Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) on Monday announced the commencement of the Open Data Week to encourage adoption of open data and promote innovation across India’s urban ecosystem.
"Leading up to the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav - Smart Cities: Smart Urbanization’ conference scheduled to be held in Surat, during February 2022, the Open Data Week is part of a series of pre-event initiatives being undertaken by MoHUA to promote awareness and use of open data. It will be conducted during the third week of January, i.e., from 17th January 2022 to 21st January 2022," said a statement by the ministry.
Open Data refers to the concept wherein data is freely available to everyone to use and republish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.
The weeklong event will see participation from all 100 smart cities that will be publishing datasets and data blogs on the smart cities 'Open Data Portal'. Presently, more than 3,800 datasets and more than 60 data stories are already available on the portal to various stakeholders to analyse this data and uncover actionable insights.
The statement said that the event aims to show the benefits of open data such as increased efficiency, transparency, a spur in innovation, and economic growth. It is divided into two segments – first, uploading of datasets, visualisations, APIs and data blogs on the Smart Cities Open Data Portal from January 17-20, 2022 and second, celebration of a 'data day' by all smart cities on January 21, 2022.
The data day will take place across all smart cities and will include talks, seminars, hackathons, demonstrations, and trainings on different data tracks identified by the cities. The day will see engagement of people from different backgrounds including government agencies, private sector enterprises, scientific and academic institutions, businesses, start-ups, civil society among others.
The idea is to provide a platform that offers ample opportunities on how to continue creating and promoting the use of data that addresses complex urban issues, such as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the ministry said.
"The event has been designed to promote the use of and spread awareness about data. There are also many different groups of people and organisations who can benefit from the availability of quality data," it said. New combinations of data can create new knowledge and insights, which can lead to whole new fields of application. This can help governments in solving some of the most common problems faced by the citizens of any city and replicating the successful ideas in other cities.
