Not Open or Accountable: Govt's Open Data Use License Is Flawed

"The ministry of electronics and information technology carried out a public consultation for an open license for government data use in August 2016. The draft license prepared had provisions designed to suppress right to information and hold no government official accountable. Every major organisation’s submission for the consultation opposed these provisions. However, these objections were ignored by the department at the end of the consultation process.

There was virtually no major change between the draft and the final license version, essentially making the whole public consultation waste of time.

India’s open data ecosystem has not grown significantly over the last few years — especially when compared to ecosystems seen in the European Union or the US — even though the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) was introduced in 2012.

The growth around it was dampened by several factors along with government data being under copyright in India. As all the data being published through open government data platform had the copyright apply notice, it created ambiguity around licensing for data users. After almost 4 years of the data.gov.in portal going live, a open government license limiting provisions granted to citizens under the Right to Information Act is out."