Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) officials said on Monday that the open data platform for the 100 cities would be expanded to cover 500 cities by 2022 and all urban centres in the country by 2024. The India Urban Data Exchange set up by the MoHUA for its Smart Cities would be expanded , eventually leading to a “marketplace”, Smart Cities Mission Director and joint secretary in MoHUA Kunal Kumar said. 

“We will start to do pilots on data marketplace. For instance, I can see anonmised data in bulk on mobility being used by advertisers to put up billboards in areas where people congregate at a particular time of the day...These are opportunities in the future. Right now, we are making sure that cities are mature in dealing with data,” he said. 

So far, the open data platform has 2,783 data catalogs from 99 Smart Cities, and by 2020, all data sets for the Smart Cities would be available, officials said. This data would help cities plan their interventions better, they said. All cities would have data officers and data coordinators by 2024, Mr. Kumar said. 

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