Examining the Rationale, Assumptions and Approaches to Non-Personal Data Sharing

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Globally, initiatives are being launched to explore frameworks, principles, codes, and mechanisms, for sharing non-personal data (NPD). India has also taken a step in this direction, and a committee of experts on NPD governance framework has recently released its report. One of its key recommendations pertains to sharing NPD for spurring innovation and enabling digital economy growth, with appropriate safeguards in place.

Despite being well-intentioned, the hypothesis, rationale, assumptions approach and recommendations regarding sharing of NPD appears to be ambiguous and inconsistent with the broader objective of the committee. In particular, ambiguities exist around: Need for NPD framework, scope of NPD which can be shared, purpose and process for sharing NPD, incentives required for sharing and checks and balances necessary for sharing NPD.
These issues would potentially impact a wide gamut of stakeholders such as: large international data driven businesses, domestic start-ups, medium and small enterprises, government, consumers, IT/ITES business etc., and India’s potential to leverage its digital economy.

Since discussions around NPD sharing framework in India are in their formative stage, there is a need to dispassionately examine the aforementioned issues, question the assumptions underlying the recommendations, and consider appropriate evidences, by taking a comparative and multi-stakeholder perspective.

To this end, Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) is undertaking a study with the objective of assessing and questioning the rationale and assumption of the report of Kris Gopalakrishnan Committee on NPD sharing framework, along with analysing its recommendation and approach and presenting a multi-stakeholder perspective in the Indian context.