California Platform Accountability and Transparency Act.

Existing law establishes the Department of Technology within the Government Operations Agency, which is supervised by the Director of Technology, to exercise various powers in creating and managing the information technology policy of the state. Existing law requires the department to be responsible for the approval and oversight of information technology projects, including, among other duties, establishing and maintaining a framework of policies, procedures, and requirements for the initiation, approval, implementation, management, oversight, and continuation of information technology projects. By July 1, 2023, this bill would require the department to establish a process to solicit research guideline applications from researchers in order to identify qualified research projects and guidelines and criteria used to determine how the department will review research applications seeking approval to be a qualified research project, as specified. The bill would require the department to establish reasonable privacy and cybersecurity safeguards for the qualified data and information, as defined, that the platform must share with qualified researchers pursuant to a qualified research project, and inform the platform of these requirements. This bill would require a platform to provide qualified data and information to qualified researchers under the terms dictated by the department to carry out a qualified research project, and limit the purposes for which a qualified researcher may use the data and information, as prescribed. The bill would require the department to issue specified regulations, including requiring platforms to make specified disclosures regarding the information those platforms share with qualified researchers. By July 1, 2024, and annually thereafter, this bill would require the director to submit a report to the Chairs of the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning operations of the department relating to these provisions, and would require that report to include specified information pertaining to a detailed statement of all qualified research projects. The bill would impose prescribed civil penalties upon a platform or qualified researcher that violates these provisions, and would exempt an individual who engages in certain activities related to qualified research projects from civil or criminal liability. Existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need for protecting that interest. This bill would make legislative findings to that effect.