More than 200 high-level federal and state officials in India will convene on December 11 in New Delhi, for the India National Open Data and Open API Conference. The conference is organized by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) in the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in the Government of India and National Informatics Centre (NIC).
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Honorable Minister of Communications and Information Technology, will deliver the keynote address. The World Bank is pleased to support this event and to bring leading international experts — including Jeanne Holm, Senior Open Data Consultant at the World Bank and former evangelist for the U.S. Government's Data.gov, and Laura Manley, Project Manager of Open Data 500 at GovLab in New York University — to share knowledge and hold discussions about the advancement of India’s Open Data initiative.
Over the course of the conference, participants will discuss India’s Open Data policy and platform, gain insights of the officials from several federal and state agencies, and hear about latest best practices on Open API policy. Social aspects, including community engagement with Open Government data, will also be covered.
World Bank experts will speak about the Bank’s own Open Data program and the state of the global Partnership for Open Data (POD). Jeanne Holm and Laura Manley will share U.S. and worldwide experience in Open Data and Open API, and will discuss the value of Open Data for business.
India was one of the first countries to embrace the concept of Open Data and to launch a robust National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy and Open Government Data Platform, which now hosts over 7,000 datasets from ministries, departments and states. The next opportunity for India is to foster a dynamic Open Data ecosystem including a vibrant community, comprising businesses, civil society organizations, academia, journalists, and others interested in deriving economic and social value from data. At the same time, there still is a need to grow and strengthen the supply of data from the government.
The conference will provide a platform for Open Data practitioners from the government and international experts to share knowledge and work out recommendations on the next steps. A high-level Panel Discussion moderated by Jeanne Holm will focus on charting ways forward for the India’s Open Data program.
The webcast of the discussion will be available on December 11, 2014 at 9:00 local time at http://webcast.gov.in/opendata. We encourage you to join and learn about the exciting Open Data initatives underway in India.
Join the Conversation