Following in the footsteps of the US government, the department of information technology (DIT) is now drafting standards for a web portal which will be home to all data collected by the government over time.
The one-stop shop portal called data.gov.in is based on the US government’s data.gov — a repository for all the non-classified data the government collects and will have demographic, economic and social information of the country.
“We are collecting metadata which is data about data. The portal is under progress and will have all data collected by government departments using taxpayers' money. It is similar to the US government's portal and will be launched soon,” said a DIT official.
While the government will provide data to the portal, DIT is laying down the architecture and standards to make the shareable data and information in both human readable and machine readable forms. However, data.gov.in will only have the metadata and data itself will be accessed from the portals of the departments and ministries through the links from data portal.
The Union Cabinet recently approved the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy which aims at facilitating access and use of government-owned shareable data and information.
“There is large quantum of data generated at the cost of public funds by various organisations and institutions in the country. Most of this data, is non-sensitive in nature and can be used by public for scientific, economic and developmental purposes,” according to the policy which has been floated by the department of science and technology.
Besides avoiding duplication of data, the centralised portal will integrate individual databases by adopting common standards for collection and transfer of data.
“All scattered data will be converted to a standard format. The policy will help in accessing spatial and non-spatial data under broad frameworks of standards and interoperability,” the official added.
Moreover, the government has also identified a negative list of non-sharable data pertaining to national security, privacy and confidentiality, trade secrets and intellectual property rights, protection of rare, threatened or endangered species and legal processes.
