National Data And Analytics Platform

On 23^rd January, 2020, NITI Aayog released its vision for the National Data and Analytics Platform (NDAP), with an aim to democratize access to public Government data through a world-class user experience.
The first version of National Data and Analytics Platform is proposed to be released in 2021.

Standardize data across multiple government sources.
Provide flexible analytics and make it easily accessible in formats.
Conducive for research, innovation, policy making and public consumption.

Availability of Rich Public Data: Government departments have digitised various processes and reporting requirements, which in turn are feeding into management information systems and interactive dashboards. This data is being used to track and visualise progress and make iterative improvements on the ground.
Making Data Easily Accessible: All public government data should be easily accessible to all stakeholders in a user-friendly manner. Further, data across sectors should be coherent to support analysis and dissemination. In addition, there should be easy access to the most recent data, published reliably.

The NDAP proposes a simple, interactive, visual, and robust platform that will host various Central and state government datasets. The platform will be designed and optimised to the needs of policymakers, bureaucrats, researchers, innovators, data scientists, journalists, and citizens.
It will follow a user-centric approach and will enable data access in a simple and intuitive portal tailored to the needs of a variety of stakeholders.
The platform will be powered by a user friendly search engine, backed by seamless navigation, with a worldclass user interface. Data will be provided in a machine-readable format with customizable analytics. Dynamic visualisations will be generated based on user search terms.
Data will be sourced from different Central and State Ministries and Departments. This will be presented using a common schema, with clear definitions and narratives to help the user navigate the differences between similar data from different sources.

A high powered inter-ministerial steering committee under the chairmanship of Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog will be set up to provide direction, oversee progress, guide on data sources, and address various inter-ministerial issues on collating data.
A Technical Advisory Group consisting of sector and technology experts will be established to provide expert consultation. TAG will provide guidance on the development of the platform, management of data, and aligning the platform for user-needs.

Source: NITI Aayog

Data is Not Published in a User-Centric Manner

The current data formats are often not conducive for research and innovation. Many departments maintain public dashboards with visualizations and options to download data in analyzable formats. However, some datasets are only available in PDF, webpage or as an image, making it difficult for further analysis.
If this issue is resolved, researchers and data scientists will significantly save time and resources in cleaning and preparing government datasets for analysis.

Incoherency of Data Ecosystem

Ministries and Departments do not use a shared standard for common indicators. Attributes like region and time period defined differently. This makes it difficult for datasets to speak to each other and present a coherent picture. If we can solve this, many use-cases can emerge. For example, a District Magistrate can access data across all departments for their district, easily, in one platform.

One Stop Platform

NDAP will be a one-stop platform to utilize, analyse and visualise all published government datasets. It will be a critical tool in the hands of policy makers, researchers, journalists, and civil society leaders, enabling them to do their work better.
NDAP would encompass critical features such as allowing easy access to all the published datasets through a single platform and using cutting edge technology to enable analytics and visualization for drawing better insight. It willstrive to ensure that datasets are merged with each other using temporal and geographical identifiers.

Improving Socio-Economic Condition

NDAP has the potential to deepen our understanding of India's dynamic economy and social conditions. Thiswill in turn help improve the socio-economic condition of the people by making the government's actions more scientific and data-driven.