Law Firm in India

Open Data Policy in India

It is widely acknowledged that sharing of data and relevant information in public domain is a major step towards boosting transparency and accountability in a system of governance. NDSAP was designed to apply to all sharable non-sensitive data available either in digital or analog form by various Ministries and other Departments of the Indian Government

Open Data Policy in India

A state model sharing its relevant data and information in public domain is a key step towards enhancing transparency and accountability in governance. Data collected or developed through public investments, when made publicly available and maintained over time, their potential value could be more fully realised. There has been increasing demand by the community, that such data collected with the deployment of public funds should be made more readily available to all, for enabling rationale debate, better decision making and use in meeting a civil society’s needs. Principle 10 of united nations declaration of environment and development (Rio De Janeiro, 1992) stated that a person has the right to appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by the public authorities and the opportunity to participate in the decision making process. States must encourage and facilitate public awareness and participation by making such information widely available.

The Indian government through its tenth Five Year Plan (2002­2007), had announced that it wanted India to become ‘S.M.A.R.T.’ state, where ‘S.M.A.R.T. was the acronym for ‘Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsible and Transparent’. 

Existing Data Sharing Policies in India:

  • Right to Information Act, 2005 

It is widely acknowledged that sharing of data and relevant information in public domain is a major step towards boosting transparency and accountability in a system of governance. In this context, the Right to Information Act, 2005 (The Act) can be said to have brought about a landmark change in so far as access to information held by public authorities is considered. Section 4(2) of the Act mentions that It should be a constant endeavour of every public authority to take steps in accordance with the requirements to provide information to public at regular intervals through various means of communication, including internet, so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information. The act also provides the principle on which data sharing and accessibility need to be based on which includes openness, flexibility, transparency, legal conformity, protection of intellectual property, accountability, etc. However, what have been much less discussed are the standards in which data can be made public. This has a crucial role in making such data accessible and transparent.

  • The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP)

A large quantum of data generated using public funds by various organisations and institutions in the country remains inaccessible to people, although most of such data may be non-sensitive in nature and could be used by public for scientific, economic, and developmental purposes. The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) of 2012, brought out by the Union Government’s Department of Science and Technology, is designed so as to apply to all sharable non-sensitive data available either in digital or analog forms but generated using public funds by various Ministries and other departments of the Indian Government. The NDSAP policy is designed to promote data sharing and enable access to Government in India owned data for national planning and development.  

Needs and Benefits of Open Government Data:

Evidence based planning of socio-economic development processes rely on quality data. There is a general need to facilitate sharing and utilization of the large amount of data generated and residing among the entities of the Government of India. This would call for a policy to leverage these data assets which are disparate. 

The current regime of data management does not enable open sharing of government owned data with other arms of the government nor does it expect proactive disclosure of sharable data available with data owners. Such regimes could lead to duplication of efforts and loss of efficiency of planning of activities focussed on national development. 

Efficient sharing of data among data owners and inter and intra government agencies and with public calls for data standards and interoperable systems. Hence, NDSAP aims to provide an enabling provision and platform for providing proactive and open access to the data generated through public funds available with various departments of the government. 

The objective of this policy is to facilitate the access to shareable data owned by the government in both human readable way and in a machine readable way. This must be done through a network all over the county in a proactive and periodically updated manner, within the framework of various related policies, Acts, etc., thereby permitting wide accessibility and use of public data and information. 

Benefits of the Data Sharing Policy:

  • Maximising use: ready access to government owned data will enable more extensive use of a valuable public resource for the benefit of the community. 
  • Avoiding duplication: by sharing data the need for separate bodies to collect the same data will be avoided resulting in significant cost savings in data collection. 
  • Maximised integration: by adopting common standards for the collection and transfer of data, integration of individual data sets may be feasible. 
  • Owner information: the identification of owners for the principal data sets to provide information to users to identify those responsible for implementation of prioritised data collection programs and development of data standards.
  • Better decision making: data and information facilities making important decisions without incurring repetitive costs. Ready access to existing valuable data is essential for many decision making tasks such as protecting the environment, development, planning, managing assets, improving livings condition, etc.
  • Equity of access: a more open data transfer policy ensures better access to all bonfide users. 

Legal Framework:

Data remains the property of the agency/ entity/ ministry which collects them and resides in their IT enabled facility for sharing and providing access. Access to data under this policy will not be in violation of any Acts and rules of the government of India in force. Legal framework of such policies will be aligned with various Acts and rules covering the data. 

Implementation of NDSAP:

The Department of Science and Technology serves the nodal functions of coordination and monitoring of policy through close collaboration with all Central Ministries and the department of Information Technology by creating ‘data.gov.in’ through National Infomatics Centre (NIC). All the sharable data will be shared on ‘as-is where-is’ basis. Detailed implementation guidelines including the technology and standards for data and metadata would be brought out by Department of information Technology.  

Conclusion: 

In India, as in other countries, the relationship between citizens and government is increasingly mediated by information systems, and e­governance is clearly seen as the way forward for efficient delivery of public services. While policies provide official mandate, facilitation of optimum accessibility and usability of data by the implementers pre-suppose a trajectory of proper organisation of data, with access services and analysis tools that provide the researchers and stakeholders with added value. For data to be reused, it needs to be adequately described and linked to services that disseminate the data to other researchers and stakeholders.  

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