In News:

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has launched e-Sankhyiki portal with the objective to establish a comprehensive data management and sharing system for ease of dissemination of official statistics in the country.

Key Highlights:

• Launched on National Statistics Day 2024, the e-Sankhyiki portal is designed to create a comprehensive system for managing and sharing data, facilitating the easy dissemination of official statistics across the country.
• The portal is also accessible at - https://esankhyiki.mospi.gov.in. It aims to provide timely and valuable data inputs for policymakers, researchers, and the general public. 
• It provides time series data for key macroeconomic indicators, with features for filtering and visualising the data. Users can also download customised datasets and visualisations and access them through APIs, enhancing the data's reusability.
• It consists of two modules viz. Data Catalogue and Macro Indicators. 
  • Data Catalogue Module:
    • This module catalogues the Ministry’s major data assets, simplifying users' access. It enables searching within datasets and tables, downloading relevant data, and enhancing its value and reusability. 
    • The Data Catalogue includes seven core data products: 
      • Consumer Price Index
      • Index of Industrial Production
      • National Accounts Statistics
      • Periodic Labour Force Survey
      • Annual Survey of Industries
      • Household Consumption Expenditure Survey
      • Multiple Indicator Survey. 
    • It currently hosts over 2,300 datasets, each accompanied by specific metadata and visualisations for user convenience.
  • Macro Indicators module:
    • This module provides time series data on key macro indicators, featuring tools for filtering and visualising data.
    • It allows users to download custom datasets, generate visualisations, and share data through APIs, promoting greater reusability. The initial phase of this module covering data from the past decade includes four major MoSPI products:
      • National Accounts Statistics
      • Consumer Price Index
      • Index of Industrial Production
      • Annual Survey of Industries
    • The portal currently features over 1.7 million records, providing access to extensive vital data.

Government Initiatives for Safe Data Dissemination

• In response to the rapid data expansion, the Government of India has instituted robust data safety measures. These include storing data in the cloud facilities provided by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), conducting comprehensive security audits of applications, and implementing Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology for domain protection. 
• Additionally, the government has focused on vulnerability assessments and ensured compliance with guidelines issued by organisations such as NIC and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
• In addition , CERT-In under the Ministry of Electronics and Information technology (MeitY) also undertakes various activities like issuance of advisories and guidelines for cyber/information security, conduct of sensitization programmes/trainings/workshops, operating Cyber Threat exchange platform & Cyber Swachhta Kendra, formulation of a Cyber Crisis Management Plan, setting up of National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) and empanelment of security auditing organisations etc. for data safety.