IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The guidelines will be shared with cities as the part of the Smart City Mission of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs by Tuesday (October 20), officials aware of the development said.

The central government is drafting guidelines to scale up cycling infrastructure in the country, including interventions such as segregated lanes, shared streets, and intersections.

The report proposes strategies to develop talent, entrepreneurship and infrastructure, improve education and Karnataka's relationship with other countries, develop the ESDM (electronics systems design and manufacturing) sector, ready tier-II and tier-III cities for business expansion and living, and refurbish brand Bangalore.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is expanding its international partnerships under the Mumbai 3.0 vision through strategic engagement with South Korean institutions.

A high-level Korean delegation met with MMRDA officials at the India Global Forum 2025, held at the Jio World Centre, to advance cooperation in smart infrastructure, mobility, and urban innovation.

To curb the growing disruptions in the city's CCTV surveillance network, Nagpur Municipal Corporation administrator Abhijeet Chaudhari has directed all development agencies to treat the Smart City's optical fibre network as an ‘essential public service'. He emphasised that prior intimation and clearance must be sought before undertaking any excavation work that could potentially damage the network.

The directive was issued during a workshop organised by Nagpur Smart and Sustainable City Development Corporation Limited (NSSCDCL) on Friday. The meeting, held at Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Hall, aimed to address the recurring issues of fibre cable damage caused during civic and infrastructure development works by multiple govt agencies.

The survey aims to include its citizens in the urban development process and to ensure participatory planning in developing the city infrastructure.

The Imphal Smart City Limited (ISCL), recently carried out a city-wide survey as part of the ‘Streets for People Challenge’ to identify the challenges faced by pedestrians in Imphal city.

During the survey, it was noted that 90 per cent of the respondents wanted places to sit, rest, socialise, and exercise in the booming city.

Aizawl is currently experiencing slow internet connectivity due to disruptions caused by the ongoing Multi Utility Pole (MUP) project by Aizawl Smart City Ltd. The project, aimed at upgrading the city’s infrastructure, involves the installation of Multi Utility Poles across key areas in Aizawl, including Bawngkawn and Kulikawn.

However, the project has led to significant delays in internet services, affecting residents and businesses alike.

The Manmohan Singh government launched the project under the National Optical Fibre Network on 25 October 2011.

The previous UPA II government dithered badly on making rural India digital as it laid only 350 km of optical fibre in about two-and-a-half years. However, the Narendra Modi-led NDA government gave a major push to the project and laid over 248,000 km of optical fibre in the last three-and-a-half years. As a result, around 1 lakh gram panchayats, covering 3 lakh villages, are all set to roll out high-speed broadband services by this month’s end.

Though, the Municipal Corporation (MC) witnessed a sharp dip in the recovery of taxes and bills after the outbreak of Covid-19, the city Mayor and officials of the civic body are claiming to strengthen the infrastructure and speed up the development in 2021.

Karmajit Singh Rintu said, “No doubt, the Covid-19 hit the revenue of MC but we have optimum planning to tackle the situation. We have several funds and fixed deposit grants so development works would not suffer. Even we will spend more than previous years.”

The first phase of this project, called the coordinated corridor of rural development (CORD) will cover Mangalore-Karwar-Panaji (400km). The second phase will take up Honnavar-Shimoga-Bangalore (325km), Chitradurga-Solapur (400km) and Bangalore-Mangalore (360km). The Bangalore-Coimbatore (402km) line will be taken up in the third phase.

The basic concept behind smart cities is the use of technology to improve urban living and address pressing challenges. This begins by integrating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to enhance critical services such as transportation, utilities, healthcare, and public administration.

People today are equipped with all the necessary tools and accessories to make them “smart”. From a smartphone to a smartwatch, from a laptop to smart glasses and the ubiquitous apps that populate these, we as individuals are much more “smart-equipped” than we were in the last century. If individual potential has been thus enhanced, can the houses, the offices and the cities that we live in be far behind, giving rise to the question – what makes a city smart and how can we ensure a smooth transition from the chaos of today’s urban sprawls to truly “smart” cities.

The SDC was implemented by the state’s IT growth agency, Chhattisgarh Infotech and Biotech Promotion Society (CHiPS) as a Shared Service Centre, allowing other state departments to focus on service delivery rather than infrastructure management.

