Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection estimates as justified the complaints of citizens dissatisfied with the content of the Certificate of Temporary Incapacity for Work issued by doctors, and submitted to employers. The citizens' dissatisfaction with the contents of this Certificate is founded since it, contrary to the Law on Personal Data Protection, provides for excess and disproportionate processing of some personal data, including particularly sensitive data.

The content of the Certificate is governed by the "Rulebook on the Manner of Issuance and Content of the Certificate of Temporary Incapacity for Work." Already this is in itself contrary to the Constitution, since the Rulebook provides for processing of several personal data, and the Constitution establishes that personal data processing is to be exclusively governed a law, not a bylaw.

Another specific problem is that, in addition to other data, it is envisaged that the Certificate contain the data about the diagnosis of disease, and its code (which constitutes particularly sensitive data under the law), which data is unnecessary to the employer, because it is necessary and sufficient for him to know that the employee is unable to work and how long he/she will be gone. In addition, since the Disease Codebook is available on the Internet to an unlimited number of people, this involves a serious and unnecessary risk of the violation of the employee's privacy.

It sounds almost bizarre that the Certificates in question are issued in accordance with the Rulebook issued by the Minister of Labor early in 2002, on the basis of the Labor Law that was repealed more than 10 years ago. The current Labor Law provides for the existence of another rulebook which adoption is under the remit of the Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs and the Minister of Health, which rulebook has never been adopted.

The Commissioner estimates that this is yet another in a long series of confirmations of the State's completely inadequate attitude towards its constitutional obligations in relation to the protection of citizens' personal data.

In this regard, the Commissioner recalls that back in 2013 in a letter to the Ministry of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs he pointed out this, and a whole host of other problems, which had to be solved as soon as possible, which letter, even after nearly three years, is yet to encounter the expected understanding and response.