BENGALURU: Essential information from around the country may soon be available for better governance after a Rs 5-crore grant from the State Planning Department was given to the International Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru, (IIIT-B) to set up a 'Data Lake'.
IIIT-B director Prof Debabrata Das announced the setting up of a data lake in the city. He also announced the establishing of a Centre for Technology Research and Innovations for Digital Governance (CTRI-DG), both of which will work with the Centre for e-Governance to improve government’s approach in terms of planning and upgrading old software.
The data lake, used to describe a central repository to aggregate all kinds of data, will work towards recording and storing data from all across the country, including remote rural villages, to improve governance and allow better planning.
The project is expected to launch in November in phases and will work in collaboration with the Centre for Open Data Research (CODR). The data gathered will include information on weather, infrastructure to help governance.
Meanwhile, CTRI-DG will work towards collecting and upgrading old software used by the government for citizen services. Prof Chandrashekar Ramanathan, head of the centre and IIIT-B dean of academics, said government software used by citizens are often decade-old and outdated, and needs to be upgraded.
Another initiative taken up by IIIT-B is the development of the Modular Open Source Identity Project (MOSIP), software that is based on the Aadhaar model.