The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) (Gazette notified on 17th March’12) was formulated to enable and establish open access to all data generated from Ministries, Departments and related Organisations of Government of India. The policy mandates these entities of the government to voluntarily release datasets in open formats which are updatable periodically. As a result, a plethora of valuable datasets are being released on the Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India - http://data.gov.in

To implement the NDSAP, the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has set up the OGD Platform (data.gov.in) as a single point of access to all government data resources such as datasets, apps and software tools. The key objective of the OGD platform is to democratise government data in order to foster transparency, citizen engagement and public participation in creating ideas and innovations to strengthen good governance.

IMPORTANT PHASES IN THE TIMELINE OF OGDP • October 1, 2012: Beta version launched with the publishing of four datasets provided by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Evaluation. • August 8, 2013: The Union Minister officially launched the portal. • February 18, 2014: Version 2.0 of OGDP launched with unified interface enabling rich user experience for visitors, data providers and platform user community.

A screen interface of OGDP Ver.2.0

OGDP VER 2.0: KEY FEATURES

  1. Well organized with cataloging of related and similar resources (Datasets/Apps) E.g.: Time series datasets of Consumer Price Index are grouped under a single catalog.
  2. Maintains catalog and resource revisions with timestamp
  3. Built with Responsive Web Design concept, enabling rich user experience equally on desktops, handheld and mobile devices. In such a design, the pages layout adapts to various viewport sizes (Elaborated in the October 2013 edition of Informatics).
  4. Improved look and feel through sleek and clean Interface design
  5. Enhanced features to search data resources
  6. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to Query Datasets. Registered users have the option to generate their API Key to access data within datasets.
  7. Registered users have the options to enable SMS and Email Alerts.
  8. Additional options for searching/filtering resources by frequency, sectors, coverage etc.
  9. Resource Description Framework (RDF) support for catalogs
  10. Enhanced Visualization Platform and an exclusive Visualization Gallery for time series based browsing of Visualization of the Day (VoDs)
  11. Dedicated events section for contests/challenges with Featured Apps section showcasing community-contributed apps
  12. Separate instance for the demo site with role based credentials to have a first-hand feel of the workflow

Screen Interface of http://SaaS.data.gov.in

INNOVATIONS IN THE PRODUCT: • Quick Response Code (QR) – QR enabled catalogs available on data.gov.in can be captured and read through advanced imaging devices such as digital photo cameras and smart phones. • Metadata & Its Vocabularies – Datasets are published along with a set of standard metadata based on Dublin Core. It uses controlled vocabularies on government sectors, jurisdictions, dataset types, access mode etc. Besides facilitating easy access to datasets, it would also be extremely useful in future for federation/integration of data catalogs for the entire country. These standard vocabularies are published on a dedicated website http://vocab.nic.in through Representational State Transfer (REST) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) based APIs/Web Services for further utilization for any of the e-Gov initiatives. • Citizen Engagement and Community Collaboration – The OGDP has a robust enablement for citizen engagement, where the citizens can express their views and suggestions. Besides, they can also rate the datasets based on its Quality, Accessibility and Usability in a scale of 5. Embedding any dataset to a user’s blog or website is also possible. One can write to the respective data controllers seeking information or clarification on any dataset available on the platform. There is also a facility to suggest datasets/apps for publishing. The It gives an idea to the departments about the kind of data people seek and accordingly they can prioritize release of data. Moreover, citizens with specific interest areas can build communities on the Platform, which facilitates knowledge sharing through utilities such as discussion forums and blogs. • Tool for Intra-operability of Data formats – APIs have been developed to convert the source datasets from original published format to five different formats. It helps developers to consume the datasets directly in their applications/tools. • Metrics – Dashboard has been developed to give a bird’s eye view of the contributed catalogs/resources on the platform, along with its popularity, usage and visitors statistics. • Visitor Relationship Management – Feedback/suggestions received for any catalog/resource is forwarded to the dashboard of the data controller for further action.

Group photo with a winning team of the #OpendataApps Challenge

NIC FELICITATES WINNERS OF #OPENDATAAPPS CHALLENGE; LAUNCHES 'OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA PLATFORM INDIA V.2.0' The winners of the #OpenDataApps Challenge were felicitated by NIC, DeitY on 18th of February 2014 at the SCOPE Convention Centre, CGO Complex, New Delhi. Cash prizes of ₹1,00,000 each to the three winners and ₹50,000 each to the three runners-up were awarded and Certificate of Merit were awarded to the finalists. Entrepreneurs, Innovators, Start-ups, Developers, Civil Society and IT industry were invited to create unique, innovative and useful Apps for cross platform and multi devices using Open Government Data. The devices and systems ranges from Smartphones, Tablets, Web, SMS to Voice based applications. The important objectives of this initiative were to encourage data-driven innovations and engage start-ups & developer community to involve and build a healthy open data ecosystem. Of the 331 proposals received from all over the country, 99 completed apps made for various operating systems viz. Android, iOS, Windows, SMS etc. on sectors such as Agriculture, Postal, Governance and Health were evaluated to shortlist 20 finalists for further deciding the challenge winners. Details of the #OpenDataApps Challenge finalists can be referred at http://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/Opendataapps_challenge_finalist.pdf and http://data.gov.in/event/ opendataapps-challenge.

PROCESS INNOVATION - SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SaaS) As per NDSAP, the government entities are required to publish their data resources on the OGD Platform India (data.gov.in). Now, the State Governments, District Administrations, Municipal Corporations, Public Sector Undertakings apart from entities & projects of government can also have personalised OGD Platform. This platform is also offered through Software as a Service (SaaS) model to set up customized data portal according to any specific requirement. Besides providing technical assistance, NDSAP-Programme Management Unit (PMU) also offers infrastructure support for hosting and maintenance to government entities for active implementation of NDSAP. The OGD Platform is being offering any or combination of the following services: • The Entire Platform with dashboard on Analytics, Metrics, Visitor Statistics • Any of the Modular Components – Content Management System, Dataset Management System, Visitor Relationship Management System, Community Management System • Visualization Engine Service As per the requirement of the Government of Maharashtra, the entire platform was offered to setup Maharashtra’s State Data Portal (https://data.maharashtra.gov.in). The OGD Platform V-1.0 has also been offered to the African countries such as Ghana and Rwanda to develop their National Data Portals. The OGD Platform V-1.0 code base has also been used to deploy NIC App Store, a repository of various applications developed by NIC. The OGD Platform India, http://data.gov.in features advanced search options for government’s data resources and various data usages. The platform is also intended to help various government entities to streamline their data gathering and processing procedures. This is a step towards promoting innovations and supports the development of data-driven solutions to benefit citizens.