A globally-competitive tech-solutions/application ecosystem can’t be sustained without government partnership. In the context of India, analyse. (200 Words)
Refer - Financial Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 4 years
KEY POINTS
· The government finally announced the winner of its video-conferencing app challenge. Vconsol, by Techgentsia, a start-up from Kerala, won the competition; the app focuses on security and uses OTP as an authentication method for login.
· Over the last few months, following a rigorous process, it narrowed the list down to 12 participants, giving each R 10-12 lakh for app development.
· Finally some companies will be listed on the government’s GeM portal so that government bodies can get into contracts with them for video-conferencing solutions.
· Such hackathons are not a new approach; the government, via NITI Aayog and other agencies, has been conducting similar challenges to rope in private players to build apps. However, the scope for continued engagement, until now, has been limited.
· The video challenge marks the first step with regards to the government actively promoting Indian apps. The government partnered an international hackathon-organising forum for ‘Hack the crisis’ in April, to encourage tech-solutions for addressing different aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and has announced a line-up of hackathons.
· While this is welcome, more proactive support from the government is needed, via the kind of engagement the GeM listing for the video-conferencing apps represents. Also, such solutions should not be just crisis-response or a knee-jerk reaction.
· The government needs to help build start-ups in the field of health-tech, agri-tech, ed-tech, etc. It also needs to promote innovations in new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, mixed reality, and robotics.
· Some states have started incorporating such solutions for better governance. Agra partnered with the start-up Gaia and Microsoft to create a corona dashboard for the city, and Mumbai did the same, too; many governments and city administrations purchased drones from Garuda, a Chennai-based company, to sanitise large areas.
· Apart from providing initial capital and facilitating incubation programmes—these have been going on for long now—governments at all levels need to hire start-ups through contracts for faster or better government-service delivery. A globally-competitive tech-solutions/app ecosystem can’t be sustained without government partnership.
A.R 4 years
Please review
IAS Parliament 4 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
K. V. A 4 years
Pls review
IAS Parliament 4 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
