Project title: Digital Privacy in Georgia
Donor: Internews and United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Budget: $14,987.50
Duration: August 26, 2021 – November 25, 2021

Project Summary

Within the framework of the project, IDFI aims to conduct research and prepare analytical materials (i.e. blog-post articles, report), which will identify major challenges in terms of protection of digital privacy rights in Georgia, identify interventions needed and design evidence-based recommendations for raising public awareness and launching advocacy campaigns in this direction to address revealed problems. Digital privacy is itself an umbrella term, encompassing digital rights, freedom of information and personal data protection. Three main challenges can be emphasized that significantly affect these components – cyber-attacks, personal data breaches and online content manipulation. Because, nowadays, most of the personal data is stored in digital systems and networks, personal data breaches are often carried out through cyber-attacks, affecting citizens’ digital rights and privacy. Moreover, other fundamental human rights and components of digital freedoms - freedom of information and free use of the Internet are affected by online content manipulation, including the spread of manipulative content by political actors as well as the creation of fake accounts and pages for distorting the information. As long as all of these challenges simultaneously endanger the key components of Internet freedom, in order to address them effectively, a unified and comprehensive approach is needed. Therefore, for assessing the protection of digital privacy in Georgia, identifying related challenges and elaborating effective approaches, IDFI’s research will be simultaneously focused on cybersecurity, personal data protection online and countering online content manipulation.

To protect digital freedoms and privacy in Georgia, it is of paramount importance to identify the existing challenges in the direction of cybersecurity, personal data protection and online content manipulation and then elaborate recommendations for raising public awareness, launching relevant advocacy campaigns and implementing a unified approach against the identified threats.

To this end, the project will include the following activities:

1 . Data collection

2.  Conducting interviews and/or focus group meetings

3.  Data analysis

4.  Preparing and publishing blog-posts and a final report

5.  Preparing and disseminating visual materials about the report findings

6.  Roundtable discussion on elaborated policy recommendations with relevant decision-makers and stakeholders

7.  Online lecture for students on digital privacy based on the research findings

Project Activities and Budget

Contract