Table of Contents
The EU data strategy
- The European Commission has recently released a “European strategy for data… to ensure the humancentric development of Artificial Intelligence” and a white paper on artificial intelligence.
- The strategy lays out “why the EU should act now”.
- “data single market” by 2030 to allow the free flow of data within the EU.
- enabling legislative framework for the governance of common European data spaces” by the latter half of the year.
- Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
- With American and Chinese companies taking the lead on technological innovation, Europe is keen to up its own competitiveness.
- 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.
- The Union Cabinet approved the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) in 2012.
- 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.
- Data protection laws would improve business processes, and their compliance will eventually lead to securing digital payments, and improvement in banking operations as well.
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) rules framed by the EU has become a model for the world when it comes to privacy. Right to be forgotten is also in effect in the EU.
- The document is significant for two reasons. One, much of the world’s data now resides in the “cloud”, massive server farms, but three-quarters of the cloud is owned by four companies—three American and one Chinese.
- EU has led the world in matters of data privacy and security. Its landmark 2016 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) serves as a guide for the world’s lawmakers. India’s PDP 19 bill, for instance, has clearly relied on the GDPR for definitions of and transfer restrictions on personal data.
- The strategy lays great emphasis on correcting the imbalance caused by the vast amounts of data collected by the Big Tech companies, and on helping European small and micro enterprises (SME) to grow to their potential.
- The world produced 33 zettabytes of data in 2018 (one zettabyte = one trillion billion bytes, that’s 21 zeroes). This is expected to go up to 175 zettabytes in 2025.
- This ranges from the emoji you sent as a response to a WhatsApp joke, to your biometrics, which, if they fall into the wrong hands, could be potentially catastrophic.
- It will continue to closely monitor Big Tech. It is analysing “the role of data in creating or reinforcing imbalances in bargaining power and the way these companies use and share the data across sectors”.
- Build a thriving ecosystem of private actors to create economic and societal value from data. The EC sees startups and scale-ups playing a key role here
- While India evolves the regulations we need on data localization and transfer, and non-India-based tech companies, expectedly, complain, why can’t we set our sights slightly higher than just keeping our data within India’s borders, to making India a hub for the global data economy
- India has all that is required, from connectivity to talent pool. Sure, Europe scores as it can tout its “European values” of liberal democracy and individual rights.
- The data economy offers a big opportunity for India. But the government giving itself the power to access all personal data without due process is definitely not going to help grab it.
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