Digital Governance Summit 2022, Haryana shines spotlight on acceleration of innovation – Elets eGov

To discuss best practices in e-Governance, Elets Technomedia and Microsoft India organised Digital Governance Summit 2022, Haryana Edition on 25th February. The one-day virtual conference witnessed participation of top policymakers from government and technology leaders.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal: Chief Guest

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal graced the summit as chief guest. In his keynote address, the Chief Minister said, “The state government is embracing technology to ensure transparent governance. We are moving from e-Governance to good governance.”

Manohar Lal, Chief Minister, Haryana said “I am Glad to connect with this Summit. Haryana is working on Digital Governance. We are embracing technology to ensure transparent governance.”#DigitalGovernanceHaryana #DigitalHaryana #conference @cmohry @Microsoft @mlkhattar pic.twitter.com/PpioQ30dkt

— eGov Magazine (@egovonline) February 25, 2022

Highlighting e-governance initiatives taken by the Haryana Government, he further said that the state has developed a systematic system under which people do not have to make frequent visits to government offices to get their work done. They can either visit their nearest Community Service Centre (CSC) or access the services online to avail the advantages of government services.

The Chief Minister also gave insights into the Antyodaya Parivar Utthan Yojana, which has been started to bring the poorest of the poor into the mainstream. “The Haryana Government is strengthening the online system to start giving direct benefits to the beneficiaries.”

Emphasising on good governance, he said, “The state government is embracing technology to curb corruption in job transfers often seen in government sector. An online transfer policy has been created. Also, we have started giving jobs on the basis of merit to ensure transparency.”

“With digital governance, we are facilitating citizens to register their grievances and complaints through CM window. Moreover, the government started the Dial-112 scheme to facilitate police help in just 15 minutes,” he further said.

The Haryana Government is committed to ensure digital governance in all sectors for overall development.

#HappeningToday I Digital Governance Summit 2022, Haryana I Join Us
To register: https://t.co/8OnWoxbd1M
For details: https://t.co/O1nUar4cfp#DigitalGovernanceHaryana #DigitalHaryana #conference @cmohry @MicrosoftIndia @eletsonline pic.twitter.com/fSl1jgaEFO

— eGov Magazine (@egovonline) February 25, 2022

Navtez Bal, Executive Director, Public Sector, Microsoft India, also joined the summit as Chief Guest. Applauding efforts of the Haryana Government, he said, “Indian public sector is ensuring the smooth continuity of citizen services with the help of technology. We look forward to work with government sector to bring digital transformation.”

Navtez Bal, Executive Director, Public Sector, @Microsoft India said “We look forward to work with government sector to bring digital transformation.”#DigitalGovernanceHaryana #DigitalHaryana #conference@cmohry @mlkhattar pic.twitter.com/VjvSrzei7S

— eGov Magazine (@egovonline) February 25, 2022

Dr. Ravi Gupta, Founder & CEO, Elets Technomedia, in his keynote address said, “For transformation across sectors, technology has a big role to play. We have been creating awareness on the importance of ICT for more transparent and efficient governance.”

Panel Discussion: Modernising Government-Owned Utilities to Enable Workforce

It is apparent that technology-driven transformation is now taking place in the way public utilities are managed.

Ease of Doing Business

Sofia Dahiya, Secretary Department of Finance & Secretary, CRID, Government of Haryana, said, “Digitisation should result into ease of business for citizens and enterprises. We are redefining processes and making it simpler with digitisation. There should be single source of trust for information and services.”

“Our ultimate goal is to provide pro-active service. Data should be available to deliver all schemes. Last mile connectivity is a surely a challenge, which should be addressed.” she said.

Amneet P Kumar, Director General, Directorate of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, Government of Haryana, said, “With use of ICT, we are improving ease of doing business in the state.”

Skill Development

Skill development is another crucial area which affects the modernisation and upgradation process.

