What is the issue?
- Collaborative federalism with focus on balanced regional development is a prime objective of the Niti Aayog.
- Effective use of big data analytics is called for, for making this developmental objective more meaningful.
What is the need?
- There is a notable information asymmetry at various administrative levels.
- This is evidently hampering the targeting of various government measures and keeps the outcomes largely undermined.
- There are entities that have outlived their utility and others that use outdated systems and processes.
- This has to be eliminated and existing legacy systems need to be analysed with clear data points.
- The UN, by a resolution on official statistics, expects India to produce quality statistics.
- The purpose is to shed enough light on the true picture of material and human resources and the needs and demands of the societies.
What should be done?
- Data - Statistics must be offered as a public good for the government, enterprises and the general public.
- The big data analytic centres do have micro data, geo-coded, along with tools for extraction of relevant information.
- There has to be a quantitative analysis on all these.
- There is also the need for devising a formula for aggregation of data to enforce a code of practice.
- Area of focus - Health, education and demography are the significant and demanding areas in this regard.
- Web-based reporting for timely collection, collation and dissemination should be taken up.
- Segregating the data under different socio-economic heads would facilitate making appropriate response for concerns in each of them.
- Localisation - Data at the district level would enable understanding the true picture at the ground level.
- The impact of developmental schemes gets captured at the smallest administrative level.
- This would be supportive for better implementation of policy initiatves and making course corrections.
- Organisation - Establishing such a massive data pipeline is indeed highly challenging.
- It should thus be ensured that data once captured are handled in an organised fashion.
- These are essential for making the developmental initiatives meaningful.
Source: Business Standard
