Concerns about the capacity of the government for data sharing, definitions of non-personal data under the Draft National Data Governance Framework policy, timeline for its implementation were among the matters of discussion at a public consultation meeting on the policy held on 14th June, MediaNama has learnt. Stakeholders at the meeting were executives of government departments, industry associations, start-ups as well as academic institutions in attendance, a source present at the meeting told MediaNama. While the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) was represented by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for MeitY; Alkesh Kumar Sharma, Secretary MeitY; and Dr. Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary at MeitY. Apart from the aforementioned issues, there were also discussions on how the data will be shared with different entities, intent of the bill, other policies the government has in the works and so on. While some of these questions were answered, there were some others that the government will subsequently need to clarify on - all of which we have elaborated on below. Why it matters? The policy is significant as it largely attempts to regulate non-personal data use and sharing in the country. Released for public consultation on May 26th, the policy proposes inter-departmental sharing of data within the government, encourage similar sharing by private sector entities, instituting a “Indian Data Management Office” (IDMO) to set standards for the same and so on. Provisions on non-personal data governance have also been a part of various other regulations the government has in the works,…
