An eight-paneled committee appointed by the Government of India has recommended that India needs a new data regulator to supervise the sharing, monetization and privacy of information collected online. The committee’s head is Kris Gopalakrishnan, who co-founded IT services firm Infosys Ltd.
The 72-page report by this committee named US giants Facebook, Amazon.com, Uber Technologies and Google as the beneficiaries of first-mover advantages and network effects that have ‘left many new entrants and start-ups being squeezed and faced with significant entry barriers.’
Read on to find out more…
India’s Growing Digital Economy Needs A New Data Regulator Say Experts!
When countries around the world have tightened data protection within their borders, India is making amends to draft and reinforce policies to govern its flourishing digital economy. The country already has a bill in place for governing the use of personal data.
In the report seen by Bloomberg News, the experts’ committee said that “market forces on their own will not bring about the maximum social and economic benefits from data for the society” and identified key issues that a new regulator would have to tackle.
The report advises that the new regulator would have to ensure that all stakeholders follow rules, provide data when legitimate requests are made, evaluate risks of re-identification of anonymized personal data and also help level the playing field for businesses.
The rules proposed in the report would govern collection, analysis, sharing, distribution of gains, as well as the destruction of the non-personal data.
Many firms involved in collection, processing, storing, or managing data were consulted by the committee prior to the drafting of the report. The firms in question may include e-commerce, internet and technology services, health companies.
This latest report recommends adding the non-personal data regulator via legislation as well.
More About the New Proposed Non-Personal Data Regulator!
The regulator’s envisioned role in facilitating data sharing would be to stimulate innovation, economic growth and social wellbeing and lessen the discriminatory effects of the first-mover advantages.
The non-personal data that this regulator is going to oversee refers to information that does not include any details such as name, age or address that could be used to identify an individual. It basically comprises data that was initially personal but later aggregated and made anonymous.
The aim of this move is to provide certainty for existing businesses and incentives for the creation of new ones, so as to tap the ‘enormous’ social and public value from data, the report said.
The committee recommended creating a new ‘data business’ classification for the above-mentioned firms that collect, process, store, or manage data. Data businesses are predicted as encompassing various industry sectors.
The report said, “The compliance process will be lightweight and fully digital.”
The report also said, “Just like the economic rights to natural resources arising from a community are considered to primarily belong to it, the value of social resources of Community Non-Personal Data should primarily accrue to it (instead of the default whereby data custodians take up the entire value of such data).”
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