[open-government] Open data contacts in Indian government?

[Pranesh Prakash]

It is the "National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy" that is 
described in that article, the draft of which I shared with this list a 
few weeks back.  Maj. Gen. (Dr.) R. Siva Kumar, who heads the National 
Spatial Data Infrastructure (which is part of the Department of Science 
and Technology), is responsible for getting this passed.  We at the 
Centre for Internet and Society submitted extensive comments, which 
don't seem to have been incorporated.

We have been hopeful since last year that this would be India's open 
data policy, but after a very long meeting with him yesterday, I am less 
convinced of that than ever.

Since each department will have the possibility of classifying something 
as "open access"/"registered access"/"restricted access", without any 
firm guidelines or requirements, there is a real possibility that 
nothing will be placed in the first category.  Furthermore, they are 
very clear that they do not wish to prescribe an open data licence 
because they wish to provide 'flexibility' to government departments. 
In some instances (especially for geo-spatial data), in the 
"implementation document", they will recommend licences (which may or 
may not cover copyright-related issues).

- Pranesh

On Wednesday 08 June 2011 01:18 AM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> Does anyone know who in the Indian government is responsible for
> implementing this? Or which part of the government is doing this? Is
> it Dr. Siva Kumar at the Natural Resources Data Management System?
>
> http://thenextweb.com/in/2011/06/06/india-to-join-the-open-data-revolution-in-july/
>

-- 
Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society
W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283

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