MoS Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Hindustan Times that the Indian government would share anonymized data sets collected and harmonized under the National Data Governance Framework with Indian startups and researchers to innovate systems and create better policy solutions.  

Chandrasekhar said that it would be a far-reaching policy that would harmonize all undefended silos of data, data management, and data processing so that standards and rules- how to store, manage access, control and security- will form an administrative part of the policy and its first pillar. 

The minister conveyed that the policy has been set to the cabinet of ministers for its final nod. India so far has no policy to govern anonymized or non-personal data. A committee was set up to review the matter under former Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan. The report was submitted last year.  

According to Chandrasekhar, these standards will be set by the India Data Management Office (IDMO). In addition, the framework policy is working on ways to store and share the data. 

The draft policy, as reported first by HY on April 9, elaborates on the overall objective of the new framework. The draft will be the “first step in catalyzing the era of Digital Government”, providing “greater scope for better, more informed decision making… while adhering to the highest data protection standards and commitment to the principles of data privacy”, said the draft. 

A core component of the data governance framework will be forming an Indian Data Management Office (IDMO) under the IT ministry. 

Chandrasekhar stressed that the anonymized data sets would be offered as part of the Indian data sets will be offered as part of the India data sets program to the AI ecosystem. So, it will be an enabler for the digital economy. 

The datasets will be provided for governance research which even the government can use to create better-targeted policies.