Have you ever landed on the Open Government Data (OGD) Platform, India? Well, the answer lies with you, but let me put some light on data platforms. The very purpose is to make data accessible to all to realise its true potential for public and legitimate purposes. In the language of the data science community, it is often referred to as “dark data,” or as per Gartner, the information assets organisations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes such as analytics and monetising. 

But, is there a need for open data platforms? Well, governments deploy a substantial investment of public funds in the collection of data, however, interoperability of scientific and technical data thus collected is a severe difficulty since such data are not generated in a standardised format. Global experience suggests open access to public data spills innovation in society and help achieve evidence-based policymaking for the public good.

“Data collected at public expense must belong to the people,” is the underlying principle for the Open Data Charter adopted by 25 countries, excluding India, since 2015.  

Now, let’s have a look at some of the open data platforms in India. 

Open Government Data (OGD) Platform, India 

The project is one of the initiatives under pillar six, i.e., Information for All of the Digital India Mission, OGD has been set up by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in compliance with the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP). NDSAP was adopted in 2012 for making non-sensitive government data accessible online. The Department of Science and Technology is serving the nodal functions of coordination and monitoring of policy through close collaboration with all Central Ministries and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology.  

As per the act, every department has to identify datasets by the following categories: 

• Negative List: The datasets, which are confidential in nature and would compromise the county’s security if made public, are put into this list. The datasets which contain personal information are also included in this list. 
• Open List: This list comprises datasets that don’t fall under the negative list. These datasets shall be prioritised into high-value datasets and non-high values datasets. 

The objective of the platform, as described by the government, is to facilitate access to government-owned shareable data and information in both human-readable and machine-readable forms in a proactive and periodically updatable manner. However, it should be within the framework of various related policies, acts and rules of the Government of India, thereby promoting wider accessibility and application of government-owned data and unlocking the potential of data for national development. 

Telangana Open Data Platform 

The state of Telangana came out with its Open Data Policy in 2016 to catalyse data-based decision making, while addressing privacy and confidentiality concerns. To support the ‘Open Data Policy’ the Government of Telangana introduced an Open Data Platform. The portal is the central repository of all the datasets of the government that should be in the public domain. With 866 resources and 233 datasets till now, the portal houses datasets from the various departments and organisations of the Government of Telangana.  

Tamil Nadu Open Govt. Data Portal 

Open Government Data Portal is a platform for supporting the Open Data initiative of the Government of Tamil Nadu. The portal is used by departments/organisations of the Government of Tamil Nadu to publish datasets, documents, services, tools and applications collected by them for public use. It intends to increase transparency in the functioning of the state Government and also open avenues for many more innovative uses of Government Data to give different perspectives. 

The portal is designed and developed by the Open Government Data Division of National Informatics Centre (NIC), Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India. The portal has been created under the Software as A Service (SaaS) model of Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India of NIC. 

Pune Municipal Corporation Open DataStore 

PMC has taken a novel step to “open the city data” for anyone to freely use, re-use and redistribute them, for any purpose, without restrictions. Efficient sharing of data among data owners and inter-and-intragovernmental agencies is the need of the hour. Hence, keeping the need for seamless data availability in mind, PMC introduced the platform for proactive and open access to the data generated through public funds available with various departments/organisations/ vendors of PMC. Some key features of the portal include: 

• Publish government data, documents, and processes from multiple departments within the corporation 
• Engage citizens with open data-based applications and services to improve their lives 
• Dashboard with key indicators 
• Department wise Data Sets 
• Metadata