SHILLONG: A one-day regional workshop for North Eastern states on Implementation of Open Government Data & National Data Sharing & Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) was inaugurated by Chief Secretary, WMS Pariat, in the presence of senior Government officials here on Thursday.
The workshop, organized by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology, National Informatics Centre, Meghalaya State Unit, was well attended by officials from different government departments of the State and the North Eastern states.
Open Government Data Portal is an open source product aimed at democratizing access of Government data in open format and energize civic engagement. It is set up at http://data.gov.in and was launched in compliance with the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) of India to provide single point access to datasets published by various government entities.
Its main objective is to enable proactive dissemination of Open Government datasets for use and reuse by citizens and to promote transparency, accountability and citizen engagement in governance.
Alka Mishra of the NPI & Data Portal Team, NIC, New Delhi, said that Open Government Data is a national initiative announced by the Union Government in March, 2012 as it felt that the government data should be readily made available for the public.
It is mandatory for all government departments to release their datasets through the NDSAP with the exception of confidential data relating to nations security, in human and machine readable forms through a network in a proactive and periodically updatable manner.
Pariat, in his inauguration address, said that in this era of information revolution, it is pertinent to disseminate information where people can gain easy access adding that Open Government Platform (OGPL) is a first step towards this end as it will transfer power to the citizen by seamless data sharing.
Pariat said this platform would have a significant impact on improving governance, enhancing accountability and generating greater collaborations between the government and the citizens even as he called upon the government officials that while generating data, authenticity of data should be ensured because it may have a negative impact for the end users.
Commissioner Secretary IT, DP Wahlang, said that Open Government Platform (OGPL) originated from the visit of the President of USA, Barack Obama to India in November, 2010, while adding that this democratization of data will lead to a concept of community engagement where the government can get feedbacks and suggestions to bring about government- citizens collaboration.