BN Satpathy, Senior Advisor, Planning Commission, Government of India, opened day two of Express Technology Sabha in Goa with a presentation on the government’s Open Data Initiative.
The initiative seeks to create an online portal through which various government departments can share their non-sensitive data that was created using public expenditure for the benefit of citizens. The policy for this was formulated in March 2012, called the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP).
“There is a huge volume of data. Once data is available on the portal, analytics tools can be used to leverage it for various purposes. India’s Open Data Initiative has fostered innovations and created new opportunities. It has created data on all sectors of economy in the public domain. Globally, open data is used to measure performance of the government,” said Satpathy.
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The Government of UK and World Bank are among those who have undertaken such open data initiatives.
According to Satpathy, open data can be used to further the cause of key attributes of e-governance such as the ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ mantra, accountability, efficiency and trust.
Currently, there are 7,764 data sets across various government departments, out of which the Planning Commission alone has contributed 1,014.
Satpathy was addressing a congregation of about 100 senior decision makers in technology from various government and public sector organisations such as the National Informatics Centre, Indian Railways, Punjab Urban Development Authority and Gujarat Informatics Ltd, among others, who are attending the three-day e-governance forum, Express Technology Sabha.
The event is supported by the National e-Governance Plan and the Department of Electronics & IT, Government of India.
Among other presentations on e-governance, panel discussions on data centre efficiencies and the challenges in cloud computing for the government were also held at Tech Sabha, which is currently in its 16th edition.
