Open data, open government

Open data, open government

Article:

Rana Kapoor, MD and CEO of Yes Bank, highlights the importance of Open Data

Important Analysis

1. Open government data means publishing data collected by government in its entirety
2. Importance of Open government data:

• Helps to ensure the transparency in policy making. This would enable good governance.
• Helps in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of public services and ensure citizen welfare
• Strengthen citizen participation in governance
• Helps in developing technology-based innovations

Examples:

a) Data on annual crop production, soil health data and meteorological data can enable companies to develop customised crop insurance policies with specific risk-based pricings

b) Data on demographic attributes, literacy can help customised literacy programmes for villages

c) Hospital infrastructure data (beds, occupancy rates etc.) and demographic data can help in designing health-care applications

• Technological applications can yield economic benefit: A study by PwC, Australia estimated that open data can add 1.5% to country’s GDP

Example: London, UK

• Transport for London had digitised and shared around 80 data sets. This had led to creation of different technology based applications. The benefit from these applications is estimated to be €130 million

Initiatives in India:

• Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology introduced: National Data Sharing & Accessibility Policy (NDSAP). In compliance with the policy the Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India has been set up
• At present, India has 1.6 lakh data resources. It has published 4,015 application programme interfaces

Concerns in India:

• Potential of Open data is largely unused
• Data sets shared are fragmented and not comprehensive
• Data management, storage and privacy issues.
• To address data protection and privacy issues, the EU has introduced General Data Protection Regulation

Measures to address concerns:

• Ensure completeness of data stacks opened for use. For example, soil health card should have data on all relevant aspects plus data on emerging technologies
• Ensure comprehensive data
• Clustering of relevant data sets and APIs
• Develop anchor cases or use cases to encourage data usage.
• Use case is a methodology used in system analysis to understand user interaction with system.
• For example, after identification in e-KYC, Adhaar data showed huge growth. Its API led to development of market applications, DBT, Adhaar enabled payment systems which have boosted financial inclusion
• Comprehensive governance framework- open data council for monitoring, regulating and building usage after oversight.