IRCTC Floats Tender to Appoint Consultant to Monetise Digital Data: Details

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has floated a young searching for to monetise digital information of the Indian Railways and the IRCTC. The latter is trying to appoint a marketing consultant for ‘digital information monetisation’. The tender, which seeks to utilise the information from passenger, freight, and parcel trains, was noticed by digital liberties organisation Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) on Friday. It is price noting that India at the moment doesn’t have a knowledge safety regulation to manage using residents’ private info.

According to the e-tender document (archived version) uploaded on the IRCTC web site, titled ‘Consultancy for Digital Data Monetization’, the general public sector enterprise is trying to appoint a consulting agency for the challenge, as a way to generate as much as Rs. 1,000 crore in income. The deadline for tender provides is August 29, and the IRCTC has set the earnest cash deposit (EMD) at Rs. 2 lakh, based on the doc.

The IRCTC states that it’s “a reservoir of huge amount of digital data which opens several opportunities for IRCTC for monetization” and that it needs to “leverage its data assets and market position to drive strong growth in revenues”. The consulting agency might be anticipated to check IRCTC information together with information from the railway’s passenger, freight, parcel, catering, tourism, and different operations.

The information that IRCTC has listed out within the tender (web page 11) contains buyer information captured from the Indian Railways, which incorporates “basic data” akin to their title, age, cell quantity, gender, tackle, e-mail addresses, in addition to their class of journey, fee mode, and login info — together with their username and password.

According to the IRCTC’s tender, the marketing consultant might be anticipated to mixture the information captured, segregate the information, and “identify market potential internationally” for particular information units. They should additionally set up procedures and protocols for long-term monetisation of the digital information of the Indian Railways, and “handhold” the monetisation course of.

In order to suggest enterprise fashions for monetisation of information, the tender states that the consulting agency ought to research laws associated to info know-how, together with the IT Act, 2000 and its amendments, in addition to information privateness legal guidelines such because the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the “current Personal Data Protection Bill 2018 of India”. However, because the IFF factors out, Personal Data Protection Bill was withdrawn by the federal government on August 3.

The digital liberties organisation has highlighted the dangers of monetising buyer information, stating {that a} revenue maximisation aim might lead to elevated information assortment, which might be in violation of the rules of information minimisation and goal limitation. Meanwhile, the monetisation would happen within the absence of a private information safety regulation. “Past experiences from the misuse of [the] Vahan database amplify fears of mass surveillance & security risks,” the IFF stated in a tweet.

Gadgets 360 has reached out to the Indian Railways for remark and can replace this text when a response is acquired.

On August 3, the federal government withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2021, saying that it was engaged on a brand new complete regulation. The invoice had proposed regulation of transmission of information throughout borders, whereas empowering the federal government to hunt information from corporations. At the time, Union Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw stated that the federal government was hopeful of getting new laws handed by the Budget session of parliament.