After being stung by a slew of data theft and misuse issues leading to the denting of investor confidence in the BPO industry in AP, state IT minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah has written to the Centre, seeking the formulation of a new Act on data protection for IT companies.
In a letter written to the Union minister for communication and information technology, Mr Kapil Sibal, the state minister said that the various incidents of data theft and misuse of private and personal information had raised concerns about outsourcing to India.
“India, in its immediate surroundings, has a problem to tackle in the form of a bad reputation that the outsourcing industry has earned abroad because of large scale thefts in the recent past,” he wrote.
The minister mentioned that during a recent visit to the UK, the industry representatives there strongly recommended that the Government of India immediately come up with a Data Protection Act. “Unlike the US or the European Union, India does not have a Data Protection Act in place. Unfortunately, India does not feature in the list of countries complying with Data Protection Standards, prepared by the EU.
The need for a specific and stringent legislation in line with the EU or the US Act is of paramount importance, if India has to sustain investor confidence, especially among foreign entities which send large amounts of data to India for back-office operations,” the minister said.