Government Activities
Information is also generated as a by-product from the activities undertaken by different governmental and non-governmental organisations. The most important organisations in this class are the governments themselves and their agencies. They perform their tasks as a matter of routine. For example, the police department has been set up for the maintenance of law and order. It is their routine administrative task. The activities of these departments, in turn, generate information about such burning topics as dowry deaths, terrorism, corruption and the like. The stupendous development planning exercise undertaken in the successive Five Year Plans by the Planning Commission and State Planning Departments of the Government has generated an enormous amount of information on almost all dimensions of socio-economic issues. A major part of the information (both statistical and descriptive) needed by the social science researchers in academic institutions and decision-makers in governments, business and industry, emanates from the governmental sources. The reasons are obvious. There is no area of activity in the life of a nation in which the government is not involved.