In last some months I happened to see the vast amount of data and statistics available in our govt. portals.
I was always surprised at the amount the data available to public in western countries.
Cities like NewYork provide charts on various topics available to people. They used a business intelligence tool (OBIEE) I work on for providing many useful graphs too. (No I did not not work on that project)
Check the NewYork CPR (City Wide Performance Reporting) here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/cpr/html/home/home.shtml
Even UN made its database available to public for along time and has been updating the way people can access it. (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/ updated to http://data.un.org/)
One can see numerous infographics made out of these by people
e.g:
http://projects.flowingdata.com/state-of-the-world/
http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/apr/electric-grid/
http://www.candychang.com/desk/2008/11/12/vendor-power/
Now the best news of theme all is this: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/adding-search-power-to-public-data.html
And yes you might have already heard of the (coming soon) http://data.gov/ showing the commitment of Obama govt's towards transparency and freedom of information
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/FreedomofInformationAct/
Done with the preface!
Now my problem is I envied all this. Because getting such data or infographics on India was difficult and scarce.
If the source is not from UN or say http://graphs.gapminder.org/ very little inforgraphics we have around our country as I feel.
Mostly we are part of some graph made for the whole world ( or in a comparison report made to show where one of the biggest democracies and big economy stands)
I always thought that we don't have much of the govt. data available to public and RTI is there for the namesake.
BUT in last 3 months my perception has changed. We too have a vast amount of data available to public. Just thatI never cared to search for these at the right place because of my prejudice.
See what all things I found out:
National Budgets, State Budgets and yearly Economic Surveys - http://indiabudget.nic.in/
Monthly Economic Reports from portal of Finance Ministry - http://finmin.nic.in/stats_data/monthly_economic_report/index.html
Check several other reports available from portal of Finance Ministry
Check RBI provided Statistics at http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/statistics.aspx and Database on Indian Economy at http://dbie.rbi.org.in/
Want to search judgments given by Supreme Court: http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/chejudis.asp
A similar search system is there in the site for each high court.
A directory of sites http://goidirectory.nic.in/
Okay... tired huh...
Yes, a lot of data is available, which probably many of us are not aware of. Many of us who get to know about it, do not use it.
What I plan to do with these data?
Create some inforgraphics from the statistics. [I make many promises. I really need to take out good amount of time to do a bit in this regard.]
Compare the presentation of data to that provided by other country governments. Wish data.gov sets a standard in this arena.
Wishes:
Wish the data comes in a more usable format making it easier to use. Having some sort of standard on making online data available will be great. Such a thing might be actually already available and I did not discover it (Need to look for this).
Some portals are pretty cluttered. Wish they improve the usability of these.
Hope, new Indian government going to be formed takes a step similar to data.gov and do not just stop at e-media advertisements for election.
For the state of things in some countries check this:
Check this http://resource.org/ and http://public.resource.org/justice.gov/index.html
A very valid set of Data principles suggested for an Open government. http://resource.org/8_principles.html
Anyways it is for sure that the data made available by a government will decide how Open it is.
I can't comment right now about how Open Indian Government is. Hope, I will be able to evaluate it completely very soon.
NOTE 1: A link I found important and need to note: http://india.gov.in/govt/constitutions_india.php
NOTE 2: Something I found out in this process is this: http://google.com/insights/search/#cat=&q=data%2Cdesign%2Cvisualization%2Cstatistics&geo=&date=&clp=&cmpt=q
India loves data the most. The results are surprising I must say.. don't give that clear a picture too.
[Thanks to Flowing data for this http://flowingdata.com/2008/08/06/google-releases-insights-for-search-india-likes-data/]
I was always surprised at the amount the data available to public in western countries.
Cities like NewYork provide charts on various topics available to people. They used a business intelligence tool (OBIEE) I work on for providing many useful graphs too. (No I did not not work on that project)
Check the NewYork CPR (City Wide Performance Reporting) here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/cpr/html/home/home.shtml
Even UN made its database available to public for along time and has been updating the way people can access it. (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/ updated to http://data.un.org/)
One can see numerous infographics made out of these by people
e.g:
http://projects.flowingdata.com/state-of-the-world/
http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/apr/electric-grid/
http://www.candychang.com/desk/2008/11/12/vendor-power/
Now the best news of theme all is this: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/adding-search-power-to-public-data.html
And yes you might have already heard of the (coming soon) http://data.gov/ showing the commitment of Obama govt's towards transparency and freedom of information
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/FreedomofInformationAct/
Done with the preface!
Now my problem is I envied all this. Because getting such data or infographics on India was difficult and scarce.
If the source is not from UN or say http://graphs.gapminder.org/ very little inforgraphics we have around our country as I feel.
Mostly we are part of some graph made for the whole world ( or in a comparison report made to show where one of the biggest democracies and big economy stands)
I always thought that we don't have much of the govt. data available to public and RTI is there for the namesake.
BUT in last 3 months my perception has changed. We too have a vast amount of data available to public. Just thatI never cared to search for these at the right place because of my prejudice.
See what all things I found out:
National Budgets, State Budgets and yearly Economic Surveys - http://indiabudget.nic.in/
Monthly Economic Reports from portal of Finance Ministry - http://finmin.nic.in/stats_data/monthly_economic_report/index.html
Check several other reports available from portal of Finance Ministry
Check RBI provided Statistics at http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/statistics.aspx and Database on Indian Economy at http://dbie.rbi.org.in/
Want to search judgments given by Supreme Court: http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/chejudis.asp
A similar search system is there in the site for each high court.
A directory of sites http://goidirectory.nic.in/
Okay... tired huh...
Yes, a lot of data is available, which probably many of us are not aware of. Many of us who get to know about it, do not use it.
What I plan to do with these data?
Create some inforgraphics from the statistics. [I make many promises. I really need to take out good amount of time to do a bit in this regard.]
Compare the presentation of data to that provided by other country governments. Wish data.gov sets a standard in this arena.
Wishes:
Wish the data comes in a more usable format making it easier to use. Having some sort of standard on making online data available will be great. Such a thing might be actually already available and I did not discover it (Need to look for this).
Some portals are pretty cluttered. Wish they improve the usability of these.
Hope, new Indian government going to be formed takes a step similar to data.gov and do not just stop at e-media advertisements for election.
For the state of things in some countries check this:
Check this http://resource.org/ and http://public.resource.org/justice.gov/index.html
A very valid set of Data principles suggested for an Open government. http://resource.org/8_principles.html
Anyways it is for sure that the data made available by a government will decide how Open it is.
I can't comment right now about how Open Indian Government is. Hope, I will be able to evaluate it completely very soon.
NOTE 1: A link I found important and need to note: http://india.gov.in/govt/constitutions_india.php
NOTE 2: Something I found out in this process is this: http://google.com/insights/search/#cat=&q=data%2Cdesign%2Cvisualization%2Cstatistics&geo=&date=&clp=&cmpt=q
India loves data the most. The results are surprising I must say.. don't give that clear a picture too.
[Thanks to Flowing data for this http://flowingdata.com/2008/08/06/google-releases-insights-for-search-india-likes-data/]
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