Building upon the ideation and guidance from the Prime Minister and under the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, National Informatics Centre (NIC), IEEE Computer Society and Oracle have come together to announce Gov Tech-Thon 2020, to incubate new ideas, boost innovation and use technology in agriculture and allied sectors.
Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, announced the Hackathon by releasing the online registration portal https://www.computer.org/education/oracle_hackathon_2020. Sawhney appreciated the efforts by National Informatics Centre, IEEE and Oracle for coming together to organise this hackathon. He pointed out that youngsters are an important part of India’s digital ecosystem and he looks forward to their participation in the hackathon and their solutions to the challenges.
Dr Neeta Verma, Director General, NIC in her address at the release of the online portal, said that the Hackathon is a step towards developing a digital ecosystem with more emerging technologies. She stated that Gov Tech-Thon 2020 will spur a lot of ideas, proof of concepts, working models for innovation and inclusion in government services.
Dr Savita Dawar, Deputy Director-General, NIC gave a brief introduction to the five challenges including AI-based crop recommendations, Blockchain-based seed certification, automated vigilance in exams/tests, automated fitness check process for commercial vehicles and easy document uploads from Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways which require immediate solutions.
Harish Mysore, Senior Director and Head of IEEE India Operations said, “IEEE has been empowering engineers for over a century, helping advance technology across sectors. This partnership with NIC and Oracle will help increase the use of technology, reduce the digital divide in agriculture, transportation and education and will help us deliver better governance to citizens of India.”
Shailender Kumar, Regional Managing Director, Oracle India, said, “To transform India into a digital and knowledge economy, we must first digitally empower all its people, key economic sectors and allied communities. We are proud to join hands with NIC and IEEE for Gov Tech-Thon 2020 and look forward to supporting local innovation in all key areas identified.”
Gov Tech-Thon 2020, a pan India 36 hours virtual Hackathon, is to be organised from October 30 to November 1. The Hackathon will be facilitated by IEEE, a trusted voice for engineering, computing and technology information. Registrations for Gov Tech-Thon 2020 are open.
The virtual hackathon is open to students, working professionals, startups, freelance technologists, faculty, and other IT service firms in India. During the hackathon, participants will receive mentorship and advice from technical experts from NIC, IEEE and Oracle, as well as senior domain experts from the Ministries of Agriculture, Education and Transport Departments, Government of India.
Participating teams will have access to the latest tools from Oracle, Oracle Autonomous Database, built-in and easy-to-use cloud security, and compute – to help them develop prototypes that are practical and scalable. Additionally, they will be able to leverage open source technologies that bring benefits of high performance, reliability and data security.
