National Data Governance Framework- step towards a Digital Government Architecture

National Data Governance Framework- step towards a Digital Government Architecture

The revised National Data Governance Framework is a replacement for the scrapped Draft India Data Accessibility & Use Policy, 2022 after it received strong criticism.

As the Country is moving towards digitised governance, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology introduced a revised National Data Governance Framework Policy (NDGF) with an aim to harness the effectiveness of a Digital Government. The current management of digital government data is inconsistent, thereby impeding an innovative ecosystem of data science, analytics, and AI from emerging to its full potential.

The aim objective of NDGF is to modernise and transform Government's data collection and management processes and systems through standardised guidelines, rules, and standards for collecting, processing, and storing government data. It further intends to catalase AI and data-led research and start-up ecosystem by creating a large repository of India datasets.

Launching non-personal data based on the India datasets program will ensure that all non-personal and anonymised data for both government and private entities are be available for research and innovation.

With its applicability across all government departments and entities, rules, and standards, the NDGF aims to lock all the non-personal data stored by different government entities in a consistent and sustainable manner.

India Data Management Office (IDMO) will be formulated under the Digital India Corporation (DIC) which will be responsible for framing, mangling, and periodically reviewing the policy. It will formulate data/datasets/metadata, rules, standards, and guidelines after consultation with the Ministry, State Government, and Industry.

Therefore the role of the IDMO will be:

1. Data Storage and Retention- comprehensive rules and standards will be developed to help ministries and departments to define their data storage.

2. Government to Government Data Access- a standard mechanism for inter-governmental data access will be developed.

3. India Dataset Programme consists of non-personal anonymised datasets from the Government which has been collected from citizens of India or from those in India. The data collected will be available for research and development. However, it shall also be ensured that such data will be anonymised.

4. IDMO will ensure the maintenance of data quality and metadata standards.

5. A Redressal Mechanism will be established for the citizens to make requests to access datasets and register a grievance. It shall also ensure transparency and accountability in the departments.

6. There will be policy monitoring and enforcement of rules and standards from time to time.

The Ministry is currently inviting feedback and input on the NDGF draft which is currently put up for public consultation.