‘Democratising The Data For The Public Has Empowered Us’

Andhra Pradesh Minister for Information Technology, Panchayati Raj and Rural Development, Nara Lokesh, talks of how the state government’s development projects have simultaneously leveraged technology and supported young entrepreneurs. In a freewheeling chat with Chahat Jain and Manish Arora of BW Businessworld, Lokesh says that the Andhra government was poised to extend the quality of life available to urban Indians to its rural population too.

What  drives the digital transformation of a country?
India has a lot of data sitting in different silos right now, but the challenge is to democratise this data and use it to deliver results, which is not happening right now. Even in my own portfolio, Panchayati Raj and Rural Development, democratising the data is the biggest challenge. However, we are slowly being able to do that.

How does digital transformation ensure transparency and efficiency in adhering to time schedules? 
Transparency has many connotations, one for citizens and another for the government. In my departments, Panchayati Raj and Rural Development, we have created a “hit map” for 150 convergence items across 13 districts. In it collectors can see which district is doing better and which needs improvement. Hence, we have created a self-review mechanism whereby collectors compete with one another to improve their performance. We have done that for rural water as well.

Earlier we did not know where the water tankers needed to go. But, today we have streamlined that (process) completely. We are able to see on a dashboard how many trips have been made by the water tankers. At a conservative estimate we have been able to contain almost 40 per cent of the leakage, that is, out of a budget of Rs 100 crore, I saved around Rs 40 crore for the department. Thus, simply democratising the entire data, making it visible to the public and public interaction with the government, has empowered us and cut all the flab in the process.

Is it difficult to build an enabling infrastructure for such issues?
It is not difficult at all, because India’s youngsters are among the smartest (in the world). This entire water tanker project was built by kids not older than 24 years. I found it a brilliant idea and decided to pilot it in Andhra. We have bright young minds and we need to nurture their talent. What I strongly believe is that the government is an amazing platform for it. We are doing it in Blockchain, drinking water, street lighting etc.

We are bringing our entire rural street lighting on an online platform where we can monitor lights real-time. Hence, the government can become a platform across a multitude of parameters where private sector players may engage and where youngsters and startup companies may pilot their projects with the government and then scale them across the country and the globe.  

How many projects in IT and rural development are in the pipeline?
A lot of projects are in the pipeline. We are doing this project called e-Pragati, which is a flagship programme of our government and will transform the governance in the state. Our agenda is very clear - a single source of  truth in terms of data. Secondly, we want to create a certificate-less government.

The second is a pothole detection project. Potholes are everywhere but the challenge is to locate them, determine the percentage of the roads impacted and allocate a budget. I came across a Bengaluru-based startup, which will do the geo-tagging of the potholes on Google Maps. We can now actually see the location of the potholes, based on which we have devised a three -year budget and strategy. At the end of these three years, there will be no potholes in Andhra Pradesh.

How about development projects?
Our third project is to provide safe drinking water to our citizens. Diseases like diarrhea, cholera and malaria etc. are all water-borne diseases and 80 per cent of Opportunistic Pathogens (OPs) are water borne. I came across this company in Australia started by an Indian, which offers an IoT device that goes across 60 parameters and I get real-time feedback on drinking water. It is linked to an Ionizer and a UE bulb and kills all the bacteria and also ensures decent quality of water. As a pilot project, we have done this in five zones and have managed to reduce the OPs to  between 40 per cent and 80 per cent.

We also plan to bring the entire healthcare system on to an electronic system to predict healthcare outcomes - which is also a dream of our Chief Minister.