JSCL hosts webinar to promote use of open data

Jammu : The Jammu Smart City Limited (JSCL) on Friday organized a webinar on ‘Data Smart Cities: Transforming lives through Data’ to
promote the use of and spread awareness about the data. Around 50 participants from different domains like Academia, Starups, Industries and citizens from different corners of the city interacted with the speakers and applauded the efforts made by the City Administration to promote such initiatives.
The webinar was part of initiative “Open Data Week” being undertaken by
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to promote awareness and use
of open data. As per MoHUA, the “Open Data Week” is being observed as a
part of the Azadi kaAmritMahotsav (AKAM) from 17-21 January 2022. The event aimed to showcase the benefits of open data such as increased efficiency, transparency, a spur in innovation, and economic growth.
In his welcome address, Manager (IT) JSCL, Jatinder Pal Singh explained the
importance of Data in the current business scenarios and how the meaningful
insights created from the data collected from different sources can help the administration to take better and informed decisions, citing few real-life examples. The audience was also apprised of the recent initiatives taken by MoHUA, GOI to promote exchange of data across different smart cities and hence the introduction of open data week which is divided into two-parts, first being a 4 days activity from 17th to 20th January 2022 focused on enriching the smart City Open Data Portal (https://smartcities.data.gov.in) where in different cities will be uploading quality data sets, data stories/blogs etc. and is accessible to different stakeholders.
The second part includes the celebration of “Open Data Day” on 21st January
2022, a one-day conference-like event for engaging various stakeholders
like Academia, Startups, NGOs, Government Agencies, Industries Media and
Citizens and highlighting the importance of open data for governance and
service delivery.
The Technical Experts, Suneel and Rahul from Project management
consultancy demonstrated the live demo of Smart City Open Data Portal and
presented various case studies based on the city data sets related to
Environment, Infrastructure and Solid Waste Management available on the
portal.
The audience was also informed of the Open Data Policies and Standards
being used in different countries across the globe and how Information
Technology is being leveraged for better decision making and enhancing
quality of service delivery.