Real cost of data

News: The Government of India has released a  policy document called “Draft India Data Accessibility & Use Policy 2022”.

About the Draft India Data Accessibility & Use Policy, 2022

What are the challenges associated with the policy?

Privacy:  Proposed draft legislation gives the government sweeping powers to collect data for broad purposes. If government departments share data with each other, government’s surveillance power increases. Monetization of data gives further incentive to collect more data.

Although this law deals with government departments only, the data protection bill provides the government with the power to request private data. This could lead to issues as private businesses run on IP and secrecy of technology and data.

Anonymous data:  The issue with anonymous data is that though identifiers have been removed, anonymous data can be de-anonymized. This is more possible where there are multiple data sets with metadata that are connected to each other. E.g. one may combine data from the clinic, diagnostic center, and medical store to form a complete picture.

Source: This post is based on the article “Real cost of data” published in the Business Standard on 25th February 2022.