Giving data its due: National Data and Analytics Platform (NDAP)

In News:

The government of India is drawing up a data ecosystem (through NDAP) thus enabling policy-makers and researchers to exploit the potential of public data.

About National Data & Analytics Platform (NDAP) (NDAP):

The National Data & Analytics Platform (NDAP) was launched in 2022 by NITI Aayog in collaboration with different ministries and state governments in India.

NDAP aims to democratize access to public government data by making it accessible, interoperable, interactive, and available on a user-friendly platform for various stakeholders such as policymakers, civil servants, university students and researchers, journalists, innovators, and civil society groups.

It has been part of the State Support Mission of NITI Aayog.

Current Issues:

Lack of uniformity in data format and no interoperability: The need to bring NDAP arose because public data in India was difficult to use, and users couldn’t compare data from different departments or data gathered over time due to differences in format and quality.

Implications of rising digital Technologies: The rise of data and digital technologies is rapidly transforming economies and societies, with enormous implications for governments’ daily operations.

How NDAP solves these issues?

NDAP solves these issues by providing a user-friendly platform that presents standardized datasets from central and state government entities and provides tools for analytics and visualization.

For example, A state-level civil servant building new primary health centres can easily find and integrate three public datasets:

Health department’s Management Information System (MIS): List of communities with existing PHCs

Economic Census from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI): To get a list of communities with private health facilities

The Population Census from the Registrar General of India (RGI): To prioritize villages based on size

With NDAP, the decision-maker can access the data from all three sources seamlessly linked into a single dataset, saving time and effort. NDAP can leverage data to strengthen good governance by making it easier to access and analyze public data.

Significance of NDAP:

Enables linking and use of several types of data at once.

The standardized dataset enables merging and cross-sectoral analysis.

Simplifies the data for it to be used by the government, academia, journalism, civil society, and the private sector

Customizes data as per the need: Users can create flexible tables and visualizations

Quality benchmark datasets: Data shown has to meet NDAP’s in-house 5-star rating framework.

Enables data-driven governance and programme outcomes for the common public

Other efforts:

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s policy around open data

The Open Government Data (OGD) PlatformIndia (by National Informatics Centre (NIC))

National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) 2012: To provide proactive access to government-owned shareable data along with its usage information.

India currently houses more than 1.6 lakh data resourcesand has published over 4,015 application programme interfaces (APIs) from across 100-plus departments.

Conclusion:

NDAP was developed in the spirit of cooperative federalism, ensuring that all states are equal partners in the journey of becoming champions of data-driven policymaking. NDAP has now been included in the curriculum of officer trainees at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. It will enable incoming government officers to develop a data-driven decision-making mindset from their first field job. Overall, NDAP has the potential to be an open data platform that can play a vital role in facilitating data-driven governance in India.

The third patient is cured of HIV: How did this happen and what are its implications?

(GS-III: Science and Technology: Biotechnology)

In News:

The man referred to as the “Dusseldorf patient” became the third person to have been “cured of HIV” after a bone marrow transplant carrying a specific HIV-resistant – CCR5 delta 32 genetic mutation.

What is CCR5 mutation and how does it fight off HIV?

HIV mainly targets and damages CD4 immune cells in the body, reducing the body’s ability to defend against infections. The virus enters the CD4 cells through CCR5 receptors on their surface, but the CCR5-delta 32 mutation prevents the formation of these receptors, making it impossible for HIV to enter the cells.

Only 1% of people worldwide have two copies of the CCR5-delta 32 mutation, while 20% of people have one copy of the mutation, which is more common in those of European ancestry. People with the mutation are highly resistant to HIV infection.

Current treatments for HIV:

There are no cures for the infection at present, but the disease can be managed using antiretroviral therapy.

These medicines suppress the replication of the virus within the body, allowing the number of CD4 immune cells to bounce back.

If left untreated, the virus destroys a person’s immune system and they are said to be in the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome stage (AIDS) where they get several opportunistic infections that may result in death.

Earlier works on the CCR5 gene:

A Chinese scientist edited the genomes of twins to remove this CCR5 gene in an attempt to make them immune to HIV. Their father was living with HIV.

He faced immediate backlash from the scientific community and legal action. This is because guidelines for genetic editing prohibit germ-line editing – editing a genome that can be passed from one generation to the other – as the editing techniques are not very precise and the long-term consequences of such editing are unknown.

Kanak Rele

In News:

Classical dance legend Kanak Rele and the Mohiniyattam exponent passed away.

Her achievements:

She was known as one of India’s most inventive classical dancers and pioneering dance educationists

She brought a systematic structure, academic veracity and much currency to Mohiniyattam

She propagated female roles in Kathakali

In 1977, she earned her PhD in dance, the first in India

She was awarded the first Guru Gopinath National Puraskaram by the Government of Kerala

She was awarded various awards including Padma Shri (1989), Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1994), M. S. Subbulakshmi Award, Kalidas Samman (2006), and Padma Bhushan (2013).

Neutral citation system

In News:

The Chief Justice of India (CJI) announced that the SC will adopt a “neutral citation system” for its judgments.

What is a “citation”?

A case citation is essentially an identification tag for a judgment and it would contain a reference number, the year of the judgment, the name of the court, etc.

For example, for the landmark Kesavananda Bharati case, the citation is AIR 1973 SC 1461.

What is a neutral citation?

A neutral citation would mean that the court would assign its own citation (distinct from those given by traditional Law Reporters), enabling a uniform citation.

Law Reporters are periodicals or annual digests that publish judgments, often with an editorial note to make it accessible for lawyers to refer to precedents.

The Delhi, Kerala, and Madras HCs have already introduced neutral citations.