PUBLIC DATA GOVERNANCE
Government’s vision is to build a modern framework for Data Governance that will be a kinetic enabler of India’s Digital Economy.
Revised Draft: The new draft, ‘National Data Governance Framework Policy’, is a replacement of the now scrapped ‘India Data accessibility and Use policy’.
Draft National Data Governance Framework Policy
- Focus of the Policy: Policy focuses on improving the institutional framework for Government data sharing, promoting principles around privacy and security by design, and encouraging the use of anonymization tools.
- Aim: To standardise the government’s data collection and management while catalysing AI and Data led research and a startup ecosystem.
- Features:
- Indian Datasets programme: It calls for the creation of an India Datasets programme, which will consist of non-personal and anonymised datasets from Central government entities that have collected data from Indian citizens or those in India. Private companies will be “encouraged” to share such data.
- India Data Management Office (IDMO): The draft calls for the creation of an IDMO, which will be in charge of designing and managing the India Datasets platform.
- The IDMO will prescribe rules and standards, including anonymization standards for all entities (government and private).
- For purposes of safety and trust, any non-personal data sharing by any entity can be only via platforms designated and authorized by IDMO.
- Sharing of data: The policy also seeks to ‘encourage’ private companies to share non-personal data with startups as part of the effort.
- Data Management Units (DMUs): As per the draft, all ministries will have data management units (DMUs). It will be headed by a Chief Data Officer. They will be responsible for the implementation of the data governance policy.
- No Selling of Data: The most significant change in this new draft is the omission of the most contentious provision in the old draft — selling data collected at the Central level in the open market.
Significance of Policy:
- Improving Digitisation: Will accelerate Digital Governance.
- Data Management: It will standardize data management and security standards across the whole of Government.
- Standardisation: It will accelerate the creation of common standard-based public digital platforms while ensuring privacy, safety, and trust. It will have standard APIs and other tech standards for Whole of Government data management and access. It will set quality standards and promote expansion of India Datasets program and overall non-personal Datasets Ecosystem.
- Data Responsibility: It will promote transparency, accountability, and ownership in non-personal data and dataset access.
- Digital Economy: It will help to build Digital Government goals and capacity, knowledge, and competency in Government departments and entities.
- Citizen Empowerment: It will ensure greater citizen awareness, participation, and engagement.
Challenges of the New Draft:
- Ambiguity over IDMO Composition: The composition of the IDMO and the process have not been made clear in the new draft policy.
- At the will of private companies: Experts also said that private companies may not voluntarily share non-personal data.
- Data sharing with Big Techs: Large repository of India-specific datasets that will be created under the National Data Governance Framework Policy (NDGFP) will not be available for commercial operations of Big Techs.
- Safeguarding Data Privacy: The NDGFP draft states that its standards and rules will ensure data security and information privacy but doesn’t state in detail how the government plans to safeguard data privacy.
- Non-personal data identification: Concerns are raised on the definition of non-personal data. A technical threshold for data anonymization should be specified as until then it will not be possible to categorically stipulate what constitutes non-personal data.
- Indian startups: The repository of datasets will only be available for Indian startups. There is no clarity on whether Indian startups mean those registered in India or those with operations in the country.
- Issue of monopolistic data market: Adequacy of the current framework to ensure a non-monopolistic data market fair for all market players is under question.
- Data centralisation: The concerns are raised regarding the data centralisation aspect of the NDGFP when the world was moving towards decentralised frameworks like Blockchain.
Way forward
- Legal framework: Issues such as data ownership, data privacy and security, and data ethics have to be firmly placed in any legal framework stipulating the usage of Government data.
- Policy measures: Specific policies governing standards shall be key to ensuring a safe and transparent data regime.
- Pass Data Protection Bill: Data Protection Bill, 2021 and the regulations for the protection of non-personal data must be implemented and finalized.
- More clarification on datasets: Provisions for harnessing the future potential of integrated datasets and clarifications around the nature of engagement with private players.
- Active collaboration: With private sector and social impact firms to build data capacity.
- Provide operational clarity of IDMO: Furthermore, information and clarity on the operations of the India Data Management Office.