The main role of the government now is to regulate—ensure the data is protected and consistent with the citizens’ rights. However, the government can do more
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There are two roles for the government in public policy. One, identifying if there is a need for its presence. Two, if the answer is yes, then what to implement and how. The first one is easy. The government can intervene only if there is market failure. Market failures occur when voluntary interactions between buyers and sellers lead to sub-optimum social welfare. It is crucial to identify the cause of market failure to map the corrective action from the government. The most often needed government intervention is to provide public goods because market failure implies often private players do not find it profitable to do so.
In contemporary economics, goods are usually defined as public goods if and only if they are both non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Non-rivalrous goods are those whose consumption by individuals does not diminish it for others, while non-excludable goods are those for which an individual cannot prevent others from consuming it. It is argued that such goods suffer from the curse of the free rider problem, thus making the government the only legitimate agency to provide them. The government does that via taxation. Given we are a resource-constrained economy, we must prioritise amongst various public goods to minimise wastage. For that, we need good data.