Authors: Joanne D’Cunha and Bilal Mohamed
On 26th May 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), released the Draft National Data Governance Framework Policy (NDG Policy) for feedback and public comments. CCG submitted its comments on the NDG Policy, highlighting its feedback and key concerns with the proposed Data Governance Framework. The comments were authored by Joanne D’Cunha and Bilal Mohamed, and reviewed and edited by Jhalak M. Kakkar and Shashank Mohan.
The draft National Data Governance Framework Policy is a successor to the draft ‘India Data Accessibility and Use’ Policy, which was circulated in February 2022 for public comments and feedback. Among other objectives, the NDG policy aims to “enhance access, quality, and use of data to enable a data-led governance” and “catalyze AI and Data led research and start-up ecosystem”.
CCG’s comments to the MeitY are divided into five parts –
In Part I, of the comments we foreground our concerns by emphasising the need for comprehensive data protection legislation to safeguard citizens from potential privacy risks before implementing a policy around non-personal data governance.
In Part II, we focus on the NDG Policy’s objectives, scope, and key terminologies. We highlight that the NDG Policy lacks in sufficiently defining key terms and phrases such as non personal data, anonymisation, data usage rights, Open Data Portal, Chief Data Officers (CDOs), datasets ecosystem, and ownership of data. Having clear definitions will bring in much needed clarity and help stakeholders appreciate the objectives and implications of the policy. This also improves engagement from the stakeholders including the government in the policy consultation process. This also enhances engagement from the stakeholders, including the various government departments, in the policy consultation process. We also highlight that the policy does not illustrate how it will intersect and interact with other proposed data governance frameworks such as the Data Protection Bill 2021 and the Non Personal Data Governance Framework. We express our concerns around the NDG Policy’s objective of cataloguing datasets for increased processing and sharing of data matching with the aim to deploy AI more efficiently. It relies on creating a repository of data to further analytics, and AI and data led research. However, it does not take into consideration that increasing access to data might not be as beneficial if computational powers of the relevant technologies are inadequate. Therefore, it may be more useful if greater focus is placed on developing computing abilities as opposed to increasing the quantum of data used.
In Part III, we focus on the privacy risks, highlighting concerns around the development and formulation of anonymisation standards given the threat of re-identification from the linkage of different datasets. This, we argue, can pose significant risks to individual privacy, especially in the absence of a data protection legislation that can provide safeguards and recognise individual rights over personal data. In addition to individual privacy harms, we also point to the potential for collective harms from using aggregated data. To this end, we suggest the creation of frameworks that can keep up with the increased risks of reidentification posed by new and emerging technologies.
Part IV of our comments explores the institutional framework and regulatory structure of the proposed India Data Management Office. The proposed IDMO is responsible for framing, managing, reviewing, and revising the NDG Policy. Key concerns on the IDMO’s functioning pertain to the exclusion of technical experts and representatives of civil society and industry in the IDMO. There is also ambiguity on the technical expertise required for Chief Digital Officers of the Digital Management Units of government departments and ministries, and the implementation of the redressal mechanism. In this section, we also highlight the need for a framework within the Policy to define how user charges will be determined for data access. This is particularly relevant to ensure that access to datasets is not skewed and is available to all for the public good.
You can read our full submission to the ministry here.
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