As a part of the Digital India Week celebrations from July 4 – 9, 2022, a three day dedicated event titled ‘India Stack Knowledge Exchange’ programme was organised from July 7 – 9, 2022. The programme came to its culmination with the three brainstorming thematic sessions on ‘Urban Stack’, ‘Technology Stack for e-Commerce’ and ‘Space Technology Stack’, followed by a valedictory session on July 9, 2022.
Urban Stack
The day’s first session was moderated by Mr. Abhishek Chaudhry, VP, National Industrial Corridor Development Programme. The panelmembers included Mr. Kunal Kumar, Joint Secretary and Mission Director, SMART Cities Mission, Dr.Inder Gopal, CEO-IUDX, and Mr.Manish Srivastava, CTO, E-Gov Foundation, as the speakers.
Mr. Kunal Kumar highlighted thatthe Smart Cities Mission, an ambitious project built around the 4 Quadrant approaches of Information, Communication, Prediction and Management, also includes the 3Ps of deployment – People, Policies & Processes and Platforms. Mr.Abhishek Chaudhry, VP, NICDC said that ULIP is about effective movement of goods, reducing logistics cost and time, providing real-time information and improving international competitiveness. Mr. Manish Srivastava, CTO, eGov Foundation said that Digital Infrastructure for Governance, Impact and Transformation (DIGIT) enabled by India Stack has been implemented in over 1000 cities resulting in impacton 180 Million citizens. Dr. Inder Gopal, CEO, Indian Urban Data Exchange said that IUDX has been deployed in 18 cities,and highlighted success stories throughexamples of bus occupancy with ETA (Surat), Safe routes and places (Pune), Multimodal transport (Surat), Efficient solid waste pick (Varanasi), Adaptive traffic lights (Agartala) and flood warning (Chennai).
Technology Stack for e-Commerce
This session was moderated by Col. Pankaj Dikshit, Senior Vice President (IT), GSTN, and was graced by Mr. Rajesh Jain, Additional CEO, GeM, Mr. P V Bhat, DDG, NIC and Mr. T Koshy, CEO, ONDC, as speakers. The panel brainstormed on the technological challenges associated with the GeM platform built for procurement within the government sector, managing around 2.5 lakh crore worth of gross merchandise value. The panel also discussed the Open Network for Digital Commerceplatform, which is a coveted initiative foreliminating monopoly from the platforms by bringing in a completely open-source domain which provides gateway to buyers and sellers between the platforms. It was also apprised that the eWay Bill has resulted into about 20–30% efficiency in logistics.
Space Technology Stack
Thissession was extremely informative, based on ISRO’s vision to harness space technology for national development, while pursuing space science research and planetary exploration. It was moderated by Mr. Shashikant Sharma, SAC/ISRO. Speakers included Mr.Nishkam Jain, SAC/ISRO, Ms. Vibha Jain, SAC/ISRO, Mr. Pankaj Bodani, SAC/ISRO, Mr. Utkarsh, SAC/ISRO and Mr.ArulrajMurugvel, NRSC/ISRO.
The thematic session gave insight into space technologies developed indigenously. It showcased Space Technology applications, namely, Satellite Communications, Navigation, Earth Observation, and Geospatial Data Dissemination. The eminent speakers shared how indigenously developed regional navigation system of India (NavIC), visualization system of India (VEDAS) and Indian storehouse for space-based weather & ocean data (MOSDAC) are crystallizing India’s position as a global leader in space technology. SATCOM’s application for e-Governance namely, Bhuvan, Bhoonidhi&Yuktdhara’s solutions was also shared.
Valedictory Session
The India Stack Knowledge Exchange programmeended with a Valedictory session thatwas graced by Dr. Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary, MeitY, Mr. Rajesh Gera, DG, NIC, and Mr. Abhishek Singh, President & CEO, NeGD. The overall programme was attended by over 6,300 participants from 60 countries with 11 thematic sessions delivered by 51 pioneers of Digital Transformation in India.
Dr.Rajendra Kumaroutlined the vision of achieving trillion-dollar digital economy and makingIndia the skilled and talented Capital of the world.
Mr.Rajesh Gera highlighted the areas of future roadmap such as cloud, cybersecurity, and apps namely ‘Sandesh’ and ‘Lok Samvad’ as secure tools enhancing government communications.
Thanking all speakers and participants, Mr. AbhishekSingh said that idea behind ISKE 2022 was to get the real practitioners – the IT champions – to speak of the implementation of ground-breaking projects, the challenges faced and the road ahead for these projects. ISKE 2022 was also visualised to present to the global community, India Stack solutions and goods, and welcomed any nation to adopt,and customise them for their own use. He shared that a physical event on the subject would be organised towards the end of year (2022). He emphasized on the launchof Indiastack.global portal, a repository of digital goods and services, whichhas beenmade available in English and French and very soon, this would be made available in all UN languages.