New Delhi: 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 that this will encourage innovation and research by start-ups and academicians. The Finance Minister also announced that an Entity DigiLocker will be set up for use by MSMEs, large businesses and charitable trusts to securely store and share documents online when needed. , with various authorities, regulators, banks and other business entities.
Anonymization is a data processing technique that removes or modifies personally identifiable information; This results in anonymous data that cannot be linked to any one individual. On fifth generation mobile system (5G) services, Sitharaman also announced that one hundred laboratories for developing applications using 5G services will be set up in engineering institutions to realize a new range of opportunities, business models and employment potential. will be established.
“The laboratories will include applications such as smart classrooms, precision farming, intelligent transportation systems and health care applications,” he added. During the budget, FM Sitharaman also announced that the government will set up three centers of artificial intelligence (AI) in institutions with the help of private players in the industry. As part of the National Data Governance Policy Framework, a platform will be created to process requests and provide access to non-personal and/or anonymized datasets to Indian researchers and start-ups.
Earlier, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had released a draft policy on the same but withdrew it after the ministry faced widespread criticism over the data sharing plan. The new (current) draft does not have provisions for data monetization.
Along with this, the government will also set up a ‘Datasets’ program of India, which will include non-personal and anonymised datasets from government entities that have collected data from Indian citizens or people present in India. The policy states that private entities will be encouraged to share such data.
