Syndicate content

South Asia

Transforming India through Digital Innovation

Darshan Yadunath's picture
Girl on cellphone. Aurangabad, India. Photo: © Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank

In recent decades, India’s growth story has been difficult to ignore. And the Indian technology revolution, a key contributor to this growth, has been remarkable. The information technology industry contributes to nearly 9.5% of India’s GDP and is the largest private sector employer, generating some 3.5 million direct jobs, and over 10 million indirect jobs[1].
 
However, the dividends of India’s digital growth have been unevenly realized, providing lots of opportunities for improvement, including:  
  • Mobile penetration in India is still relatively low. India’s rural populace makes up approximately 68% of the population but account for just over 40% of its mobile users[2].
  • India ranked 156th in the world in terms of broadband penetration (at over 19%) as per the UN Broadband Commission report released in 2015.[3]
  • Roughly nine out of 10 workers are informally employed and lack social protection. Most workers lack adequate education or skills and the educated youth faces high unemployment rates.[4]

Open Data for Business Tool: learning from initial pilots

Laura Manley's picture
Citizens in Nigeria participate in a
readiness assessment exercise to identify
high-priority datasets
Around the world, governments, entrepreneurs and established businesses are seeing the economic growth potential of using Open Data – data from government and other sources that can be downloaded, used and reused without charge.
 
As a public resource, Open Data can help launch new private-sector ventures and help existing businesses create new products and services and optimize their operations. Government data – a leading source of Open Data – can help support companies in healthcare, agriculture, energy, education, and many other industries.  

​In addition, government agencies can be most helpful to the private sector if they understand the unique needs of the businesses that currently or could potentially use their data.
 
The World Bank has used the Open Data Readiness Assessment (ODRA) in more than 20 countries to provide an overall evaluation of a country’s Open Data ecosystem. With that information and insight, government agencies can identify strengths and opportunities for making their Open Data more useful and effective. The ODRA covers essential components of any national Open Data program, including:

Exploring Digital India's transformative plans

Rajendra Kumar's picture
In August 2014, the Government of India approved Digital India, an ambitious national program aimed at transforming India into a knowledge economy and making government services more efficient and available to all citizens electronically. Over the next three years, the program envisions a national optical fiber network will connect thousands of India’s most distant gram panchayats — village-level governments — with a total population of more than 800 million.

This infrastructure will support government reform and change the way services are delivered. It is also expected that the program will help create thousands of new IT jobs, give a boost to the domestic manufacturing of electronics and, as a spin-off effect, lead to emergence of new services and flourishing e-commerce.
 
India’s Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) is the agency that help develop and now is driving the implementation of this transformative agenda. We asked Dr. Rajendra Kumar, Joint Secretary for e-Government, to tell us more about Digital India, the challenges this program is meant to address and the solutions that are envisaged. Read Dr. Kumar’s selected responses below, and click here to download the full version of the interview.

Digital India, the ambitious initiative of the Indian Government, aims to bridge digital divide and bring high-speed Internet and government services to the rural and underprivileged parts of the country by 2019. What are the key development challenges that Digital India is addressing and why was investment in ICTs chosen as the main solution?

India is sitting on the cusp of a big information technology (IT) revolution. We have to leverage our massive Indian talent and information and communication technologies (ICTs) as growth engines for a better India tomorrow. This is embodied in the following statement: IT (Indian Talent) + IT (Information Technology) = IT (India Tomorrow).

Keeping momentum toward India's digital future

Deepak Bhatia's picture
The Government of India has recently announced the Digital India program, which aims to transform the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. In addition, the Government has an ambitious plan to upgrade 100 cities into Smart Cities by 2014, and the Swachh Bharata Abhiyan national initiative is focusing on a green and clean India by 2019.

The emphasis of all these programs is on leveraging the innovative potential of ICT, mobile and new media Technologies to achieve these visionary activities. In addition, the Neeti Ayog (Erstwhile Planning Commission) is working on a framework to set up a state-of-the-art data mining center and develop ICT tools that can help make use of Open Data for national planning purposes.

Teams from World Bank’s Transport & ICT and Urban Development teams are closely partnering with the Government of India (both at the federal and state levels) to help achieve these goals. The World Bank plans to be the key knowledge partner in both the Smart Cities project and the Open Data initiative. Bank specialists have been actively supporting these activities through knowledge events and workshops that are focused on sharing global best practices and technology trends.

On the road to Open Data: glimpses of the discourse in India

Isha Parihar's picture

Recently I attended an India Open Data Community meeting organised by the World Bank in New Delhi that brought together government officials, academics, corporates, developers and a few development sector professionals to discuss social and economic Open Data opportunities in India and the emerging partnerships forming around them. 

