The Economic survey talks about data as a public good. (Image source: PTI)The Economic Survey 2018-2019 has been released a day before the annual Budget is presented in the Parliament. This time the Economic Survey also talks about the use of data as a public good and refers to data as “Of the People, By the People, For the People.”
The Economic Survey outlines the path that can be taken to ensure that data that the government already possesses be put to better use in order to ensure greater welfare benefits, and bring more efficiency to the entire system of governance. Though it notes that all of this should be within the legal framework of data privacy, and not compromise individual privacy.
It acknowledges that any data which is disseminated needs to be “stripped of personal identifiers and aggregated,” in order to protect user privacy. One way in which data can become a public good would be by merging the various distinct datasets that are held by government already, in order to create a number of benefits, as proposed in the survey.
It notes that social sectors of the economy, “such as education and healthcare, have lagged the commercial sectors in exploiting data.” The survey explains that data is useful as a whole, rather than the sum of its parts, meaning when it is married with other data.
It also proposes how data collected by various ministries could be under one central database, and other ministries would be able to access it, though any changes in the data can only be made by the ministry concerned.
The challenges to this kind of data collection are also highlighted and the survey notes that currently in India the process of data collection is highly decentralised. It also calls on each department to “appropriately treat private data and public data with the standards they require,” but it does not go in to details on what these standards will be.
Read more: Explained: Economic Survey 2019 — new ideas to policy prescriptions
The survey also outlines three critical features in order to ensure efficiency for the integrated system. One would be that the ministry can manipulate only those data fields for which it is responsible, second all data should be uploaded in real time without impacting other ministries’ access and most importantly, “the database should be secure with absolutely no room for tampering”.
According to the survey, the focus with the plan is not to gather “new information”, but to focus on efficiency with existing data.
The survey admits that the kind of system proposed would need a “robust data infrastructure.” It also talks about how the government could consider giving the data to private players, provided privacy is not compromised. “However, after obfuscating all personally identifiable information, if this data is shared with the private sector, government can harness the skills and enthusiasm of data analytics professionals to gain the maximum possible insights from the data,” says the survey.
According to the economic survey, there would be several advantages with this kind of proposed system as the government would be able to “retrieve authentic data and documents instantly” and “improve targeting in welfare schemes and subsidies by reducing both inclusion and exclusion errors.”
“The private sector may be granted access to select databases for commercial use. Consistent with the notion of data as a public good, there is no reason to preclude commercial use of this data for profit,” says the survey, though it recommends charging them for the use of this data.
It also adds that “stringent technological mechanisms exist to safeguard data privacy and confidentiality even while allowing the private sector to benefit from the data.”
