A new India Data Office, an Indian Data Council & the ideas of High, Medium and Low Value Public Data. Unpacking the brand-new data policy and assessing it after 2 years.
In February 2022, the Union Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MEITy) released "India Data Accessibility & Use policy 2022" which aims at harnessing and monetizing the value of the public datasets available with various branches of governments.
According to this policy, government aims at radical transformation of our nation’s ability to harness public sector data for catalyzing large scale social transformation.
Data sharing shall happen with-in Indian legal framework, current and future policies and legislations and recognized international guidelines.
The policy intends to unlock the value of data sharing ecosystem through –
Increased accessibility to and use of public data.
Efficient policy strategies.
Robust service delivery.
Streamlining of inter-government data sharing.
Capacity building of Government personnel.
Greater participation from Citizens vis-a-vis open data.
Enhanced information security in case of R&D data.
Increased availability of high-value datasets of national importance.
Compliance mechanism for data sharing
Applicability
This policy applies to all data and information created/generated/collected/archived either directly by the Government of India or through authorized agencies by various ministries, departments and autonomous bodies.
State governments are free to adopt provisions of this policy along-with necessary protocols applicable.
Based on which principles?
The policy is based on 12 principles, they are –
Open public data accessibility by default.
Transparency in operations.
Interoperable, integrated and technology agnostic.
User-centric practices and systems.
Risk management over risk avoidance.
Trust building of all stakeholders.
Privacy and Security by design.
Well-defined accountability for all stakeholders.
Equal and non-discriminatory access.
Regulatory clarity and structured enforcement.
Proactive data sharing to augment innovation and research.
Protection of intellectual property
What is the Framework and how does it work?
India Data Office (IDO) shall be established by the Union Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeITy).
IDO’s objective is to streamline and consolidate data access and sharing public data repositories across the government and other stakeholders.
All Ministries and Departments shall have Data Management Units (DMUs) headed by Chief Data Officers.
DMUs shall work closely with IDO to ensure effective implementation of this policy.
Indian Data Council (IDC) shall be established whose objective is to undertake tasks that require deliberations across ministries, departments and State Governments.
IDC finalizes the frameworks related to –
High Value Datasets.
Data and Meta-data standards and their definitions.
The overall policy implementation and review.
IDC comprises an Indian Data Officer and CDOs of Departments of Government of India or State Governments.
IDC will be supported by a dedicated unit to,
■ Co-ordinate data sharing across ministries.
■ Provide technical support.
■ Performance evaluation and review.
Through IDO, various stakeholders like researchers, start-ups, enterprises, individuals and government departments shall have access to enriched data.
All data under government and its subsidiaries will be open and shareable by default unless they are categorized under,
○ a negative list of datasets that cannot be shared.
○Restricted access and shared only with trusted users as defined under a controlled environment.
What are High Value Datasets (HVDs)?
HVDs are those public datasets that contain non-PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data/information of users in a given public domain and context.
The policy proposes design of an indicative framework for identification of HVDs. This shall be done by IDC.
HVDs shall be defined as per their –
Degree of importance in market.
Degree of socio-economic benefits.
Impact on India’s AI strategy, and
Performance on key global indices.
All governments, ministries and departments shall adopt HVD framework to identify, publish and maintain their high-value datasets.
Pricing & Licensing policy
Free access to minimally processed datasets in order to promote innovation, research and development.
To promote innovation and unlock the potential value of data, certain detailed datasets that underwent value addition may be valued appropriately by the owner departments, ministries, of Union and State Governments and their subsidiaries.
Just licensing frameworks and valuation models to be adopted that enable fair price discovery and promote data sharing.
Prospects regarding the restricted access data sharing shall be decided by the owner of data i.e. government and its departments/agencies.
Current Status
All the data across the criteria mentioned above under this policy should have been made available on https://www.data.gov.in/ we evaluated 56 categories of crucial data ranging across the departments of ministries of Home Affairs, External Affairs, Corporate Affairs, Agriculture, Fisheries & Dairy Development, Corporate Affairs, Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, Municipal Administration & Urban Development, Railways, Electronics & Information Technology, Youth Affairs among others. Most of the essential data has been made available and new data is being added, however, some crucial information pertaining to unspent CSR funds, production and yield rates of cash crops, active no. of cold storages district-wise, district-wise & mandal-wise agro-stats related to urea usage, fertilizer accessibility, cases of farmer suicides, crime records, case and trial pendency at district-level among other such critical data has not been made available to the general public via this portal.
We are currently seeking information from the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology on the total revenue generated under this policy, the number of high/medium/low value raw data files, formats identified and published on the data portal and the same that is yet to be published or had been classified under negative lists, the number and nature of the stakeholders who accessed or have been provided access to high-value public data along-with the performance and impact studies held so far w.r.t this policy and the reports associated with it to better understand its effectiveness and limitations. We will update this blog as soon as new information is available.
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