accordingly, we suggest that this measure strikes a fair balance.

Further reading

Swales L, Thaldar DW, Donnelly, D-L. Why research institutions should indemnify researchers against POPIA civil liability. South African Journal of Science. 2022.

See also

Thaldar DW. Research and the meaning of ‘public interest’ in POPIA. South African Journal of Science. 2022.

Thaldar DW, Townsend B. Protecting personal information in research: Is a code of conduct the solution? South African Journal of Science. 2021

This podcast was made possible by a grant from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (award number U01MH127690) under the Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program. The content of this podcast is solely the responsibility of discussants of the podcast and does not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health or the U.S. National Institutes of Health.