Punjab among first states to notify overarching, comprehensive data policy to improve data accessibility, service delivery
CHANDIGARH, JULY 16.2021:In order to ensure accountable, transparent, and responsive governance and service delivery to the citizens in the state, the Chief Secretary, Ms Vini Mahajan, called for further increasing the collaboration with J-PAL to leverage the potential for digitisation and administrative data use as evidence for decision making within the state government through a newly formulated data policy.
Chairing a meeting to review the progress of cooperation with J-PAL, here, the Chief Secretary said the Punjab Government is one of the first states in the country to notify an overarching and comprehensive data policy and intends to implement the provisions under the policy so as to improve data accessibility, security, interoperability and integration, thereby providing better and efficient service delivery to citizens with assured accountability, responsiveness, and transparency at all levels of governance in the state.
During the meeting, the Chief Secretary asked the J-PAL team to also start work with the Departments of Police and Health and Family Welfare at the earliest. J-PAL has already been working with the Department of Governance Reforms and Public Grievances to support the implementation of data policy across the state government through capacity building to enable use of data for decision making. The data team at J-PAL has also initiated work with the departments of Labour and Taxation.
The Chief Secretary asked the J-PAL to accelerate the pace of work and present the progress report within a month. She assured that the state government was committed to improve data governance and use data for decision making that enables accountable, responsive, and transparent governance and service delivery to its citizens.
Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Tejveer Singh, Additional Chief Secretaries Vijay Kumar Janjua (Labour), Anirudh Tewari (Governance Reforms), Principal Secretary Health and Family Welfare Hussan Lal, Taxation Commissioner Nilkanth S Avhad and other senior officials of the state government also attended the meeting.
