Technology should be designed to make life easier and simpler: Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad

The Union Minister for Law & Justice, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the technology should be designed to make life easier and simpler. He was addressing the gathering after inaugurating the 2nd Edition of NIC TechConclave 2020, organized by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), here today.

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the NIC should engage people from outside the system to have their views and advises to amend the system accordingly. He further said that we need a Government that has transformational change as a character. Technology has become the biggest enabler of governance for transformation, he added.

He advised the Technocrats to start dreaming big and try hard to concretize that dream into a reality and said that the technology is the biggest facilitator for that. If you have the vision, if you have the ambition, if you have the dream and if you have the commitment to concretize, things can happen, he added.

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad said that Digital India has to be a transformational programme. We have the challenge to articulate the digital India and Digital India which is designed empower ordinary citizen into the power of technology, he said. Digital India is designed to bridge digital divide of haves and have-nots and Digital India must bring in digital inclusion, he added.

The Minister for Electronics and IT said that technology should be low cost, developmental and inclusive. He coined a new slogan that Digital India means technology from the Classes to the Technology for the masses. This conclave must find the emerging challenges and also the way out for it, he tasked.

Saying that more and more rural empowering missions must be thought of as a model of governance, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad said that NIC has helped monitoring the Swachch Bharat Campaign in the country. Technology should be designed to fulfill the aspirations of the people, he added.  The Minister for Electronics and IT said that financial inclusion is supplementing digital inclusion which is going to be the roadmap of the future of our nation. Digital India should be supplemented by the digital inclusion, he added.

He hoped that a woman in a remote village with a Smartphone in her hand should get the bank in her hand. A good team of women entrepreneurs be formed in every village ranging from financial inclusion skilling, digital inclusion skilling to further empower them, he said.Saying that India is waiting for a big revolution of financial inclusion, the Minister for Electronics and IT said that let the digital inclusion and financial inclusion must become the benchmark of India’s transformational governance.

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad said that data is going to drive the Technology and governance. We all must understand the impact of data. He narrated five corners for Data – Data Availability, Data Utility, Data Innovation, Data Anonymity and Data Privacy. We need to have these five corners in mind while handling data, he said. India should become a big centre for Data refining process and NIC should work in that direction, he added.The Secretary – MeitY, Shri Ajay Sawhney, the President, CISCO (India and SAARC), Shri Sameer Garde, the Director General, NIC, Dr. Neeta Verma and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.