Anant Prakash Pandey, DG & Secretary, Foreign Cooperation Department, & Mission Director, Haryana Skill Development Mission, & CEO, Haryana Kaushal Rojgar Nigam, Haryana, said, “Key initiatives are being taken for skill development in the state. We are collaborating with MNCs like TATA for skill development of youths.”

“HUNAR – Haryana, Udyam, Naukri Aur Rozgar’ app has been launched to give training to the candidates for self-employment,” he said.

Namit Sinha, Head – Govt Vertical, Microsoft India, said, “Skilling is very crucial to make people employable in the market.”

Technology has played an important role in responding to the novel coronavirus. Dr. Veena Singh, Director General, Health Services Health Department, Haryana, said, “The Health Department is virtual on all platforms to provide services. A lot more has to be done as there is acute shortage of doctors, hospital staff, technicians. We must leverage technology like AI to address the challenge.”

Smart Meters

Veer Singh Yadav, Director Finance, Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam, Haryana, said, “We have installed 157,000 smart meters in Gurugram, which is making the system more transparent.”

Tech-driven Decision-making

Dr. Satbir Singh Kadian, Engineer in Chief, Irrigation & Water Resources Department, Haryana, said, “We are taking help of technology to improve our decision-making. We have deployed smart devices to collect useful real-time data.” “Data security and ownership would be a challenge. But, we are working on IoT, AI and other technology areas.”

Panel Discussion: Leveraging Technology to Meet with Challenges of Last Mile Connectivity in Government Sector

Dr. J. Ganesan, Director (Secondary Education), School Education Department, Haryana, said, “Technology has come to stay. Government teachers are also accepting & embracing technology. Initiatives like online School Progress card has been rolled out in rural areas.”

“We have always looked beyond academics. We are now emphasising on vocational education. As of now, we are training about 1.8 lakh students in 12 different vocations. Moreover, 15 incubation centers in schools have been set up to give boost to vocational training.”

Hitesh K Arora, Deputy Secretary, Haryana State Board of Technical Education, Haryana, said, “Online internships and trainings will help students and we are trying to work around it. Further, gamification of the education technology has promising future.”

Last Mile Connectivity & Challenge

Munish Chandan, Head- State eGov Mission Team, Government of Haryana, said, “We are working to ensure cashless, paperless & faceless government. We are able to generate work, build capacities and to strengthen the governance.” “We focus on very small level of changes as well for better use of technology. Storage capacity is one of the challenges in digitisation. We are working towards it.”

Aman Kumar, Deputy Secretary, Information, Public Relations & Languages Department, Haryana, said, “When it comes to collection of data, same type of data is coming from people. We must come up with long term plan with the help of IT for value creation of this data.”

Advance Policing

Anshu Singla, SP (Kurukshetra), Haryana Police, said, “Technology has revolutionised the policing. Emergency response system is one the examples. With real-time data we are addressing issues. Providing services well on time with the help of technology is a big paradigm shift.” “We are using Data analytics even in social media to map crime hotspots.”

Arpit Jain, SP (Sirsa), Haryana Police, said, “Data analytics is helping improve the policing. Now the concept of predictive policing is coming.”

Digital Technology-enabling connected citizen service

Amit Bansal, Sr. Product Marketing Manager – Dynamics 365 & Power Platform, Microsoft India, said, “By simplifying relationship with citizens government can resolve recurring issues. For this, they should make a single window for multiple citizen services and Microsoft Dynamic 365 can help in implementing this” 

Reimagine collaboration through empowered frontline essential service workers

Sneha Trivedi, Senior Specialist Modern Work, (Global Black Belt), Microsoft India, said, “In a hybrid environment or work from home scenario, we need to ensure productivity and communication & collaboration among employees. Microsoft power tools come in handy to optimise management remotely.”

Adaptive, Resilient, and secure infrastructure solutions for digital governance

Hari Krishan T.M, Director Specialist Manager – Azure, Data & AI, Microsoft India, said, “Any security initiative in Smart Cities needs numerous agencies to collaborate to work together. So this needs a centralised platform. We have IoT services based on Azure to help in such areas.”

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