The Digital Governance Tech Tour, launched by Microsoft India, is a programme to skill government IT officials in technologies like AI and intelligent cloud-computing.
It is a national programme and includes a series of physical and virtual workshops. The objective is to train 5,000 personnel in 12 months.
The programme was inaugurated at the Digital Governance Tech Summit 2019 in New Delhi by the CEO of India’s policy commission and the Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and IT.
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.
It was designed keeping in mind all skill levels required at every stage of the government’s cloud adoption journey – from integrating on-premise core infrastructure with cloud platforms to operationalizing cloud analytics solutions. Participants will come away with a range of skills including being able to move, transform and analyse data, design, and deployment skills for end-to-end solutions, and monitoring and troubleshooting in the cloud.
For India, the potential of AI, cloud services, and data analytics needs to be brought to bear in core sectors for inclusive economic growth.
According to an official statement, AI and intelligent technologies are becoming all-pervasive today, driving change across businesses, communities, and governments. As India advances towards fulfilling its vision of becoming a US $5 trillion economy, applying AI and data analytics using secure and compliant cloud-based tools can provide actionable, predictive, and effective citizen-focused services while empowering more secure inter-departmental and cross-agency collaboration.
The program will help upskill government officials, equipping them with the digital skills and experience needed today and – in the future – to successfully deploy cloud-based solutions.
As the country moves beyond pilots and understands how to scale AI implementation and cloud adoption across states and sectors, it is vital to equip the ecosystem with the right know-how and skills. Collaboration with academia and the industry, and initiatives such as this will help build the foundation towards an AI-enabled future, a government official said.
Microsoft’s president said that AI and the cloud can enable path-breaking innovation and drive the next phase of India’s growth. Continuous focus on learning and improving skillsets for all is a must to make this a reality.
According to a study, IoT and AI-based applications could create over 2.8 million jobs in rural India over a period of 8 to 10 years with an annual value of IN ₹60,000 crores (about US $8.9 billion).
Out of the 2.8 million jobs, at least 2.1 million will be created for the agriculture sector and another 700,000 jobs will be created for the rural healthcare sector.
Also, another report has said that AI is expected to more than double the rate of innovation and employee productivity in India by 2021.
For organisations in India, the top reasons for adopting AI are higher competitiveness (24% of respondent chose it as number one driver), accelerated innovation (21%), better customer engagement (15%), higher margins (14%) as well as more productive employees (9%).
