Economic Survey pitched for Central Welfare Database of Citizens 07/07/2019 – Posted in: Daily News

 CENTRAL WELFARE DATABASE OF CITIZENS

 

For: Preliminary & Mains

Topics covered: Central Welfare Database of Citizens, Significance

News Flash

The Economic Survey 2018-19, pitched for setting up a central welfare database of citizens.

  • It will be created by merging different data maintained by separate Ministries and departments.
  • It can be tapped for upgrading the ease of living for natives, especially poor people.

Governments can create data as a public good within the legal framework of data privacy. Care must also be taken not to impose the “elite’s preference of privacy on the poor, who care for a better quality of living the most”.

It also prescribed allowing access to select the database to the private sector for a fee. Stringent technological mechanisms also exist to safeguard data privacy.

 

Importance

  • The governments as of now have a rich repository of the administrative, survey, institutional and transaction data about citizens. But, these data were scattered across numerous government bodies.
  • Merging these particular datasets would create multiple benefits and advantages with the applications being limitless.
  • The government could utilize the information embedded in these distinct datasets to enhance:

(i) Ease of living for citizens

(ii) Enable truly evidence-based policy

(iii) Improve targeting in welfare schemes

(iv) Uncover unmet needs

(v) Integrate fragmented markets

(vi) Bring greater accountability in public services

(vii) Generate greater citizen participation in governance, etc.

 

Datasets include

The datasets talked about the inclusion of:

(i) Administrative data such as birth and death records, pensions, tax records, marriage records

(ii) Survey data such as census data, national sample survey data

(iii) Transactions data such as e-national agriculture market data, UPI data, institutional data and public hospital data on patients.

 

Source: The Hindu

 

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