Hyderabad:

Much like the Centre, the Telangana government too plans to put out data pertaining to various departments in the public domain. On the lines of data.gov.in — the website on which the central government shares information — a single portal has been envisaged for state-related data.

The purpose of such a move is to make available to the public a huge cache of information that can be analysed or made use of. “Once such data is put up to be accessed by the public, there are endless possibilities on how it can be used for the benefit of society in general,” said Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu, founder of ‘Factly’ and co-convenor of National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI).

The Telangana ICT Policy Framework 2016, which was made public a month ago, clarified the government’s stance in favour of putting out data in the public domain. This was reiterated this time round by IT secretary Jayesh Rajan at the ‘Public Data Devthon’ oragnised by Factly in association with the Telangana government and T-Hub.

During the Devthon, groups of people demonstrated an analysis of how data from various departments, including the GHMC, could reveal crucial information regarding spending on public schemes. “Government data which can be given out to the public should be put up in real-time. Anyone can come up with suggestions or recommendations on how to rectify shortcomings in the functioning of various departments,” Dubbudu said. For instance, he said, if there were places where too many accidents were taking place, this could be analysed to come up with suggestions as to how to prevent the same.

Apart from the Centre, no other state government has put up much data in the public domain, although some annual reports are released by departments. While mentioning ‘Open data’ in its IT policy, the government said various departments were involved in collection, generation and updating of data on multiple issues collected using public funds. Such data should be readily available for citizens’ consumption. “Although individual departments share data for use by civil society and the private sector, there is a need for an open data policy that enables proactive data sharing by every department. This will not only result in greater transparency, but also help the government in better decision making,” the policy said.

According to the IT policy, the IT, Electronics and Communication (ITE&C) department, will formulate the open data policy based on best practices adopted in the national open data policy. The ITE&C department will also identify departments for the first phase of the open data roll out.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Hyderabad / TNN / May 18th, 2016