Organized at the highly regarded Indian Institute of Technology, the meeting was focused on three key areas; experiences of institutions using open data around the world, how organisations need to prepare to tap into the growing potential of Open Data, and how to build and strengthen the community of data users and providers. The aim was to help assess the challenges and opportunities for extracting and using open government data in India, and to then communicate these at a subsequent National Conference on Open Data and Open API. 
 
India – Open Data opportunity
One of the key speakers at the meeting was Professor Jeanne Holm, a senior Open Data consultant at the World Bank and former evangelist for Data.gov in the US. In a brief presentation, she summarized the key reasons for governments’ willingness to open their data. These include improved internal efficiency and effectiveness, transparency, innovation, economic growth and better communication with citizens and other stakeholders.

She highlighted some key observations about the opportunities for Open Data in India: the availability of a vast resource of data; a stable, open source platform for open government data; rich technological expertise and knowledge; and opportunities to design specific data sciences programmes in educational institutions. A rapidly growing community of open data enthusiasts in India, DataMeet, is also shaping the discourse on data and its civic uses and exploring engagement opportunities with a wide spectrum of Open Data users.

Discussing India's Open Data Initiative: where next?

Oleg Petrov's picture

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.

Taking Open Data to the next level to deliver solutions for inclusive rural growth

Saki Kumagai's picture
“It is not data [that] makes you powerful; it is how you use it. That is exactly what our government has set out to do…data empowers not only the holder of it, but also the people who receive it and are empowered by using it.” – Minister KT Rama Rao
 
Over the past several years, I have attended many Open Data-related events in Washington, DC and elsewhere. But as far as I remember, no one has addressed the opportunities and potentials of Open Data for greater government accountability, citizen engagement, empowerment of the poor, and inclusive rural growth as speakers and presenters did in early September in Hyderabad, India.
 
Being transparent — through Open Data in this context — is an achievement itself. Transparency has been at the center of attention of the Open Data movement for some time. However, as many of us know, being open is a means to an end — the more important questions are what to open, as well as for what purpose, for whom and how.
 
On the morning of September 4, 2014, I was sitting in a packed conference room for a workshop with high-level government officials, members of the project implementation unit, civil society organizations, academics, IT firms, and media. We were all blown away by the opening speech delivered by the Honorable KT Rama Rao, Minister of IT and Rural Development for the Government of Telangana, one of India’s 29 states. This opening speech set the tone for the workshop on Open Data Solutions for Rural Development and Inclusive Growth.
 
KT Rama Rao at workshop on Open Data Solutions for Rural Development and Inclusive Growth

Please share your ideas on how Open Data can help eradicate rural poverty

Oleg Petrov's picture
We’d like to hear your ideas of how Open Data could be used to help eradicate poverty and improve public services in rural India. 

We are launching a co-creation and crowdsourcing effort on “Open Data Solutions for Rural Development and Inclusive Growth in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.” This is linked to an ideation workshop on September 4 in Hyderabad, which will bring together key stakeholders from these two Indian States, including government officials, development practitioners, health, education, agriculture, retail and other subject matter experts, entrepreneurs, ICT firms, and academic and research institutions.

You can follow the discussions online via Twitter, ask questions and engage with us on (http://www.twitter.com/worldbankict), using the hashtag #data4impact. You can also follow us on our Facebook page.

The workshop will consist of two parts. The first part will focus on knowledge sharing of global and Indian good practices, successful solutions and lessons learned, as well as collecting feedback from participants and discussing priorities for the Open Data initiative in the rural space. There will be presentations by government officials and World Bank experts with examples from around the world, in India and within the two states.

Using Open Data to drive innovation, collaboration and change in India

Vikas Kanungo's picture
Open Data has the potential to be a game-changing tool in poverty reduction and economic growth. The World Bank has been actively encouraging governments to become more transparent, more accountable to their citizens, less susceptible to corruption and better at delivering services.  

We often consult various partners – including governments, organizations and other implementers – on Open Data and its critical role in economic development and growth. The World Bank’s team of information and communication technology (ICT) and open data experts help explore the potential for forecasting national and global trends, while also unlocking opportunities for innovation and improved performance. These consultations serve as a crucial starting point in planning, implementation and correction of many government, private sector and civil society initiatives.

Since 2012, the Bank has organized a series of trainings on open data tools and online resources for users in government, economic research institutes, media, civil society, academia and the private sector. More than 3,000 stakeholders have been trained already in 10+ major cities of India. There is need to take this agenda forward especially in the low-income states where exposure to the Bank's resources is lower.

Pages