Settle The Principles of Data Sharing First of Data Sharing First

Context: The Kris Gopalakrishnan panel’s report on the regulation of non-personal data opens up a debate on defining information as a public good. 

Findings and Suggestions for the report: 

• Defined “non- personal data”: as that which is either devoid of people’s details or anonymized to prevent individual identification.
• Proposed a new Data Authority: to regulate “non-personal data”.
• Outlined the need for a framework: that would require companies to share its databanks with others -
• To help the country catalyze business innovation

• • • To bolster India’s startup ecosystem,
    • To help governments and local authorities frame data-enriched public policies.

• Emphasised on pre-emption of data monopolies: India's nascent online population has rapidly attracted investors with huge sums of capital to deploy.

Facts about Significance of Data:

• The world generates over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, a significant chunk of which is valuable.
• Multiple successes: Data has been used for: Yielding market patterns, Traffic predictions, Epidemic risks.
• Presence of Monopoly: Early movers in the space of data collections have so much of it stored that rivals cannot catch up.

Challenges to the implementation of the report:

• Risks of arbitrariness: Disclosure of data from a private entity must follow a certain set of principles. 
• Challenge to competition: Disclosure of data might reduce the strategic edge of private entities over their competitors. 
• Confidential learning could be appropriated by the intrusive data authority.

Way Forward: Regulate it, but don’t let arbitrary authority ruin the idea.

• A clear set of guidelines could be set down that specify what sort of data qualifies as a public good and must be kept open to all.
• Evolve a market mechanism: For other kinds of data, that lets various parties bid for privately-held information.