The European Commission has recently released a “European strategy for data… to ensure the human-centric development of Artificial Intelligence” and a white paper on artificial intelligence.

EU data strategy

• The new documents present a timeline for various projects, legislative frameworks, and initiatives by the European Union, and represent its recognition that it is slipping behind American and Chinese innovation.
• The strategy lays out “why the EU should act now”.
• The blueprint hopes to strengthen Europe’s local technology market by creating a “data single market” by 2030 to allow the free flow of data within the EU.
• To aid a “data-agile economy”, the Commission hopes to implement an “enabling legislative framework for the governance of common European data spaces” by the latter half of the year.
• By the beginning of 2021, the Commission will make high-value public sector data available free through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) — a pathway for two different applications to speak to each other.
• Between 2021 and 2027, the Commission will invest in a High Impact Project to jump-start data infrastructure. Several other initiatives are laid out, including a cloud services marketplace.

Why such strategy?

• The EU has the potential to be successful in the data-agile economy. It has the technology, the know-how and a highly skilled workforce.
• However, competitors such as China and the US are already innovating quickly and projecting their concepts of data access and use across the globe, the strategy states.
• With American and Chinese companies taking the lead on technological innovation, Europe is keen to up its own competitiveness.

What does the EU move mean for legislation?

• Europe has been a frontrunner when it comes to technology regulation.
• Its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) released in 2018 was a game-changer across the industry. In the recent strategy, the GDPR is seen as giving the “solid framework for digital trust.”
• Parliamentarians are discussing India’s current Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill in a Joint Select Committee.
• The recent draft of the PDP introduced a clause on non-personal data, mandating entities to hand over such data to the government on command.
• This was not included in the draft proposed by the Justice B N Sri Krishna Committee in October 2018.
• Some of the movement around the PDP Bill comes from a desire to strengthen India’s own data economy, similar to the EU’s desire.

Has India done anything similar?

• The Union Cabinet approved the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) in 2012.
• As part of the initiative, the government worked with the US government to release data.gov.in, a site of government data for public use.
• The Economic Survey of 2018 envisioned a similar use of non-personal data.
• Just as the EU’s strategy discusses “data for public good”, the chapter titled “Data ‘Of the People, By the People, For the People’” advocated that the government step in to sectors that private players ignore, marking the first time India’s Economic Survey has isolated “data” as a strategic focus.
• Other data integration efforts have been announced or implemented by NITI Aayog (the National Data & Analytics Platform), the Smart Cities Mission (India Urban Data Exchange), and the Ministry of Rural Development (DISHA dashboard).
• In 2018, the National Informatics Centre worked with PwC and other vendors to create a Centre of Excellence for Data Analytics aimed at providing data analysis help to government departments.

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