Tech available to monitor all, privacy an issue: Vijay Goel

"Today, the world has become highly interconnected and Internet dependent. Tools exist to potentially monitor and propagate each and every movement of our activities, movements and transactions," Goel said addressing the Data Science Congress here.

"There are also challenges that have emerged in the use of big data like sovereignty of a country in cyberspace, heterogeneity, scale, timelessness, complexity and privacy issues. All of these need to be addressed," the minister of state for statistics and programme implementation said.

Data science is closely connected with statistics, and is a concept to that unifies statistics, data and information to understand and analyse actual problems and issues, the minister said.

There is a vast use of big data in governance and it has immense potential in transforming our lives by helping us make informed decisions and implement policies, he said.

"I strongly believe that the time has come for governments and public-sector entities to actively embrace new frontiers of data science," he said.

Goel said apart from benefits of operationalising various public service aspects, data science can also have a critical role in formulating policy as well, and asked governments to invest in the aspect.

"What is needed is for the governments to invest in building a targeted programme around leveraging data science in governance with well-articulated short, medium and long-term goals," he said.