The revised draft of the NPD Governance Framework, which aims to create processes for sharing non personal data for larger social and economic benefit, is a step in the right direction. The draft has taken inputs from over 1500 submissions on the earlier report, and has directly engaged with some of the key concerns.
In this regard, The Dialogue held a Virtual Stakeholder Consultation on Future of India’s Data Governance Policies on January 19, 2021 from 1500hrs to 1800hrs which saw participation from across industry with nearly 100 attendees.
The Consultation began with the launch of the report titled: “Impact Study: PDP Bill 2019 on the Start-up ecosystem”, which was followed by a panel discussion on the recently released version of the Non Personal Data Governance Framework.
The impact report aims to study the pain points with the Bill in the current form, that is under the scrutiny of the Joint Parliamentary Committee. The study aims to understand the startup ecosystem with respect to personal data protection in India. It has original analysis conducted by the team at The Dialogue, by combining inputs collected over the course of 2020 from startups, with existing literature that was reviewed throughout the process.
This was followed by an in-depth discussion on the recently released second version of the draft NPD Framework.. The report recommends to exclude the provisions concerning non-personal data namely S. 91(2) and S. 93(x) from the ambit of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019. The framework envisages a harmonious correlation with the PDP bill but at the same time recommends the two concepts to be mutually exclusive. The report further introduced a new concept of High Value Datasets (HVDs) which serves as infrastructure to facilitate the use of data for public good. The report also restricts the purpose of data sharing to public good purposes citing that mechanisms for sharing of data for sovereign and business purposes already exist. The report also recognises IP protection for NPD datasets which could qualify the respective threshold under the existing IP laws.
The consultation aimed to cover the various themes that arise from the report, that are key for effective implementation of the framework. The panellists spoke of the nature of power the data trustees yield, the concept of HVDs, the privacy risks in sharing of anonymised data, the data sharing and stewardship, and structure of the NPDA, among others.
