The role of digitisation in realising India’s vision of becoming a $5 trillion economy cannot be overstated. As per a NASSCOM report, data and artificial intelligence (AI) can add approximately $450-500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025. Rapid digitisation of government operations, however, is accompanied by increasing volumes of citizen data. Such data is typically of two kinds — Personal Data i.e., data containing identifiers through which an individual can be mapped; and Non-Personal Data (NPD) i.e., data excluding personal data.
NPD constitutes the primary kind of citizen data obtained by the government, which possesses the potential of serving as a ‘public good’. To create synergies and devise scalable solutions, integration of NPD in the dispensation of public services is generally being advocated for. Application of high value advanced analytics and AI to NPD across key sectors of the economy can help predict socially and economically sound outcomes. Junctures where such data-driven insights can better inform governance and public functions are meteorological and disaster forecasts, infrastructure capacity and citizen use-patterns, mobility and housing patterns, and employment trends, to name a few.
