[Answered] Draft data accessibility policy can pave the way for a radical change in sharing public data for the greater good. Do you agree with the statement? Give arguments in support of your answer.

“Draft India Data Accessibility & Use Policy, 2022 by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology aims to radically transform India’s ability to harness public sector data. The draft makes data collected, generated, and stored by every government ministry and the department open and shareable. It allows sharing of public data with various domestic companies and entities.

What are the radical changes proposed by the data accessibility policy in sharing public data for the greater good?

• India Data Office (IDO), Data Management Units will be established. These institutions will streamline and unify data access and sharing among government and other stakeholders.
• The policy will unlock the high value of data sets across the economy. Equal and non-discriminatory access will be provided to data.
• The private sector may be granted access to select databases for commercial use. It will unlock new and profitable avenues.
• Under the draft, all data and information generated by the central government and authorized agencies will be covered thereby improving policymaking and service delivery
• It will bring a radical change in innovation and research purposes by sharing the data

Concerns and Way Forward:

Amid all this there exist certain Issues that need to be addressed under the policy. Some of them are mentioned as below:

• There is lack of certain definitions like High Value data sets which opens them up to misinterpretation therefore there is needed to categorize such data sets properly.
• Privacy related concerns: Even past experiences in data sharing are not encouraging. For example, the transport ministry had to scrap the bulk data sharing policy, 2019 citing potential misuse of personal information and privacy issues.
• Draft policy does not contain any proposals for the creation of a legal framework that governs data sharing. As per the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy judgment on the fundamental right to privacy, the first ingredient to satisfy constitutionality is the existence of a legal, more often a legislative, basis.
• Anonymization tool proposed by draft is not suitable. As per Luc Rocher and co-authors at the Oxford Internet Institute even heavily sampled anonymised datasets are unlikely to satisfy the modern standards for anonymisation set forth by GDPR.

Thus, any new policy related to data use must be framed carefully, keeping in view the rights and digital needs  of users.