Minister of electronics & IT and Law & Justice, SH. Ravi Shankar Prasad today called upon National Informatics to support efforts aimed at making India low cost cyber Security hub. This would facilitate India in making its presence in development of technology among the neighboring states. He was inaugurating the “2nd National Meet on Grassroot Informatics – VIVID: Weaving a Digital India” on cyber security and Innovation. He said the digital initiatives of this government are aimed at not only becoming number one in Data Economics and Data Innovation but also to transform India by empowering citizens through the use of Technology which is affordable and inclusive.
He said NIC being the back-bone of technology should not only innovate new products for betterment of their own states/districts but also hand hold the local citizens in becoming familiar with new technology. He said this would supplement government effort for making citizens literate in technology and expedites process of making digital economy reach one trillion dollar mark in five years time. He said transformation of the society has to be politically neutral.
He said, “Our government believes in Digital connectivity and also in physical connectivity. The entire country’s digital Infrastructure has been managed by NIC’s district officials being the Digital Backbone of the country & being the innovators for e-Governance. All the Digital Innovations which our government is doing have got the footprint of NIC. Digital India is the design to transform India by empowering citizens by the use of technology which is affordable & inclusive. We want to become Global leaders in Digital Revolution”.
“I would like my NIC district officers to start innovative thinking and to develop new products at the district levels. I encourage NIC District Officers to become guardians, hand holders of Digital India. NIC should be more pro-active and should support other countries in their endeavor to move towards Digital based economy”, added Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Hon’ble Minister further stated that NIC officers should get more exposure in the emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, Blockchain Technology, IoT, Data Analytics, etc. and can be further innovated by NIC people. Hon’ble Minister also desired India to become Low cost cyber security hub which is suitable for India & for the world.
In order to encourage officers at grassroot level, Hon’ble Minister presented the awards to the NIC District officials who have done exemplary work in the five categories including Emerging Technologies, Innovation in Service Delivery, mobile applications, Web Applications and Data Visualisation.
NIC today also introduced two new portals – ‘Centre of Excellence for Application Security’ (CoEAS) and ‘Secure, Scalable & Sugamya Website as a Service’(S3WaaS), which were launched by Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The National Meet on Grassroot Informatics is aimed at showcasing the various initiatives of NIC in creating and enhancing the Digital Infrastructure in the country. Some of these are – setting up of ICT infrastructure, developing state of the art products to enable the government and empower the citizens, its initiatives at state and district level along the lines of Digital India initiatives along with the various awareness campaigns on Digital Payment Systems encompassing DBT, PFMS, Cashless Payment, Aadhaar etc.
VIVID this year is providing an extensive platform for knowledge sharing which will empower 240 NIC District officials from across the country to interact and leverage on each other’s experience and best practices. During the three days, DIOs would be giving presentations on their portals, showcase their applications, their District initiatives and their immense contribution towards implementation of the Digital India initiative of the Government.
The National meet will cover wide range of relevant topics in various sessions including Emerging Technologies (internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Big Data Analytics), Cyber Threats & Counter Measures (Changing Digitisation Paradigm & its impact on Security, Cyber Security Threats & cyber crimes), Critical Information Infrastructure protection (NIC-CERT), Enterprise Level Applications, and many more topics for NIC District officials.
The meet will also be attended by Senior Government officials, States IT Secretaries along with the NIC officers from across the country to discuss on various important subjects related to the technology field. They will also be sharing their experience in the implementation of the eGovernance programme at their State/District. Nearly 400 officers from all over India will participate in this meet.
Among those who participated in the three-day event were Shri Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Ms. Neeta Verma, Director General, NIC, Ms. Rama Nangpal, DDG, NIC, Sh. G.K. Gaur, DDG, NIC and Ms. Nandita Chaudhri, DDG, NIC .
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