The India Data Management Office (IDMO) is a proposed institutional body, not an act or a scheme, that will function as the nodal agency for data governance in India. It is to be set up under the Digital India Corporation (DIC), which operates under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The IDMO was first proposed in the draft National Data Governance Framework Policy (NDGFP), which was released on May 26, 2022, by the Digital India Corporation.
The IDMO was created to solve the problem of digital government data being managed in "differing and inconsistent ways" across various entities, which hindered data-driven governance. Its primary function is to frame, manage, and periodically review and revise the NDGFP. The IDMO will develop rules, standards, and guidelines for all data, datasets, and metadata in consultation with Ministries, State Governments, and industry. It will also create and manage the India Datasets platform, which will process requests and provide access to non-personal and/or anonymized datasets for Indian researchers and startups.
A key mechanism involves the mandate for every Ministry/Department to establish a Data Management Unit (DMU), headed by a designated Chief Data Officer (CDO), to ensure the policy's implementation in close coordination with the IDMO. The IDMO is closely connected to the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, as the IDMO oversees non-personal data, while the DPDP Act establishes the legal architecture for personal data. A significant recent change is the omission of a monetization clause from earlier drafts, ensuring that data access is solely for public good and innovation, and only anonymized, non-personal data is shared. The IDMO will also set up and publish data anonymisation standards to ensure informational privacy is maintained.