The government is planning to establish a national centre for data governance to hold all public data. It also plans to set up guidelines for the management, sharing and monetisation of this data.
Public data for this purpose means freely available data that is collated by various agencies or companies in the course of their operations and which can be traded without restrictions or be used for public utility purposes.
According to a report by The Economic Times the data can be accessed by state agencies or start-ups through this facility.
“This division will be more about guidelines, standards, interactions and so on. This could be housed in the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and all community data — not personal data, but public data, including anonymous data — would fall under the purview of this centre,” said a government official in the report.
The official added that all personal data-related issues would fall under the purview of the proposed personal data protection law that is expected to be introduced in Parliament soon.
The report quotes another official stating that this centre will help end the confusion over which wing of the government actually handles matters related to data. At the moment, data matters are handled mainly by three agencies – MeitY, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Commerce Ministry.
He also said that the centre will interact with all other government agencies who need any data.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)