National Informatics Centre (NIC) has recently set up the Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Blockchain Technology in Bengaluru, which aims to provide Blockchain as a service and allowing all stakeholders to benefit from shared learning, experiences and resources. The CoE was inaugurated by Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Law & Justice, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology.
NIC has also successfully set-up CoE in Data Analytics in partnership with NICSI and CoE in Artificial Intelligence some time back.
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At NIC, the CoE is an exclusive team which is formed to deep dive into a particular technology and explore how it can be leveraged for better governance and delivery of services to citizens, build Proof of Concepts and then engage with the government for its large scale roll out.
The inauguration of CoE for Blockchain was attended by several dignitaries from the Central and State Government.
Ravi Shankar Prasad said that Technology need not be publicised, instead it should be so robust that it should speak for itself and its popularity would be spread by the word of mouth. The feedback system of the online platforms has to be made stronger and user-friendly to benefit the citizens. He mentioned that due to DBT “out of about 9 lakh crores sent out in the last 4 and half years,1 lakh 41 thousand crores has been saved which used to be pocked by middleman otherwise. He said that his vision is to see 50 products from NIC in the next five years.”
Dr. Neeta Verma, Director General, NIC said, “The Vision of the Union Minister is completely possible.”
“NIC has several projects, a major one is Digital Office, where all the documents are being digitised and is running in 450 different offices, another initiative is e-auction through which any department can put articles for auctioning, then there is e-hospital endeavour,” she adds.
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Referring to the sectors where blockchain initiative is aimed at presently,Verma said “Healthcare sector where the entire supply chain of medicines will be recorded; another is for excise department with the help of blockchain, supply of spurious liquor and medicines can be avoid. Now by scanning the barcode, it can be traced down from which molasses has the liquor been made or from where the medicine has been made. Another blockchain initiative is for the benefit of students. Students’ educational certificates will be available online. With this, not only the students in India but the ones who are abroad will not have to run back and forth their educational institutions to procure their educational documents.
Gopalakrishnan, Addl Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and IR and Chairman, NICSI said that it does not help to stay away from any technology, we nedd to embrace it further. “Although several blockchain initiatives have been taken up, it is in bits and pieces and needs proper streamlining,” he emphasised.
Rajiv Chawla, Addl. Chief Secretary, eGovernance, Government of Karnataka, said “Samrakshane, which is crop insurance facility, it is a brilliant example of how to use IT. It now has a central portal, and Karnataka is the only state which is allowed to use its own portal, while all others use central portal.” He also pointed out another infinitive where the family database is recorded so that the families can be given schemes and benefits on entitlement basis. “In all the initiatives NIC has played an important role,” he said.
Ravi Kumar, Addl. Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka said, “Blockchain is like a blackbox, it has to more demistified and more decentralised, so that it is used more.” He also appreciated the VATsoft e-filing system initiative of NIC.
T.M. Vijay Bhaskar, Chief secretary, Government of Karnatka, said, “The CoE will bring up some path breaking innovation. It will work with software vendors and start-ups not just in Karnataka but also other states of the country.”
According to a statement issued by NIC, “Blockchain technology is upcoming & niche technology and adoption of the same in sectors such as health, finance, agriculture and various other sectors would aid the government in implementing various programmes and provide trust and immutability to the assets.”
“The CoE has developed Blockchain based Proof of Concepts (PoCs) for select government use cases to understand potential benefits provided by this emerging technology. New and previously unforeseen applications of Blockchain in the Government are expected to enhance transparency, traceability and trust in e-governance systems,” the statement added.
With the enhanced infrastructure provided by NIC, the CoE will additionally offer Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) for better hosting of Blockchain network.
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