Context: Recently, NITI Aayog launches National Data & Analytics Platform (NDAP) for open public use.

Key Points

• The platform aims to democratize access to public government data by making data accessible, interoperable, interactive, and available on a user-friendly platform.

• It hosts foundational datasets from various government agencies, presents them coherently, and provides tools for analytics and visualization.

• All datasets are standardized to a common schema, which makes it easy to merge datasets and do cross-sectoral analysis.

Types of datasets available: Internal & External Affairs; Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry; Socio-Economic development; Power & Natural Resources; Industries; Communications; Finance; Health; Human Resources Development; Science and Technology; Consumer Affairs; Transport; Housing; Culture and Tourism

Features of NDAP

• Accessibility: The platform makes data more accessible by hosting data in clean, machine-readable formats, ensuring datasets are interoperable, and providing detailed documentation on the contents of each dataset.
• Use case-based Approach: It follows a use-case based approach to ensure that the datasets hosted on the platform are tailored to the needs of data users from government, academia, journalism, civil society and the private sector. 

Why need such data?

• The rise of data and digital technologies are rapidly transforming economies and societies, with enormous implications for governments’ daily operations.

• NDAP is a critical milestone – which aims to aid India’s progress by promoting data-driven disclosure, decision making and ensuring the availability of data connecting till the last mile.

By: Shubham Tiwari