India’s ambitions of becoming a $5 trillion economy depend on its ability to harness the value of data. With an idea to “enhance access, quality, and use of data”, in line with the current and emerging technology needs the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) released Draft India Data Accessibility & Use Policy 2022.
The document has proposed the setting up of an India Data Office (IDO) by MeitY with an objective to streamline and consolidate data access and sharing of public data repositories across the government and other stakeholders. Further to this, all data for every government ministry, department, or organisation shall be open and sharable by default with certain restrictions. Data will not be shared if:
- Categorised under the negative list of datasets that won’t be shared
- Categorised under restricted access and shared only with trusted users – as defined by concerned ministry or department.
As per the policy, state governments will be free to adopt the provisions of this policy and protocols. The ministry further invited feedback and inputs on the draft policy and is open for public consultations till 8 March 2022.
“All data portals or dashboards maintained by line ministries/departments” shall be integrated through APIs or other appropriate integration mechanisms with the open government data portal, according to the document. Moreover, the technical and implementation support required shall be provided by the IDO.
Assuring the security, integrity and confidentiality of data, and preventing its misuse – the document clarified “any data sharing shall happen within the legal frameworks of India,” its national policies and legislation as well as the recognised international guidelines.
Relevance
The number of active internet users in India is expected to reach from 622 million in 2020 to 900 million by 2025, nearly a 45% jump. Come to 5G, India is likely to have 330 million subscribers by 2025 and the monthly data consumption per smartphone is expected to touch 40GB, which is nearly a three-fold jump compared to what is today.
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The data thus generated provide ample opportunities for the government to fulfil its promise of governance, provide better service delivery and innovations in sectors critical for societal transformation. Till now, data remains in silos thus benefitting no one. The absence of a well-structured mechanism for monitoring and ensuring access to quality government datasets was a kind of a drag on the digital economy. This creates a hindrance for government-to-government data sharing, sub-optimal utilisation of valuable data, and thus leads to poor planning.
Additionally, lack of meta-data and data quality standards, limited and restricted data sharing, inadequate government data capacity, absence of anonymisation and data privacy tools are some of the current challenges when it comes to data sharing and usage ecosystem in India. Against this backdrop, the time seems suitable for responsible, transparent, access and governance of data.
Way to go forward
The policy document also provides an update on some of the existing government initiatives in this domain – the National Data and Analytics Platform (NDAP) by NITI Aayog to democratise access to public government data for conducive research, innovation and policymaking; committee in 2019 to draft a framework for sharing of non-personal data (NPD) under Infosys cofounder S (Kris) Gopalakrishnan; JPC report on PDP bill etc.
India’s private sectors are the early adopters of technology and digital products, now it’s time for the government to fill the void when it comes to access to public data. Governments sit on the top of a large chunk of data, which when given access can lead to the injection of innovation for startups working in sectors such as health, energy, geo-spatial mapping and bolster the pace of the data-driven economy.
The need to make skill investments within the government for building capacity in emerging technologies, data science, analytics, security and ethics is recognised in the document policy. The time is for various stakeholders to come together, provide views and suggestions to lay the foundation for a futuristic data access and usage policy for the next decade.
Source: indiaai.gov.in
