What kind of impact will IoT have on Smart Cities—the discussion at this round table began with different speakers presenting their views on this subject. There was universal agreement on one point—the data growth is going to be exponential. ESDS team questioned where is this data going? When we are talking about a massive programme like Digital India, there will be data related challenges. Government would need to ask:
How to protect privacy of data?
Where to store data?
How to manage and maintain the devices?
How to maintain and manage the infrastructure?
The ESDS team said that there is lot of complexity with data centres today. 80% of India’s data is being stored abroad. And there is every possibility that this data is being used and analysed. Can there be a policy to ensure that the private companies’ data be stored in India itself? Many government officials and organisations use Gmail.40% of WhatsApp users are in India, and when the Facebook deal happened, Indian government did not get anything. There needs to be handshake even in technology and e-commerce because these deals are going to get bigger.
ESDS mentioned that EU, Singapore have policies on personal data. The team questioned that how do we get analytics sector developed here if we have no data stored here? The discussion concluded by delegates mentioning that majority of decisions taken in the country are business driven.