A one-day awareness workshop on National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy and Open Government Platform was held at Shimla on 21-June-2013 under the Chairpersonship of Sh. P.C. Dhiman IAS, Principal Secretary (Information Technology) to the Government of Himachal Pradesh. About 80 officers from different State Government Departments and NIC, including all District Informatics Officers from Himachal Pradesh participated in the workshop. The objective of the workshop was to create awareness among the State Government officials and to identify the probable lists of datasets which can be contributed from Himachal Pradesh.

Dr. Saurabh Gupta, State Informatics Officer, NIC Himachal Pradesh, in his welcome address stressed upon the importance of Datasets of Government Departments being available on the Data.Gov.In portal. He listed a number of NIC Himachal Pradesh developed applications which have huge data available under different sectors. Some of these include Finance, Grievance Redressal, Schemes, Kanoon Vyavastha, Gazette Notifications, Arms Licenses, Driving Licenses, Vehicle Registrations, Employment data, Certificates, Pensions, Prisons etc.

Sh. P.C. Dhiman, Principal Secretary (Information Technology) to the Government of Himachal Pradesh in his keynote address highlighted the role of technology in betterment of Government functioning and providing better services to citizens. He gave examples of duplicate data being captured under schemes and advised that existing data should be re-used in the Government sector. This is where the Open Government Platform can help the State Government in making all existing digital datasets readily available for sharing amongst Departments, which is also the objective of the NDSAP.

Mrs. Alka Mishra, Senior Technical Director, Data Portal Team, NIC Hqrs delivered talks on NDSAP, Open Government Platform and procedure to be followed for contributing Datasets. She demonstrated the SW interface for Dataset contribution. The participants raised a number of questions related to the Datasets , their utility to end-users, role of Departments, which were addressed by Mrs. Alka Mishra.

In the afternoon sessions, all the officers were divided into 10 Groups consisting of officers from 3 to 5 related Departments and NIC. The Groups were advised to discuss among themselves the points related to their Departments, with respect to digitized datasets available readily, wish-list of datasets proposed to be put on Data Portal India and suggestions for improving contribution.

Each of the Groups made presentations based on internal discussions and these have been documented. The Workshop was broadcast live through NIC Video Conferencing in 3 Districts of Kinnaur, Lahaul & Spiti and Solan. Based on the discussions held with the Principal Secretary (IT) and presentations made by the 10 Groups, Dr. Saurabh Gupta, State Informatics Officer moderated these interactive sessions and summed up the deliberations.