One of the immediately observable identifiers of a region’s economic status is the quality of its infrastructure. As a driver of economic growth, infrastructure spending is emphasised by Governments all over the world as a lever for employment and enhanced socio-economic development. World Bank states that a 10% increase in infrastructure spending correlates directly with a 1% increase in GDP over time.

After the G20 was formed in 1999 to deliberate on global economic and financial issues in the wake of the Asian crisis, it was thought that given the Group’s combined population and economic strength, topics for discussion under its ambit must be expanded. Thus, in 2009, the Group was designated the ‘premier forum for international cooperation’ at a Leaders’ level. Infrastructure was recognised as one of the developmental pillars, finding a strong footing in the 2012 Los Cabos Summit, which emphasised a strong correlation between infrastructure investment, productivity and standard of living.

The installation was notable not only for its speed, but also because it marked the beginning of Africa’s largest information and communications technology-based development project to be funded entirely by a developing country – India.

The Government is making all efforts to translate the dream of paperless governance into a reality. Over 671 million telephone subscribers, 20 million Broadband connections and 3G services are expected to be rolled out by the end of 2010, targeting 40% rural teledensity and Broadband connectivity to all Gram Panchayats by 2012. Plans are also afoot for delivering financial services using mobile technology. These factors clubbed with e-governance initiatives i.e. mandatory e-delivery of identified services are going to further enhance the magnitude of e-demands.

Though Indian telecommunications sector is the third largest in the world and the second largest among the emerging economies of Asia, when it comes to rural teledensity, it is very low, pointed out Communications and IT Minister A Raja.

While inaugurating the 14th India Telecommunications International Summit in New Delhi today he said despite impressive growth of the telecom sector and low tariffs, vast stretches of India's rural population have little or no telecom penetration and there is a large rural-urban divide in connectivity.

With its large talent pool of English-speaking Information Technology professionals, its extensive and expanding domestic market, and the increasingly central place occupied by information and communication technologies (ICT) in the government’s development strategy, India is well positioned to leverage ICT moving forward.

This will enable the country to leapfrog to higher stages of development, reduce poverty and regional income disparities, and reinforce its competitiveness for enhanced growth and prosperity. This is the conclusion of the World Economic Forum’s recently just released Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010.

Speaking at the ICT Conference 2011 organized by Computer Association of Nepal (CAN) here on Wednesday, they also stressed on the need to implement various concepts like e-village, e-library and telemedicine with focus on rural sector to bridge existing digital divide.

Speaking at a panel discussion on ´Building e-Nepal: Prospects and Challenges´, lawmaker Rajendra Khetan encouraged entrepreneurs to work with competitiveness, quality and access in mind. He further suggested them not to look for government assistance on everything.

The Philippines has increasingly caught the eye of Singapore businesses in recent years, thanks to its growing middle-class, young population and skilled workforce.

Indeed, even in the midst of Covid-19, Koufu expanded its Supertea and R&B Tea brands in the Philippines in August 2020, via a franchise with Philippine F&B group Shakey’s Pizza Asia Ventures.

Smart Cities are being developed with the help of a variety of IoT technologies, but generating, curating, categorizing, analyzing, and transferring such vast amounts of data creates certain challenges for the provision of context-aware real-time services.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are combining to construct Smart Cities quickly. Applications for Smart Cities rely heavily on data, which is also a major source of concern. According to a thorough analysis of various Smart City use cases, data is the essential component that powers the development process in most Smart City use cases. Improper data processing can harm individuals whose privacy may be jeopardized and programs that get the wrong data. An integrated ICT solution is essential to achieve the highest scalability, data integrity, and secrecy inside and between Smart Cities.

Milestone's aim is to develop AI-driven solutions to enhance traffic management systems and create smarter cities with high-quality, regulation-compliant video data. After launching in the USA, Milestone’s Project Hafnia is now engaged in Europe with the city of Genoa, Italy. The aim is to develop AI-driven solutions to enhance traffic management systems and create smarter cities with high-quality, regulation-compliant video data trained with NVIDIA NeMo Curator on NVIDIA DGX Cloud.