Pathways for a UK-India Data Bridge
The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 (DPDPB 2022), released in 2022 for consultations, paves the way for a simplified, principle-based framework to govern personal data in India. This Bill also provides a principle-level congruence in data protection regimes between two of the world’s leading digital services suppliers, India and the UK, and facilitates a positive environment to expand digital trade between both countries.
In this context, we are pleased to share our report on “Pathways for a UK-India Data Bridge” prepared along with our knowledge Partner, The Dialogue – an emerging research and policy think-tank.
This report contains perspectives of UK and Indian businesses on approaches to enabling cross-border data transfers, existing mechanisms of data flows adopted by companies, and the need for sharper convergence with key sectoral regulators where data governance provisions may overlap with sector-specific regulations.
It also provides an overview of the UK and India data protection regimes as well as some suggestions for the final version of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill and the associated Rules.
In particular, some of this intelligence was captured from a UKIBC-organised UK-India Data Roundtable with Mr. Baijayant Panda, National Vice President-BJP, a key advocate on data privacy reforms, to discuss the Draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 in April 2023.
As India finalises the Data Protection Bill for introduction into law, UKIBC has undertaken a range of policy discussions on the Bill including a further report produced last year on ‘Harmonising the UK and India data protection regimes‘ as well as submissions to the Government of India on the recent iterations of the Bill.
