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Good practice Imported

India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX) — Open-Source Data Exchange for Smart Cities

India · Bengaluru · See the India profile · See the Bengaluru profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 21% 81/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

India's national open-source data exchange lets cities publish and share standardised urban datasets. Backed by ₹29 crore in central funding, it scaled from 3 pioneer cities in 2021 to 10 operational deployments by November 2021, targeting 25 more by 2023.

₹29 crore (~US$3.5 million)
Central government funding (FY2021-23)
3
Pioneer cities live (2020-2021)
10
Operational city deployments (November 2021)
25
Target of further cities onboarding (by 2023)
India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX) — Open-Source Data Exchange for Smart Cities

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru & Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Smart Cities Mission
Period
2021–present
Keywords
urban governance, open data, digital infrastructure, smart cities

Context

India's smart cities generate huge volumes of data — traffic sensors, water meters, waste collection, public transit — but before 2021 most of it sat locked inside disconnected municipal systems with no common format for sharing.

Activities

The India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX) was built to fix that: an open-source, open-standard data-exchange platform developed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, in partnership with India's Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) under the national Smart Cities Mission, launched on 23 February 2021. IUDX lets Urban Local Bodies, data providers and third-party applications publish, discover and exchange standardised urban datasets through common APIs rather than negotiating bespoke integrations city by city.

Results

Three pioneer cities — Pune, Surat and Varanasi — went live in 2020-21; by November 2021 the platform had operational deployments in ten cities (adding Agartala, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Bhopal, Faridabad and Vadodara), backed by roughly ₹29 crore (about US$3.5 million) in central government funding for FY2021-23, with a stated target of 25 further Smart Cities onboarding by 2023.

Conclusions

The evidence available is administrative and self-reported rather than independently evaluated: government and IISc sources confirm deployment counts, funding and open-source architecture, but no independent study has yet measured downstream effects on service-delivery costs or citizen outcomes.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Approximately ₹29 crore (~US$3.5 million) in central government funding allocated for FY2021-23 to build the platform and onboard cities.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Launched 23 February 2021; scaled from 3 pioneer cities (2020-21) to 10 operational deployments by November 2021, with a target of 25 further cities by 2023.
Staffing & skills
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru technical team, Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) / Smart Cities Mission programme staff, Urban Local Body (ULB) data officers in participating cities

Conditions for success

  • Central government funding tranche (₹29 crore) dedicated to platform development and city onboarding
  • Open-source, open-standard architecture reducing bespoke city-by-city integration effort
  • Institutional backing from a national ministry (MoHUA) under the Smart Cities Mission

Common failure modes

  • No independent study yet measures downstream effects on service-delivery costs or citizen outcomes
  • Continuity beyond the funded FY2021-23 window is not documented

Where it fits

Governance type
national government programme (IISc + MoHUA)
Scale
multi-city national rollout
Income level
lower-middle-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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