The ministry of communication and information technology has notified data standards to boost inter-operability amongst  all ICT-enabled ministries and departments across the country.

"Three standards have been notified - font standards, meta-data and data standards for person identification and land region codification. This will enable departmenst across the country to coordinate information sharing," said Shankar Aggarwal, joint secretary at the department of information technology (DIT) here at the SAARC workshop on e-governance on Tuesday.

"These standards were notified keeping in mind that various departments, both intra- and inter- state, need to share information. The standards will facilitate a smooth, error-free transition of information from one department to another even. This particulary important for information exchanged between states that speak different languages," Aggarwal told Governance Now.

Meta-data standards ensure that the interpretation or meaning of the data is retained even when the data itself is translated. "In the context of land records computerization, the standards minimizes errors in ownership and legacy details of land owned by an individual when it is being digitized from a  regional language," Aggarwal said.