Representations to Government
Our positions on governmental policies and papers
C-DEP initiated study and stakeholder consultation on potential amendments to the IT Act 2008. The previous amendment to the Act was made in 2008.
A brief summary of pointers has been listed below;
e-Governance needs to be democratized to unleash the benefit of e-Governance to billions of people of India. The following legal changes would benefit the overall CivicTech ecosystem, especially startups
- Democratizing the Common Service Centre (CSCs) to make sure there are a greater number of G2C service delivery points. Instead of regulating CSC and the fee that has not been followed on majority of cases, the market should be left to decide. The application must be available on all mobile platform in assisted mode.
- Exposing APIs by online Govt. System (Open API Policy) like it has been done for IRCTC (railway reservation) and Income tax department (ITR filling)
- Acceptance of E-Sign documents by Government offices (IT Act). It is legally accepted but not in the Government offices. There need to be rules to enforce this in all Government offices specially District and below level offices.
- One Data – One Owner – One Source. This has very high strategic and economic value. Thousands of crores can be saved by getting away from services like name change. If name is stored at one place only and all other department are allowed to store only reference key. The reference key may be replaced be name as and when demanded post consent from users.
- Enforcement of a regulatory body to regulate the prevalence of predatory apps and their practices that construes threats to personal safety, economic prosperity, national security and privacy rights, as well violations of regulations related to cross-border transactions and usurping IPR through predatory consent.
- Curb the rise of Digital Monopolies, which are anti-competitive in nature as a result of them having acquired monopoly status due to network effect (such as messaging systems) or due to accumulation of data.
- A more enabling regime for Online gaming and lotteries, especially where the offline versions are permitted
Provisions for check on Predatory apps – In the recent context, there are evidences of commercial apps which ask users/customer to make multiple micro-payments in order to unlock or gain access to services which ultimately do not get delivered. This also renders the user unwilling to take the matter up in any court of law in the case of a transgression, given the added costs, complexity and time-consuming nature of the procedure. Alterations to existing consumer protection frameworks need to be made to safeguard against such practices.
C-DEP wrote the second draft of the e-Commerce Policy for the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under Ministry of Commerce for the Draft E-Commerce Policy.
Extensive background research was conducted on e-Commerce practices and policies prevalent from global standpoint, including identifying best practices and opportunities from emerging and leading market regions. Inputs of Indian e-commerce stakeholders were taken in
C-DEP Engaged with government and industry leaders to formulate policy inputs that would bolster the Indian E-Commerce sector.
The draft is path breaking globally as it includes policy measures to strengthen various aspects of e-Commerce. Some key pointers include, but not limited to;
- Acknowledging the importance of data as an asset
- Promoting the creation of CivicTech E-Commerce to enable the Government to move towards a regime of API driven government (Open API Policy). This would allow e-commerce start-ups to offer government services, similar to the opening up by IRCTC and Income tax department.
- Setting up of access to existing Government portals that would be made available for commercial use. This would democratize access to Common Service Centers (CSC) and would lead to a healthy CivicTech ecosystem.
- Creation and enforcement of an e-Commerce regulatory body to regulate the prevalence of predatory apps and their practices. The proposed regulatory authority would also be empowered to block the cross-border flow of potentially commercial data pertaining to defense, medical records, biological records, cartographic data as well as genome mapping, as necessary.
C-DEP provided representations to the Minister of Home Affairs and Additional Secretary, MeitY on the consideration of banned Chinese mobile applications reappearing in the Indian app ecosystem post the imposed ban. Specifically, it was pointed out that ‘Kwai’, a banned application under Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co., has come back into popular app stores retitled as ‘Snack Video’ operating under Symphony Tech Pte. Ltd., a Singapore based entity owned by the same Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co.
The application was highlighted for consideration after it was discovered that it posed similar significant data and security risks to Indian citizens and Indian National Systems as the previously banned ‘Kwai’ app, especially with regards to the applications ability to;
- Acquire user permissions that granted access to critical and sensitive personal data
- Circumvent Indian privacy laws protecting underage users from data acquisition and leakage
- Censor and alter media content within the application designed to maliciously target specific personal and societal entities.
- Deploy predatory behavior making it possible for the application to misuse sensitive user data.
C-DEP was invited to provide inputs to the Data Governance Committee, headed by Mr. Gopalakrishnan, on the following aspects;
- To address privacy concerns
- To create incentives for the free flow of data
- To provide certainty and incentives for new business creation.
- To improve competition
- To protect economic benefits of citizens and communities
- To understand better the uses and benefits of data
- To prevent predatory apps from misusing user data
- To encourage a single source of truth for government data
C-DEP was requested to provide expert comments to Ministry of Commerce on the National Digital Health Blueprint. Some of the key inputs made centered around issues of;
- Evaluation of number of entities involved – Could translate to integrity of data becoming a huge loss, that could result in information loss and transfer of blame.
