The attendee list included people from all walks of life. Students, teachers, educationists, environmentalists, scientists, government officials, people’s representatives, lawyers, people from the tinseltown — everyone was welcomed with open arms to the event. The Chief Guests included the young and talented movie director Bidula Bhattacharjee, a prominent lawyer from the Kolkata High Court Aninda Chatterjee, educationist Bijan Sarkar and an important political activist Rajib Ghoshal. Each one of them added value to the event, making it into a free flow of ideas. The major speakers from the side of Open Knowledge India included Subhajit Ganguly, Priyanka Sen and Supriya Sen. Praloy Halder, who has been working for the restoration of the Sunderbans Delta, also attended the event. Environment data is a key aspect of the conservation movement in the Sunderbans and it requires special attention.

The talks revolved around Open Science, Open Education, Open Data and Open GLAM. Thinking local and going global was the theme from which the discourse followed. Everything was discussed from an Indian perspective, as many of the challenges faced by India are unique to this part of the world. There were discussions on how the Open Education Project, run by Open Knowledge India, can complement the government’s efforts to bring the light of education to everyone. The push was to build up a platform that would offer the Power of Choice to the children in matters of educational content. More and more use of Open Data platforms like the CKAN was also discussed. Open governance not only at the national level, but even at the level of local governments, was something that was discussed with seriousness. Everyone agreed that in order to reduce corruption, open governance is the way to go. Encouraging the common man to participate in the process of open governance is another key point that was stressed upon. India is the largest democracy in the world and this democracy is very complex too.Greater use of the power of the crowd in matters of governance can help the democracy a long way by uprooting corruption from the very core.

Opening up research data of all kinds was another point that was discussed. India has recently passed legislature ensuring that all government funded research results will be in the open. A workshop was held to educate researchers about the existing ways of disseminating research results. Further enquiries were made into finding newer and better ways of doing this. Every researcher, who had gathered, resolved to enrich the spirit of Open Science and Open Research. Overall, the India Open Data Summit, 2015 was a grand success in bringing likeminded individuals together and in giving them a shared platform, where they can join hands to empower themselves. The first major Open Data Summit in India ended with the promise of keeping the ball rolling. Hopefully, in near future we will see many more such events all over India.

In association with: The National Council of Education, Bengal.

Sponsored by: Open Knowledge Micro Grants

Events Partner: MeraEvents

BOOK YOUR ENTRY PASS NOW!

http://www.meraevents.com/event/india-open-data-summit

Open Knowledge India is organizing the India Open Data Summit on February 28, 2015. This year’s event is free for anyone to attend. There will be talks and workshops relating to Open Data, Open Science, Open Research and Open Education. The thrust this year will be on creating a sustainable and viable citizen driven, crowd sourced environment for Open Data. See you there!

The event is intended to be a melting pot of ideas.

Venue: Indumati Sabhagriha, 188, Raja S C Mallick Road, Kolkata – 700032, Beside Jadavpur University Campus.

Time: 10:30 am

Anyone* can attend the event for free and there is no provision for tickets. However, seats are limited and therefore, it will be wise to come early to the venue and register your name.

Spread the word. Bring your friends along. Use the hashtag #OpenIndia.

• If required, the organisers will have the right to deny entry to anyone, whose presence they find to be detrimental to the smooth functioning of the event.

Happy Independence Day, India!

The UnFestival and several fringe events formed an important part of the Open Knowledge Festival, 2014. In these, people from all over the world showcased their stories and exchanged ideas. The talks revolved around a diverse range of topics, including Open Data, Open Education, Open Glam, Open Science, building up new tools and partnerships, etc. A very efficient team of volunteers worked day and night to make the events a grand success. Open Minds to Open Action had been this years theme at the Festival. Knowledge, tools and society had been the three predominating streams around which all talks and discussions took place. To put broadly, the underlying driving forces had been: Knowledge (that informs change), Tools (that enable change) and Society (that effects change).

