The State government on Tuesday reconstituted the two-member expert committee it had announced in March to find out anomalies, if any, in the State’s deal with U.S.-based data analytics firm Sprinklr Inc.
The government had contracted the firm to analyse the personal health data of citizens to predict the pattern of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kerala. Its stated aim was to identify the most vulnerable sections of the population in advance and calibrate containment strategy accordingly.
M. Sivasankar was the Principal Secretary of the IT Department when the deal with Sprinklr was formalised. He had to leave the administration under a cloud after his alleged links with the accused in the UAE consulate-linked gold smuggling case emerged in public.
New committee
The new committee has the former Chief of National Cybersecurity Gulshan Rai and former Civil Aviation Secretary M. Madhavan Nambiar as members.
The government has appointed Mr. Rai instead of former Additional Chief Secretary Rajeev Sadanandan. Mr. Sadanandan’s continuation in the enquiry panel became legally and ethically untenable after he rejoined the government post-retirement as Special Advisor to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The government has roped in Mr. Rai on the recommendation of Mr. Nambiar.
Opposition charge
Mr. Rai’s inclusion comes at a time when the Opposition had accused the government of having pulled the wool over the eyes of the public by appointing a committee that “existed only on paper” to give the people the appearance of a fair probe.
The UDF had accused the government of entering into a self-defeating Faustian pact with the U.S.-based firm. It had said the security of the personal health information of citizens stored in Sprinklr’s foreign servers were at stake. The “data trading” firm could monetise it by selling it to private health care, pharmaceutical and medical insurance businesses, it had said
Privacy clauses
The government had tasked the committee to find out whether the contract with Sprinklr to crunch health data collected by field workers from COVID-19 vulnerable population had incorporated clauses for protecting the “privacy of personal and sensitive data of individuals.”
It would also scrutinise whether the IT Department had violated any laid-down procedure. The committee would give its report on or before October 10.
