Context: The government committee headed by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan has suggested that non-personal data generated in India need to be allowed to be harnessed by various domestic companies and entities.
Gopalakrishnan Committee

• The Committee was constituted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) on 13th September, 2019
• Purpose: Developing a governance framework for non-personal data and ensure wide sharing and availability of data in society.
• Non personal data: Set of data which does not contain personally identifiable information. This means that no individual or living person can be identified by looking at such data. The committee has classified non-professional data in to three main categories
• Public non- professional data: It involves all the data collected by the government and its agencies during execution of all publicly funded works.
• Community non-personal data: It involves any data identifiers about a set of people who have either the same geographic location, religion, job, or other common social interests.
• Private non-personal data: It can be defined as those which are produced by individuals which can be derived from application of proprietary software or knowledge.

Issues involved

• Favoring big tech companies: Only big tech companies possess the capital and infrastructure to create such large volumes of data.
• Data monopoly: Some companies with the largest data pools have ‘outsized, unbeatable techno-economic advantages’ owing to first mover’s advantage, network effects and enormous data volumes which have been collected over years. These act as entry barriers for startups and new companies.

Gopalakrishnan Committee key recommendations

• Data availability: Treat data as infrastructure, or ‘commons’, so that data are widely available for all businesses.
• Community Ownership: Sharing of non-personal data, as it may be useful for Indian entrepreneurs to develop new and innovative services or products to benefit citizens.
• Reducing dependency: With a robust domestic data/AI industry, dependence on U.S. and Chinese companies will reduce.4
• Addressing monopoly: Separating the infrastructural elements of digital service provision from the business of digital service delivery.
• Separate national legislation and a separate authority to oversee non-personal data.

Different roles in the NPD ecosystem

• Data Principal: This is essentially the entity/individual to whom the collected data pertains.
• Data custodian: The entity that undertakes collection, storage and processing of data, keeping in mind best interest of the data principal.
• Data trustee: Data trusts are data infrastructures that will enable data sharing, sector-wise, or across sectors, and which can be run by various kinds of third-party bodies.

Road Ahead

• India is the first country to come up with a comprehensive framework in this area. It will set the stage for building a strong, and competitively diverse, domestic data/AI industry in India.