India’s Role at the global stage:

Open Knowledge India played an important role in the event and put forward a number of new ideas. Our mode of action has been finding out the problems that affect us locally, brainstorming with the global community, finding out solutions and finding out ways of implementing the solutions locally. The motto for us had been Thinking Local and Going Global. Among the few new lines of action that we proposed are:

• Collaborating more with countries to that face problems similar to our country. We agreed to pool our resources and find out solutions to the intersection set of problems that we all face. Pooling our resources and attacking the problems together can help us a great deal in actually affecting positive changes.
• Building up a common platform for discourse both within the community and outside of it, where the general public can be effectively involved in carrying out the positive changes.
• Creating partnerships with countries like Bangladesh, Nepal,etc., with whom we share facets of our own culture.

‘Reflecting the diversity of the open movement, by including contributions from different disciplines, countries and cultures…’ had been the key lookout of the organizing team for the event this year. True to this spirit, the Open Knowledge Festival, 2014 did manage to create a melting-pot of ideas and discourse. It managed to create a roadmap for an even brighter future ahead for humanity.

The first step in making data actionable is to make sure the data is easily accessible. Many cities, whether they have an open data policy in place or not, have work to do in terms of making datasets open and available online. Do an evaluation of where your city stands on releasing our landscape of datasets openly and work with your municipal partners to come up with a plan for making all of them open and available in 2014.

Once you have an inventory together, work with your city partners to figure out what barriers stand in the way of making any missing datasets open and accessible online and discuss solutions to overcoming those barriers. Work with government to create a timeline tool and/or alerts for when data will be released. If your city is making all this data available, now is the time to start thinking about what questions can be answered or problems addressed with these datasets. Take a look at what other cities are doing with key datasets. Are there lessons to be learned for your city?

To take this project a step further, you can pick an issue area of particular concern to your city (crime or blight, for example) and do an inventory of all datasets related to that issue. Then work with issue-area experts from the community to determine what potential value those datasets might have for addressing the problem, or what datasets are missing that would be particularly valuable.

Present State

Presently, the census has been conducted for 7 major cities in India — New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The total number of existing datasets is 105. However, none of these is open and the Percentage of Open Dtatasets found is ZERO therefore. What this means is that our governments have a lot of work to do and a lot of improvement is to be made to realize the potential of Open Governance in India. In many cities, like Kolkata, Delhi and Bangalore and Mumbai, many of the existing datasets can be made open simply by presenting them in a machine-readable format. In other cities, the governments need to work harder, as the existing datasets for these cities lag behind on various parameters. In fact, many of the datasets DO NOT EVEN EXIST!

You can find more information regarding the census at: India City Open Data Census

Other Updates

We are planning to start a new platform for coders shortly. In this platform, anybody would be able to code freely to produce Open Source products. India has a substantial volume of young coders, who can benefit from such a platform. However, building such a platform would require a lot of work and the plans are still in nascent stage. Please look for updates on Open Knowledge India’s pages.

visualized Data

India Data

Open Data Day Talk

The 22nd of February, 2014 was celebrated In India and world over as the Open Data Day. Thousands of Open Data enthusiasts from all over the world participated in it, helping to open up datasets and Visualizing data. The Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments. The event is open to all, curious citizens, journalists, tech-geeks, students, scientists, graphic designers. This day was marked with activities all around India, across cities like Kolkata, Hyderabad, etc. Special events and workshop were organized by OKFN, India to educate the citizens regarding the importance of Open data in all walks of life. The emphasis was also on opening up new datasets and to mine the existing ones. India Data is a small example of the work that had been done on datasets.

A number of datasets had also been analyzed and visualized on the Open Data Day. The visualized Data include

Funds Alloted to Different NGOs, Tree and Forest Cover, Gold Prices, Forest Cover Percentages, Power Supply Position, Proportion Unemployed (per 1000) for persons of age 15-59 years according to usual status, Primary Census Abstract, Revenue Realized from Road Transport (States), Drinking Water Facility and Source of Water, Factors Responsible for Increase in Retention in Schools, Male-Female Ratio, Suspicious Transaction Report Statistics, Key Financial Data of Public Sector Banks, Plan Expenditure, Households access to safe drinking water, State-wise Literacy Rates, Index Numbers of Foreign Trade, State-wise Infant Mortality Rate, Health and Nutrition Indicators by Social Groups, National Estimates of HIV Key indicators and many more.

