Out of site, out of mind

It’s no secret that the government is cagey about giving out data. But here’s a case of the government turning chary about revealing information it had been putting in the public domain for several years. Till recently, the website of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, the finance ministry wing that considers foreign direct investment proposals, uploaded the status of applications every week. Then suddenly, the data didn’t show up for over a month. Asked about this omission, one official said there was nothing like a weekly update, another said he had no clue about it and several others insisted that no such data could be shared with the media. A more plausible cause, as revealed by an insider, was that the key official concerned was on leave so no decision could be taken on uploading the data. Finally, when the administration woke up to the situation, data spanning several weeks was uploaded on the site in a bunch.