Commercial entities, including startups would soon be allowed access to Centre's repository of over 42,000 databases that are currently available on a web platform for use in academic and government purposes. A senior official at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that it would notify a change in policy that allows the use of available information on the portal 'data.gov.in' by commercial units free-of-cost. “The government generates a lot of data, which many people can use for various purposes. Data is a very resource. Till now the data available on the platform data.gov.in was permitted for use only by academics and government institution. We have taken a policy decision that we will allow people to create commercial value added services based on this data,” said Ajay Kumar, additional secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology. “This data can be used to create value added services by either private or government entities. We will not charge anything, but the developer of the services may do so,” Kumar said. Even as the IT ministry is responsible for taking a call on what data would be uploaded on the platform, depending on if any of the data is strategic interest and of national importance. “Ministries are typically oriented not to disclose data, and our effort is to create awareness among ministries that there is no harm in sharing this data,” Kumar said, adding that there are chief data officers appointed in each ministries, and the IT department holds workshop with them every quarter to try and release as much data as possible, at the same time keeping in mind that no data that could have privacy implications is released. The open data platform which comprises over 42,000 databases includes those such as revenue realised by Centre from road transport released by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highway, annual crime databases released by the Ministry of Home Affairs, socio-economic data of various migrants, among several others. Kumar gave an example of a value added service that could be offered using one of the databases. He said that someone could offer a list of past owners for someone wanting to buy a used car for a fee, based on the vehicle registration data available on the portal. The government had notified the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) in March 2012 and under its mandate IT ministry and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) developed and run the data.gov.in platform for open data sharing, bringing together all the envisaged aims and objectives of the NDSAP.
