Increasing access to government data our goal: Vivek Kundra
An Indian-origin US official on Friday said that providing information on the web to increase access to official data is a priority for the American government.
"We created data.gov in 2009 with an aim to increase access to government data as close to the authoritative source as possible," said Vivek Kundra, US chief information officer, on a visit to Mumbai.
The 34-year-old Indian-American was named the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) by US President Barack Obama in March last year.
Kundra said that President Obama wanted to make Information Technology (IT) central to the knowledge base of the public.
"However, we are also focusing on cyber security and hence will release as much information as possible without compromising national security or individual privacy," he said.
"We would rather not wait for the public to ask for information, but release sufficient information on our own," he said.
"The goal is to strengthen democratic institutions through a transparent, collaborative and participatory platform while fostering development of innovative applications and analysis by third parties," he added.
Kundra mentioned that through data.gov, the government would implement, enhance and propagate best practices for data and information management, sharing and dissemination across agencies.
Kundra stressed the idea that both India and the US can learn a lot from each other and can work perfectly in collaboration with each other in fields like Right to Information and cyber security.
The federal CIO establishes and oversees enterprise architecture to ensure system interoperability, information sharing and information security and privacy across the US federal government.
