

Draft Policy on Open APIs for Government of India [pdf] - manikantan
http://mygov.in/uploads/documents/Draft_Policy_on_Open_APIs.pdf

======
architgupta
Super excited by the Indian Government's focus on e-governance and technology!

Also see [http://attendance.gov.in/](http://attendance.gov.in/) \-- This is
such a beautifully designed website that it blows my mind that the Government
designed it!

Our startup ClearTax ( [http://cleartax.in](http://cleartax.in) ) is made
possible by the APIs of the Indian IRS.

The APIs aren't completely open but the registration process is not very
onerous. The most interesting aspect is that the Indian IRS is keen on
improving the APIs. When we make bug reports, they usually push fixes within
48 hours which is almost unexpected from the Government! Not everything is
great but its one of the most advanced tax APIs in the world imo. The bug
reporting process is a bit broken, but after the bug was reported they called
us back and gave us information about the fix!

I am also deeply optimistic about India's progress in the next decade because
of the new PM and the strong focus on development. See also:
[http://www.makeinindia.com/](http://www.makeinindia.com/) a new initiative by
the Government to get entrepreneurs building in India.

~~~
viksit
Incidentally, attendance.gov.in seems to be down. Perhaps someone can confirm
from their side.

As for the design - they've used a stock "analytics" template based on
bootstrap (as I remember seeing in their source code when the site was up,
having been surprised at the design goodness myself!).

One of the most interesting things is that the Modi government is _not_
pioneering biometrics attendance. It's been around since 2009 [1] and an early
version of the dashboard did exist, but on a domain that languishes with
disuse. So if anything, there are pushes being made with a lot of PR about
tightening this and that - but honestly, in the 6 months that the new
government has been in power, I'm hardpressed to find _real_ measures of
technological advancement in terms of policy or implementation. And let's be
realistic - 6m is not enough time for any advancement in technology at the
scale at which it needs to be meaningful.

I would give them props on the dahsboard being made anew, but unfortunately,
that has also been frought with glaring issues. [2]

For now - fingers crossed.

[1] [http://www.babusofindia.com/2010/08/chidambaram-to-
tighten-a...](http://www.babusofindia.com/2010/08/chidambaram-to-tighten-
attendance-norms.html)

[2] [https://medium.com/@troysk704/attendance-gov-
in-4e87acae39b7](https://medium.com/@troysk704/attendance-gov-in-4e87acae39b7)

~~~
wozniacki
Let's do a bit of political sleuthing and indulge in a smidgen of sincere
speculation, here.

This is not to judge his leadership early but to set realistic expectations in
a country where hope in transformational leaders, is all too often, cruelly
crushed.

So lets ask this: what clues has Mr. Modi left so far - in the present term
and in his previous stints as the Chief Minister of Gujarat - to lead us to
believe that he is a stickler for lasting change and not impetuous acts of
political theater.

Does his track record show a penchant for thoroughness and completion?

He is known not to trust underlings, delegate little and in general not given
to relinquishing control.[1]

Again these are early days, but is anyone prepared to share their hunch on how
effective this man will prove to be in transforming India, say four years on?

[1] Defying Expectations in India, Modi Begins Key Trip to U.S.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/world/asia/narendra-
modi-d...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/world/asia/narendra-modi-defies-
expectations-with-mix-of-soft-and-severe-in-india.html)

------
aravindet
1\. Build a small, centralized team to assist every department with API design
(not implementation). This would help keep things relatively consistent and
interoperable, and may also assist in component reuse.

2\. Design in the open — publish proposed APIs early and get public feedback,
preferably at a single place (apidocs.gov.in?).

3\. Build a centralized authentication/authorization system with libraries for
all the popular languages. Mandate that every department with sensitive data
use it rather than roll their own.

4\. Other than that, give implementation teams freedom to make their own
technology and architectural choices. Express a preference for, but do not
mandate, open standards. (It goes without saying that HTTP/REST and JSON
should be added to the list of preferred open standards!)

5\. Mandate that all implementations be open source (provide a standard
license) with a public issue tracker and pull request mechanism. Provide a
centralized project hosting with these features, but allow project teams to
use alternatives if they choose.

------
aravindet
For the Indian government it’s very remarkable that (1) they are thinking
about open APIs and (2) they’ve published a draft, presumably for feedback
although there is no information on how one might provide it.

The title of this post is misleading though. It should be "…input on upcoming
policy for Open Data and E-Governance APIs". There is no specific API here,
just a rather broad set of guidelines for each government department to build
their own APIs.

Most of the actual guidelines seem to be on the three documents linked from
this one. Unfortunately two of them are on a domain with certificate errors,
and one leads to a 404. Here are the two that work (at least if you accept a
certificate issued to egovstandards.gov.in by "Gujarat Narmada Valley
Fertilizers Company Ltd."):

[https://egovstandards.gov.in/sites/default/files/Published_S...](https://egovstandards.gov.in/sites/default/files/Published_Standards/Technical%20Standards%20for%20IFEG/Technical_Standards_for_IFEG_Ver1.0.pdf)

[http://ogpl.gov.in/NDSAP/NDSAP-30Jan2012.pdf](http://ogpl.gov.in/NDSAP/NDSAP-30Jan2012.pdf)

Edit: These documents are only tangentially related to the Open API project.
The first one is a broad catalogue of acceptable data formats in
“e-governance”, the second are guidelines for how government departments must
upload data sets to data.gov.in.

~~~
rockoder
_although there is no information on how one might provide it._

On Page 4:

 _All queries or comments related to the “Policy on Open APIs for Government
of India” shall be directed to the Joint Secretary (e-Governance), DeitY at
jsegov@deity.gov.in._

~~~
aravindet
Aah, I stand corrected. Although I do hope someone from deity (clever name)
also reads HN.

