'Not good' for govt to share data in aggregated form: G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant

Mumbai, India's G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant on Tuesday pitched for the dissemination of data by the government in a granular form and said that sharing aggregated information is "not good". Addressing the G-20 development working group meeting here, Kant said data is a key aspect to help any country meet her developmental goals and added that India has benefitted from the same.

Stressing on the importance of ensuring quality of data, the former civil servant who till recently worked as the chief executive of the government think-tank Niti Aayog made the reference to data aggregation practices by the government.

"...Government data are provided as aggregates, which is not good. We should break down the aggregation," Kant said.

He said many a time, the quality of the data is also very poor and "we need to ensure that the data is de-cluttered, presented in a simplistic way and it is not difficult to navigate".

"Quite often in government, we feed garbage and you get garbage and you feed our garbage. So it is very important to improve the quality of data," he said.

Kant also hit out against government officers for being "possessive" about data and often resist sharing them.

"We need to overcome this challenge so as to help academics and researchers analyse the data and use it for best outcomes," he added.

There is also a challenge with data is that while a huge quantum of it exists all around, the same is siloed, he said, adding, "we need to break down this compartments".

Kant said the Niti Aayog had brought in a data governance quality index, and exhorted attendees from the world over to adopt the same.

"Without data and good governance, less developed and developing countries will never be able to grow," he said.

Addressing the event through a video message, Union minister of state for information and technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar stressed on the government's work on the data front.

"The Indian government will soon begin to assemble large swathes of anonymised data sets collected and harmonised under our national data governance policy," he said.

Infosys co-founder and chairman Nandan Nilekani said, "We have an opportunity to create a new data for development paradigm right now."

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