Centre drops proposal to sell data to private entities

Months after its draft ‘Data Accessibility’ policy came under severe criticism, the Centre has come up with fresh norms that seek to make “non-personal data” available to public and private entities for better delivery of services. Significantly, the earlier proposal for sale and licensing of data to private entities has been dropped.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) made the draft National Data Governance Framework public on May 25, asking for stakeholders’ inputs and feedback by June 11. As per the draft policy, the IT Ministry said the framework allows for non-personal datasets based in India as well as the formation of the India Data Management Office (IDMO) to ensure such data is available to the research and innovation ecosystem. While the new draft will deal with datasets available with government departments and agencies, the regulation of data with private bodies will be taken up later.

The framework follows the government’s previous ‘Draft India Data Accessibility and Use Policy, 2022’ which came under criticism after its release in February. The provision that permits the licensing and sale of public data by the government to the private sector was one of the key issues that was slammed.

A ministry official said the present framework is a modified version of the norms made public in February. “The new norms allow for data accessibility, but without sale and licensing,” the official said.

The official added that while the terms of availability of data to public as well as private entities are not yet formulated in detail, and only the broad contours are available in the draft, it will be the role of the data management office to come up with the guidelines.

Another senior IT Ministry official told DH that the IDMO’s primary mandate will be to "collect, store, transfer, and transmit" non-personal data. "The IDMO will also create a platform for processing such datasets. Initially, data within all line ministries, government agencies and state governments will be regulated,” the official said.

The official also made it clear that non-personal data will include data which is non-identifiable as well as untraceable to the user. “The data that will be used will be stripped of personal identifiers to anonymise it,” the official said.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the framework will be of help to startups, research or government departments that utilise artificial intelligence (AI). “Its imp piece of policy framework thats being devlopd to catalyze #India’s $1 Trillion #DigitalEconomy (sic),” he tweeted.

The draft lays down the norms for the IDMO which will be set up under the Digital India Corporation, and will be responsible for “framing, managing and periodically reviewing and revising the Policy”.

“The IDMO shall be responsible for developing rules, standards and guidelines under this Policy that shall be published periodically. The IDMO shall formulate all data/datasets/metadata rules, standards, and guidelines in consultation with Ministries, State Governments, and industry,” the note states.

As part of its function, the IDMO will be responsible for data storage and retention, access to datasets between government departments, the Indian Datasets programme, data anonymisation, ethical usage of data and fair rights.

The draft note said that currently digital data is inconsistently managed and stored without regulation, preventing the full potential of an “innovative ecosystem of data science, analytics and AI”.