Expert panels differ on Sprinklr deal as one gives clean-chit to Sivasankar

M Sivasankar

Thiruvananthapuram: Two expert committees that probed the State's deal with Sprinklr have found that the data-sharing agreement was signed in violation of norms. The current controversy was sparked by the second panel's clean-chit to former IT Principal Secretary M Sivasankar, stating he had no vested interests in the deal.

The report came to public domain when it was tabled before the Assembly in response to questions raised by MLAs P T Thomas and P C Vishnunath.

Both committees were appointed by the government to study the deal with Sprinklr, a New York, US-based software firm, to analyze Covid-19-related data.

The committees:

The expert committee that probed the Sprinklr deal comprised M Madhavan Nambiar, former secretary, Civil Aviation, and Dr Gulshan Rai, former coordinator, cyber security.

The second committee, constituted to look into matters on which the previous panel had not made any references, had as its members K Sasidharan Nair, former secretary, Department of Law; Dr A Vinaya Babu, Professor (Retd), JNTUH College of Engineering, Hyderabad; and Dr Umesh Divakaran, Professor, College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram.

A comparison of the findings of the two panels:

Expert committee:

• Due process was not followed before signing the contract with Sprinklr.

• The deal was finalised without the knowledge of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who held the IT portfolio, and the then Chief Secretary, Tom Jose.

• Signing of the deal without the knowledge of even the chief minister was against the interests of the State.

• M Sivasankar unilaterally implementing the contract document presented by the firm led to the company having complete right over the data of the public.

• Sivasankar, who led the initiative for the contract, did not follow the norms. Relevant documents are not available.

• The minutes of the technical committee meeting was not provided, despite raising a demand.

• Those who implemented the deal lacked adequate technical and legal knowledge.

• The platform's capacity and security were not examined.

• Legal action against Sprinklr will be difficult since the firm is under the jurisdiction of US courts.

Second committee

• Not even the chief minister was informed before appointing Sprinklr for data analysis

• Sivasankar should have held talks with the departments of law, finance, and local self- government department, and the high-power committee.

• Data security was not ensured before uploading information.

• Sprinklr's capacity was not assessed before signing the deal.

• No deals were signed before assigning Sprinklr. IT department did not even have relevant files.

• Guidelines for master service agreement (MSA) and service level agreement (SLA) were flouted.

• Though there were faults in signing the deal, the agreement was not against the State's interests.

• Sivasankar did not have vested interests.

• The deal was on only for a month. No payment was made to Sprinklr. The data was transferred to the State Data Centre by April 20, 2020. Security of data was not compromised.

As reported earlier Kerala Government had put up a stout defence of the deal in the wake of the controversy early last year. It had argued that it had strong data protection clauses and emphasised that no sensitive information was being collected by Sprinklr.

Despite Kerala government's strong defence, the Centre claimed that the deal was flawed and that data privacy could not be ensured. In an affidavit submitted to the High Court, the Union IT department questioned the state government's decision to overlook several government-owned and government-controlled entities like the C-DIT and Information Kerala Mission. It also pointed out that there were central agencies like National Informatics Centre capable of handling the task that was entrusted to the US firm. 

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