IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

India’s unique characteristics and huge service deficits make apps an odds-on favourite

The announcements of the Digital India and Skill India missions are the prime minister’s twin promises to the youth of India for a better future. Both recognise the role technology must play—the Skill India initiative, that targets to skill over 400 million youth by 2022, gives a computer-screen the pride of place in its logo. Technology is permeating our lives and changing how we live and work. An outstanding example of this is the mobile phone (in all its varied sophistication levels and incarnations). As mobile operators vie to acquire the billionth subscriber in India, telephone connections are no longer the privilege of a select few, but a nearly-ubiquitous accessory that in numerous cases pays for itself. The JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile technology) trinity described expressively in this year’s Economic Survey is also built on the foundation of a fully-digitised economy, the ramp up to which will not be easy. Policy challenges such as the hotly contested debate on the disruption of legacy communications services by over the top (OTT) applications and ambitions of net neutrality demand attention but elude instant resolution, and require nuanced and contextual thinking. But even as policy makers wrestle with such conundrums, they must not lose sight of the numerous other opportunities for development that may be forged with technology. Apps—the innovative bite-sized applications that are resident on smartphones—are one.

Krishna’s appeal followed shortly after a buyer-seller meet held at the Habitat Centre in New Delhi saw more than 100,000 participants respond to an open advertisement in the national press. The Panchayat Raj is acting as the third party between buyers and sellers.

Armenian Health Minister Derenik Dumanyan said at the proposal made by India implies cooperation with an IT company.

Earlier, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Manasaryan said India had already chosen a company, and on Armenian side, the health ministry will be involved in the deal and one of Armenian IT companies.

"Our 'Digital India' initiative will rely on the IT/BPM (business process management) sector for design, deployment and its continued success," Jaitley said at a pre-budget consultative meeting with IT hardware and software groups.

Telecommunications service provider and part of the M2 Telecommunications Group (ASX: MTU), iPrimus, has helped in the delivery of a digital local government program alongside the City of Whittlesea.

The Digital Local Government Program is an online ‘virtual village’ service for senior citizens in the NBN enabled area and was designed and implemented by City of Whittlesea.

Through its iPrimus brand, M2 delivered the 100/40 Mbps NBN connection that hosted the high definition video conferencing and online Seniors Resource Centre portal.

Revolutionizing the way the web has been accessed for so long, International Domain Names, which till now allowed only Latin characters. allowing only localities which used Latin as their script to have domain names in their own language, will now be able to support the script of various Indian languages.

Currently the project is being implemented at select places in Tripura and Bihar. Department has received such proposals from states like J&K, Punjab, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal. The department is planning a mega roll-out across the country under the 'Ayush and Public Health Scheme', sources said.

India, whose highly trained team of experts work in the global IT industry, is an ideal partner for Bahrain in promoting its e-government initiatives, said the newly-appointed Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs and president of the Central Informatics Organisation (CIO), Shaikh Ahmed bin Ateyatalla Al Khalifa.

Amulya Kumar Debnath, Director General of CPTU and Abdul Qadeer, Vice President of GSS Infotech Ltd, India signed the contract on behalf of their respective sides. Air Vice Marshal (retd) AK Khandaker, Minister for Planning, Md Abdul Malek, Secretary of IMED and other officials of the CPTU, IMED and the Ministry of Planning were present on the occasion.

Bangladeshi ICT entrepreneurs Saturday sought training and business supports from their Indian counterparts for the betterment of the sector in Bangladesh.

They stressed the need for cooperation from the entrepreneurs of the neighbouring country, which is leading the ICT business globally, at a seminar on “ICT Development in Bangladesh: Opportunities and Challenges” in Dhaka.

They also urged their Indian counterparts to assist Bangladesh in winning a larger share of the global IT business.

Bangladesh has a huge shortage of skilled IT professionals as the educational institutions in the country cannot produce the expected number of skilled people, said Mustafa Jabbar, president of Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS), the national association of ICT companies.

"India is in a special position to offer its services in the IT solutions space in Africa. Many of the global consultants your governments are hiring are perhaps much more expensive and do not have the understanding of the harsh physical conditions and environment they have to operate in," Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Sachin Pilot told a gathering of African delegates at the 7th CII-EXIM Bank conclave on India-Africa Partnership.

Bharat Bytes is Computerworld India’s regular round-up of news from the world of IT.

India is biggest digital ID provider

With 1.3 billion Aadhaar card users, India tops the list of countries with the most digital ID users. A digital ID is a digital copy of a physical ID like Aadhaar, a driving license, or a passport. Globally, there are 4.2 billion digital ID users, a number expected to reach 6.5 billion by 2026, according to Juniper Research. Most government-funded schemes in India are linked to Aadhaar card numbers for verifications.

Union ministry of housing and urban affairs to confer awards under different categories on January 10, 2020

Union ministry of housing and urban affairs has declared three smart cities of MP a winner under various categories of India smart city empowering awards.

Bhopal Smart City Development Corporation Limited (BSCDCL), Jabalpur and Sagar smart cities will receive awards under different categories on January 10, 2020.

Bhopal, Surat, Bhubaneswar, Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Varanasi and Indore are set to be declared India’s ‘first set of smart cities’. Seven years after launch of a flagship urban renewal mission to make 100 cities sustainable and citizen-friendly, the seven cities from Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh will be showcased as such cities by the end of the year.

The Smart Cities Mission, launched on June 25, 2015, to ‘smarten up’ cities with eco-friendly hi-tech solutions to urban problems, is in its last year of implementation. The mission period ends in June 2023. Of the 100 cities, the seven have taken a lead with most projects completed. Bhopal has completed 92% projects, Surat 82.44%, Udaipur 78%, Bhubaneswar 76%, Indore, Varanasi and Ahmedabad 70%.

The Nu 2.5B project, previously known as the ‘Total Solutions project’, is an ICT capacity building project, undertaken by the government of Bhutan, with financial assistance from the Indian government.

The project, in its six components, will work over the next five years towards enabling e-governance, empowering teachers and taking ICT to schools, enabling employment skills, furnishing tertiary institutes with ICT training centres, reaching the unreached all over the nation, and managing e-waste.

The move is aimed at making digital even remotest of villages and towns across the nation to ensure people there have access to the Internet for their consumption.

In what can be termed a big boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India aim, the government is all set to extend internet services to six lakh villages in the next three years, reducing the digital divide between big cities and smaller and far off villages, top insiders in the central government told Times Now on Wednesday.

US$349 million set aside for smart cities this year, down from US$1.2 billion last year.

Budget for India’s 100 smart cities project have seen a big dip in the 2015-16 Budget announced on 1 March.

This comes as countries around the world race to share their expertise on city planning and sign deals with Indian states to build new cities.

Speaking here via video link at the DI Conclave organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry Ravi Shankar Prasad, Indian Minister for Communications and Information Technology, said that the DI initiative was “basically a programme to bridge the divide between the digital have’s and digital have-nots [and] we need DI for the poor and the underprivileged”.