MoSPI holds workshop on leveraging administrative data for governance
The workshop forms part of the groundwork for the national-level negotiating summit on ‘Data for Development’ scheduled to be held in April, which the ministry will organize as a follow-up to the fifth national conference of state and union territory principal secretaries held in December last year.
Speaking at the meeting, S Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, called for breaking down data silos between government departments and expanding data access beyond centralized systems to state, district and field level administrators. He noted that interoperability and responsible data sharing will strengthen evidence-based management.
Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation (MoSPI) Secretary Saurabh Garg has urged states to hold state/district level workshops for wider consultations in the effort to institutionalize data-driven governance.
Corporate representatives and senior officials from states such as Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan presented case studies on leveraging routine administrative data to generate policy insights.
“They highlighted common challenges in data reuse and integration, particularly around data quality issues, and examined the enterprise architectures needed to support data integration,” the ministry said in a statement. he said.
The consultations aimed to create a roadmap to systematically harmonize and link administrative datasets across states and UTs, with defined timelines by the April national summit. NITI Aayog distinguished fellow Debjani Ghosh said accessibility, interoperability and trust in data are fundamental to democratize intelligence and enable real-time decision-making at the grassroots. He added that the world has now entered the age of intelligence and the real power of intelligence is in democratization.
World Bank senior economist Thomas Danielwitz emphasized the importance of integrating decentralized digital datasets, describing data as the key infrastructure of the AI revolution. Seamless data integration can deliver efficiency gains and cost savings while reducing the compliance burden for citizens and businesses, he said.
The workshop also focused on operationalizing purpose-built data connections following legal and governance frameworks. The basic building blocks required to create AI-ready, accessible ecosystems were discussed, with an emphasis on uniform standards and making datasets interconnectable by design, the ministry said.
