The document provides information on India's Open Data Policy, the data.gov.in data portal, and the Web Ratna Award. It notes that the Government of India has implemented a National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy to facilitate public access to government data. As part of this, the data.gov.in portal currently hosts over 14,000 datasets, including 1,560 from the former Planning Commission. The Planning Commission received the 2014 Web Ratna Award for being an "Open Data Champion" based on the volume and usage of its datasets on the portal.

1. NITI AAYOG
(Science and Technology Division)
Sub: Information Note on Open Data Policy, Data Portal and Web Ratna Award-2014
Open Data Policy:
 Government of India notified the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy
(NDSAP) on 17th
March 2012. The objective this policy is to facilitate access to
Government owned shareable data (along with its usage information) in machine
readable form through a wide area network all over the country in a periodically
updatable manner, within the framework of various related policies acts and rules of
Government of India, thereby permitting a wider accessibility and usage by public. As
per the NDSAP policy, all ministries/departments are required to implement the policy
in their respective departments.
 In pursuance to this policy, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology
(DeitY) formulated implementation guidelines for implementation of NDSAP-2012 and
issued it to all Ministries/Departments in January, 2013.
 Erstwhile Planning Commission, on 11.05.2012 constituted an Oversight Committee to
oversee the implementation of the NDSAP- 2012 in Planning Commission.
Data Portal (data.gov.in)
 As on 10.4.2015, the Data portal has a total of 14175 datasets out of which 1560 data
sets belong to erstwhile Planning Commission. They cover 23 sectors which inter alia
include Agriculture, Communications & IT, DBT, Disaster Management, Elementary
Education, Higher Education, Environmental Forests Financial Resources, Health &
Family Welfare, Power & Energy, Rural Development, Social Justice and Transport.
The sector-wise data sets available on the Data Portal are given in Annexure-I.
 The Data Sets are further categorized into sub-sector-wise with 776 catalogues,
belonging to erstwhile Planning Commission out of a 3396 in total.
Web Ratna Award:
 Web Ratna Award was initiated by Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology to promote and uphold the use of World Wide for enhancing the efficiency
and transparency of Government Mechanism and encouraging its speedy transition
towards Digital India.
 Based on the number of data sets and catalogs of NITI Aayog (Erstwhile Planning
Commission) available on the data portal, number of hits, visualizations, downloads,
NITI Aayog (Erstwhile Planning Commission) was selected as one of the awardees for
the Web Ratna Awards 2014 and bagged Gold medal in the Open Data Champion
category. The award was presented by Hon’ble Minister of Communications and IT
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad in the Ceremony held on 25th
March, 2015 at 11.00 A.M. in
the Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi-110003.
 The award was received by the team of NITI Aayog headed by Shri B.N. Satpathy,
Dr. Ashok Sonkusare and others.

2. Access to Planning Commission in Data Portal:
 Data resources uploaded by the Planning Commission can be accessed at the URL,
https://data.gov.in/catalogs#path=ministry_department/planning-commission
Usage of Planning Commission of Datasets in NITI:
 The data sets can be converted to e-book and put on the website of NITI Aayog for
wider dissemination and appropriate usages.

3. Annexure-I
Breakup of Sector-wise datasets at Data Portal (As on 31/12/2014)
Sl. No. Division/ Subject Datasets
01 Agriculture 39
02 Communications & IT 57
03 Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) 02
04 Disaster Management 01
05 Elementary Education including DICE 2012 96
06 Higher Education 52
07 Environment & Forests 228
08 Financial Resources 55
09 Health & Family Welfare 114
10 Housing & Urban Development 75
11 Labour & Employment 88
12 Perspective Planning & Macro Framework 18
13 Power & Energy 93
14 Rural Development 58
15 Social Justice 45
16 Transport 51
17 Water Resources 07
18 UIDAI 04
19 Industry 17
20 Integrated Action Plan (IAP) 14
21 Plan Evaluation Organisation (PEO) Studies 295
22 State Plans & District Plan 112
23 India Human Development Research (IHDR-2011) 39
Total 1560