Find your state data protection officer quickly and easily
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Anyone who deals with the issues of freedom of information, data protection or data protection officers must deal with various people, authorities and administrative institutions. In particular, the term state data protection officer appears again and again — time to deal with it. In purely conceptual terms, a state data protection officer, a federal data protection officer and a company data protection officer share various tasks in the area of data protection. We explain the various tasks.
Legislative competence in the area of data protection
The Federal Republic of Germany has a federal structure. The Basic Law assigns various tasks and state powers to the federal and state governments. This division between federal and state governments is primarily about legislative competence in the various areas. This is not clearly assigned for data protection purposes. In the event of a lack of allocation of powers, it must always be assumed that the countries have jurisdiction to legislate. However, data protection is a complex issue that affects many life issues and must be applied in many contexts if the protection of corresponding rights is to be implemented in practice. For this reason, the federal government sometimes has supplementary legislative competence due to the factual context. The Federal Constitutional Court has expressly confirmed this additional legislative competence in the area of data protection.
The juxtaposition of different competencies means, among other things, that in addition to the Federal Data Protection Act, there are also state data protection laws of the individual federal states. This makes it easier to understand that, in addition to the Federal Data Protection Commissioner, there must be a separate state data protection officer as an authority in the federal states.
Responsibilities and position
As state data protection officer, the respective authority is responsible for advising the public authorities of the respective federal state in the area of data protection.
In most federal states (not in Bavaria), it also acts as a corresponding supervisory authority within the meaning of Section 38 (6) of the Federal Data Protection Act vis-à-vis non-public bodies. In the everyday life of companies, the state data protection officer is the decisive authority when it comes to compliance with data protection regulations and related administrative processes, such as reporting or managing data protection matters. For citizens, their state data protection officer is the point of contact for questions about freedom of information (contact options, such as e-mail and homepage, can be found at the bottom of this page). As an authority, a state data protection officer is independent of further state supervision in its monitoring activities in the non-public sector. Until a decision by the European Court of Justice in 2010, there was legal supervision by the respective government of the federal state in which the individual federal state data protection officers worked.
The state of Bavaria goes its own way when it comes to supervising non-governmental bodies. It is the only federal state that has set up its own state office in this area. In addition to the data protection officers of the other federal states, the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision is the highest supervisory authority for the non-public sector in data protection matters in the state of Bavaria. The respective state data protection officer, the Federal Data Protection Officer and the President of the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection regularly meet in a committee. This is the data protection conference of the independent data protection authorities of the federal and state governments. In various working groups, the relevant data protectionists discuss current issues and problems in data protection and therefore form a corresponding counterpart to the Conference of Interior Ministers. The latter will often also deal with data protection issues, but will therefore be more likely to have options for data protection interventions on the agenda. In contrast, the respective federal and state data protection authorities monitor compliance with data protection regulations.
State data protection officer — authority or person?
When you talk about a state data protection officer, you mean the authority on the one hand, and the person who heads this authority on the other hand. In fact, the respective state data protection officer also represents a natural person who is appointed to the office for a certain period of time.
State data protection officer — relationship with the Federal Data Protection Commissioner and company data protection officer
The respective Federal Data Protection Commissioner represents the highest federal authority for data protection and freedom of information in the Federal Republic of Germany. In this position, however, he has no authority or control rights vis-à-vis the State Data Protection Commissioner. He also does not act as a supervisory authority vis-à-vis non-public bodies. He only has direct contact with private companies in one area: this involves security audits in accordance with the Security Inspection Act (SÜG).
The company data protection officer ensures compliance with data protection regulations in individual companies. Within this framework, he is the contact person of the respective state data protection officer, who, among other things, faces him as a supervisory authority.
Overview of the state data protection officers of the federal states
To make it easier for you to keep track of things, we have compiled a comprehensive overview of the individual state data protection officers of the federal states below. Would you like to know who the state data protection officer in your federal state is or who you can contact if you have any questions? On our LDSB pages, you can find a wide range of information about your state data protection officer and at the same time find out about the federal state-specific features of the Office and relevant exemptions. If you want to contact your state data protection officer directly or report a data breach, we have also listed all relevant contact details of the authorities and contacts (homepage, e-mail and - if available - telephone number) for you.