eGovernance takes centre stage at the 17th edition of the Express Technology Sabha

The 17th edition of the Express Technology Sabha, organised by The Indian Express Group in Hyderabad, from February 12-15,2015, was a record-breaking success. A galaxy of government officials, thought leaders, media personalities and representatives from Information Technology companies attended the three-day Sabha.

They shared knowledge and experience on the full breadth and depth of the initiatives that must be taken for “Achieving the Vision of Digital India.”

The event was inaugurated by J Satyanarayana, Advisor (eGovernance, Electronics & IT), Government of Andhra Pradesh; Padma Bhushan Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Chairperson, Board of Governors, The Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER); and other eminent dignitaries.

Following the inauguration, Anant Goenka, Wholetime Director & Head – New Media, The Indian Express Limited, gave the welcome address. The welcome address was followed by the an exclusive conversation between Satyanarayana and Dr. Ahluwalia. The conversation, moderated by Subhomoy Bhattacharjee of Indian Express, was entitled “Smart Cities: The New Frontier in Digital Governance”.

“Governments have to build a public-private partnership (PPP) model for creating the smart city project. IT is a powerful tool to leapfrog with rising income and rising expenses,” Ahluwalia said. She said financial viability was the key to success of the project. Given urbanisation challenges, governments must explore smarter ways of management, create strategies for smart city transformation, maximise environmental sustainability efforts and create new citizen services. So, state governments will have to play a major role, Dr. Ahluwalia added.

Many interesting ideas about urbanisation and the issues and challenges in developing new Smart Cities in the country came to light during this conversation. Satyanarayana said: “The engagement of citizens is important in the whole exercise of digital India because without people involvement there will be disconnect and dissatisfaction.”

As one of the key agendas of the event was to facilitate the exchange of knowledge on the subject of creating Smart Cities in the country, in the weeks running up to the event, the The Indian Express Group and PwC jointly conducted a survey which is essentially an assessment of Indian cities for Smart City Transformation. The result of this pathbreaking survey, the book of eponymous name, “Assessment of Indian Cities for Smart City Transformation,” was launched at the event. The launch was followed by a presentation entitled “How Smart are Our Cities?” by NSN Murty, Associate Director – Government and Public Services, PwC India.

The first day of the event also saw in interesting presentation titled “Transformational Governance”, by P H Kurian, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology & Department of Industries, Government of Kerala. In the session that followed Dr. Ashwini Kumar Sharma, MD, NIELIT impressed upon Skill development and capacity Building for Make in India and Digital India vision of Government of India.

The second day of the event began with an interesting presentation titled “Passport Services in Digital India” by Muktesh K. Pardeshi, Joint Secretary (PSP) & Chief Passport Officer, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. After a string of presentations by speakers from private sector companies, there was a panel discussion on the theme ‘ICT for better delivery of healthcare services’. The second panel discussion of the second day was organised towards the evening. It was on the theme of “Smart Cities: Urban Mobility, Connectivity and Environment Sustainability”.

The day three of the event, began with a presentation Dr. P V Ramesh, Principal Secretary, Finance, Government of Andhra Pradesh. He spoke on the Public Finance Management Automation system that is now all set to be launched across all departments in the government. This was followed by a range of interesting presentations from representatives of major IT companies. There were two panel discussions during the day—the first was on “Best Practices in Cyber Security”, and the second was on “Improving Governance with Technology: Cloud, Big Data Analytics & IoT”.

The awards night at the 17th Express Technology Sabha turned out to be a major success. The Chief Guest at the awards night was Parakala Prabhakar, Advisor (Communications), Government of Andhra Pradesh. A total of 6 awards in various categories of eGovernance were given to deserving projects by the hands of Parakala Prabhakar. The event came to an end with an entertaining live performance by noted artist Shibani Kashyap.

The event was supported by government organisations such as Ministry of Urban Affairs, Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY), National Informatics Centre (NIC), National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT) and National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). PwC was the knowledge partner.