FM announces National Data Governance Policy to enable access to anonymised data

New Delhi [India], February 1 (ANI): During the Union Budget speech on Wednesday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a National Data Governance Policy, which will enable access to anonymised data. The Finance Minister said this will unleash innovation and research by start-ups and academia.

The Finance Minister also announced that an Entity DigiLocker will be set up for use by MSMEs, large businesses and charitable trusts for storing and sharing documents online securely, whenever needed, with various authorities, regulators, banks and other business entities.

Anonymisation is a data processing technique that removes or modifies personally identifiable information; it results in anonymised data that cannot be associated with any one individual.

On fifth-generation mobile system (5G) services, Sitharaman also announced that one hundred labs for developing applications using 5G services will be set up in engineering institutions to realise a new range of opportunities, business models, and employment potential. “The labs will cover, among others, applications such as smart classrooms, precision farming, intelligent transport systems, and health care applications,” she added.

During the Budget, FM Sitharaman also announced that the government will establish three centres of artificial intelligence (AI) at institutions with the help of private players in the industry. As part of the National Data Governance Policy framework, a platform will be designed which will process requests and provide access to non-personal and/or anonymised datasets to Indian researchers and start-ups.

Earlier, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) had issued a draft policy on the same but retracted it after the ministry faced widespread criticism over planning to monetise sharing of data. The new (current) draft does not have provisions for data monetisation.

With this, the government will also set up the India’s ‘Datasets’ programme, which will consist of non-personal and anonymised datasets from government entities that have collected data from Indian citizens or those in India. The policy said that private entities will be encouraged to share such data.