Restricting Access to VAHAN Database - National Register e-Services

The Ministry of Road Transportation has put an end to the free access of data from the Ministry’s VAHAN big data database.

The Ministry has now put a restriction on accessing data from VAHAN – A Vehicle Database.
Company accessing the data for big-data analytics must be a registered company in India and is at least 50% Indian owned.
All the data thus accessed must be stored on Indian servers.
Such servers must be monitored by security auditors for preventing data theft – A security report from Cert-In must be submitted.
Annually, Rs. 3 crore has to be paid by the company for accessing the data.
The data will be transferred to the entity in an encrypted form.
They cannot sell the raw data further but can sell the analysis.
For education institutions, there is a relaxation.
If the data is for research purposes, they can avail the data for Rs. 5 lakh.

The VAHAN database has vehicular registration details from across the country for 28 types of vehicles.
All the information from the State Registers will flow into the VAHAN Database.
The information stored in the databased include:
1. Registration No either full or partial
2. Chassis No
3. Engine No
4. Body Type
5. Fuel Type
6. Color
7. Name of Manufacturer
8. Make/Model etc.
Digitisation of such data allows both the state and central departments to keep track of the vehicles, aids police in their investigations, will come handy at the inter-state check posts and other G2C services.
It will also help the public and industry in various ways.
For example, a paint manufacturer can know from the data which colour automobile is in demand and increase the production of paint of that colour.
In such a scenario, the Ministry has devised the policy for data sharing.

The policy was approved by the Cabinet in 2012 with an objective to facilitate access to government owned data in both human readable and machine readable formats.
Various non-sensitive data generated by the Ministries/Departments/Subordinate Offices/Organisations/Agencies of Government of India will be available for access due to the policy.

Use of valuable public data for the benefit of the community.
It avoids the need for collecting data separately by other entities.
By adopting common standards for the collection and transfer of data, ingtegration of individual data sets may be feasible.
Helps the users identify the owners of the data and implementers of prioritised data collection programs.
Enables taking important decisions with the support of data.

After the notification of NDSAP, the government has launched Open Government Data Platform India in 2012.
It provides access to collated resources on a single platform.

Though the Transport Ministry’s move appears to be in contravention to NDSAP, the Ministry is only looking to protect the data from the misuse of foreign entities.
Also, with clearly laid out policy, those accessing the data will act responsibly in using the data.