India should be global center for data innovation, development: Ravi Shankar Prasad

India should take a leadership position in the global digital revolution and become a key center for data innovation as well as low-cost cyber security products, Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said. “In the digital revolution, we do not want to lag behind, but become leaders,” Prasad said. The minister was speaking at the inaugural session of three-day national meet on grass-root informatics – VIVID 2018 organized by National Informatics Centre (NIC), a prime builder of e-government and e-governance applications.

Prasad further exhorted NIC officials to play a pivotal role in creating technology solutions to strengthen basic welfare standards in the 115 identified underdeveloped districts across India. He also urged officials to leverage NIC’s new website-building platform to create, in a time-bound manner, individual sites for each of the 600 districts across India.

“India’s digital story is waiting to explode. We have to make a convenient ecosystem for it,” the minister said. Stressing the importance of data in a nation of 121 crore mobile phones, he said that India should become an important center globally for data innovation and data development. “India should be a low-cost cyber security center,” he said while asking NIC to work towards building affordable cyber security products that would not just be relevant for India but also for global markets.