The Government of India had recently issued a draft India Data Accessibility and Use Policy for public comments. The policy documents are available here
Draft Policy : Background Note : A copy of the feedback on the policy is available here.
The India Data Accessibility Policy was meant for Central Government Ministries and public sector bodies and it was suggested that the States could adopt similar policies.
It is creditable to note that Tamil Nadu has been the first State Government off the block with its own Data Policy. This has come as a Gazette Notification and not for public comments.
Copy of the Tamil Nadu Data Policy
It appears that this TN policy has been drafted with the guiding principle of “Data For Public Good” based on the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy 2012 (NDSAP 2012)of the Government of India. The recent policy of the Central Government had been developed under a slightly modified objective which took into account the Kris Gopalakrishna Committee report and the Data Protection Bill 2021. Some of the changes that had been observed in the Central Government policy may not be available in the TN State policy. Probably it will be modified as and when necessary to accommodate the changes.
The Tamil Nadu Data Policy (TNDP) is built on 13 key principles such as
Openness,
Privacy, Ethics and Equity,
Flexibility,
Transparency,
Legal Conformity,
IPR protection,
Interoperability and Standards,
Quality,
Security,
Accountability and formal responsibility,
Sustainability and Usability
The policy would be applicable to all the public authorities under the RTI act within the State of Tamil Nadu.
The policy classifies data into 4 categories namely Personally identifiable information, Sensitive personal data, anonymised data and aggregated data. Some of the information could be made automatically available in the Open Data Portal of the Government.
The state is expected to adopt a mix of federated and centralized data storage system. The TN e Governance Agency (TNeGA) will be the nodal agency to monitor the policy. A state level Empowered Data Governance Committee chaired by the Chief Secretary will provide the strategic guidance. The CEO, TNeGA will be the State’s Chief Data Officer (CDO) and there will be a Data Inter-Departmental Committee to take operational level decisions.
A mention has been made on monetization of data also and it would be interesting to see how the Government would approach Data Valuation.
We need to appreciate the efforts of the TN Government for having come out with such a policy well before other States. We need to await and see how the policy would be implemented.
Naavi
