The Surat Municipal Corporation has launched an open data initiative for the city at surat.data.gov.in. The initiative is a part of the Open Government Data (OGD) platform for India, intended for use by Government Ministries/ Departments and their sub-organizations to publish datasets, documents, services, tools and applications for public use. #surat first city level open data portal in India! @DataPortalIndia #opendata #india #smartcity #DMhangout — datameet (@datameet) November 22, 2016 The Surat portal currently lists 8 data catalogs, including data sets related to property tax, details of the elected wing for the Surat Municipal Corporation, census data for Surat, professional tax registration data, vehicle registration details, birth & death data for Surat and a catalog of various citizen facilities like offices, libraries, reading rooms etc. Each catalog has its own resources, with a total of 70 resources across all catalogs. For example, the census data for Surat contains resources like population of the main cities of Gujarat from 1901 to 2011, ward wise area and population of SC/ST etc. The platform lists the size of these files, and lets users export them in CSV, XML, JSON, JSONP, XLS and ODS formats. The portal has other nifty features like the name, designation, contact and address of relevant data officers on each catalog. It also lets users provide feedback, and/or suggest a new data set. Other than Surat, only the state of Sikkim has a data portal based on the OGD platform. The state government lists 25 catalogs by 5 departments with…
