 Thank you, Dhanashree and Mohit and good morning viewers. My name is Dheeraj Gyani and I lead the education and government engagement for Github. And today I have the pleasure of hosting this discussion on code is building India. We heard this morning on how software is made in India and in true sense this is driven by the Indian developers or all of you. And no surprises that India is the leader when it comes to adoption of AI also in contributing to AI related code on Github globally. And it's such an honor to have Miss Anna Roy who's playing a crucial role in enabling all this for our country. Miss Roy is an Indian economic services officer and has held multiple roles in the government. Currently with Niti Aayog she leads the vertical dealing with data management and frontier technologies. I have closely followed her work in building the national strategy on artificial intelligence blockchain and many other tech-led initiatives in the government. In fact last Friday I witnessed a launch of national data analytics platform which will facilitate access to huge repositories of published government data. And she has been leading that initiative as well. Miss Roy also heads the women entrepreneurship platform at Niti Aayog that works towards developing the entrepreneurial ecosystem for women. Welcome Miss Roy. Niti Aayog has been India's premier think tank helping created a shared vision for our country. In that aspect how important is technology strategy and how does Niti Aayog think about it for India. Thank you Dheeraj. First of all I would like to thank the organizers who have given me this opportunity to address a community which I feel is really driving the change today. And Niti is all about transformation so very happy to be here. You spoke about the strategy on technology. Niti as the name suggests you know is not an organization which is too much into the current implementation. For that we have relevant administrative industries but Niti is the premier think tank which is supposed to kind of give a vision a long term medium term and a proposed road ahead on how you know various aspects need to be dealt with what needs to be done to achieve that vision. So in that case strategy becomes very important and that is at the core of Niti's function. If we just focus on technology per se I will come to the other domain area. You know specific technology how do we kind of promote development of technology. How do we promote adoption of technology. What are the technologies fears that we should look at. Then I take you back to 2018 when we came out with the national strategy on artificial intelligence. Several ways you know that really led the path of starting a dialogue on the adoption promotion and building an ecosystem for development of technology in the country in a very very cohesive manner. I wouldn't say it's not as if nothing was happening before that. But from 2018 onwards it has been happening in a more cohesive and collaborative pattern where we have identified various you know players and who are working together to develop a strategy where Niti plays a very critical role as since it provides a platform for all stakeholders including the government research academy or industry to all come together and in a very collaborative and conservative manner come out with a strategy. So starting from the AI strategy you will see Niti need the way in other areas whether it is clean energy whether it is you know the clean mobility when you talk about EVs. So Niti has been driving the entire strategy space where adoption and promotion of technology in the country is you know involved. That's true ma'am in fact I have met so many people who have been benefited out of the great work coming out of Niti IO especially the green energy what we talk today and even the national strategy on AI. I was with my previous organization and we have seen tremendous work happening on the ground because of that policy. So thank you, thank you for that. Personally I have been a big fan of your work around inclusion and especially tech inclusion and you know that's even the objectives of the government today that we see digital and tech inclusion is big on agenda. So how do you ensure an inclusive tech policy framework and it's all up? So I will again take you back to 2018 and the cornerstone of the strategy was really inclusion. How do we ensure that we don't have islands of you know excellence in a huge area of you know where not much is happening. So inclusivity and democratizing access to infrastructure was one of the key things which we focused on and since 2018 we have been addressing it in different fashion. We also were required to do it because that was also the mandate given by the government and in all fora whether it is our honorable prime minister or any of the other representatives of the government it is again and again stressed that you know inclusivity no matter what we are doing needs to be stressed. So I will just give a few examples in that you know area. First of all we started from 2014 to really leverage the India stack and we came to you know the India stack experience and India stack UPI and various other initiatives that followed that you know that particular initiative has really revolutionized the financial sector in a big way. So we started off with payment and then you know we have this wonderful constant based data sharing the framework which was brought out essentially developed by Ice Spirit where Niti collaborated in launching the paper. So that is the second phase which I will say really marked the progression towards inclusivity the data framework and you know the framework was really very proactively adopted by our regulators also with RPI coming out with the guidelines for regulatory sandbox where AA could be really evolved as well as giving the licenses to several companies to be the consent managers. So I think that I will mark as the second most important aspect. The third is really developing the digital books. So one of the important platforms which we played a very big role in conceptualizing giving a vision and then incubating and then you know handing it over to an implementing authority is really the ULIP platform. Now what does ULIP do? ULIP is also translating what happened in India stack in the financial sector. So we have a three layered approach here. We have implication, data implication at the bottom then in the middle we will have a data governance and data exchange protocols and on the top is the consumer interface. So what does it really do? It provides access to data to everybody. So you don't have to be a deep pocket. You don't have to be a big company to have access to data and develop you know various tools to address the various issues in the