Economic Survey praises Telangana for citizens’ data bank

Hyderabad: The Telangana state government’s Samagra Kutumba Survey (SKS- integrated household survey), conducted after the Telangana Rashtra Samiti government came to power in 2014, has been appreciated in the Economic Survey 2018-19 presented in Parliament on Thursday.

The report said that the Telangana state government’s Samagra Vedika initiative indicates the potential benefits of integrating data sets.

In a chapter titled ‘Data of the people, by the people for the people’ the Economic Survey says that the initiative links around 25 existing government datasets using a common identifier - the name and address of an individual.

The report says that seven categories of information about each individual were linked in this aggregation exercise — crimes, assets, utilities, subsidies, education, taxes and identity information. Each individual was then further linked to relatives such as spouse, siblings, parents and other known associates.

The initiative also puts in place all necessary safeguards to preclude any tampering with the data or violation of privacy, the report said. The right to add or edit data in the database varies according to the ministry or department concerned.

The TS government did not release this data to the public due to cases pending in the High Court. Congress leader and former MP V. Hanumantha Rao had written to the government seeking publicising of this data and has also appealed to Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan for the same. Mr Narasimhan forwarded the letter to the state government which replied that the data could be used only for government purposes and could not be revealed to the public due to the pending cases.