Saturday 22nd February is  Open Data Day!

Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments.

The events are open to anyone: from curious citizens to journalists, tech-geeks to scientists, designers to data wranglers. Swing by on the day to hack, have a hangout and wrangle with us!

Want to see what’s going on all around the world on Open Data Day and let us know what you’re working on? Follow and tweet the hashtag #OpenDataDay!

What is this?

Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments.

Who is this event for?

Everyone

If you have an idea for using open data, want to find an interesting project to contribute towards, learn about how to visualize or analyze data or simply want to see what’s happening, then definitely come participate! No matter your skillset or interests, we are encouraging organizers to foster opportunities for you to learn and help the global open data community grow.

Developers

We need computer cowboys and cowgirls like yourself to wrangle data into something useful. That means visualization, notification, integration, etc., all in the name of doing something crazy and fantastic.

Designers

We need people like you to make the everything look amazing, feel intuitive, and have a smooth user experience. The best application in the world that no one can use… isn’t much use! You know the drill.

Librarians

I heard you folks like books and eat catalogs of data for breakfast. You beautiful people are going to scour the earth for interesting data, help the rest of us figure out what’s important, and generally be useful.

Statisticians

YES! YOU ARE SO NEEDED. Seriously. While we can find it, blow it up, calculate it, and make it look pretty, we needs us some mean number crunchin’ to present meaningful visualizations. Join up.

Citizens

We need you the most. If it weren’t for you, this whole thing wouldn’t be happening. We need ideas, cheerleaders, and friends to spread the word.

How is this going to work?

These hackathons, like small pieces, will be loosely joined by 5 basic principles.

It will happen on Saturday, February 22, 2014

It can be as big or as small, as long or as short, as you’d like it.

It should be open

Ottawa’s open data community attracts a diverse crowd of people to hackathons, with whole families coming out. In the UK groups have done amazing work getting young and diverse group hacking. Veteran hackers have said it over and over again: Our movement is stronger when it is broader.

Anyone can organize a local event

Want to help organize one in your city and/or participate? Add your name to the relevant city on the wiki. Let’s try to keep it to one event per city, build some community and get new people together.

You can hack on anything that involves open data

Could be a local or global app, a visualization, proposing a standard for common data sets, scraping data from a government website to make it available for others or even creating your own data catalog of government data.

Let’s share ideas across cities on the day

Each city’s hackathon should do at least one demo, brainstorm, proposal, or anything that it shares in an interactive way with at members of a hackathon in at least one other city. This could be via video stream, skype, by chat… anything but let’s get to know one another and share what we are hacking on. There may be some challenges to making this work: timezones, languages, culture… but who cares, we are problem solvers, let’s make it work.

Again, let’s not try to boil the ocean. Let’s have a bunch of events, where people care enough to organize them, and try to link them together with a simple short connection/presentation. Above all let’s raise some awareness, create something, and have some fun.

What to Expect

A lot will be going on. So… expect to:

• Learn more about open data.
• Find out how your local and national government could do more to release open data.
• Engage local non-profits and companies in the uses of open data for the products and missions
• Meet & network with tons of cool people in your city and around the world.
• Voice your opinion & share your ideas with the people and media attending.
• Find out about apps being created, and get to play around with them as well.
• Help out with parts of the conceptualization, creation, design, advertisement and testing of apps.
• Conduct an open tutorial sessions around using open data,like learning how to customize google maps to show the data you want to show.
• Have lots and lots of fun.

What to Bring

Anything! Bring your laptops, mobile phones, phasers set to stun, etc. but above all, your energy and your brains! We’re trying to make this event very hands on, so feel free to bring all your wacky geektronics so that you can participate in all the fun. Don’t worry if you don’t bring anything since there will still be tons of stuff to do.

December, 2013 was celebrated by OKFN, India as the Open Knowledge Month. While we talked with various institutions, both government and non-government, regarding the need for Open Knowledge, our primary focus had been opening up data. India specific datasets are coming up in the Datahub platform, run by the Open Knowledge Foundation. We already have a long list of machine-readable datasets and the good news is that the list is growing everyday. A greater participation on behalf of the citizens of India can help a lot in achieving our dream of Open Governance and Open Data. You are invited to add to the list and visualize the datasets that we already have.

