India to launch national data governance policy

Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the government is working on approving a national data governance policy to ‘unleash innovation and research by start-ups and academia’. The goal is to ensure greater citizen awareness, participation, and engagement with open data, increase the availability of datasets of national importance, and identify datasets suitable for sharing and improve overall compliance to secure data sharing and privacy policies and standards. A core component of the data governance framework will be the formation of an India Data Management Office (IDMO) under the IT ministry. A draft data governance policy was published for public comment in May 2022.