Public Information Infrastructure: Towards Democratising Information

Governments across the world are focused on enabling a move towards a more inclusive governance framework with a focus on social equity and development parameters. Increasingly, participative decision-making, with due systems of transparency and accountability, is being seen as the new shift in the governance architecture which would involve strong and robust public involvement in the government process. At the heart of this move towards more participative governance is the idea of democratizing access to information to citizens to ensure improved service delivery and rights’ awareness.

To realise this, there is a need for creating a framework for a robust Public Information Infrastructure (PII) in the country with adequate standards and transparency to improve governance and public service delivery and to make information available to citizens in the best possible way.

Currently, the information infrastructures in the country are marked by the lack of a national approach in planning, implementation and monitoring - especially for central programmes, due to geographical barriers and state boundaries. They are also dependent on individual initiatives and local priorities for progress at state level. Further, there is lack of integration due to the absence of common technology, standards and processes. This leads to wasteful duplication of efforts on software, development, applications, infrastructures etc. leading to high costs. These duplications and multiple delivery systems, apart from leading to high costs for the exchequer, also create a cumbersome governance experience for the citizen, and in many cases entitlements of Government public delivery programmes don’t adequately reach the intended beneficiaries.