The “ICSSR Data Service” is culmination of signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). The MoU provides for setting-up of “ICSSR Data Service: Social Science Data Repository” and host NSS and ASI datasets generated by MoSPI. The ICSSR Data Service hosts a comprehensive set of statistical datasets in social sciences generated and contributed by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), New Delhi. Subsequently, scope of the repository would be expanded to include datasets from all social science institutes under ICSSR's direct purview as well as Government agencies. The ICSSR Data Service is set-up with an aim to support researchers, teachers and policymakers who are heavily rely on high-quality social and economic data for their research.

The platform provides single point access to a wide range of primary datasets including datasets generated by large-scale government surveys i.e. ASI and NSS that provides unit level data as well as qualitative studies. The ICSSR Data Service as a policy, promotes data sharing to encourage the reuse of data and provide information on developing and generating social science research data & its management.

The ICSSR Data Service extracts and transforms the data from raw datasets before uploading it in the data repository with necessary documentation for the benefit of researcher. Besides hosting unit-level datasets, the ICSSR Data Service also provides access to secondary datasets derived from the unit-level datasets using selected parameters. Training materials and guidance to meet the needs of data users, owners and creators is also offered through this platform. Users can explore collection of datasets accompanied with user guides and supporting materials using search interface of the ICSSR Data Service. All datasets documentation and resources are freely available through this platform.

The project on setting-up of ICSSR Data Service is being executed by the INFLIBNET Centre with funding from ICSSR.