Context: Recently, a government committee headed by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, in a Draft Non–Personal Data Governance Framework, has suggested that non-personal data generated in the country be allowed to be harnessed by various domestic companies and entities.
Background of Data protection and regulation in India

• The importance of data is increasing in this digital age and various countries are now concerned with data regulation and protection of data. While the European Union has come out with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), in India also, the Personal Data Protection Bill has been introduced already in the Lok Sabha.
• Now, the government is focusing on the non-personal data front also and is planning to introduce a bill in that regard also.
• The recommendations of the panel have been put up for public consultation as of now.

Key Suggestions

• It has also suggested setting up of a new authority which would be empowered to monitor the use and mining of such non-personal data.
• The development comes months after central government framed a draft personal data protection bill, which aims to build a framework to preserve the sanctity of consent in data sharing, and penalize those breaching privacy norms.

What is non-personal data?

• It is any set of data which does not contain personally identifiable information. This in essence means that no individual or living person can be identified by looking at such data.
• For example, while order details collected by a food delivery service will have the name, age, gender, and other contact information of an individual, it will become non-personal data if the identifiers such as name and contact information are taken out.

Three types of data

• The government committee has classified non-personal data into three main categories, namely public non-personal data, community non-personal data and private non-personal data.
• Public non-personal data: All the data collected by government and its agencies such as census, data collected by municipal corporations on the total tax receipts or any information collected during execution of all publicly funded works.
• Community non-personal data: Any data identifiers about a set of people who have either the same geographic location, religion, job, or other common social interests.
• For example, the metadata collected by ride-hailing apps, electricity distribution companies among others have been put under the community non-personal data category by the committee.
• Private non-personal data: Produced by individuals which can be derived from application of proprietary software or knowledge.

Need

• India, with the second-largest smartphone userbase, is one of the largest data markets in the world.
• A law that regulates the sharing, commercial use and privacy of non-personal data of users will ensure that big corporations don’t end up creating data monopolies which would invariably harm smaller businesses and tech startups. 

How sensitive can non-personal data be?

• Sharing of non-personal data with private players could lead to the creation of economic value, as the data could be useful for Indian entrepreneurs to develop new and innovative services and products.
• However, in certain categories such as data related to national security such as locations of government laboratories or research facilities, even if provided in anonymised form can be dangerous.
• Similarly, even if the data is about the health of a community, though it may be in anonymised form, it can still be dangerous.
• Therefore, as per the committee, the non-personal data arising from such sensitive personal data may be considered as sensitive non-personal data.

What are the global standards on non-personal data?

• In May 2019, the European Union came out with a regulation framework for the free flow of non-personal data in the European Union, in which it suggested that member states of the union would cooperate with each other when it came to data sharing. However, the regulation, had not defined what non-personal data constituted of.
• In several other countries across the world, there are no nationwide data protection laws, whether for personal or non-personal data.

Significance of this type of data

• It will spur innovation at an unprecedented scale in the country. 
• To promote and encourage the development of domestic industry and startups that can scale their data-based businesses.
• It will  help businesses create value of their data having an economic good, not just information.
• Minimize the possibility of data monopolies