Major Links this week!

• 7 Challenges to Government Innovation by Nagaragan
• Rail Radar was launched! – Rail Radar allows you to live track your train, and see whether it is delayed or not. (via Pravin)
• Bangalore Urban Mapping Project – is a project that aims to map major indicators about the Bangalore city.
• Tactical Tech Animated Film – a short about the Land Matrix. (via Maya)
• Population Pyramid– Visualization around population. (via Vaibhav)

Projects

• Instagram Post Box Project – Help map Indian postboxes using Instagram
• Open Bangalore – Repository of open data for Bangalore.

Mentions of Open Data

• The Hindu – Government Portal Set to Take Off by T. Ramachandran
• OKFN posts a great roundup of all the open data projects they visited in India.

Events:

• JS Foo – Conference dedicated to JavaScript
• NIAS Data Workshop every Monday.

Questions of the week

I was wondering whether there exists a mapping of PIN Codes to MP/MLA/Corporator constituencies/wards, please? Also, if a similar mapping exists to districts/taluks etc.?  – vis Gautam John

Data.gov.in just launched its beta version. With 13 datasets already online and downloadable it is a good start. Granted not everything is working smoothly but given how new it is I’m feeling pretty good about the effort.

Like all things everywhere it never really is about intentions or really first steps but implementation and continued support. This is where the difficultly will lie with the Indian Government’s IT department the National Informatics Centre. They will be running the site and implementing the portal and I hope also can be an intermediary between citizens and the ministries that are providing the data.

Unlike data.gov or data.gov.uk, the data does not have to stay on data.gov.in, according the governing policy the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy. The individual Ministry has control of the data and can still charge, not make data downloadable, and also restrict data and not tell you why. Also incredibly valuable datasets like the Census and the National Sample Survey (official link not working) will not be available for download.
Continue reading Data.Gov.In Beta is Up →