logistics space. You can be a startup. You can be a small time you know company and you can address the last mine problems of the logistics sector by leveraging ULIP. So ULIP has come a long way and in this year's budget honorable finance minister you know recognizing how ULIP is revolutionizing the logistics space and kind of aligned with the Katishapati initiative of the government she announced that a similar platform should be built for passenger travel. The next thing I will so this is the public digital you know platform. Two other initiatives which we have driven from the is one is the national data analytic portal which you yourself mentioned at the beginning. It was launched on the 13th and that is addressing the last mile access to data. Now all the data you know as it is said in various promotional videos India is very data rich today thanks to the digital you know push given by the government and very very successful digital movement. But all this terabytes of data which comes from surveys which come from various other sources the use is limited because that last mile was not being addressed so end up is addressing that. So now as a journalist they can go to end up and have easy access a researcher can go a student can go on end up and have easy access and this is in line with government's philosophy of providing easy access to data and democratizing access to data and last but not the least is the women entrepreneurship platform which we have developed within Niti and it's an aggregator platform which really you know is providing a seamless access to all initiatives which are there in the ecosystem which benefits the women entrepreneurial ecosystem in a single window kind of a thing and when I say single window it is not as if you will be taken to some other platform it provides access to initiatives through a smart search and all kinds of initiatives whether by the government, private, corporate any other international body at the click of a button with smart search with various other you know two features which are there on the platform. Thank you. Awesome awesome I think there's so much wonderful work happening at the government level today and then on the other hand we have we have thousands of developers listening to you right now on Twitch on YouTube on Twitter on across multiple channels. How do you look at democratizing data and get help of you know all the passionate developers that we have because they really want to contribute to nation building and not only developers we have one of tech providers also so how do you get them to support the program support your initiative that you are running. So you know since GitHub has done such a wonderful job in getting the developer community you know collaborate and kind of develop this open source so both WEP and NDAF are really digital platforms. I would like to restrict my comments to these two platforms because I am personally involved in it so I will use this you know your program as a call for action to all the developer community to come and join hands with us to help us develop it now whether it is NDAF in NDAF also we are trying to see how new tools can be uploaded we don't want to reinvent the wheel but of course it has been developed by you know by one company which is under contract so we have to kind of be in quote unquote within the frames of that contract which Niti I have signed with the tech developer but that has not stopped us from reaching out to other companies and today we are in talks with several companies who want to integrate their tools with NDAF so that the NDAF engine really gets energy we provide more features by this integration and so though the public launch only happened you know this week on Friday these are very early days but I think your program is very very timely for us and I would we would also use our social media to reach out to this community but I would request you also to reach out to the community to come and you know discuss with us how they can collaborate with NDAF the second platform which is more open source I would say compared to NDAF because NDAF is with data and we have to be a bit you know circumspect about the quality of data which is being uploaded various other tools a lot of things go into it but the WEP is something where we are now at a very point of inflection where we are trying to see you know take it to the next level whatever happened in the past let me tell you the first WEP platform was developed by the Niti interns and over time you know various partners have joined hands to develop various modules say Flipkart developed the community page and we took towards other people to come and develop individual modules now we are trying to you know kind of take stock of what we have and whether we are on the right path and see how our next journey, next phase of this journey should evolve so we are in that design thinking phase and WEP presents another you know very very important platform for developers to come forward use the platform not only use but also work with us to develop specific modules add on to it and work with us in different you know aspects so that of course we are open to have a dialogue with the developer community and see how we can involve this platform to become really a world leader in a aggregator kind of a sense Thank you Mamran I think that's a great call for action for all of us all the developers listening to you or the tech provider I think that's a wonderful opportunity to really contribute back to our nation so I think some great call to action and things to do at all our end thank you I'm going to stay on on the developer topic and I think you know we have seen that India's leadership in tech is is kudos to the developer the individual developers the mind that we have in India and who's doing some who are doing some awesome work the other area where India really leads is open source software development so your thoughts around how can Indian developers and open source software development really accelerate the digital India mission so you know digital India mission is all about inclusivity and as Mr. Khan is the CEO of PTIO government says we need to have a system which allows a thousand flowers bloom so we do not want to be restrictive we want to have a system which allows people to kind of come up with solution Auto innovation mission is one such initiative of PTIO which really promotes this kind of initiative where the developer community you know through by participating in their challenges can kind of contribute to nation building and as a Prime Minister also keeps on saying you know do not adopt tech for just the sake of tech use tech as the vehicle for problem solving and for that to achieve that you know organizations