February

The Singapore government is reviewing guidelines that limit the use of national identification numbers.

The revisions to the advisory guidelines in the country 's Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) pertain specifically to the collection, use and disclosure of NRIC numbers. The numbers, which are unique to each Singapore resident, currently are used widely to facilitate various functions, including gaining entry to buildings and signing up for customer loyalty programmes.

A bill recently introduced in Singapore will support the government 's effort to better enable public sector agencies to share data with one another. The Public Sector (Governance) Act 2018 also will enable government agencies to share data amongst themselves as permitted under the data-sharing directive.

Officials representing Korean Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) met in Brussels to exchange views on ways to further strengthen cooperation between the EU and Korea on data protection and data flows issues.

The discussions recognized the work done by the KCC, KISA and the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission, which has significantly strengthened the mutual understanding of the EU and Korean data protection systems.

Both sides acknowledged that recent reforms of their respective privacy legislation have further increased the convergence between the EU and Korean data protection systems, which rests notably on a core set of data protection principles, enforceable individual rights and oversight by independent authorities. This offers new opportunities to further facilitate data exchanges, including through an adequacy finding. They agreed to intensify the efforts towards swiftly achieving this common objective in 2018.

The Supplementary Education Act will require Taiwanese teachers to submit police criminal record certificates and a "certificate of good conduct" for foreigners applying for work at cram schools in Taiwan.

According to the Workforce Development Agency, the latter certificate must apply nationwide and is a document that proves that an applicant does not have a record of criminal offenses.

In the United States, this FBI Identity History Summary could take 10-12 weeks to be processed. The background check applies to cram schools only and to those teachers who are applying for the first time. It also applies to teachers who have applied since June 16 or who have yet to complete their application process from an earlier date.