The governments of the United States of America and India launched today launched an Open Government Platform (OGPL), an open source version of the US's Data.gov platform, for helping make governments across the globe make data public. Teams from both countries - from the National Informatics Centre from India, and Data.gov from the US - collaborated over a six month period to develop the platform. At a press conference in Delhi execs said that there is interest from other governments to make their data public, especially from those in Africa. Note that the Open Government Platform repository on github (link via this page) gives a 'page not found' error. Data.gov.in In Closed Beta For Testing The Indian government is launching data.gov.in in closed beta for the time being, and the release is available at present for only a selected set of people (though government representatives did not specify which), who are expected to test the platform and give the project team feedback on its stability and suggestions for processes that need to be put into place. Once tested, the Indian government will make data.gov.in public, and release data in the public domain. Initially, datasets for agriculture, health and energy will be made public. Challenges Speaking at the launch, Sam Pitroda said that the plan is to release all kinds of government data - on transportation, water, sanitation, railways and more; ideally, all but certain confidential data related to defense. He did warn, though, that it won't be easy: "It will take time for people…
