The Government of Uttar Pradesh, during the last ten years, has undertaken a number of initiatives to leverage technology for enhancing the efficiency and transparency of various state government departments. One of the first states to give a digital push to governance, Uttar Pradesh is now gearing up to usher in AI-governance for the benefit of the masses.
On the occasion of National Technology Day, ETGovernment spoke to Anil Kumar Sagar, Principal Secretary, Department of IT & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh, and Neha Jain, Special Secretary, IT and Electronics Department, and Managing Director, UPDESCO, to explore the journey of technology-led transformation so far and future plans.
Noting that the deployment of digital technologies have brought a seminal transformation in the way in which the state delivers critical services to the citizens, Anil Kumar Sagar said, “Citizen Service Centers have come up, and land records have been digitized.”
“We have set up CSCs in our districts for delivering services to citizens. Under the CSC 3.0 Scheme, more than 1.85 lakhs CSC centres have been made operational,” he said.
Speaking about the success of the e-District Project, the Principal Secretary said, “Uttar Pradesh was the first state in the country to roll out the e-District project. The project serves as a single window platform for the delivery of citizen-centric services. Currently, 314 Government-to-Citizen (G2C) services of 41 departments are operational in 75 districts through the e-District Portal and over 32.50 crores applications have been processed.”
The government started the process of digitizing all land records, which has been a game changer in keeping revenue records.
“The Bhulekh UP is an online portal launched by the UP government to digitise land records and make them easily accessible to the general public. This platform allows citizens to view their land records online from their mobile phones, eliminating the need for physical visits to government offices. The portal offers a variety of online services like complaint registration, stamp and registry, e-district, and much more,” Sagar said.
He pointed out that the state administration has done away with many rules and regulations and made it easier for businesses to operate in Uttar Pradesh.
“We have made various online portals across different departments, especially the industry department as well as IT department. Nivesh Mitra is the largest portal within the country which provides more than 400 services on one platform, where investors’ problems are resolved,” he said.
“Apart from this, the IT department is also giving a lot of services to the IT industry online, especially in the case of giving right of way services. All telecom related services are provided through the right of way portal in which various government departments have also been onboarded,” he said.
“Our state wide area network (SWAN), functioning in all the districts, has been connected by a high speed network. We are planning to revamp our state wide area network from SWAN 2.0 to 3.0 very soon,” the Principal Secretary said.
He noted that as per the vision of the Chief Minister, Lucknow has been envisaged to develop as an AI city. “We are in consultation with various companies who have shown their interest in setting up data centers, as well as training centres for the capacity building of government employees and other people in the field of artificial intelligence.”
The Principal Secretary also informed that Uttar Pradesh has prepared an Artificial Intelligence-based common beneficiary database of the people eligible for different schemes. He also said that the state has also deployed an AI-enabled video surveillance platform called Joint AI Research for Video Instances and Streams (JARVIS) in around 70 prisons.
Speaking about the potential in Uttar Pradesh, Neha Jain said, “Uttar Pradesh is home to India’s youngest generation, which will help IT companies to further their business. The state has already seen significant contributions from industry giants like Microsoft, TCS, IBM, Wipro, Oppo Mobiles, Haier Electronics, STMicroelectronics, HCL, Samsung, and LG Electronics.”
“Noida has become a hub of Data Center and Lucknow is poised to become an AI City. Under the Data Center Policy, major players, including Adani, Sify, NTT, Webwerks, STT, and NIDP (Yotta), have contributed to the state’s data centre ecosystem,” she said.
“There is no dearth of young talent in UP, we just need to hone their skills. We have IITs, IIITs and engineering colleges under AKTU. “We are doing a lot of partnerships with top IT companies for improving our training centers,” she added.
She informed that Uttar Pradesh hosts 55% of all electronics component manufacturers in India. The state is a major manufacturing hub for mobile phones in India, contributing significantly with a 65% share of the overall output. It is home to major mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo.
“We have over 196 companies in the Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) sector. We have also come up with our semiconductor policy and very soon we might be getting good investment in the semiconductor domain,” Jain added.
The Special Secretary informed that the IT and electronics sector in Uttar Pradesh is doing well because the law and order situation and the infrastructure has become much better. Today the global investors are bullish on Uttar Pradesh.
The state has established itself as a key hub for electronics manufacturing, boasting Electronics Manufacturing Clusters, Electronics Manufacturing Zones, Industrial Clusters, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs) exclusively dedicated to electronics manufacturing.