Data Wars And Platforms: NITI Aayog Proposes To Build National Data And Analytics Platform

Even as large platforms and political 'consultancies' are fending off criticism about the misuse of data, India's top think-tank has proposed a build a new platform to aggregate and help analyse the vast amounts of data being generated across various government departments.

According to the proposal, NITI Aayog will foot the bill of Rs 50 - Rs 100 crores to design, develop and operate the national data and analytics platform (NDAP), reported the Economic Times. A request for proposal (RFP) is in the works to invite proposals for the project. A private sector player is likely to be chosen based on competitive bidding.

The said platform is envisaged to apply artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for producing in-depth analysis of the humongous data sets available with the government. Analysis could include identifying government spending patterns, consumption patterns across the country, to ascertain efficacy of government projects and such.

Should the platform be built according to the plan it could emerge as the single point source of data for all relevant stakeholders including activists, policymakers and journalists. While the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) already operates an open government data platform (at data.gov.in) the new platform is envisaged to offer a fuller coverage with analytics capabilities.

To allay fears of data misuse all data collected in the platform would be "aggregate data on government function with no individual or personal identifiable data collected", the report says.