New Delhi, Feb 9 - In order to permit wider accessibility and sharing of public information, the cabinet Thursday approved the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy-2012 (NDSAP-2012).

The meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cleared the policy whose objective is to facilitate access to government-owned shareable data and information in both human-readable and machine-readable format through a network all over the country.

Officials said this will be done in a proactive and periodically updatable manner, within the framework of various related policies, acts and rules.

The NDSAP policy is designed to promote data-sharing and enable access to government- owned data for national planning and development.

The policy will apply to all data and information created, generated, collected and achieved using public funds provided by the government directly or through authorised agencies by various ministries or departments.(IANS)