According to a news report, the government likely to allow only non-personal datasets to be stored in data embassies — the physical data centres of trusted nations which enjoy diplomatic immunity from local laws — as part of an upcoming policy.
- The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) plans to draft a separate policy for data embassies, instead of including it in the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, reported Business Standard.
- Non-personal data refers to any dataset that does not contain infor- mation that can be used to identify an individual. These datasets could be consumer shopping trends, vehicle registration figures, tax col- lection information, etc.
- Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Union Budget speech 2023-24 announced that the government will set up “data embassies” in the country to facilitate seamless digital transfers and continuity for other nations.
What are Data embassies?
- In 2015, Microsoft and Estonia, one of the world’s most mature countries in digital administration, partnered on the virtual data embassy research project.
- Luxembourg, Monaco and some other nations have adopted the data embassy model.
- Through its e-Estonia initiative, Estonia has built a digital society and developed the most technologically advanced government in the world.
- Practically every government service is paperless and performed electronically. As a result, Estonia is highly dependent on its information systems and the data stored on them. While the benefits of a paperless government are immense, it does raise a few challenges. One is the issue of how to secure data that could become vulnerable in the event of a major natural disaster or cyber, terrorist or military attack.
- To protect its data, Estonia developed the concept of data embassies – servers outside the country that are legally under Estonian jurisdiction.
- The digital copies of key databases they store can be accessed in the event of a major data incident in the country, thereby protecting the digital lifeblood of this small Nordic country.
- Estonia launched the world’s first data embassy in partnership with the Government of Luxembourg. In June 2017, the Prime Minister of Estonia and the Prime Minister of Luxembourg signed a unique bilateral agreement between the two governments regarding Estonian data and related systems, which are stored in Luxembourg’s government-owned data centre.
- This agreement creates the basis for establishing the world’s first data embassy.
- The data embassy is an extension of the Estonian government cloud, meaning that the Estonian state owns server resources outside its borders.
- These will be used not only for data backup, but also for operating critical services. As with physical Estonian embassies, the servers are considered sovereign embassies in foreign data centres.
- Estonia is on its way to becoming a “country without borders”, and the data embassy is one of several Estonian programmes that blurs the lines of national borders and sovereign identity in a digital world.
(Sources: Business Standard and OECD)
