Karnataka’s e-government projects can go national: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

At least two of Karnataka’s technology-based governance initiatives have an all-India potential, Union Minister of State for Electronics & IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Monday.

Chandrasekhar was in Bengaluru where he held talks with officials from the state government’s e-governance department.

“Many of their solutions have all-India potential,” Chandrasekhar told DH, citing FRUITS and Kutumba projects as examples.

The Farmer Registration & Unified Beneficiary Information System (FRUITS) database contains information on 72.48 lakh farmers, including their land details that banks can access. This is being used by banks to disburse loans.

Kutumba is the family ID project, a comprehensive database that the government wants to use for automatic disbursal of benefits to eligible citizens without them having to even apply.

“There are some very good initiatives that I believe should be used by other governments, including in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY),” Chandrasekhar said.

The minister said he asked the e-governance department to migrate fully to the cloud and “evolve to provide e-governance as a service”.

“I also gave ideas on how to have tier-2/3 city-based companies play a bigger role in e-governance development,” he said.

During the day, Chandrasekhar visited the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) office and launched the innovation development upskilling (INDUS) IoT kit.

The kit is the size of a credit card fitted with six sensors, actuators, connectivity and debugger interfaces.

“The compact and easily portable IoT kit shall facilitate development of local and smart solutions in a range of applications including drones. It is modestly priced at Rs 2,500 per unit and shall soon be available over GeM portal. C-DAC is also willing to transfer this technology to startups for commercial production,” a release said.

Chandresekhar also interacted with top industry executives.

“The way we launched the PLI scheme, the government is working on a DLI scheme. The government is ready to walk the extra mile. I encourage you to engage with me. I am just a phone call away,” he told them, the release said.