The government is looking to tap unconventional datasets and share alternative, administrative datasets with various stakeholders to enable integration with census and other surveys. In a brainstorming session on ‘Leveraging Non-Conventional Data Sources for Official Statistics’ held by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on Thursday, discussions were held that there should be efforts to create an enabling environment to use all possible data sources — conventional and non-conventional — to use for decision making. “It was discussed that the ministries / departments may use the alternative datasets for the real time monitoring and tracking the decision variables. In addition, it also emerged that the ministries / departments may make available alternative / administrative datasets to various stakeholders so that their integration with census / survey data may become possible,” an official statement said. MoSPI Secretary Saurabh Garg urged representatives of the central ministries and departments including statistical advisors to explore the possibility of reusing datasets generated by the other agencies. “The culture of data sharing, however, maintaining the sanctity of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) must be fostered in the working of all the stakeholders,” the statement quoted him as saying. The session was attended by Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman, Axilor Ventures and co-founder of Infosys; Rana Hasan, Regional Lead Economist, South Asia, Asian Development Bank (ADB); and Shombi Sharp, UN Resident Coordinator (UNRC) among others. In total, 150 delegates attended the session. Gopalakrishnan stressed on the importance of non-conventional data by citing use of Aadhaar. He said there is a need for standardisation of various datasets, strengthening data processing capabilities, and developing data governance framework, adding that there should be a system to allow access to private data, legally backed and for rightful usages. The linking statistical data to geospatial locations and making it easily accessible to various data users was discussed in the session. Ayago Wambile, Senior Economist, World Bank, spoke about different non-traditional data sources such as scanner data, mobile phone data etc. that can be leveraged to supplement the official statistical data of the country. Details were also shared by MeitY officials about Aadhaar ecosystem and areas where non-traditional data is being used for authentication of data, identification of bugs, etc. Officials from ISRO presented various types of geospatial data collected by it and products built using them in the official data ecosystem.
