Telangana working to harness data economy

Hyderabad: Telangana State is now working to unlock the potential of the data economy. In this direction, it is preparing a data compendium for agriculture. This brings various data relating to agriculture to a single platform and this will be accessible to various technology and startup players. They can use the data to come up […]

Hyderabad: Telangana State is now working to unlock the potential of the data economy. In this direction, it is preparing a data compendium for agriculture. This brings various data relating to agriculture to a single platform and this will be accessible to various technology and startup players. They can use the data to come up with services and solutions that will help farmers, said a top official.

The Government will attempt to bring this kind of data set across the sectors. In all, there are about 32 departments. The focus will be on those sectors where the people-people interaction is high, directly or indirectly. “We are preparing a compendium for agriculture. It is the largest employment creator,” said Industries and IT Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan recently at an event.

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Data economy

Telangana has been working to realise the potential of data economy. The rise of smartphones, e-commerce and Internet of Things has led to the generation of huge amounts of data. The Internet traffic in India is estimated to be 78 exabytes (1 exabyte is one million terrabytes). Management consultancy firm Mckinsey estimated that India’s core digital sectors have the potential to more than double to $435 billion by 2025, and the newly digitising sectors including government applications can create an incremental value of up to $150 billion in the same period. The data economy benefits the governments, citizens, industry and academia in various ways ranging from enhancing transparency and empowerment of users to economic impact arising from innovation.

Apart from agriculture, Telangana will further try to unlock the potential of the data economy by creating a data stack ecosystem in key sectors like healthcare, education, smart cities and the environment. A data marketplace will be set up that will help discover and exchange data based on open standard, interoperability, open APIs, security and privacy by design and flexible data governance models, according to the second ICT policy of the State.

Data Stack

A dynamic data stack is required to ensure rapid innovation and product development. So, the State will create digital assets such as electronic health records (EHR), electronic farmer records (EFR), GIS maps and others. A data marketplace (DMP) will be established for the innovators to test their solutions in a sandbox using both Government and commercial private data. There will be clear regulatory frameworks and guidelines that will help in addressing critical issues such as privacy, trust and ethics ensuring that the transformative potential of emerging technologies is fully leveraged.

“Data will be a key and there is a lot of value to be unlocked. We can unleash a change. Agriculture is one of the things that is nearing completion. We are working with various startups. We are trying to help them in multiple ways. The data consumption will rise. There will be alogrithms. The work is on and it will be ready in about two or three months,” said Rama Devi Lanka, Director- Emerging Technologies Wing and OSD (IT and C) department.

National scenario

In August 2021, the Government of India had said work had commenced for creating an agristack in the country. Technology/agri-tech/startups were identified to collaborate with the Government of India to develop Proof of Concepts (PoC) based on small portions of data from the federated farmers’ database for certain identified areas.

 

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