HOW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES ARE EXPECTED TO HELP ACHIEVE THE SDGS AND STRENGTHEN THERELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE STATE AND ITS CITIZENS?

          Development in a country is fostered by its efficient governance. To ensure betterment oftheir citizens, governments over the world have accepted Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), announced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the year2015, as acceptable governance targets for all. Information and CommunicationTechnologies (ICTs)1serve as meaningful contrivances to engage with all the cross-currentslinking the 17 SDGs together. Digital technologies were initially deployed in the early1990s as means of dissemination of public services and information. In present times,these technologies have also been accepted as means for co-creating values for citizensas insisted by participatory models of governance too.

Emerging Technologies - The Changing Realm of e-Governance

Category-I : ‘Artificial Intelligence-AI’ is an area of computer science that emphasises the creation ofintelligent machines that work and react like humans. Based on this logic, some of the applications of AI areMachine Learning, Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles (AV).Example are:

1.    AI can also make governments more vigilant about crimedetection/ incident response processes/ prospective emergencies by analysing ‘digital footprints’ of certainsuspicious people.

2.    New AI-based tools coupled with data mining tools are already being used by the armedforces to speculate about potential national security threat.

3.    Another popular AI implementation is that of drones that are remotely piloted aircraft systems. Dronesoffer low-cost, safe, and quick aerial surveys which can be used for data collection and are useful inindustries such as power, mining, realty, oil and gas exploration, railways and highways.

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Category-II : ‘Transparently Immersive Technologies’ bring the physical world and the digitally simulatedworld closer, hence, creating a sense of immersion for the user. Real sensations can be experienced byusing technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, assistive technologies, and wearable technologies.Example are:

1.    The VR uses a computer-generated environment to provide interaction with the real system,using head-mounted systems, whereas, in the realm of AR, the actual machine is augmented or supplementedby computer-generated sensory output.

2.    In India,startups like ‘Smartivity’ have been selling STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)-based educationalcontent in the form of toys, and DIY (Do-It-Yourself) kits that are AR-enabled.

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Category-III : ‘Emerging Digital Platforms’ are all the technologies that provide the advanced digital connectivity mechanisms and tremendous computing power to process humongous amount of fast data and ubiquity-enabling ecosystems. These features can be best experienced through digital technologies like 5G,Cloud Computing, IoT, Big Data and Blockchain technologies.Examples are :

1.    In India, NITI Aayog has developed the largest blockchain network by the nameof ‘IndiaChain’12 so that records/contracts based frauds are reduced, etc. IndiaChain will be linked to India-Stack and other government digital identification databases to further strengthen transparency in transactions.

2.    BigData analytics’ helps in ‘mining’ / excavating the datameaningfully, thereby creating new business models built around knowledge generated by analysing this humongous and heterogenous data.