In news– Recently, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), under Smart Cities Mission has announced the initiation of the Open Data Week.
About Open Data Week-
- It aims to encourage adoption of open data and promote innovation across India’s urban ecosystem.
- It also aims to show the benefits of open data such as increased efficiency, transparency, a spur in innovation, and economic growth.
- It is being conducted during the third week of January, i.e., from 17th January 2022 to 21st January 2022.
- The Event will see participation from all 100 Smart Cities that will be publishing high quality datasets and data blogs on the Smart Cities Open Data Portal.
- As part of this event, a Data Day will be observed nationally across all smart cities on 21st January 2022.
- The idea is to provide a platform that offers ample opportunities on how to continue creating and promoting the use of data that addresses complex urban issues, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
- It is a part of a series of pre-event initiatives(undertaken by MoHUA) leading up to the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav – Smart Cities: Smart Urbanization’ conference to be held in February 2022 .
What is Open Data?
- Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike.
- It is the idea that some data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.
- The term is recently gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web and, especially, with the launch of open-data government initiatives such as Data.gov, Data.gov.uk and Data.gov.in.
Source: PIB
