“We plan to setup a data innovation lab wherein we will try new things. We will tie up with private institutions and industry to work on official datasets, and if that works out, we can integrate it with official statistics,” said an official in the know of the development.
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New Delhi: India is working on a plan under which innovative techniques will be evolved for exploiting new data sources and existing data sets, and ideas would be crowd sourced, incubated and developed for use in the national statistical system.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has begun work on a data innovation lab wherein trained professionals equipped with consultancy and research and development skills in official statistics, could take up live projects at central and state levels. It plans to rope in industry and academia to delve deep into the country’s existing official data including that on industrial surveys, consumer data through internet transactions and telecom, to help improve the quality of India’s statistics.
“We plan to setup a data innovation lab wherein we will try new things. We will tie up with private institutions and industry to work on official datasets, and if that works out, we can integrate it with official statistics,” said an official in the know of the development.
The plan is to increase and link the usage of administrative data in the day to day functioning of government and help the national statistical system converge the information flow across varied sources for more effective and timely policy interventions.
As per the official, the ministry will identify certain areas and problem statements and invite researchers for proposals.
“For example, there are large telephone datasets, consumer data from internet transaction and existing data which is not being used. We will extract information from them,” the official said, adding that ideas could come within the government or outside.
The official added that the ministry is working on an incentive for those who get involved in the process.
“We will start with small funding,” the official added. The lab could be implemented under the Capacity Development Scheme of the ministry, that to improve the statistical systems and capacity of states.
Separately, the World Bank has approved $30 million for the scheme to augment resources and training capacity for bringing out key economic indicators, various socio-economic surveys, capacity building and strengthening statistical coordination in the country.
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