A few of the datasets at India Data include:

All India Pincode Directory, Crude Death Rate India 2011, Crop Wise Irrigated Area Under Land Use Statistics (LUS), Data Base on the Indian Economy, Water Quality Affected Habitations As On 1st April 2012, Number of Buses Owned by the Public and Private Sectors in India during 1961-2012, Ambient Air Quality with respect to Ammonia under National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP) during the year 2010, Details of Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI) Scores and Status of Moratorium in Critically Polluted Areas (CPAs) in India, Village wise Dugwells in the command of major/medium projects and average pumping hours for 2nd census of minor irrigation schemes, Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan – District-wise Financial Progress As On Date, Water quality of Ground Water – 2008, etc.

In future tools like the CKAN and the Datahub can bring about a system driven entirely by crowd-sourced data-handlers. The very essence of the Open Data and Information Project is to build such a platform, where every citizen will have the right and scope to be directly involved in the process of handling all information related to the country in general and its governance in particular.

‘In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.’ — Galileo Galilei.

The Vitayard Open Science and Research, running with support from OKFN, India, has come a long way since its experimental inception in October, 2013. Speaking on the Vitayard Open Science and Research Platform: Watch Here.

www.vitayard.in

http://vitayard.wordpress.com

Countries assessed (in rank order): United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Australia, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, Iceland, Moldova, Bulgaria, Malta, Italy, France, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Israel, Czech Republic, Spain, Ireland, Greece, Croatia, Isle Of Man, Japan, Serbia, Russian Federation, Ecuador, South Korea, Poland, Taiwan R.O.C., China, Indonesia, Hungary, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Jersey, Guernsey, Slovak Republic, Bermuda, Romania, Costa Rica, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Singapore, Lithuania, South Africa, Cayman Islands, Egypt, Nepal, Senegal, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Gibraltar, Belgium, Hong Kong, Barbados, Bahamas, India, Bahrain, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Kenya, British Virgin Is., Saint Kitts & Nevis, Cyprus.

Transport Timetables: While timetables for trains are commonly available, for other modes of transport we could do with more easily available information. The data provided is public, still there is a “captcha code” facility which mandates human intervention in the search process. Due the heavy web traffic these websites are slow functioning. Marked as “no bulk download” / “not easily machine readable” due to capcha Real time train data is easier to find than timetable data. Cannot find open licence. http://enquiry.indianrail.gov.in/ntes/ — real time train information https://www.irctc.co.in/ – some train information

Government Budget: The data is fully available in the government website mentioned above. The data is available on Govt of India website “indiabudget.nic.in”. The data is available in both machine readable and non readable formats. The excel format is only available for 2012-2013 data, while the earlier data is available in PDF format. The archives can be accessed at http://indiabudget.nic.in/index.asp under the sub-heading ‘Annual Financial Statement’. The The Excel Sheet contains only data. For complete Statement of Budget Estimates (SBE’s) with notes please see PDF Format. The PDF data is available from 1996-1997 onwards, and the 2011-2012 data is not available at the moment.

Government Spending: This data is taken from ministry of finance website “http://www.finmin.nic.in/the_ministry/dept_expenditure/cca/cca_exp_stat.asp“. It is publicly available. You can also find info on http://cga.nic.in/default.aspx and on http://www.finmin.nic.in/the_ministry/dept_expenditure/cca/cca_exp_stat.asp Data available in pdf not in excel. Data is not available in bulk for all things, though for some. Given the definition of spending I have changed the link to CGA as that is where detailed accounts are available to some degree of disaggregation. The ministry of finance has some but CGA would have more.

National Election Results: Data is available fully in PDF form(state wise). In some cases provisional state election results are available as XLS. Its available for free but cannot see a licence on the data; and website is managed by Election Commission of India. Details include- * List of Participating Political Parties * List of Successful Candidates * Performance of Political Parties * Candidate Data Summary * Electors Data Summary * Women Candidates * Constituency Data Summary * Detailed Results (also see http://eciresults.ap.nic.in/ )

Company Register: There is unrestricted access to the basic data. The interface of the websites is user friendly. The government website while registering for a company, also suggests whether that name is available or not and the probable names that can be chosen. also http://www.mca.gov.in/MCA21/Master_data.html Info only available via search not via download or bulk view.

