E-governance: Niti Aayog engages Oracle Cloud for data-driven transformation of aspirational districts

Government policy think-tank Niti Aayog has engaged Oracle to help it modernise vital IT infrastructure underpinning the Aspirational Districts Programme. A key project of the government, its purpose is to help improve the quality of life of citizens in 112 of India’s most backward districts, constituting 28% of India’s population of nearly 1.4 billion. Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog, said, “This programme is aligned with our Prime Minister’s vision of a new India. It focuses on improving people’s capacity to participate in India’s economic development. Data-driven decisions will help identify the strengths and weaknesses of these districts and pave the way for their progress. By using a range of Oracle Cloud services, we are looking to fast-track their transformation by providing simplified data access, increased process automation and real-time data governance.”

The programme uses data to identify top performing districts— these could be Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, Nandurbar in Maharashtra, Dahod in Gujarat, Kupwara in Jammu & Kashmir, Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh, or Godda in Jharkhand, among others. The weaker performing districts are encouraged to catch-up with top performers, by competing with, and learning from them.

Information is collected across five key themes, on 49 key performance indicators. They include: education, health and nutrition, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion and skill development, basic infrastructure including access to road, potable water, internet connectivity, and housing under the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana – Gramin (PMAY-G).

This work requires assimilating thousands of data points from multiple sources and in differing formats from across the country, which are checked for data accuracy (triggering alerts if the data feed appears to be inconsistent), and integrated for analysis and reporting. Critical to the success of the programme is for this data to be fed back in real time to administrators, district collectors, government officers and the general public via a visual and intuitive dashboard: https://championsofchange.gov.in/, to ensure the data is accessible and understandable by all.

Oracle Autonomous Database is at the heart of data management in this programme. Being self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing, it requires a minimal IT team and resources to support it. The system and the data it manages are protected from system failure and attack by machine learning (ML) and automation. ML and Artificial Intelligence built into its data capabilities enable greater insight to be gained than a human-based system alone.