Hindu
Business Line: New Delhi: Saturday, 15 November 2014.
The
Open Government Data initiative is gaining ground, but it needs to be in step
with the Central Information Commission.
Open
government data (OGD) is fashionable. Governments and public institutions in
Europe and other parts of the globe are making increasing numbers of datasets
available to the public by means of national, regional, local or thematic
portals, in keeping with their political commitments towards open government
and open data. At the global level, OGD is an important part of the Open
Government Partnership, an international initiative launched in September 2011
by eight founding governments.
The
demand for such data “give us our data back” has not arisen out of nowhere.
There is at least one law, the Right to Information Act, which complements and
creates an environment for such data demands in India.
Section
2 (f) of the RTI Act very broadly defines “information” as any material in any
form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press
releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples,
models, data material held in any electronic form. While the RTI is mostly
rights-based, OGD is mostly technology-driven.
Two
systems:
The
recent focus of national government on OGD in India may ‘distract’ its
attention from providing accessible information to the general public in favour
of making data portals for developers, entailing a possible new information
power for the latter. In addition, the emphasis on proactive dissemination of
OGD may actually have a negative influence on the demand-side of RTI. It is
therefore felt by the Government that efficient sharing of data — among data
owners and inter-and-intra governmental agencies along with data standards and
interoperable systems is the need of the hour.
So,
the Government in 2012 formulated a policy on National Data Sharing and
Accessibility (NDSAP), which could provide an enabling provision and platform
for proactive and open access to the data generated through public funds
available with various ministries/departments/bodies of the Government. The
objective is to facilitate access to government-owned shareable data (along
with its usage information) in machine-readable form through a wide area
network all over the country in a periodically updatable manner.
This
would be within the framework of various related policies, acts and rules of
the Government of India, thereby permitting a wider accessibility and usage by
public.
To
give or not to give:
The
principles on which data sharing and accessibility need to be based include:
openness, flexibility, transparency, quality, security and machine-readability.
As per policy, each department has to prepare its Negative List. The datasets
which are confidential and are in the interest of the country’s security would
fall into the negative list.
By
and large, Government data are generated through the processes and events of
primary data (population census, education census, economic survey, etc.),
processed/value-added data (budget, planning, etc.) and data generated through
delivery of government services (income tax collection, MNREGA wage
distribution, etc).
The
implementation plan for the NDSAP involves the Department of Science and
Technology serving the nodal functions of coordination and monitoring. The
challenges of the OGD are far too many in India. The first and foremost is the
involvement of several agencies in the implementation. Keeping in view the data
generation and data sharing a low priority sector in India, the coordination
among all these agencies seems to be fallible.
Ensuring
accountability:
This
will also result in loss of time which will ultimately affect the timeliness
principle of data sharing. Further, one of the purposes of the OGD is to
guarantee accountability, and too many agencies would dilute their
accountability in cases of default.
The
issues of privacy and confidentiality are other areas of concern.
Representatives of government agencies often fear that citizens may use raw data
irresponsibly and an incorrect analysis of data may lead to misconceptions and
may hurt business or larger public interests. Hence, many data suppliers are
cautious about releasing any data in the public domain. There are concerns
about sensitive information, as there have been past instances of confidential
information finding its way into the websites and reports sold by data
intermediaries. For example the data set on household surveys and the data
regarding the Annual Survey of Industries owned by the Ministry of Statistics
and Programme Implementation fall in this category.
As
per the policy of NDSAP, each department has to prepare its Negative List. The
datasets which are confidential and are in the interest of the country’s
security would fall into the list. All other datasets would be in the Open
List. Thereafter, within a year all the datasets need to be published on the
data portal, data.gov.in and within the first three months at least five
high-value datasets need to be published.
The
experience of the Central Information Commission (CIC) regarding compliance
with its full bench order of November 15, 2010, in which the public authorities
of the central government were directed to dichotomise negative and positive
classes of information, can be discouraging. Even though the order of the
Commission has the force of law, its non-compliance even after three years can
dampen the identification of data sets by various departments, as NDSAP does
not have any force of statute.
The
portal allows citizens and users to place a request for a certain dataset
online. Once the number of requests for a dataset crosses 100, NIC officially
writes to the department concerned requesting it to provide that data. While
this is a good practice where citizens can directly influence the data
availability, it is important for the data portal and its implementing agencies
to seek data in a structured manner.
The
biggest problem is the supply deficit of data. For example, data demand for
many social indicators are well known, however, there has not been much sincere
effort by the Government to generate such data.
There
is need for improving quality of government data through better record keeping,
improving coordination between government departments and reducing multiple
departments and personnel providing similar data is another challenge for data
governance in the country.
Even
though the OGD faces many challenges, it has put a variety of data in a readily
accessible and machine-readable format. While NDSAP implementing agencies and
the project unit are largely responsible for uploading data in open data
formats, there needs to be a system in place to review the contents of data
portal from time to time.
The writer is a civil servant,
currently on sabbatical. The views are personal
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