We need more DATA!
We need more DATA!
Give us DATA, and we will grow the economy, make government efficient, improve social well-being, improve the environment & make India $10Trillion economy. Why, What & How.
As India moves towards a $10 trillion economy, we need more data - economic data, government data, corporate data. I have been vocal about it for decades now.
This is what happened a few days ago.
Some person commented that the US has 1000 train derailments every year.
Now that number seems a bit high to me. So I went to the FRA Site mentioned above. There are quite detailed views of the data available on the site.
To compare, I went to the Indian Railway site to seek basic figures. But they were not available. There is some data summarized in response to question asked in the Parliament, but that is about it. Indian Railways has a webpage dedicated to accident reporting, but not many accidents are reported therein.
That brings me to my pet peeve - DATA!
India needs a lot more data that we are getting - this is true not just of Railways.
It is true of any level of government and ANY kind of data - long term or short term. Say, at the city level, it could be the number of COVID beds, oxygen cylinders, etc. At the State level, it may be types of crop production, state GDP etc. At the national level, say, consumption basket details, central government beneficiaries, forest cover, etc.
Most of the data is available at the government institution level. Yet, it is not available in a usable way. It is not updated regularly.
How will data help?
The lack of data means there is a lack of quality analysis, and therefore quality solutions cannot be found. Usually, we do not know what is going on in reality, we do not have enough metrics to diagnose it and do not have consistent data series to monitor the impact of our solutions.
Quality data will allow us to build metrics to understand what is going on and how to improve it. Citizens and private entities can and will build on these metrics and analytics. But without data, it will be a question of garbage-in-garbage-out.
The more people look at data, metrics and analytics more insights you will get. We need more eyes on metrics. We need more analytics, expertise and innovation, ALL of which need data and metrics. Give us data, and we will improve the economy, make it efficient, make new products and services, create more growth than you can imagine.
Share data by default mentality is required.
Senior bureaucrats or ministers often ask us what data do you want and promise to get for us. That misses the point completely.
Government has no business hiding data. What we need is a share-data-by-default mentality with government departments. More than 90% of the data with government departments is not confidential and could be analysed better if it were available.
This additional hurdle is deliberately created by bureaucratic derision to mock the citizenry.
Data needs to be accessible to people.
Government departments have a habit of burying information in an unintelligible form. That sparks requests for Information and creates more bureaucratic work. It is no problem if you don’t want to do the work.
The unfortunate reality is that these very government departments will share properly tabulated, machine readable data with foreign agencies. But when Indian agencies and citizens ask for it, they will send photos of tables (we cannot extract data, or it is pretty cumbersome).
In Sum
India's journey to 10Trillion economy will not happen without data. We need to create, clean and anonymise data at every government department so that citizens can observe, report, analyse and find innovative solutions to challenges faced by the government.