It's been nearly a year since the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation went into effect, sparking conversations and compliance efforts in legal departments worldwide.

At a Friday morning International Association of Privacy Professionals Global Privacy Summit session in Washington, D.C., Microsoft deputy general counsel and corporate vice president Julie Brill spoke with Andrea Jelinek, European Data Protection Board chairwoman and Austrian Data Protection Authority director, about GDPR's first year of challenges and changes and what could come next.

“The world didn't stop turning on May 26 … but the most impressive, most surprising issue was the interest for data protection, the interest [in] privacy didn't stop,” Jelinek said.

Instead, it's spread. In the wake of GDPR's May 25, 2018 start date, California passed the first U.S. state privacy law and both the U.S. House and Senate have held hearings on a possible federal law, taking lessons from GDPR.

One of Jelinek's initial GDPR lessons: regulators and companies should work toward compliance together. She said data protection officers' importance “never can be overestimated.” GDPR requires certain companies appoint a DPO to work with regulators on data protection issues. More than 5,000 DPOs have registered in Austria alone, Jelinek said.

“What is most important, the most important thing is that [DPOs] know their company,” she said, and DPOs can “translate” communications to regulators, executives and in-house counsel.

When shaping a U.S. law, Jelinek also suggested a “carrot and stick” approach. That means the U.S. needs an “enforcer to be taken seriously” with strength, money, staff and the authority to investigate infringement. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission currently has 40 staffers. In an IAPP summit session yesterday the agency's chairman Joseph Simons said the FTC would have to “beef up” to enforce a federal privacy law.

Jelinek said she's hoping for a strong federal U.S. law, in part because “so many U.S. citizens were affected” by recent privacy scandals and may have lost trust in American companies.

It's also simpler for companies if countries worldwide adopt privacy laws similar to GDPR, she said. Canada, Japan, Argentina and other countries have received “adequacy decisions,” from the EU, meaning their data protection standards meet Europe's.

“When you have global alignment, not copy and paste but a global alignment on the principles, how we're going to collect data … and the rights of individuals then it will be much easier for all of us,” she said.

Brill asked whether California would be granted adequacy because of CCPA, as a submarket in a country currently without a federal privacy law. Jelinek declined to give a definite answer, but she said it's a discussion the European Data Protection Board has heard.

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