On 28 January 2025, Data Protection Day, Lviv Polytechnic National University hosted Data Protection Day 2025. This event was organised within the framework of the Erasmus+ project Jean Monnet Chair «Data Protection in the EU» (101085612 – DataProEU – ERASMUS-JMO-2022-HEI-TCH-RSCH).
This year, Data Protection Day expanded its geography: about 150 participants from all over Ukraine – Lviv, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Sumy and Odesa, a speaker from Malta, as well as representatives of leading law and IT companies in Lviv. All this was made possible due to the online format of the event.
This year’s conference was solemnly opened by Vasyl Tesliuk, Head of the Department of Automated Control Systems, the Institute of Computer Science and Information Technologies, who emphasised the great positive impact of the Jean Monnet Chair on the educational process of the EU Data Protection project, which has introduced new, relevant and important disciplines to the educational program for the IT industry. Professor Tesliuk also noted the particular relevance of protecting citizens’ personal data and the importance of studying and implementing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in terms of Ukraine’s European integration.
Anastasiia Doroshenko, DataProEU project coordinator, Associate Professor at the Department of Automated Control Systems, spoke about all the activities, events and training programs implemented within the project. She noted the wide activity and interest of students in studying the GDPR and other personal data protection standards, as today, for an IT specialist, understanding the responsibility for personal data that is collected and processed is very important and relevant.
Data protection specialist Oksana Komar, Governance Risk and Compliance Lead, SoftServe, and Volodymyr Voityshyn, Software Architect, ELEKS, explained how to properly set up business processes in accordance with the GDPR, take into account personal data security requirements at the stage of architecture development, and what additional tools should be used to protect data.
Oleksandr Pastukhov, LL.M., Ph.D., Associate Professor, European & Comparative Law, Faculty of Laws, University of Malta, shared his European experience in the field of personal data protection, and spoke about the history of the development of European legislation governing the processing of telecommunications data of users and the challenges associated with such processing. The experience of European citizens in the struggle for proper protection of their personal data, which is reflected in modern European regulations, was extremely interesting.
During the roundtable, all participants had the opportunity to discuss the current state of the personal data protection situation in Ukraine and the world, as well as to offer their own vision of the prospects for implementing the requirements of the European personal data protection regulation in Ukraine. They also discussed in detail the prospects for personal data protection under Ukrainian law.
Students also took an active part in Data Protection Day 2025. In particular, many students of the Institute of Computer Science and Information Technologies, who have already encountered the requirements and restrictions of the GDPR in their work at IT companies, enthusiastically joined the discussions and asked interesting and relevant questions about personal data protection.
