Draft E-Commerce Policy Says Data Is ‘National Asset’, Restricts Foreign Access
The overall objective of the national electronic commerce policy is to prepare and enable stakeholders concerned to fully benefit from the opportunities that would arise from the progressive digitalization of the domestic and global economy.
India has proposed regulating cross border data flows, locating computing facilities within India to ensure job creation and setting up a dedicated ‘data authority’ for issues related to sharing of community data.
In its draft National e-Commerce Policy, India has said that the data generated in the country is a national asset, and citizens and the government have a sovereign right over it.
The Document says :
The following categories of data would be required to be stored exclusively in India and suitable framework developed for sharing the data within the country (this would be guided by ongoing exercises, including the forthcoming Report of the Justice Srikrishna Committee):
- Community data collected by IoT devices in public space; and
- Data generated by users in India from various sources including e-commerce
platforms, social media, search engines etc.
A level playing field would be provided to domestic players by ensuring that foreign websites involved in e-commerce transactions from India also follow the same rules, including procedures for payment systems, such as two-factor authentication, as in case of domestic companies.
Read Draft-National-E-commerce-Policy
Date: February 24, 2019
