Data and Governance

Data governance, in the institutional sense, is the set of policies, roles, standards and processes that ensure data are accurate, secure, private, available and used responsibly across their lifecycle (creation, storage, use, sharing, archiving and deletion). Data in governance, in the public-policy sense, means using reliable data to plan, monitor and evaluate policies, so that decisions rest on evidence and not on guesswork. This is called evidence-based policy making.

The main roles in data governance are the data owner (accountable for a data set), the data steward (looks after quality and standards) and the data custodian (manages storage and security). Core elements are data quality, metadata, standards, access control, privacy and security, and compliance with law.

E-governance is the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to deliver government services, exchange information and make administration transparent, efficient and accountable. India's National e-Governance Plan began in 2006 and its work has since been absorbed into the Digital India programme.

Benefits of e-governance include transparency, reduced corruption, saving of time and cost, wider access and better accountability. Challenges include the digital divide, lack of digital literacy, cyber-security threats, poor interoperability between systems and resistance to change.

Open data are data that anyone can freely access, use, modify and share, subject to conditions such as attribution. In India, the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP, 2012) governs the sharing of government data, and the Open Government Data Platform at data.gov.in is the portal that publishes it. NITI Aayog also runs the National Data and Analytics Platform (NDAP), which brings government data sets together in one place. Good open data are often described by the FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

Benefits are transparency, public participation, innovation and research. Risks are privacy loss if personal data are not anonymised, and misuse or misinterpretation of data.

Big data refers to data sets so large, fast and varied that ordinary tools cannot handle them. They are described by the 5 Vs: Volume (size), Velocity (speed of generation), Variety (types such as text, image, video and sensor data), Veracity (reliability) and Value (usefulness). Governments use big data and analytics for predicting disease outbreaks, planning transport, detecting tax fraud, targeting welfare and monitoring crops. The main types of analytics are descriptive (what happened), diagnostic (why it happened), predictive (what will happen) and prescriptive (what should be done).

The Digital India programme was launched on 1 July 2015 to make government services available electronically, build digital infrastructure and promote digital literacy. Its vision rests on three areas: digital infrastructure as a core utility, governance and services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens. It is organised around nine pillars, including broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public internet access, e-governance, e-Kranti, information for all, electronics manufacturing, IT for jobs and early harvest programmes.

• UDISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education Plus): school-level data on enrolment, teachers and infrastructure.

• AISHE (All India Survey on Higher Education): data on higher education institutions, students and staff.

• NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework): ranks institutions on parameters such as teaching, research and outreach.

• NAD (National Academic Depository): a digital store of academic awards and certificates.

• ABC (Academic Bank of Credits): stores credits earned by students, linked with the National Education Policy 2020.

• NAAC and NBA: accreditation data for institutions and programmes.

Data privacy is a person's right to control how their personal information is collected and used. The main principles are consent, purpose limitation (use data only for the stated purpose), data minimisation (collect only what is needed), accuracy, storage limitation, security and accountability. India's law on this subject is the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which governs the processing of digital personal data; its rules and phased commencement should be checked for the current position. The Information Technology Act, 2000 deals with cyber offences and electronic records, and the Right to Information Act, 2005 gives citizens access to information held by public authorities. Ethical issues include surveillance, algorithmic bias, exclusion of people who are not in the system, data breaches and use of data without consent.

The digital divide is the gap between people who have access to and can use ICT and those who cannot. It arises from differences in income, location (urban and rural), gender, age, education, disability and language, and from the cost of devices and connectivity. It has three levels: access (who has devices and internet), skills (who can use them well) and outcomes (who benefits). Remedies include public internet access points, digital literacy campaigns, low-cost devices, services in local languages and accessible design.

GIS and remote sensing support land records, disaster response, city planning, agriculture and infrastructure monitoring. Dashboards bring indicators together so that officials can track progress on schemes and targets in near real time.

Example 1. Which e-governance model describes a citizen paying a property tax online? G2C.

Example 2. Which characteristic of big data refers to the reliability and accuracy of data? Veracity.

Example 3. Which policy governs the sharing of government data in India? NDSAP, 2012.

Example 4. A firm collects only the data it needs for a service and deletes it after use. Which principle is being followed? Data minimisation and storage limitation.