How's this for timing... a significant part of the discussion at the Technology, Transparency and Accountability Camp yesterday, organized by Accountability Initiative, was around making data public, and the challenges faced with both acquiring and collating data; and today, the Economic Times reports that Data.gov.in is being launched, once the National Data Sharing and Accessibility policy is approved by India's Cabinet of Ministers. This is in line with what US CIO Vivek Kundra has pushed through in the US with Data.gov. Both Kundra and US CTO Aneesh Chopra were in India in March this year, as well as Tim Berners-Lee, and from what I've heard, they met with Indian government representatives - those working with the UID project, as well as Sam Pitroda - on Open Data initiatives. We'd made a case for Open Data earlier. Benefits: The Powercuts.in Example The Centre for Internet and Society has outlined benefits and challenges in its report on Open Government Data , but I'll illustrate the opportunity/benefits with example - one that I've been personally involved with (as a volunteer): A month ago, taking cue from an innocuous twitter discussion on power cuts between Shefaly Yogendra, Netra Parikh and me, Ajay Kumar set up PowerCuts.in (within 28 minutes of the first tweet, incidentally), using the Ushahidi platform. The Ushahidi platform has been used previously for Vote Report India. A crowdsourced document with suggestions and objectives with suggestions was soon set up, and using twitter, reports of power cuts have been coming in via twitter over…