- Evaluation of Data collection and maintenance – Quality of captured data and its validation at the capture source would need to be done regularly.
- Enterprise approach – Advocacy of distributed ledger over C.E.P
- Data and information security
- Use of Blockchain as a more flexible, scalable and cheaper alternative, while addressing privacy concerns through certain mechanisms.
- Opening up the system to private sector through API’s in order to provide collaborative governance
- Having a single source of truth for data
C-DEP provided directional inputs to Ministry of Commerce on Cloud Computing & Local Data storage as the potential next generation export of IT Services.
Some key inputs included, but were not limited to;
- Recognising India as a global powerhouse in software infrastructure and application software, facilitating export of Cloud computing services would provide a platform to application developers to tap international markets which otherwise involves significant cost of sales through alternate sales channels.
- Necessary to locate cloud computing infrastructure close to cheap, inflation-proof sources of electricity (areas close to Hydel power would be ideal for such infrastructure). In this context, it would also be prudent to adopt Green Computing, i.e. computing powered by green sources of electricity, so as to reduce carbon footprint of computing.
- Imperative to adopt appropriate policies to notify and create Cloud Computing Parks in the Himalayan States, with sufficient bandwidth.
- Focus to be put on trans-border legislations that inhibit the export of Cloud Computing Services.
- Need for stable regulatory requirement.
C-DEP was requested to provide inputs on Implementation Guidelines that focused on, but not limited to issues on;
- Ensuring Service Level Agreements of Database Scalability – Best Practices to be adopted by API owners in terms of data coupled with rigorous testing before APIs go live.
- Due consideration to be given to supporting the service in terms of the SLAs.
- From a commercial standpoint, API owners ought to be compensated for the task of exposing data and ensuring the upkeep of the services.
- Greater need to look into creation of CivicTech to enable the Government to move towards a regime of API driven government (Open API Policy).
C-Dep was invited to provide expert comments to Ministry of Commerce on the Draft National Strategy for AI.
The Report aims to bring focus on how India can leverage the transformative technologies to ensure social and inclusive growth in line with the development philosophy of the government. The approach advocates identifying sectors that may have the potential of greatest externalities while adopting AI solutions, and hence require the government to play a leading role in developing the implementation roadmap for AI.
Some of the important considerations put forward by C-DEP was to put a greater focus for AI in sectors of Manufacturing, eCommerce, Service delivery and Transportation, which would have a transformative effect on India.
Additionally, it was recommended that the initiative needs to be commercially led in order to be sustainable and to have a greater impact on economy and jobs. Therefore, there is a need to have a sustained program to evangelize AI with the corporates and to provide them with incentives to be early adopters of AI in their domain of operations.
C-DEP was invited to comment on the Draft Competition Act as well as provide observations and feedback on the proposed amendments to the Competition Act.
Some key pointers, highlighted were;
- Recommendation to amend the act to incorporate digital monopolies as they are anti-competitive in nature as they natural monopolies due to network effect (such as messaging systems) or are due to data.
- Exchange of data and exchange of exposure to advertisements or advocacy on websites (particularly Social Media platforms) should be recognised as a ‘trade and sale’. Such forms of purchase should also be within the ambit of the Competition Act.
- It was advocated that penalties be based on income as well as revenue as Large companies in the digital domain choose to stay as loss making in order to avoid anti-competition regulation. Their income may be negative but they have extremely large turnovers and would display anti-competitive behavior.
- Recommended that anti-competitive behavior in the digital world should include blocking access to known personalities who could endorse apps, thereby monopolizing certain sectors such as gaming wherein all key known figures are blocked by one or two apps, thereby creating a monopoly
C-Dep was requested to provided observations and feedback on the Draft National Logistics Policy.
- Promoted API based integration with private sector
- Promoted single source of truth for all data related to logistics
C-DEP provided representations to the Minister of Home Affairs and Additional Secretary, MeitY on the consideration of banned Chinese mobile applications reappearing in the Indian app ecosystem post the imposed ban. Specifically, it was pointed out that ‘Kwai’, a banned application under Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co., has come back into popular app stores retitled as ‘Snack Video’ operating under Symphony Tech Pte. Ltd., a Singapore based entity owned by the same Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co.
The application was highlighted for consideration after it was discovered that it posed similar significant data and security risks to Indian citizens and Indian National Systems as the previously banned ‘Kwai’ app, especially with regards to the applications ability to;
- Acquire user permissions that granted access to critical and sensitive personal data
- Circumvent Indian privacy laws protecting underage users from data acquisition and leakage
- Censor and alter media content within the application designed to maliciously target specific personal and societal entities.
- Deploy predatory behavior making it possible for the application to misuse sensitive user data.