About the IAPP

Atty. John Henry D. Naga, a lawyer with a passion for public service, is the Privacy Commissioner of the National Privacy Commission.

Before becoming a government official in the National Government, Privacy Commissioner Naga, already served as a Provincial Board Member for two terms in the Province of Masbate. After passing the bar, he engaged in the practice of law under one of the top law firms in the Philippines, and was able to handle high-profile cases in Labor, Telecommunications, and Corporation Law.

In September 2016, Privacy Commissioner Naga was appointed by President Duterte as the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT). During his stint, he was responsible for pushing for several ICT bills as the Legislative Liaison and became the representative of the Department in various International ICT organizations, such as: the ITU, APT, ASEAN, among others. Eventually, Acting Secretary Rio assigned him as his Chief-of-Staff.

On June 2018, he was appointed as the Undersecretary for Management and Operations. As the Undersecretary, he is responsible for the overall internal management of the Department. He was also the head of the various Technical Working Groups such as the Entry of the 3rd Telecommunications Player, the Common Tower Policy, the Tripartite agreement with NGCP and Transco, and was instrumental in securing the Landing Party Agreement with BCDA and Facebook giving the Philippines 2 Terabyte internet capacity.

On February 2019, he was designated to head the Development and Innovations cluster of the DICT that is in-charge of implementing the National Broadband Plan, National Government Portal, the Philippine Identification System, among others.

On December 2019, he was appointed by the President to be one of the Deputy Commissioners of the National Privacy Commission (NPC). Concurrent to his responsibilities as a Deputy Commissioner, he was designated as the Officer-In-Charge of the Finance and Administrative Office of the NPC in June 2020. Thereafter, in March 2021, he was designated as the OIC of the Data Security and Compliance Office of the NPC.

Privacy Commissioner Naga is an alumnus of the San Beda University – College of Law. He is married to a fellow lawyer, Atty. Ma. Katrina Naval-Naga and they have two children. Privacy Commissioner Naga deems his family and being a father as one of the most important roles and aspect of his life aside from being in public service.

As he takes this new role as the Privacy Commissioner, his focus is to ensure the efficient and effective enforcement of the law while further protecting the data subjects’ rights and interests and for PICs to have mechanisms that will allow the exercise of such rights through simple and convenient procedures. He believes that compliance is not just for one organization. It is also for the people, for our country. To protect one another through compliance is the first step in achieving national stability and security.