Som Satsangi, SVP and Managing Director, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, India, says technology can solve a wide range of problems and increase efficiency, which will play a greater role in governance transparency
DQ: How is HPE helping India adopt Smart Governance to streamline both governance and business practices?
Sum satsangi: HPE actively supports the Digital India and Smart Cities mission projects and partners with several PSUs to enable the digital transformation of their organizations. We are now witnessing the adoption of several digital technologies such as IoT, AI-ML, analytics, etc. at scale in smart cities and other projects and HPE provides unique, innovative and use-case specific solutions from its portfolio of hardware, IP software. as well as design, consulting and integration services.
HPE has in fact set up India’s first cloud-based integrated command and control center for Bhopal Smart City Development Corporation Ltd. (BSCDCL). This center enabled the monitoring and administration of utilities and citizen services of multiple cities in each of the cities through a central cloud and enabled the monitoring of cities statewide from a view central control.
Additionally, our cloud and IoT enabled Covid testing labs and OPD centers have collectively facilitated over 5,00,000 patient visits and set a benchmark in India’s tech-enabled healthcare ecosystem. while supporting government efforts to respond to Covid.
Our High Performance Computing (HPC) systems have enabled some of the renowned institutes such as Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune; Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore; Tata Institute for Basic Research (TIFR), Mumbai; Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kanpur, Kharagpur). The research center with HPE HPC facilities includes the National Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Noida. HPE solutions for data, compute and applications enable several smart government initiatives.
DQ: Which technologies will play a major role in effective and transparent governance?
Sum satsangi: Technology can solve a wide range of problems and increase efficiency, which will play a greater role in transparent governance. Looking at data usage, data integration across verticals, innovative service delivery models, and cross-industry collaboration, we’ll see technologies like data, data analytics, AI-ML , high performance computing, cloud, etc., help governance to be agile. and efficient.
The Indian government has already taken steps to use digital infrastructure to solve India’s problems in delivering services without presence, paper and cash. The development of the CoWIN app, digital vaccination certificates in DigiLocker, the Aarogya Setu app are great examples. Similarly, other applications in the Indian stack such as the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) provide access to digital documents including driver’s license, vehicle registration, academic records of issuers origin and eKYC to establish their identity electronically and without paper. Therefore, the transition to emerging technologies such as the use of AI, ML, data analytics, 5G, augmented reality and the Internet of Things is already paving the way for the effectiveness and quality of governance in India.
The adoption of these technologies has already had a huge impact on smart city projects by managing traffic to reduce pollution, forecasting weather data and efficient processes as more and more people connect through devices. smart and smart workplaces. The key is to make these technologies available to every citizen of the country and to ensure effective governance.
DQ: How should companies and startups participate?
Sum satsangi: The biggest challenge for companies and startups would be to figure out how they can work with governments and solve people’s problems. Through the Government’s Digital India policy and efforts, it has become easier for companies and startups to collaborate and participate in these initiatives. From HPE’s perspective, we have worked with government organizations, policy makers, and initiatives to ensure that we are able to share our global experiences in providing diverse solutions in this space. Our portfolio of compute, storage and networking computing technologies, solutions and services hosts many innovative government services and applications. We also work with several startups associated with providing various solutions in this space providing end to end solutions.
DQ: What should be the action points for government and policy makers regarding smart governance technologies to be implemented?
Sum satsangi: India has come a long way in embracing technology for smart governance. Central and state governments have invested significantly to put in place a framework for smart governance. The Smart Cities mission was a great initiative to equip cities with the right ICT infrastructure and related solutions to address complex governance challenges. HPE has been at the forefront of deploying integrated command and control centers which have helped tremendously during the pandemic and even for other disaster management requirements. ICCCs have been designed to deploy advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and IoT to generate real-time data and information for authorities to take necessary action.
After successfully working with many government departments on their digital journey, we believe that as we move further down the digital curve, the application mix would become more complex and unpredictable. Provisioning IT resources for this ever-changing application demand would be a daunting challenge. To address this challenge, we are working on a partnership-as-a-service model which is a unique consumer-based offering from HPE. This model not only has the ability to keep the computing environment up to date with the latest technological advancements, but it is also elastic and scales with fluctuations in demand. This HPE model has matured and evolved and is used by many customers around the world for their digital journeys.
DQ: How will this transform the Indian economy?
Sum satsangi: This approach has the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in how government acquires and deploys ICT infrastructure and services. The as-a-service model brings agility to operations, which is crucial for government. The upfront savings on capital expenditure and resource sharing with other departments can virtually transform India’s local economy. This model can ideally be implemented even for small towns which can then have a multiplier effect. Collecting, storing and analyzing this data at the city level can unlock a lot of value for businesses and generate insights that can be leveraged for planning and development purposes. From HPE’s perspective, we have worked with government organizations, policy makers, and initiatives to ensure that we are able to share our global experiences in providing diverse solutions in this space.
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