India’s proposed non-personal data regulator will be designed following consultation and roundtables with industries, government agencies, Big Tech companies, and consumer groups, among others, said Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar in conversation with The Indian Express. "We will not decide the design and composition of the IDMO [India Data Management Office] in this ministry alone," Chandrasekhar reiterated. The Indian Data Management Office was proposed in May’s draft National Data Governance Framework Policy (NDGF), which seeks to harness government and start-up-related non-personal data through building "a vast repository of anonymised, non-personal data obtained from government ministries, departments and organisations, alongside anonymised data voluntarily disclosed by private entities". The standard-setting body would be responsible for regulating how start-ups and researchers access and use government-related data, particularly under the proposed ‘India Datasets’ platform. Why it matters: As MediaNama has previously reported, little information was provided on how the IDMO will be formed, or who will preside over it. This raised concerns over "arbitrary executive action" in the body, in addition to concerns around the definitions of "non-personal data" used by the government as well as its capacity to share this data. These transparency issues were somewhat addressed by Chandrasekhar’s comments—at least for now, stakeholders can breathe easy that institution-building, in this case, may be collaborative. How has the government dealt with non-personal data in the past? In 2020, the Kris Gopalakrishnan Committee, tasked with developing a non-personal data governance framework, defined non-personal data as "any data that is not related to an…
