A Missed Opportunity

Context: The Gopalakrishnan Committee report does not adequately address governance frameworks around government data sets

Arguments for “open” data for citizens

• Improve transparency and accountability of State: This is one of the reasons why the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, mandates the disclosure of government data on a suo moto basis.
• Return the favour: if taxpayer money has funded any of the data sets, then it is an obligation of the state to return the fruits of that funding to the taxpayer.
• Avoid duplication: By permitting the reuse of government data sets
• To increased confidence in data quality and increased usage
• Free flow of information can have beneficial effects on society in general

Existing Governmental Measures to Ensure Data Sharing:

• Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005
• Digital India Policy: One of the nine pillars of the policy is “information for all”.
• National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP), 2012: Requires all non-sensitive information held by public authorities to be made publicly accessible
• Data Platforms:
• To provide open access to data sets held by ministries and other agencies of the government.
• Various States have also either created their own data portals or have provided data sets to the Open Government Data Platform.

Failure to create an open data society

• Low quality and quantity of data sets published by the government
• General reticence of the government: to make valuable information sets available to the public, reasons for which are:
  • Lack of clarity in some of the provisions of the NDSAP
  • Inability to enforce guidelines appropriately: This leads to inconsistent, incomplete, outdated data sets.
• Missed opportunity by Gopalakrishnan Committee: The report largely focuses on the dangers posed by data collection by private sector entities, ignoring the evaluation of existing policies and practices.
  • For, E. it failed to evaluate the issues related to surveillance, data privacy and inadequate cybersecurity while Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee warned about the growing power of the state.

Conclusion: The incremental approach to perceived problems should engender greater trust in data governance practices and allow the development of state capacity to govern the data ecosystem.