The government’s draft on the ‘India Data Accessibility and Use Policy’ is a move aimed to ensure more effective data-based governance paradigms for better and more broad-based governance, say industry veterans and experts.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Monday came out with a draft policy that proposes a framework for government-to-government data sharing and moots that all data for every government department or its organisation shall be open and sharable by default, with certain riders. It proposes to make available certain data for the purpose of R&D and innovation. “Minimally processed data sets shall be made available at no cost to promote innovation and R&D ... for restricted access data sharing as per the licensing model adopted, pricing of data sets will be decided by the owner/government department or agency and must be notified in a transparent manner,” said the draft.
The draft has been evolved in consultation with various stakeholders including academia, industry, and government, and currently is put up for public consultation.
Building ambitions
“As a matter of principle, this is something we have been advocating that if we build artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the country, access to government open data is very critical. But of course, privacy has to be at the heart of it ... it cannot compromise any individual’s privacy. India cannot build AI ambitions without data,” Sangeeta Gupta, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Nasscom, told BusinessLine.
Although Nasscom is going through the whole document for better understanding, she said the broad understanding is that this is about generating non-personal data like traffic data which can be anonymised to build an AI algorithm which Google- or Uber-like companies are already using to alert where are the congestion or which is the best route to take.
National Informatics Centre (NIC), under the MeitY and other government platforms already have portals like data.gov.in and tonnes of data are already available there, she added.
‘Thin ice plate’
According to Pavan Duggal, cyber law expert and Supreme Court advocate, the intent of the government is to ensure the maximum utilisation of data for the greater good.
However, he also said, “The proposed policy could also be opening the doors for government mining individual’s data. This is a thin ice plate to walk on, without appropriate legal and policy foundations being addressed. This policy, if implemented in the current form, without enabling legislative framework, could open up issues of violation of citizen’s data privacy and personal privacy.”
He said issues of cyber security have not been addressed by the policy. This could have consent-related ramifications from the perspective of users. “This policy, could have a direct conflict with the provisions of the Indian cyber law and the rules and regulations made there under. It could also compromise on the exercise of due diligence by the government in its capacity as an intermediary,” Duggal said.
Given the fact that India is already coming up with a new Personal Data Protection law, he added that it would have been much better to have waited for the new law to come, before bringing out such a policy. “The urgency to bring out such a policy is not understood, in the context of current ground level realities,” he said.
Social transformation
According to MeitY, the objective of the policy is to “radically transform” India’s ability to harness public sector data for large scale social transformation. It will be applicable to all data and information created, generated and collected by the government directly or through ministries, departments and authorised agencies.
All data for every ministry, department and organisation will be open and sharable by default, with certain exceptions, according to the draft policy that outlines an institutional framework entailing ‘India Data Office’, India Data Council, and Data Management Units as key components, the detailed document said, adding that States will be free to adopt the provisions and protocols as applicable.