Congratulations to the winners of the sixth annual Privacy Innovation Awards

Three organizations were recognized with Privacy Innovation Awards at the IAPP Privacy Academy in Orlando last month. Sponsored by HP and the International Association of Privacy Professionals, the awards recognized significant innovations in privacy-enhancing initiatives. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Victorian Department of Justice in Australia, and the Privacy and Identity Management for Europe (PRIME) project received this year's awards.

The winner in the Small Organization category (less than 5,000 employees), was the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's annual agency-wide privacy awareness program. Through its comprehensive "Privacy Week," the FTC has successfully heightened agency awareness of the need to protect information assets against unauthorized use or disclosure.

In the Large Organization category (more than 5,000 employees), the Victorian Department of Justice (Victoria, Australia) won for its national privacy education program designed to instill privacy impact assessment processes in project management, policy development and formal training efforts for all public sector employees across Victoria. In 2008, for the third year running, the Department worked with the Victorian Privacy Commissioner to create and deliver "Privacy Awareness Week," an education program directed at the 63 statutory entities and 6,000 full-time metropolitan and regional staff across Victoria. The program was coordinated with other national bodies including the Privacy Commissioner of Hong Kong and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

The HP-IAPP Privacy Innovation Technology Award went to PRIME: the Privacy and Identity Management for Europe project, an EU-funded research initiative that focuses on privacy and identity management (IAM) schemes and their impacts on a variety of fields and industries including e-commerce, e-government, e-health, finance, travel and telecommunications. PRIME is a coalition of 20 research institutions in the U.S. and Europe along with industry partners including IBM, HP, T-Mobile, Swisscom and Lufthansa.

"HP is proud to sponsor an award that encourages innovative practices that impact governments, consumers and businesses," said HP Chief Privacy Officer Scott Taylor.