ICT Legal is founded by Dr. Irena Barkane, a qualified Latvian lawyer. She has been practising law for ten years and has acquired a deep expertise in ICT law and EU law matters. She is passionate about interaction between law and technology and legal challenges caused by the rapid development of digital technologies. Legal issues related to digital environment, in particular artificial intelligence regulation, privacy, data protection, and security are at the core of her interests.
Irena Barkane
Irena has acquired unique in-depth expertise in EU law matters and European court cases. She has worked as a legal adviser at the Department of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the CJEU) at the Ministry of Justice being responsible for representing the state position at the highly important cases of the CJEU and other EU law fields as well supervising infringement cases before the European Commission. Prior to creating ICT Legal she has worked at Baltics law firm specialised in intellectual property law, commercial law and litigation cases and as a lawyer at private company providing commercial law advice in marketing communication sector.
Irena has earned Doctoral degree in law at the University of Latvia. She is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Legal Science, Faculty of Law, University of Latvia where she leads research projects related to regulation, legal, ethical and social implications of new digital technologies and teaches Information Technology Law course. Previously she has taught AI ethical and legal issues at the Riga Graduate School of Law, European Human Rights Law and European Competition Law at the University of Latvia and Riga Stradins University and has also led seminars at the Latvian Judicial Training Center.
She continuously deepens her knowledge in ICT Law, e.g. by participating in Geneva Internet Law Summer School, data protection courses organised by the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity, Maastricht University and the Academy of European Law (ERA). She is also a Certified Data Protection Officer in Latvia and holds European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) Data Protection Professional Certificate.
Irena is the author of numerous articles and book chapters devoted to human rights law and legal challenges brought by AI, the latest published by Oxford University Press. Irena regularly participates in international conferences, including the European Society of International Law (ESIL) Annual Conference and Riga StratCom Dialogue organised by NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.
In March 2020 she was appointed as a member of UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group for the preparation of a draft text of a Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.
Irena is a member of several organizations in ICT field:
- Latvian Information and Communication Technology Association (LIKTA), where she is also a board member of Associate Members Section from 2017
- Information Technology and Information Systems Security Experts Group (DEG), at the Information Technology Security Incident Response Institution of the Republic of Latvia (CERT.LV)
- Information Society
- International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP)
- European AI Alliance
Irena is an author of number of publications on ICT law, Human Rights law and EU law issues, e.g.: