Philippines and Singapore to partner on data protection

Data protection authorities from Singapore and the Philippines have announced to agree on working bilaterally to cooperate on data protection and cross-border data flows. The two countries signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to work on mutual assistance in data privacy enforcement, and envision exchanges of information and best practices. BusinessWorld reports that the MoU is the first between two ASEAN member states involving data protection. According to the Manila Times, this bilateral work will include developing mechanisms to facilitate cross-border data flow, such as the APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules and Asean Cross-Border Data Flows Mechanism, and best practices to enable data innovation, through the use of data sharing sandboxes.