Turning India’s data deluge into actionable intelligence in the public sector

On India's 75th Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to the ongoing technological boom as the nation's 'techade', referring to 5G communication, optical fiber to villages and semiconductor manufacturing as examples of the revolution. This can also be achieved by empowering the public sector since most of the Indian population interacts with its institutions — agriculture, finance, health, energy, and more — in some form. These agencies generate or receive vast quantities of data while serving the nation.

However, mining this data repository is a huge challenge and requires time, effort and visibility to derive actionable insights. With the right set of tools, resources and training, public sector institutions can provide essential services to citizens promptly and efficiently.

The road to actionable insights

In public sector companies, success relies significantly on how information is processed and visualized. Modernization over the years has also resulted in data silos, making it difficult for stakeholders to access historical data promptly.

For instance, the Fertilizer Corporation of India (FCI) could benefit from data on soil health, year-on-year production, satellite imagery, and weather patterns to estimate seasonal demand and crop yield. However, there are limitations since it is based on historical evidence. FCI can model the same data with AI and ML to provide predictive insights.

Another example is the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), which has received government approval for a state-wide roll-out. It will enable citizens to create their health account numbers that link to their digital health data, and will aid healthcare providers in making better clinical decisions. 

When this data is integrated with other information, like vaccination status and insurance, it will allow state and central agencies to take adequate action.

Taking data integration to the next level

What if both these institutions could share data to gain further insights? For instance, a stakeholder in one company would need to have end-to-end visibility — with requisite security and governance checks — to initiate any action. This can be achieved through the consolidation and integration of data, enabling public sector employees to use dashboards to gain situational awareness and extract insights.

Raising awareness about a 'digital India' and correct policies will also help redevelop the public sector and make it more cost-effective and performance-driven. Here, the draft policy on sharing data between governments in the public sector, floated in February 2022, can transform the functioning of these institutions. 

Though this would require thorough evaluation to ensure that all checks and balances are in place, this policy could unlock benefits for Indian citizens. It would allow a public sector employee to make further correlations, lower response times, and make functional heads in each department more efficient.

Data for good: A reality and not a theory

The above examples of how raw data can be converted into actionable insights to achieve operational efficiency are theoretical in nature, but highly achievable. Mobilizing data with AI and ML has enabled us to go from being reactive to proactive.

Any regulatory body that collects, analyses and interprets data will rely on statistics at its core to draw some frameworks. Plus, India has rich publicly available data — such as the Open Government Data Platform — which is being digitized and made available for processing and visualization. Much more needs to be done to ensure that technologies like data integration and active intelligence benefit the common man.

It is high time…

There is an urgency for the public sector to digitally transform at a pace that matches the modernization wave in Corporate India. This means that India's decade of technological revolution should not be restricted to the private sector and limited to delivering connectivity to the common man. It must include the public sector, formulate citizen-centric data sharing policies, and build and plan future data repositories where stakeholders can easily make sense of the information on their dashboards and make impactful decisions in near real-time with intelligent analytics. This may seem like a tall order, but it is achievable since India already has the tech and talent to transform the Indian public sector and serve Indian citizens more efficiently.

Varun Babbar

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Varun Babbar is the Managing Director, India and SAARC, at Qlik.