An update on the "Opening Government Data by Mediation: Exploring the Roles, Practices and Strategies of Data Intermediary Organisations in India" project at the Open Data in Developing Countries research network regional meeting in Delhi. July 2013. See http://www.opendataresearch.org/project/2013/zb for more details.

1. Opening Government Data by Mediation:
Exploring the Roles, Practices and Strategies of Data
Intermediary Organisations in India
HasGeek Media LLP, Bangalore, India
Sumandro Chattapadhyay
Zainab Bawa
oddc.hasgeek.com

2. Reformulating the research plan 1/3
Initial questions:
- How RTI and NDSAP have transformed approaches and processes of data
practices, and
- Can the grounded experience of advocacy and research organisations
inform shaping of a more effective open data policy for India?
Initial plan of study:
- Study government data access and usage practices of advocacy and
research organisations working in the urban development sector,
- Ask how NDSAP and RTI are influencing/enabling their work, and
- Speak to organisations working on issues of urban development in five
cities – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Pune.

3. Reformulating the research plan 2/3
Reasons for reformulation:
- Identifying 'intermediation' of government data/information as a
crucial task in the process of opening up data,
- Studying key organisations across India (across various sectors of
operation) that are mediating access to and use of government
data/information using provisions of NDSAP and RTI or otherwise, and
- Focusing on the disjunctions and commonalities between the open
data and the RTI movements in India.
Shifting the focus of the study:
- Focusing on organisations that perform a similar function (that of
mediating access to and use of government data/information) instead of
those with common sectoral focus (like, urban development), and
- Mapping the government data/information intermediation ecosystem.

4. Reformulating the research plan 3/3
Objectives of the study:
- Inducing collaborative efforts within data/information intermediary
ecologies by identifying and highlighting the potentials within the existing
network, as well as the specific needs for capacity development and
resource sharing,
- Enriching government data/information policy discussion in India by
gathering evidence and grounded experience of (non-governmental)
data/information intermediaries about their actual practices of accessing
and using government data, and
- Critically reflecting on the nature of open data movement and
policy-making in India by strategically reading the commonalities and
differences within the communities of RTI activists and open data
advocates, and their shared and diverging experiences of engaging with
various state apparatus, and accessing and using government
data/information within specific socio-legal contexts.

5. Most insightful conversation about open data
Suchi Pande, Member, MKSS and Former Secretary, NCPRI:
- On use of government information collected through RTI:
Courts are one site of of using government information in pursuing
existing cases. Urban and rural public hearings are another example; and
social audits along with MIS in NREGA implementation. The question is not
either or, but developing and using mechanisms depending on the context.
- On seekers of government data/information and their security:
RTI allows only individuals (and not organisations) to request for
government data/information. How does that shape the roles,
responsbilities, vulnerabilities and strategies of seekers of open data?
- On open data and RTI activists:
Need to focus on commonalities and differences in lobbying for
implementation, usage polices and law to obtain data/information, and
technique of publicising and/or sharing government data.

6. Significant events around open data
NDSAP-PMU:
The NDSAP Project Management Unit at NIC has been very effective in
(1) convincing various government departments to share their data, notably
the Ministry of Agriculture, (2) driving the development of the OGPL software,
and (3) in organising various events to create public usages of hosted data.
Department of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension:
Published an office memorandum setting the guidelines for 'implementation of
suo motu disclosure under Section 4 of the RTI Act'. Among other things, the
document mandates proactive disclosure of all RTI requests received and
responses given by government agencies on their respective websites. While
the document mentions NDSAP, it is ambiguous about the integration of the
data/information disclosure workflows under the NDSAP and RTI guidelines
concerned. It sets somewhat vague standards and lacks in clarifying how the
guideline is to be implemented (and the implementation be monitored).

7. Open government dataset that is being used
to create important impacts
Agricultural price datasets:
Available on data.gov.in. Applications and visualisations coming soon!
Rainwater data:
Published by IMD. Being used by several organisations, for data journalism and
data-based advocacy.
Crowdsourcing crime/safety data
Interests from civil society groups and media houses.
Visualising Census of India 2011 data
As the more granular datasets from CoI 2011 is becoming available, there are
interests from different organisation to visualise them.

8. Case where emerging impacts of open data
can be seen

9. Most important policy issue you think open data
research needs to address
Extended applicability of NDSAP:
- Licensing and cost structure of datasets
- Integration with RTI Act and the recent memo from MoPPGaP
- State level open data policies
Larger concerns:
- Inter-organisational collaboration for implementing NDSAP
- Reliability of official statistics
- Creating actual access and usage of government data

10. Thank you very much.
HasGeek Media LLP, Bangalore, India
Sumandro Chattapadhyay
Zainab Bawa
oddc.hasgeek.com