It is a positive sign that the government is making significant strides in building Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiatives, such as IndiaStack — the backbone of platforms like UPI, Aadhaar, DigiLocker, and Arogya Setu, which have been receiving praise globally. These achievements form the foundation for the next stage — digitising, integrating, and opening the data to enable citizens, businesses, and civil society to access it securely and legitimately.

This stage has the potential to form a new frontier in India’s digital story. The global success stories offer lessons in this regard, but scale makes India’s journey unique. The real question is not whether India can harness this resource, but how quickly it can be achieved.

India Data Paradox

The government has indeed acknowledged the importance of accessibility for extending the horizons of scientific knowledge, economic advancement, and societal welfare. In 2012, it launched the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP), intended to place “non-strategic data” in the public domain. It is an initiative rooted in the spirit of the RTI Act and inspired by global data-sharing norms.

However, ambiguity around what constitutes “non-strategic” has stymied its impact and, while scientific data have trickled into the public domain to some extent, a vast amount of the social, economic, and financial data remain untapped.

India Stack - Paving The Digital Future Forward

On the innovation front, India Stack stands out as a holistic, API-based digital infrastructure framework that transformed financial access and governance. It enables secure data-sharing, underlying gamechangers like UPI, Aadhar, DigiLocker, Arogya Setu, and over a dozen other platforms. India Stack has become a global exemplar of Digital public infrastructure.

Yet, it continues to prioritise new data flows rather than tapping into existing (historical) datasets lying dormant across the departments and ministries. Even within this framework, inoperability remains weak, thanks to the lack of digitisation of data, the existence of data in different formats, and the inability of datasets to talk among themselves.

Several sectoral interoperability initiatives have emerged with notable promise, viz. India Energy Stack (Ministry of Power), the Unified Data Exchange (Ministry of Road Transportation and Highways), and the Land Stack Pilot in Chandigarh, to mention a few.

Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India

However, these remain largely guarded to maintain ministerial fiefdom and haven’t yet integrated into a holistic data-sharing architecture. To centralise access, the Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India was launched as a one-stop portal for datasets. It provides open access to public data via catalogues and APIs, governed by licences. While the portal currently hosts a substantial volume of resources, the platform remains underutilised to enable access to existing (historical) data.

Thus, the Indian paradox becomes clear: we are lauded globally for the strides we are making in the DPI, yet domestically constrained by a lack of digitisation of data, inaccessibility, and underutilisation of the historical data. To realise the potential, the gap must be closed by digitising historical datasets, ensuring a uniform format, enabling interoperability across ministries, and then making the data available to the private sector, NGOs, and citizens.

But how can we fill the gap?

Through evidence-based policy-making and by drawing lessons from global success stories, we could pave the way forward, after due modifications. 

Digital Transformation

Today, India is at a critical juncture in its digital transformation. To unlock the value of the vast data available, it must be accessible to the private sector, startups, researchers, and civil society.

Denmark’s Grunddata demonstrates the economic potential of the availability and accessibility of usable datasets. Though India has an open data platform, hosting around 4.8 lakh resources, it remains underutilised due to poor quality and lack of interoperability. For India to realise the potential of its existing datasets, certain reforms like digitising the datasets, integrating through interoperability, and ensuring secure and legitimate access are needed.

Lessons From The World

The following are lessons from the global success stories and subsequent suggestions to reform India’s data infrastructure.

Firstly, there is a need to prioritise “data reuse” over repeated “data generation”. Countries such as Estonia, Denmark, and the Netherlands follow the “only once” principle, ensuring that the citizens and businesses provide their data only once, while the government reuses it across the services. For India, where platforms like CoWIN, eShram, and ration card data, among many others, already exist, the challenge is not the absence of data, but rather its duplication and interoperability.

Digitisation and integration through interoperability of the existing (historical) data with the departments, viz., land records, welfare databases, and health data, will spur innovation and unleash the latent value of the data.

Holistic Governance Framework

A strong data governance framework is the next essential. Lessons can be drawn from the EU’s (Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services (eIDAS 2.0) for interoperability and authentication of data, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for legal certainty and privacy, and Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL) for standardised data exchange.

Also, Singapore’s Gov tech and South Korea’s digital ID illustrate how clear institutional mechanisms can ensure trust and certainty for businesses and civil society organisations using government data. Without similar frameworks, private players may be reluctant to invest in innovations using government data.

To improve the service, a unique identifier needs to be adopted for all units (businesses, citizens, CSOs, etc) across the registers. Estonia’s personal identification code (isikukood) and the Netherlands' burgerservice number (BSN) are used to access all public services.

In India, we have AADHAR, which is used widely, but it is not uniformly linked across the registers (land records, business registries, health, and education). This may be detrimental to the efficiency of service delivery and innovations in data use.

At the technical level, standardisation of data formats and building technical protocols is crucial. Switzerland's Sedex and Germany’s Administrative Service Directory show how harmonised formats allow seamless integration across the registers. In India, data continue to be in physical format, and even if digitised, registers vary widely in formats.

Developing “Bharat Data model” with uniform standards and API on the lines of “sedex" and the “Administrative Service Directory” could help with the much-needed integration of the data. A central data exchange layer on the lines of Estonia’s X-Roads would further ensure that datasets across the ministries and states can interact in real time, rather than being siloed as in the case of LandStack or Energy Stack initiatives.

Institutionalisation Of Data Governance

Institutionalisation of data governance through a central agency is equally necessary.  Estonia’s Information System Authority and Singapore’s GovTechData Office oversee standards, building data exchange infrastructure and attracting top data science talent, while at the same time maintaining the national data catalogue.  

For India, a National Data Authority could also serve as a single point of interface for private players.

Finally, data sharing comes with huge privacy and security concerns. Therefore, robust safeguards are quintessential. The recent data privacy legislation and subsequent rules are a missed opportunity. 

The Way Forward

India needs urgent action in the data domain to realise the dream of Viksit Bharat@2047. A leap forward in this direction is long overdue.

Existing data must be made accessible to citizens, businesses, and civil society. This could be done by prioritising data digitisation and integration through interoperability. A central agency could be set up to oversee the process. In this regard, lessons can be learned from global best practices while being mindful of India’s sensitivities.

Above all, the privacy and security of the citizens must be upheld. 

(The writer is a research fellow at IIM-Ahmedabad. Views are personal.)