The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) has released the ‘Draft India Data Accessibility & and Use Policy 2022.’ As per the draft policy document, all central and state government bodies will have to compulsorily share data with each other to create a common “searchable database”.
The policy document prescribes that a regulatory authority called the Indian Data Council (IDC) and an agency by the name India Data Office (IDO) will oversee framing metadata standards and enforcement, respectively. The document has proposed an IDO with the idea of streamlining and consolidating data access, and sharing of public data repositories across government and other stakeholders.
The IDO will be constituted by MeitY to streamline and consolidate data access and sharing public data repositories across the government and other stakeholders. The policy document provides an update to the existing government policies — the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) and the Open Government Data Platform (OGD) India.
The policy is open for public consultations till March 18, 2022.
The policy will apply to all data and information generated, created, collected or archived by the central government and authorised agencies. State governments can also adopt the provisions, as applicable, the draft policy document said. Every ministry will also have data management units led by chief data officers to implement the policy. The policy document provides an update to the existing government policies — the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) and the Open Government Data Platform (OGD) India.
The document further stated that the researchers, startups, enterprises, individuals and government departments will be able to access data through data licensing, sharing and valuation within the overall framework of data security and privacy.
As per the document, IDC will define frameworks for high-value data sets, finalising data standards and metadata standards, as well as reviewing the implementation of the policy, among others. Moreover, the document further informed that all government data will be open and shareable unless classified under a negative list of data sets. For restricted data sets, pricing will be decided by the owner government agency.
The draft also said a data-sharing toolkit will be provided to ministries and departments to assess and manage risks associated with data sharing and release. This framework will identify whether specific data sets qualify for releases, restricted sharing or negative lists, in addition to defining mechanisms and required degree of anonymisation.
