RSD 15 - Data in relation
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION
Infrastructure
Evolving Public Data Futures
A lens on the digital evolution of the world’s largest headcount
KEYWORD
Parv Singhal, Manasvi Joshi, Aanya Mehta, Dhwani Jain, Praveen Nahar, Sahil Thappa
#policy innovation #information design
#decentralization #participatory policies
National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India
ABSTRACT
Evolving Public Data Futures began with a provocation: where does your data go? As India’s 2027 Census introduces digital enumeration and self-enumeration at national scale, we explore datafication through multiple lenses, converging on the census as where public data, state authority, and civic trust meet most acutely. Our core question: how can design reduce friction across touchpoints when technology is deployed at population scale? We map governance, accessibility, trust, and participation across the administrative hierarchy, proposing interventions toward more equitable public data futures for India.
CREATIVE PROCESS
The gigamap synthesised PESTLE context, stakeholder hierarchy, and field research into a single visual field, becoming the evidence base for every intervention. Its defining device sits along the bottom border: halftone dots of analogue print gradually resolve into digital pixels, visually enacting the census’s own shift from paper to digital. The metaphor doesn’t just add an anchor to the map but it restates the project’s core question in visual form.
IMPLICATIONS AND NEXT STEPS
This work shows human-centred design can bridge administration and grassroots adoption without being speculative — interventions are built to function within the census system as it exists. The 2027 Census is a governance event, not just data collection: its success depends on human interfaces as much as infrastructure. Next steps involved discussing interventions with national level ORGI stakeholders for potential inclusion of the deliverables in the 2027 Census.
References
Brown, J. J., & Chipperfield, J. (2025). Census transformation and the future of population statistics. Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 41(2).
Data for India. (n.d.). Open data resources and datasets on Indian demographics. https://dataforindia.com
Ofosu-Ampong, K., Asmah, A., Kani, J. A., & Bibi, D. (2023). Determinants of digital technologies adoption in government census data operations. Digital Transformation and Society, 2(3), 293–315. https://doi.org/10.1108/DTS-11-2022-0056