National Contact Point for Knowledge Security will soon be allowed to process personal data

How can we prevent foreign entities from acquiring sensitive knowledge? How do we make sure that Dutch research findings aren’t misused to strengthen the armies of China, Iran Russia or North Korea?

Universities, other knowledge institutions and individual researchers have a responsibility to assess knowledge security risks when collaborating with foreign researchers – which can be challenging.

House in order

Following a series of revelations by Delta and Follow the Money regarding the leakage of knowledge from Delft and the Netherlands to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, concerns about knowledge security grew.

In 2022, then education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf (D66) believed that higher education had been naive. The sector needed to get its house in order, as he put it. His ministry also announced plans to start screening foreign researchers who wanted to work in the Netherlands.

Helpdesk

As things stand, however, institutions and their researchers must rely on their own judgement, for example by using the Partnering Tools developed in 2023, a set of documents containing key knowledge security checks for every stage of an international collaboration. Universities and researchers can also contact the government’s Knowledge Security Helpdesk, which opened in January 2022, with any questions regarding international collaboration. It is consulted more than a hundred times a year.

In many cases, questions involve specific individuals. While this was to be expected, the contact point is doing everything it can to minimise the amount of personal information it receives. “Do not send personal data directly to the Contact Point”, the organisation writes on its website. “This includes names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, publications, CVs and photos.”

It’s difficult to provide useful advice based on vague information

Information that can be combined to identify individuals – so-called indirect personal data – cannot be submitted either. After all, academia is a small world where everyone knows each other.

But it’s difficult to provide useful advice based on vague information, and the government has received ‘signals’ suggesting that the contact point does sometimes process personal data, despite the privacy restrictions in place. To address this, a bill is being drafted to formally empower the organisation to process such personal data.

Criminal nature

If the bill is adopted, it will also be allowed to process personal data ‘of a criminal nature’. This includes information about specific researchers who have been prosecuted for espionage or theft of trade secrets.

The bill is now available online for consultation, which means that anyone can submit feedback. The government may use this feedback to make changes to the bill before submitting it to the Council of State. Once the latter has reviewed it, it will be submitted to the House of Representatives.