------
stevephillips
The UK Govt API [http://data.gov.uk/](http://data.gov.uk/) is a good place to
start and study.

Here are the 7 design principles that guided them in the design process

1\. Start with needs* 2 Do less 3 Design with data 4 Do the hard work to make
it simple 5 Iterate. Then iterate again. 6 Build for inclusion 7 Understand
context 8 Build digital services, not websites 9 Be consistent, not uniform 10
Make things open: it makes things better

Here is more about that [https://www.gov.uk/design-
principles#first](https://www.gov.uk/design-principles#first)

------
virens
Providing an API is good. Developers would come up with many innovative
solutions. One of my friend built an android app to find location based loo
finder using the data public domain.

Not sure if you guys are aware about the data sets which are already publicly
available.

[http://data.gov.in/](http://data.gov.in/)

------
cmadan
JSON. No XML please. Please!

EDIT: The entire doc is completely light on details. It doesn't say anything
apart from the fact that every department needs to have an API.

It needs

1\. More technical details.

2\. What data, as a bare minimum, each government department needs to expose
via the API.

3\. Timeframe for compliance.

~~~
ankit84
It appears to be a DRAFT! Filename: Draft_Policy_on_Open_APIs.pdf

Edited: From sec 6, point 1: A more detailed guidelines will come after public
comment.

    
    
       6. Implementation Mechanism
       i) GoI shall formulate detailed implementation guidelines for rapid and effective adoption of the policy.

------
varadpathak
It's very important to have this data machine readable, query-able and inter-
operable.

1\. I suggest that it should be available in RDF
([http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/NOTE-
rdf11-primer-20140624/](http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/NOTE-
rdf11-primer-20140624/)) format.

2\. The government should create a Top level ontology to define the broad
level classes and relations.

3\. Each department would then create their own child ontology which they can
map with the top level ontology.

4\. This satisfies most of the requirements and has scope to grow and make
this platform truly open.

The work done by wikipedia (along with researchers) in the form of dbpedia
([http://dbpedia.org/About](http://dbpedia.org/About)) is very good example
and can be set as a north star.

------
natch
There's this notion that "you get what you measure."

Therefore, it would be good to see metrics that reveal how corruption cases at
various levels are being dealt with.

Not trying to be negative about India, it's just that having the ability to
measure this will allow people to see where positive changes is happening, and
where it is not.

I would have the same kinds of comments if this were a US API: what tools is
it giving us to see what the inspector general is and is not doing for various
aspects of government performance.

------
goombastic
This is the same government that is mandating compulsory biometric IDs for its
population with nary a thought about security. Its a mess, third party
contractors with no exposure to IT or security are doing the scanning and data
entry right now despite the Indian supreme court saying this should not be
made mandatory. This is a government that is openly violating its own supreme
court.

------
srinivasnjay
Hi - Created a Github Repo to add design, APIs and Code Samples as soon as
they are available.

[https://github.com/IndiaGov-OpenPlatform](https://github.com/IndiaGov-
OpenPlatform)

There are two important documents that you can take a look at and provide you
feedback.

I think sharing these files in a forum like setup will help to easily share,
discuss and capture the feedback. Any suggestion?

1\. Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy:
[http://goo.gl/VdWH9o](http://goo.gl/VdWH9o)

2\. Interoperability Framework: [http://goo.gl/MKrqY4](http://goo.gl/MKrqY4)

------
shade23
The problem is this would take a long time.You are talking about removing a
large quantity of paperwork from organisations which move to bigger offices to
accommodate the paper work. And also when it comes to security,You saw what
Anonymous did to Ukrainian government.The government in itself is not capable
of such a large endeavour.I hope the implementing organisation selection
depends more on their reputation instead of tenders and briberies.

~~~
jjude
You are underestimating what Indian Govt can do. Until recently (two months
back), I was part of Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which completely
eliminated paper for company registration. The implementation project started
sometime in 2006 and was rolled out pan-India by 2008. Since 2009, no physical
paper is used for registration; all are done electronically. Company
registration in India now takes a week which used to take 3 months until 2006.
It's a huge success. Similar thing is done for Passports too.

------
steventhedev
My personal opinion: stop focusing on the technology of how to put it out
there and just put it out there. Another API is another API that open data
developers need to work with, which may or may not be better than any of the
existing solutions (Data.json, CKAN, ESRI, the UN data platform, etc).

If they really want to create open government, just post up the _raw_ files on
an ftp server and open it to the public.

Edit: a typo

------
viksit
Someone somewhere in the huge machinery that is the Indian Government clearly
has a sense of humor. To quote,

All queries or comments related to the “Policy on Open APIs for Government of
India” shall be directed to the Joint Secretary (e-Governance), _DeitY_ at
jsegov@deity.gov.in (emphasis mine).

Presumably that is the email address to send feedback to.

~~~
swatkat
DeitY - Department of Electronics and Information Technology
([http://deity.gov.in/](http://deity.gov.in/))

------
logicuce
Its great Govt is finally understanding the need for 'Accessible' data and
solutions.

Hopefully this will bring in more transparency and efficiency in otherwise
slow and opaque system.

------
2pointsomone
So Indian government way of doing things. Long MS Word document with fluff
language and big words, but no sample API.

------
andrea-estrella
What kind of data exactly would be accessible?

