Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second term saw a slew of initiatives started in order to adapt cutting-edge technologies in the economy. The Interim Budget 2019 discussed the national program for the development of emerging technologies like robotics, IoT and AI, among others. However, the Indian think tank NITI Aayog has clearly been at the forefront of looking at the adoption of new-age technologies for bettering government service.
In this article, we list down the top 5 AI collaborations between the Government of India and the tech giants in 2019.
(The list is in alphabetical order)
1| ABB
After signing a statement of intent (SoI) last year, this year in March, NITI Aayog joined hands with ABB and organised a workshop in order to help the MSMEs to understand how the Indian economy can be digitised with the help of emerging technologies like AI, big data and digital connectivity. Entrepreneurs, policymakers, state government functionaries and technology experts were brought together from the selected sectors of pharmaceuticals, textiles, electrical and electronics, food processing, and manufacturing to address potential impacts of automation and AI on the workforce and steps that could be taken to educate, train and reskill the workforce.
2| Adobe
On 27th Feb 2019, NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) signed a Statement of Intent (SOI) with Adobe to collectively drive the charter of developing creative skills and spreading digital literacy across all Atal Tinkering Labs in India. According to the SoI, Adobe will be adopting 100 schools under Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) initiative and the company will provide free licenses of Adobe Spark premium to ATLs.
3| Google
During the fifth Google for India event, the tech announced to expand its free Wifi program across the villages of three Indian states. According to reports, Google hosted the event in Sept 2019 where the tech giant announced the partnership with BSNL as a part of which it would provide high-speed, reliable and secure public WiFi to villages in Gujarat, Bihar, and Maharashtra.
Recently, the tech giant has signed a statement of intent with the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) for rolling out the ‘Build for Digital India’ programme. According to reports, the programme will offer a platform for engineering students to develop market-ready, technology-based solutions in order to address the key social problems.
Recently, Google joined hands with the Indian Central Water Commission (CWC) to forecast floods. This will be done by measuring the water levels hourly in over a thousand stream gauges across all of India. The real-time river measurements and forecast data will be provided by the CWC and the tech giant will involve incorporating using the multidisciplinary techniques.
4| Microsoft
On 27th August 2019, tech giant Microsoft announced the Digital Governance Tech Tour, a National program to deliver critical AI and intelligent cloud computing skills to the Government officials in charge of IT across the country. The initiative comprises a series of physical and virtual workshops and aims to train 5,000 professionals over a period of 12 months. The Digital Governance Tech Tour will be open to technocrats and IT professionals across the entire Government ecosystem, including employees of Public Sector Undertakings, government partners as well as solutions/systems integrators.
5| IBM
In July this year, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare signed a Statement of Intent (SoI) for undertaking a pilot study with IBM India in 3 districts of Bhopal, Rajkot, and Nanded in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra respectively. The study aims to generate a solution in the field of agriculture through artificial intelligence and weather technology at the farm level to provide weather forecasts and soil moisture information on a pro bono basis.
