The draft India Data Accessibility and Use Policy, released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) can pave the way for a radical change in sharing public data for the greater good. Various government departments, local authorities, police forces, the healthcare system, and schools have access to key data which when shared can improve public services, facilitate research and innovation, and inform policymaking. For example, data shared by the Railways and local transport departments are used in various applications to provide the schedule of buses and trains that help citizens plan their travel. With the digital economy growing rapidly data has become an important economic and social resource and, in India, the government is the biggest data repository. In this context, the draft policy proposes to consolidate public data repositories and make them available to interested parties like researchers, start-ups, enterprises, individuals, and government departments. While a similar attempt to share data was made by the government in 2012 under National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, it failed to take off due to a lack of an institutional framework. It’s good that the proposed new policy will bridge this gap by setting up an India Data Office under MeitY with a data management unit in every Ministry, headed by Chief Data Officers.

The benefits of effective data sharing could be huge — enabling health researchers to spot patterns in inpatient data, and advancing knowledge in the fields of science and medicine. It also democratises access to data wherein new-age start-up entrepreneurs can use raw datasets to develop user-friendly applications using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, thus breaking the control on data by a few big tech companies. However, pooling and sharing data gives rise to important questions of privacy, as well as the extent to which individuals have ownership of data that is personal to them. Although the proposed policy considers anonymisation as a desired goal, it does not provide any details on how this will be ensured.

The policy also allows private companies to access high-value data by paying a fee. This is a matter of concern because individuals have to give a lot of personal data to the government as mandated by law. The draft policy does not clarify what constitutes high-value data sets nor does it put in place guardrails to protect individual privacy. Definition of more sensitive categories which should have restricted access is left to the independent government ministries. This can be dangerous when the government acts like a data broker trying to maximise revenue from selling data. Unfortunately, India still does not have a data protection law in place. The Personal Data Protection Bill has been in discussion for over four years now but is yet to be tabled in Parliament. The proposed data use policy should be anchored to the data protection law if it has to find a larger acceptance. Perhaps, the Centre can convert the policy itself into a Bill and get it enacted as a law by the Parliament given that public funds will be used to set up the institutional framework to implement it. 

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