Unshackling India’s data for Growth and Welfare : Daily Current Affairs

Date: 29/03/2023

Relevance: GS-2: Government Policies and Interventions for Development in various sectors and Issues arising out of their Design and Implementation.

Key Phrases: Technology landscape, Delivery of Services, Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022, Committee of Experts on Non-Personal Data Governance Framework, Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture, Societal cooperation, Public discourse.

Context:

Data is the defining word of the 21st century technology landscape — powering a variety of personalized services by linking granular data from many sources and permeating our collective consciousness.
- In the realm of governance as well, citizens expect seamless and coordinated delivery of services by the government.

Key Highlights:

The report by the Committee of Experts on Non-Personal Data Governance Framework (NPD Report), and the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) paper released by NITI Aayog have built on the concept of data’s benefits.
- Data as a beneficial good was also covered in the Economic Survey 2019, which proposed that data gathered by governments on issues of social interest ought to be democratized in the interest of social welfare, or made a public good.
Data is a critical component for measurable and actionable governance and policy perspectives, as well as for triggering innovation and growth.
- Data to enhance ease of living and efficiency has been addressed through several Government of India initiatives, including the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile or JAM trinity, the Open Government Data Platform of India, and the National Judicial Data Grid.
As Covid-19 demonstrated, governments today require multiple departments and their frontline functionaries to collaborate and share data to respond to a wide range of complex challenges.
- As per OECD, 2019 studies, data access and sharing can help generate social and economic benefits worth between 0.1 percent and 1.5 percent of GDP in the case of public-sector data.

Data as a public Good:

While sharing data between departments has always been a ‘North Star’, initiatives in this vein have not borne much fruit as the integration has often been done on aggregated data.
- Such aggregated data lose sight of local issues essential for effective targeting of beneficiaries and assessing the impact of policies.
The initial emphasis on digitisation in government was on making specific legacy functions more transparent through data.
Later, the thrust of digitisation shifted to real time integration of a basket of functional data.

Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) Paper:

The DEPA paper states how the architecture “flows from the Centre’s overarching position that data is primarily an economic good”.
Its key goal is empowering individuals with control over their personal data, through a robust and dynamic regulatory, legislative, and institutional framework, supported by technology design for secure data-sharing.
The DEPA platform’s availability as a public good allows market players across the financial and technology ecosystems as well as new entrepreneurs to have the chance to leverage and build on this digital platform.
- As the paper states, the problem is not that companies are benefiting from the data of individuals; the problem is that individuals and small firms do not benefit.

Non-Personal Data (NPD) Report:

Data, especially non-personal data, is a vital component for elevating transparency and good governance.
The NPD Report emphasizes its importance from a public good perspective.
- At the intersection of big data and good governance, access to current big data sets also helps provide opportunities to quickly address issues in new technology-led solutions.

Concerns:

When weighing the risks and rewards of using big data sets for good governance, what needs to remain contextual is that adequate protections are being afforded to the community and individuals.
- The utility of raw/factual data sets comprising anonymised user information data that is collected is also crucial.

Need of Hour:

The evolution of digitisation in government from an initial focus on specific functions in departments to core departmental operations needs to be taken to its logical conclusion by enabling real time sharing of granular data between departments.
- Privacy and security standards should be evolved and adhered to for safeguarding citizens’ data.
- To do this, we must concurrently engender an architectural shift, a mindset shift and an administrative shift.
- Departments need to shift their mindset to treating data as a ‘product’ rather than just a by-product of their operations.
Sharing will be accomplished by each department publishing a data catalogue (metadata) and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) — enabling a system that is at once agile, robust and secure.
In order to facilitate this, the following administrative steps need to be taken.
- First, the quality of publishing of curated data fields to the central catalogue needs to be tracked at the highest levels of government with departmental Service Level Agreements (SLAs) defined.
- Second, data scientists need to be embedded in a distributed manner across departments and empowered by a direct reporting line to the head of the department.
- Finally, the centralized aspects of data governance should be carried out by a Central Metadata and Governance Authority.
Government must intervene in creating data as a public good, especially of the poor and in social sectors.
- Merging the distinct datasets held by the Government already would generate multiple benefits.

Conclusion:

Society’s optimal consumption of data is higher than ever given technological advances in gathering and storage of data.
- As data of societal interest is generated by the people, data can be created as a public good within the legal framework of data privacy.
To ensure optimum governance outcomes, access to and utilization of big data is going to be key.
- This will benefit Indian society from an ease of living perspective.
- It will also spur the overall achievement of ease of doing business along with world-leading innovation in India.