Inside India's draft data sharing policy

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has proposed data sharing among all central and state government departments to create a "searchable database" in its draft policy.

This, according to the document, will minimise duplication of data processing efforts and enable better delivery of citizen centric services.

The draft, India Data Accessibility and Use Policy, also suggests that certain detailed datasets that have undergone "value addition" and "transformation" may be "valued appropriately" by government bodies to promote innovation and unlock the value potential of data.

"Minimally processed datasets shall be made available at no cost to promote innovation and research & development," the draft reads.

The draft document, released on Monday, also proposed setting up of India Data Office (IDO) by MeitY with an objective to streamline and consolidate data access and sharing of public data repositories.

"Through the IDO, stakeholders including researchers, startups, enterprises, individuals and government departments will be able to access enriched data through mechanisms for data licensing, sharing, and valuation within the overall framework of data security and privacy," it says.

As per the proposed draft, all ministries and departments should have Data Management Units headed by Chief Data Officers which will work closely with India Data Office for ensuring implementation of the data policy.

"India Data Council - comprising India Data Officer and Chief Data Officers of departments of Government of India and state governments - shall be constituted with an objective of undertaking tasks that require deliberations across ministries, departments and state governments. This shall include but not limited to defining frameworks for defining High Value Datasets, finalizing data standards and metadata standards as also reviewing the implementation of the policy," it says.

The India Data Office will coordinate closely with line ministries and states to identify and accelerate access to high value data (HVD) housed with these custodians, according to the draft document.

The draft policy said that a data-sharing toolkit will be provided to all ministries and departments to help assess and optimally manage risk associated with data sharing and release.

While all government data shall be open and shareable by default, datasets falling under the "negative list" will not be shared. Databases under the "restricted access" will be shared only with "trusted users" which will be defined by the concerned ministries and their departments.

"For restricted access data sharing as per the licensing model adopted, pricing of datasets will be decided by the owner government department or agency and must be notified in a transparent manner," it says.

The policy, which is open for public consultations till March 18, comes over two years after the government formed a committee under the chairmanship of Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan to suggest the framework of non-personal data protection.

In December 2021, a Joint Parliamentary Committee had made a slew of recommendations in its report on the changes that should be included in the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019.