The central government is seeking agreement on parameters for a national policy on data-sharing and accessibility, and will address the issue in a cabinet meeting this month.
A group of ministers, headed by home minister P. Chidambaram, is leading the charge. The group has acknowledged that while there is a need to restrict access to data that has implications for national security, a large amount of non-sensitive data is generated using public funds and should therefore be publicly available.
The central government has asked all departments to reclassify data into ‘sensitive’ and ‘non-sensitive’ within the next six months.
According to Indian media reports, once cabinet approval has been granted, the Department of Science and Technology will be responsible for preparing the data for storage in either an analogue or digital format. The Department will also formulate a pricing policy to govern how much the public will pay to access the information.