Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India

An Overview

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) established the Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India (https://data.gov.in) in accordance with India’s Open Data Policy (NDSAP). The policy’s goal is to enable proactive access to shareable data owned by the government, as well as consumption information, are available in open/machine formats, readable format, across a wide area network across the country, on a regular basis in an up-to-date manner, within the context of many connected policies, laws, and acts of the federal government. The project, which was created with Open Source Stack, is one of the projects under the Digital India initiative’s Pillar 6.

It encourages community participation in product development by providing Visualizations, APIs, Alerts, and so on. It offers a simple and user-friendly interface with dynamic/pull-down menus, search-based reports, secure web access, a bulletin board, Dublin Core metadata standards, and parametric and dynamic reports in exportable format. The platform exemplifies how the innovative use of information technology has resulted in a paradigm change in accommodating the country’s vast data potential.

The Platform includes a robust mechanism for citizen participation that could assist Ministries/Departments/Organizations in prioritising the distribution of Government Datasets.

It also allows citizens to review the quality of datasets and seek clarification or information from nodal officers of participating government agencies, in addition to expressing their desire for specific datasets or apps.

Through online communities, the Platform also serves as a knowledge-sharing platform.

Citizens with specific interests are invited to publish blogs and participate in online forums centred on various datasets or their area of expertise.

Engaging with the greater audience is a key factor in the success of the Open Data programme and the NDSAP policy. Citizen participation in Open Government Data is encouraged through community engagement. A separate Community Portal (http://community.data.gov.in) has been developed to give a shared platform for knowledge exchange through conversation and to contribute using data accessible on the platform through blogs, infographics, visualizations, and so on.

Similarly, a dedicated event portal (https://event.data.gov.in) has aided in the management of workshops, hackathons, challenges, and other similar events. OGD has so far organised six events/apps-challenges/hackathons, as well as numerous seminars/training/awareness sessions, including state-level workshops.

The following are the key characteristics of the OGD Platform:

• Ministry/Department/State contributes/publishes open format resources (CSV, XLS, XML, ODS, JASON) either directly or via Web Services via workflow-based Data Management System.
• Provides a single point of access to datasets and apps provided in open format by various Ministries/Departments/Organizations/States.
• Citizen/community suggestions and data requirements can be given to help prioritise data sharing by participating ministries/departments. Anyone can vote on previously submitted recommendations.
• People can write to the Chief Data Officer (provider) (formerly known as the Data Controller) directly if they need further clarification/information on the released resources or related requirements.
• Through visualisations and the development of apps, mashups, and other applications, the platform promotes better discovery and use of government resources. Visualization platform has the ability to build maps as well as many chart types such as radar, bar, line, area, pie, column, and so on.
• Query Datasets Using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• The APIs also allow for direct and dynamic queries to access data items from specific datasets.
• Catalogues can be subscribed to for an update alert service.
• A separate Community Portal (http://community.data.gov.in) has been developed to give a shared platform for knowledge exchange through conversation and to contribute using data accessible on the platform through Blogs, Infographics, Visualizations, and so on.
• People can use the OGD Platform’s visualisation engine service to build visualisations of their own data.
• People can use the OGD Platform’s visualisation engine service to build visualisations of their own data.
• Custom Widgets for Sharing/Linking/Consuming a Selected Set of Catalogs (Ministry/Department/Organization as well as Sectors, etc.).
• The platform features a Responsive Web Layout design, which means that the service is available on different web/mobile platforms.
• People can rate resources (datasets/apps) on a 5-point scale based on three criteria: quality, accessibility, and usability.
• There is a separate Event portal (https://event.data.gov.in) for managing workshops, hackathons, challenges, and so on.
• A Software as a Service (SaaS) portal for the OGD SaaS instance has also been launched, allowing states and other organisations to create their own Open Data site.