Know what’s next in Modi’s ‘Digital India’ bucket

The Indian government is now planning to ramp up the online division and make more and more data available to the public for free.

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation is right now busy working on a note, which will have data that can and cannot be shared on the website. The Ministry is also planning to make the ‘sharable data’ available on the portal for free; earlier, the user had to pay a nominal fees to access it.

Currently, the government charges fees for providing data related to its national sample surveys, annual survey of industries and the economic census. As reported in the Economic Times, some officials believe that the current practice is against the spirit of the open data policy.

Earlier, an internal committee of the ministry had suggested retaining the current practice, but many officials said that the data collection and surveys are being conducted with the help of the taxpayer’s money, which is why they should have a free access to the data.

The amount, which the government receives every year in form of the fees is nearly Rs 7 crore.

A government official, requesting anonymity, said, "We want every ministry to have a negative list wherein they specify the kind of data that they don't want to share because of its strategic importance and confidentiality."

Officials also said that once the ministry draws a clear line on what data can be shared and what not, the same will then be recommended to other ministries.

The Statistics Ministry, however, plans not to share the worksheets on which it is making the calculations and estimates. An official from the ministry said, "We identify units with the help of geospatial data which is many a time sensitive from security point of view.”

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