like PTIO is there what kind of help can be provided because government sees itself in the role of being a enabler, a catalyst and government like it has been moving away from the business development phase in various sectors and even in tech space government wants to kind of you know be the enabler be the facilitator and allow this huge demographic dividend and the huge potential which we have in this country to take this mission forward so this is again and again a space where a lot of collaboration is required where you know you must realize we are not really the custodian of all kind of you know we don't have all the wisdom and we look towards the developer community we look towards academia we look towards industry to come up with suggestions we will have an open mind and how to take this forward is something that I assure you that we will be there to work with you but it can't be said that okay government should bring out ABC it has to be from both sides so in case you do not you know find us as a good collaborator at that stage you can say look I did ABC and I did not get a response so government is providing platforms whether it is the Atal innovation mission whether it is the end up where we have you know have been kind of doing challenges and going forward we plan to do several hackathons and other challenges whether it is Hewlett where NICTC has already done a challenge and we have several winners so I would say that the community also needs to be responsible to come up and proactively work with the government Absolutely, I will switch gears and I want to probably ask you the last question we are sort of fine but that's your area of your passion and you lead the Women Entrepreneurship Ecosystem at Metiaio you would love to hear more about that the work that's happening and what can we do to support that Absolutely, so you know it was an idea and how I see my work is to come up with solutions for dealing with specific problems so when we came up with a vision of end up the problem was how do we ensure that we don't need a huge amount of work to draw insights from certain data sets it's not as if we are creating this data we are not creating this data all that we are doing is identifying the use cases of that data so our starting point on end up is first identifying the use cases otherwise all this data being there is just lying there so we have started that from the other way round we first identify the use case then we identify the data set then we look for the data and put it in a schema and so going forward for that use case and we keep on updating data so that use case gets solved on the fly so you can come on the platform and use the features of the platform to solve that one particular use case that's a journey today we have around I think 165 or 65 I'm not very sure but these many use cases and it is just the beginning similarly the second problem that we encountered was how to overcome the information asymmetry that exists in the entrepreneurial ecosystem for women in 2017 in the global entrepreneurship summit at the close of the summit Mr Khan said that in his interaction with all the women entrepreneurs he realized that there is a lot of lack of information and he announced setting up of a women entrepreneurship and he made me in charge of that now when I it was all very new for me and when I started working on the subject I realized there are so many sales so many initiatives so many programs that we do not really need another cell for dealing with this issue so we came up with the idea of a platform which will be the aggregator platform which will showcase all these initiatives at one place now that does not mean we make it a data dump because you know all this information is out there you just have to Google you just have to YouTube so we wanted to be better than that now if a Facebook can you know do a lot of analysis and give you a kind of insights based on various searches etc that users are doing why can't we do it so here is this platform where our vision is that we will a you know collate all the information out there about schemes initiatives by all agencies and we have already completed the work for central government schemes for state government schemes and several FIS second comes you know the role of technology there we will use AI ML kind of a thing to for a smart matchmaking third a smart engine which allows people to access that information seamlessly fourth have as little interface human interface as possible so that through technology we are able to reach out to a large audience next have index language content as well as various other you know availability of this WEP on various devices to reach out to the community pan India and not be constrained that only you have to you know only through web based you can do it so whether a chatbot with a app so all that needs all this is our vision because you know it is a process and next have you know things like mentoring compliance funding for all this to a baseline study to a gap analysis and then look for a modules which are outcome oriented so you define the outcome and then you develop the you know various interventions and in addition to all that work with partners on the ground we don't want to duplicate anything we just want to amplify evangelize all the wonderful work which is being done but in silos and small pockets to collaborate and scale up in the process and have an offline module also because of last two years you know because of the pandemic our offline work got a bit delayed we hope to get back in the offline space as well and look towards everybody to join hands so here the role of developers come they need to go on the platform and they need to come to us and say look this is what is missing this is what you need to do so I have explained the vision now the thing is do WEP 2.0 till now it was more right now we have got a lot of interest because the critical mass is there on the platform going forward I hope we will have a lot of you know action happening on the platform this is extremely inspiring and especially I think when we see technology playing a role and creating that impact on on largely cities which are meant for community for society up front I think that's that's truly awesome and very very inspiring thank you so much ma'am for spending your time with us today I think there is a lot for me I have taken I'm taking back from this discussion and there's a lot for everybody else who's listening to you to come and contribute back to our nation building thank you so much thank you very much and I look forward to hearing from a lot of your participants who perhaps are listening to me through this webinar thank you very much thank you thank you so much I'll give back to the host