Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has launched the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) for development of 100 Smart Cities with the purpose of driving economic growth and improving the quality of lives of people, through local area development and harnessing of technology. The Mission's aim is to catalyze investments in holistic infrastructure and services, development of integrated approaches to problem solving, promotion of co-creation and bottom-up innovation using technology, creation of sustainable outcomes by espousing circular economy and participatory processes built around communities.

DataSmart Cities Strategy was also devised to effectively leverage data generated by the various systems and processes deployed in cities,so as to generatemeaningful business intelligence and improve operational efficiencies. This strategy document defines data dynamics and data governance in a city through life-cycle of data and data roadmaps emerging technologies have been defined.

The Smart Cities Open Data Portalis a step towards the culmination and effective execution of theDataSmart Strategy. The Smart Cities Open Data Portal is a platform where the Smart Cities can share valuable data which can then be used by all stakeholders in the Smart Cities Ecosystem. The aim is to provide data that would be used to generate actionable insights not only by municipal / line departments, but also by research institutes, academia and industries. These insights could potentially help develop products and services that would assist in the betterment of the urban scenario in India.

To help cities better imbibe the Smart Data Culture, and to advance in the path towards success of Open Data initiative by MoHUA, a Data Maturity Assessment Framework (DMAF) has also been developed by the Ministry. This DMAF would build a healthy competitive spirit among cities by conducting quarterly / half-yearly assessment of Smart Cities through Systemic and Sectoral Maturity indices.