Every country must worry about data sovereignty, says IBM Chairman Krishna

IBM Inc Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Arvind endorses data localisation. Speaking at a round table with the media in the capital, he said he believed data sovereignty was a serious matter which every country had to worry about and make its own policies.

There should be rules in place for use or misuse of personal information, he said. But if anyone wanted to keep highly encrypted data as a back-up copy somewhere else, that should be fine. “One should permit the free flow of data for commercial purposes but without violating personal information and data sovereignty,” he added.

On whether personal information could be given to the government when sought, he said there were two extreme models that could be followed: the German and Chinese. The difficulty was in drawing a line, as demand for access to personal information could be misused in the name of national security. “One way is for courts to interpret what national interest is.”

Krishna also highlighted that IBM was planning to increase its R&D strength in the country, including setting up more centres in smaller cities in response to a global crunch in tech talent which might last a decade. “Apart from the four R&D centres in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and a smaller one in Delhi, we have just announced the opening of centres in Kochi and Ahmedabad. We will also add a few thousands per year in our R&D centres and tens of thousands in the consultancy business,” he said.

One reason for the shortage of talent in technology, Krishna said, was that every company and government had woken up to the fact that technology is not a cost but fundamental to getting a competitive advantage.

“India has a great education system. I think asking for the talent to be perfect makes no sense but if the talent is good enough, IBM gives training. We are investing heavily in skills to boost the pipeline,” he said.

Krishna has met Railways, Electronics and Communications and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, IT minister of state Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during his visit to India. Among the subjects discussed was skilling Indian workers.

“One area was on what he we can do in workforce development in India which is deeper than just IITs so that India is ready for the digital revolution. It is an area we are very passionate about. One hundred per cent of our CSR is undertaken for workforce development,” said Krishna.

Another subject was ‘gatishakti’ or how India can speed up digitisation in government platforms so that services that go far beyond what is available today and improve people’s lives reach them faster.

Given the government’s eagerness to build rural connectivity through broadband, Krishna discussed the role that IBM could offer in technology and thought partnership.

IBM is spending about $6 billion on organic R&D and as much as 70 per cent of its business is accounted for by software and consultancy.

In the company’s last quarter results, Asia as a whole and India did very well with India being what he called ‘a big piece of the pie’. In the changing geopolitical scenario, IBM sees a huge ‘opportunity for India to leapfrog even more than it has in the past two decades’.

On the global debate on cryptocurrency, Krishna was non-committal. “Cryptocurrency has its place. I can hardly debate the value of Bitcoin. All I will say is that currencies which cannot be taxed and which have highly fluctuating exchange rates, well, go decide for yourself whether a government will endorse them.”

Block chain, though, will have an important use in supply chain management, especially in areas of food security, but he did not want to hazard a guess as to how long it will take.

Krishna argued that digital currency (which he said was becoming confused with crypto) did not need blockchain. “The standard databases and systems held by reserve banks could issue digital currencies. It is backed by the government, it has fixed exchange rates. For those who say that blockchain is needed for in-country high volume and high transactions, that’s an overkill,” said Krishna.