The best results can only come when we take stock of the present diversity in the market and allow the most suitable technology or standard to emerge through a natural process.
By Anoop Verma
Earlier the Indian government had been struggling on how IoT may have an impact on economy and governance. But now some new ideas have started emerging.
The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has released a draft IoT policy, which takes a look at the ways by which IoT can transform governance through development of low cost platforms for connecting people, places, processes and data. DeitY defines IoT as “a seamless connected network of embedded objects/ devices, with identifiers, in which M2M communication without any human intervention is possible using standard and interoperable communication protocols.”
One of the key objectives of the government, according to the DeitY’s draft IoT policy, is to facilitate the development of an IoT industry in India of $15 billion by 2020. Initiatives will be taken for capacity building in IoT specific skill-sets and for the development of IoT products in the spheres of “agriculture, health, water quality, natural disasters, transportation, security, automobile, supply chain management, smart cities, automated metering and monitoring of utilities, waste management, oil & gas, etc.” The draft IoT policy draws the conclusion that IoT will make a seminal difference to the way business and governance are conducted.
The billions of things connected to the Internet will lead to many new opportunities for the government to energise the economy and develop better systems for governance. But every shift in the way of doing things will entail pain. It will be tempting for the government to resort to framing of regulations that might lead to short term alleviation in the pain of moving away from the traditional way of doing things. However, the government must move cautiously in developing regulations for IoT. A hastily conceived regulation can miss the target, introduce costs and delays and eventually stymie the growth of a vibrant IoT ecosystem.
Some kind of standardisation might be needed to ensure that the things connected to the Internet can seamlessly communicate with each other, and with the government agencies and the people, without any risks of invasion of privacy or loss of data. But standardisation through government regulation is not the right way.
The best results can only come when we take stock of the present diversity in the market and allow the most suitable technology or standard to emerge through a natural process. Too early regulation from the government will inhibit the emergence of better technologies or standards through the process of trail and error in the market.