What do you understand by the term Open Government Data (OGD)? Are the steps taken by Government of India adequate to reap the full potential of OGD? Discuss. (200 words)
Refer – The Hindu
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 6 years
KEY POINTS
What is Open Government Data?
· Open Government Data (OGD) is a philosophy and increasingly a set of policies that promotes transparency, accountability and value creation by making government data available to all.
· It means publishing information collected by the government in its entirety, such as government budgets, spending records, health-care measures, etc.
Benefits of OGD
· It will benefit government itself, by reducing the burden of locating information – both for internal use, as well as for responding to Right to Information (RTI) requests.
· By encouraging the use, reuse and free distribution of datasets, governments promote business creation and innovative, citizen-centric services.
· It will expose incorrect and outdated data, which the government itself is often not in an easy position to detect.
· It will help citizens; the variety of CSOs in India currently working with government data.
· Most importantly, OGD can be seen as a step towards greater transparency and accountability.
Steps taken by GoI
· The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has made some laudable efforts, including a policy around open data.
· India currently houses more than 1.6 lakh data resources and has published over 4,015 application programme interfaces (APIs) from across 100-plus departments.
· As a result, India’s global ranking by the Global Open Data Barometer has jumped.
Are these steps sufficient?
· This is a good start but not enough. A closer analysis of the Open Data project shows good intent but sporadic execution.
· Hence, while India publishes data points, very little of it is getting utilised by data consumers, scientists and corporates.
· Naturally, the socio-economic impact is limited.
Way Ahead
To address the current execution gaps, ensure the following –
· Completeness of data (i.e. a set of data)
· Comprehensiveness of a data set
· Clustering of relevant data sets
· Build anchor cases or use-cases to encourage data usage
· Establishment of comprehensive governance framework to monitor, regulate and build usage after proportionate oversight.
