Addressing data sovereignty, security, and connectivity concerns

The government is taking several proactive actions and a commitment to construct smart and resilient infrastructure to support long-term growth, says Debapriya Nandan, Sr. Director and Head - Public Sector Business Development, Oracle India.

Elaborate on your smart governance initiatives.

Oracle has been working with governments at the center and states to make governance simpler and more transparent. For decades, Oracle Database is being used for securing data for almost all large and critical government applications. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI is a normal progression from on-premise to Cloud. Adoption of OCI along with Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Blockchain, Data Science, and Analytics is seeing a lot of interest from governments. Initiatives, in which Oracle has been involved, include various initiatives under the Prime Minister’s Gati Shakti Program, up-gradation of Finance Planning and Budgeting Infrastructure of state and central governments, Metering Infrastructure modernisation under the RDSS scheme of Ministry of Power, to name a few.

Additionally, Oracle offers governments with Oracle Cloud at Customer – a solution from Oracle, where Oracle’s complete portfolio of public cloud infrastructure, fully managed cloud services, and Oracle Fusion SaaS applications are brought into the customer’s data center. It enables governments to run applications faster and lower their costs using the same high-performance capabilities, autonomous operations, and low-cost subscription pricing found in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. And they get all this while maintaining complete control of their data so they can address data sovereignty, security, and connectivity concerns – all important aspects of consideration in India.

How are you using technology to facilitate and support better planning and decision-making?

Governments of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and those from more than 29 states and union territories already utilize Oracle solutions. Customers include their various departments like commercial taxes, power (meter data management), social justice (courts), urban local bodies, health, locomotive works, and more.

Many government ministries too like the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Railways, and Ministry of Finance rely on Oracle solutions. PSUs like Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Indian Oil Corporation, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), etc. have also been users of Oracle technologies for a long time. Central government projects of Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN), Unique Identification Authority of India (UID), IceGate, and more are also powered by some of the other Oracle technology.

What about other kinds of infrastructure?

The government is taking several proactive actions and a commitment to construct smart and resilient infrastructure to support long-term growth. Among others, one notable step is in the energy and power space with the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS), under which all meters are to be replaced with autonomous meters. This will not only benefit customers but will also make energy auditing much more convenient, faster, efficient, and accurate.

When it comes to billing and meter data management in the energy and environment area, Oracle is the market leader. Oracle Cloud has been at the heart of modernizing smart metering in India – we work with so many states already.

In terms of transportation, one example of our work is what we support CRIS with. CRIS has used Oracle to develop its FOIS system (Freight Operations Information System). It runs on Oracle middleware technology. Then there’s the Department of Income Tax- it was one of the first few Indian Govt. departments to initiate automation through IT for improved tax filing experience and compliance through various projects like ITR e-filing. This is powered by Oracle.

How are you achieving integrated goals of citizen happiness, making life easier, and promoting economic and competitive activity?

Oracle has been a prominent technology stakeholder in the Indian market for the past three decades, and we have been associated with various projects – at the state and central levels, to support the integrated goals of citizen satisfaction, making life easier, and fostering economic development.

For example, we ran a successful pilot project with NITI Aayog along with partners Apollo Pharmacy & Strides Pharma, where we tested the use of Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service in reducing the growing menace of fake drugs production and distribution, IoT helped in tracking temperature control of medicines especially medicines like vaccines.

Then we also had the opportunity to support one of the Government of India’s core projects, the Aspirational Districts Programme – whose aim is to improve the quality of life of citizens in 112 of India’s most backward districts. The program, run by NITI Aayog, uses data to identify top-performing districts, on the basis of certain key performance indicators. Oracle Autonomous Cloud was the technology behind this.

More recently, the Logistics Division, under the Ministry of Commerce, launched its pilot project known as “Secured Logistics Document Exchange” or SLDE, with an aim to further improve ‘the ease of doing business with India. The SLDE platform has been developed by our partner, CargoExchange, using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and our Blockchain Cloud Service. This solution replaces the present manual process of generation, exchange, and compliance of logistics documents with a digitized, secure, and seamless document exchange system. This is true smart governance.

By Aanchal Ghatak

x-aanchalg@cybermedia.co.in