Bhubaneswar: In a measure to maintain transparency and accountability in government departments, a portal for public to get required information without filing an RTI application was launched by the Odisha government today.
The website 'odisha.data.gov.in' was inaugurated by chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi today. In the first phase School and Mass Education Department has been asked to upload its data. The department has been instructed to upload data on 10 different aspects in the next seven days.
"The data remains in the files of a department. But the department is bound to provide the information to a person who files an RTI application. If the data remains in machine-readable format then school students or general public will be able to see it, use it and can develop a mobile app on it," said Meena.
"The website odisha.data.gov.in is having a lot of data which is put in open format for use by researchers, academia, developers, start-ups and by the government as well," said Senior Technical Director, National Informatics Centre (NIC), Alka Mishra.
Such scheme has already been launched by states such as Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Assam.
"The website has been done in collaboration with NIC and the Electronics & Information Technology Department of the Odisha government. This collaboration has brought a lot of synergy," said NIC's Odisha state coordinator, Nandita Chaudhri.