In its decision of November 21, 2022, the data protection authority ruled on the legality of the publication of job advertisements freely available on the Internet by the Public Employment Service. The complainant was a legal entity, which felt that its right to confidentiality under Section 1 of the Data Protection Act had been violated by the publication of data from a job advertisement. Originally, the complainant had published job advertisements on its own homepage; these were found by the Public Employment Service and subsequently published on the Public Employment Service’s job platform. Since the complainant was a legal person, the scope of application of the GDPR was not opened and the exception of generally available data pursuant to Section 1 para. 1 DSG must be observed. The data protection authority found the publication in question to be lawful, based on the following considerations: on the one hand, the exception for generally available data applied in the present case, as the complainant published the job advertisement itself on its homepage, no informational added value was created by the Public Employment Service in the context of the publication, and the job advertisements published on its website are regularly updated. In addition, the publication was also made on the basis of the tasks assigned to the Public Employment Service by law pursuant to Sections 29 and 32 para. 2 AMSG and taking into account the principle of data minimization pursuant to Art. 5 par. 1 lit. c GDPR. The decision is legally binding.
Source: DSB Austria