National Map: The name MapsOfIndia and logo with background grid, and all others related or associated product and service names, distinguished design or Trademarks i.e. black hat with stars, logos, colour scheme and slogans are the trademarks or registered trademarks of MapsOfIndia.com All other products offered and service marks contained herein are the trademarks of MapsOfIndia.com Or of respective third party in agreement with MapsOfIndia.com You may not use any MapsOfIndia or third party trademarks or logos or images without the prior written consent of MapsOfIndia.com The data is available from the source which we can cannot confirm whether it is from official government site. The data available is comprehensive extent fully available. Some information is also available in the site “http://www.portal.gsi.gov.in/portal/page?_pageid=127,529486&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL” and “http://www.surveykshan.gov.in/“

National Statistical Data: http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/site/home.aspx also http://planningcommission.nic.in/data/datatable/ and http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/site/home.aspx Data is completely available. This data is available on the planning commission of India website and was published on 3rd May, 2013.

National Legislation: http://indiacode.nic.in There is no mention of the license applicable, so have marked it as NOT open.

National Postcode Database: Two sites: http://www.indiapost.gov.in/pin/ http://data.gov.in/dataset/all-india-pincode-directory The data is available in CSV format and is updated on 22-Jul-2013. The data consists of pin-codes along with post office information like address and postal code but does NOT include geographic boundaries or lat long information. The data can also be searched by location or pincode on ‘http://www.indiapost.gov.in/‘. The data is available completely and is from official source, i.e the site managed by National Informatics Center which is a government body. It is hard to say whether the post office address which forms each result could be connected to a lat/long location with other information as per the census requirements.

Environmental Data: http://cpcbenvis.nic.in/airpollution/database.htm  For specific data, publications are available from the Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India at minimal charges. http://cpcbenvis.nic.in/publi.htm data for air quality available for 2005 only at http://cpcb.nic.in/Air_quality_data.php data for air quality in years up to 2006 at http://cpcbenvis.nic.in/airpollution/database.htm

Open Data Index provides first major assessment of state of open government data

In the week of a major international summit on government transparency in London, the Open Knowledge Foundation has published its 2013 Open Data Index, showing that governments are still not providing enough information in an accessible form to their citizens and businesses.

The UK and US top the 2013 Index, which is a result of community-based surveys in 70 countries. They are followed by Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Of the countries assessed, Cyprus, St Kitts & Nevis, the British Virgin Islands, Kenya and Burkina Faso ranked lowest. There are many countries where the governments are less open but that were not assessed because of lack of openness or a sufficiently engaged civil society. This includes 30 countries who are members of the Open Government Partnership.

The Index ranks countries based on the availability and accessibility of information in ten key areas, including government spending, election results, transport timetables, and pollution levels, and reveals that whilst some good progress is being made, much remains to be done.

Rufus Pollock, Founder and CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation said:

Opening up government data drives democracy, accountability and innovation. It enables citizens to know and exercise their rights, and it brings benefits across society: from transport, to education and health. There has been a welcome increase in support for open data from governments in the last few years, but this Index reveals that too much valuable information is still unavailable.

The UK and US are leaders on open government data but even they have room for improvement: the US for example does not provide a single consolidated and open register of corporations, while the UK Electoral Commission lets down the UK’s good overall performance by not allowing open reuse of UK election data.

There is a very disappointing degree of openness of company registers across the board: only 5 out of the 20 leading countries have even basic information available via a truly open licence, and only 10 allow any form of bulk download. This information is critical for range of reasons – including tackling tax evasion and other forms of financial crime and corruption.

Less than half of the key datasets in the top 20 countries are available to re-use as open data, showing that even the leading countries do not fully understand the importance of citizens and businesses being able to legally and technically use, reuse and redistribute data. This enables them to build and share commercial and non-commercial services.

Pollock:

For the true benefits of open data to be realised, governments must do more than simply put a few spreadsheets online. The information should be easily found and understood, and should be able to be freely used, reused and shared by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose.