22-Apr-2021: MeitY announces #FOSS4GOV Innovation Challenge to accelerate adoption of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) In Government
India is well positioned to become a vibrant hub for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) innovations, due to the large number of 4G data subscribers in India, 96% of whom access the digital world via open-source based mobile operating systems (primarily Android). Some of India’s largest-government projects (including Aadhaar) and many technology start-ups have also been built using FOSS. Acknowledging the huge potential of FOSS, the Government of India had issued a Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software in 2015.
To increase awareness about the usage of FOSS in governance and Government functioning, and adoption of FOSS, a virtual roundtable discussion ‘Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Government’ was organized by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) in collaboration with Omidyar Network India on April 22, 2021.
Speaking at the occasion, Shri Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, appraised the steps taken by MeitY like Policy for Open Source Software in 2015 to Open Source Collaborative development of Aarogya Setu. “I am delighted to see the interest in further advancing the adoption of FOSS in Government among a wide range of Government leaders, Academia and FOSS innovators. MeitY will continue to play a key role in this journey. We are also pleased to announce the #FOSS4GOV Innovation Challenge, which will harness the innovation potential of the FOSS community and start-ups to solve for critical issues in GovTech. More such efforts will be forthcoming.”
Making a presentation on the Potential of FOSS in India, Shri Varad Pande, Partner, Omidyar Network India, said “We see FOSS as a key component of GovTech 3.0, which is about building secure and inclusive Open Digital Ecosystems (ODEs) that harness the potential of social innovators to help solve India’s toughest problems. We are excited to see MeitY advancing the adoption of FOSS in Government in a thoughtful and strategic manner and are delighted to partner with them on this journey.”
Shri Abhishek Singh, President and CEO, NeGD and CEO, MyGov, and MD, Digital India Corporation moderated sessions wherein stakeholders shared their experiences on successful deployment of FOSS-based platforms like Aadhaar and UPI in India and highlighted best-practices and learnings for all participants. Presentations were made on successful FOSS led innovations adopted by Governments of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Kerala as well as open source enterprise solutions. The speakers included representatives from Ek Step Foundation, Samagra Governance, Civic Data Lab, International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), and Frappe Technologies (creators of ERPNext). The collaborative potential of FOSS was palpable in the discussion with FOSS community members, innovators, and academia. Representatives from State Governments shared their experiences about building tech platforms, and reflected on challenges where open source technology could be most useful.
The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology also announced a #FOSS4GOV Innovation Challenge to accelerate adoption of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) In Government. The #FOSS4GOVInnovation Challenge calls upon FOSS innovators, technology entrepreneurs and Indian Startups to submit implementable open source product innovations in CRM and ERP with possible applications for Gov. tech in Health, Education, Agriculture, Urban Governance etc. Participants to be eligible for incubation support, prize money, mentorship by domain experts, institutional support from eminent organizations for incubation of ideas and listing of solutions on GeM. Further details about the challenge and how to participate will be shared soon by the Ministry through MyGov and MeitY Startup Hub.
The roundtable provided a forum for eGov leaders of States, Central Ministries and Agencies to share their experiences, best practices and learnings in using FOSS in Gov. Tech platforms and applications. Participants shared perspectives on the way forward to drive adoption of FOSS in Government, and the announcement of the #FOSS4GOV Innovation Challenge was welcomed as an important step forward in this direction.
1-Apr-2021: INSPIRE Faculty fellow modifying tiny dots for fabricating optical materials useful for optical sensors, light-emitting purposes, energy conversion & composites
Dr. Satyapriya Bhandari, from the Department of Chemistry, University of North Bengal, West Bengal, is fascinated by tiny nanoscale crystals which, when hit by ultraviolet light, emits light of multiple colours.
This recipient of the INSPIRE Faculty fellowship instituted by the Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India is using chemical reactions to modify the surface of these nanoscale crystals called quantum dots (QDs) for fabricating optical materials that can have sustainable applications in optical sensors, light-emitting usages, composites and fluorescent biological labels.
Chemically modifying the surface of QDs can be an innovative pathway to alter their optical features and making newer optical materials, which are useful for fabricating white light-emitting (WLE) materials, ratiometric sensors for detecting disease responsive molecules or environmental pollutants, photocatalysts (for H2 production) and imaging of cancerous cells.
Dr Bhandari’s chemically modified QDs could be used for ratiometric tracing of in vitro pH, detection of amino acid and vitamin B12, developing advanced WLE materials that can emit day-bright light, capability to image cancerous cells and packaging of enzymes to enhance their activity.
The research was published in journals Chemical Communications, Advanced Optical Materials, Chemistry: an Asian Journal, and Nanoscale Advances. Dr Bhandari has worked on construction of advanced, sustainable and environment-friendly optoelectronic materials and sensors, setting a new paradigm in the area.
In collaboration with IIT Guwahati, he established a dual emitting nanoprobe which can serve as a sensor for the detection of Hg2+ and Cu2+ ions. The work has been published in the journal ‘Journal of Material Chemistry C’ recently.
With the inspire faculty fellowship, he is working on the fabrication of QD-based optical materials for advanced energy and sensing applications that can be used for household lighting, alternative fuel production, better human health monitoring and for clean and sustainable environment.
18-Nov-2020: India’s AI supercomputer Param Siddhi 63rd among top 500 most powerful non-distributed computer systems in the world
Param Siddhi, the high performance computing-artificial intelligence (HPC-AI) supercomputer established under National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) at C-DAC has achieved global ranking of 63 in TOP 500 most powerful non-distributed computer systems in the world released on 16th November 2020.
The AI system will strengthen application development of packages in areas such as advanced materials, computational chemistry & astrophysics, and several packages being developed under the mission on platform for drug design and preventive health care system, flood forecasting package for flood prone metro cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Patna and Guwahati. This will accelerate R&D in war against COVID-19 through faster simulations, medical imaging, genome sequencing and forecasting and is a boon for Indian masses and for start-Ups and MSMEs in particular.
It is a boon for application developers and will help testing of weather forecasting packages by NCMRWF & IITM, geo-exploration packages for oil and gas recovery; packages for aero-design studies; computational physics and mathematical applications and even online courses for education.
The supercomputer with Rpeak of 5.267 Petaflops and 4.6 Petaflops Rmax (Sustained) was conceived by C-DAC and developed jointly with support of Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under NSM.
“It is a historical first. India today has one of the largest supercomputer infrastructures in the world and that is evidenced by the ranking that Param Siddhi-AI has received today,” said Secretary Department of Science & Technology, Professor Ashutosh Sharma.
“I truly believe that Param Siddhi-AI will go a long way in empowering our national academic and R&D institutions as well as industries and start-ups spread over the country networked on the national supercomputer grid over the National Knowledge Network (NKN)”, Prof. Sharma added.
Prof Ashutosh Sharma pointed out that with the infusion of Param Siddhi-AI, the scientific and technology community in the country will further be enabled and empowered to solve multidisciplinary grand challenges of healthcare, agriculture, education, energy, cybersecurity, space, AI applications, weather and climate modelling, urban planning to name a few.”
“This is a compelling piece of our journey in Aatmanirbharta through Science Technology & Innovation,” he stressed.
Param Siddhi Supercomputer is built on the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD reference architecture networking along with C-DAC’s indigenously developed HPC-AI engine, software frameworks and cloud platform and will help deep learning, visual computing, virtual reality, accelerated computing, as well as graphics virtualization.