Digital connectivity to reduce rural-urban gap: Prasad

Proliferation of digital connectivity will help bridge the gap between rural and urban India, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said here Thursday.

"Proliferation of digital connectivity will help in bridging gaps in the homogeneous development of the society and must be pursuit with full earnest to ensure that fruits of developments reach all sections of society and all corners of the state," he said, while inaugurating National Conference on Open Data and Open API.

Prasad said the digital world has the potential to change the mindset and empower equally the under-privileged.

Availability of data is integral part of good governance and open data platform helps in further strengthening participative democracy, he said, adding the idea of opening up data is picking up in the government sector.

It can also be used to promote transparency, innovation and accountability to make economic activity more competitive, said Prasad.

The objective of this policy is to facilitate access to government owned shareable data and thus needs to be in a readable format and periodically up dated to well inform the user.