New Delhi:
The latest Economic Survey has favoured the idea of Digital Locker to store all the documents that are critical in the life of every resident of India.
These documents are most needed by those who depend on the state for welfare. They are also often the hardest to secure for the same vulnerable group.
DigiLocker makes all their documents available, in a verified format, in one place on the cloud. Citizens only need an internet connected device, smartphone or computer to access the locker. It helps digitize downstream processes such as college admissions. For anyone who has had to retrieve a lost or missing document from the government or have to get photocopies “attested”, the DigiLocker experience is immensely more time-saving and user-friendly. They do not have to live in the fear of their precious documents being lost to the elements or other misfortune.
Saying that citizens are the largest group of beneficiaries of the ongoing data revolution, with the DigiLocker,citizens no longer need to run from pillar to post to get “original” documents from the state such as their driving licence, Aadhaar card, PAN card, CBSE results, etc.
In a similar vein, the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) has announced the Non-Banking Financial Company-Account Aggregator (NBFC-AA). Even in the finance industry, an individual leads a complex financial life with their data spread across multiple providers. One may hold a bank account with State Bank of India, but take a loan from HDFC. Their mutual fund investments may be through Axis Bank, but their insurance is through LIC.
They also have a credit card from Standard Chartered and use Motilal Oswal to invest in some stocks directly. In such a case, the data needed by the individual to piece together their own financial life is distributed across many data providers. The NBFC-AA allows users to pull that data together, for any purpose the citizen requires. This may be for personal finance management, or maybe to apply digitally for a new housing loan. The NBFC-AA neither reads data nor creates an invasive 360-degree dataset. It simply enables citizens to demand their data from these institutions in a machine-readable format, so that it can be used by them meaningfully.
Through Aadhaar, India has been at the forefront of the data and technology revolution that is unfolding. As data for social welfare may not be generated by the private sector in optimal quantity, government needs to view data as a public good and make the necessary investments.
The benefits of creating data as a public good can be generated within the legal framework of data privacy.
Going forward, the data and information highway must beviewed as equally important infrastructure as the physical highways. Such a stance can help India leapfrog to utilise the benefits of technological advances for the welfare of its people. In the spirit of the Constitution of India, data “of the people, by the people, for the people” must therefore become the mantra for the government.