In a bid to boost the quality of education in government schools all over India, Telecom and IT minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, has asked the National Informatics Centre to arrive with blockchain technology-based solutions. He wants the NIC to make optimum utilization of these solutions.
National Informatics Centre is an e-governance arm of the IT Ministry. It came into existence in the year 1976 and had vast experience in offering ICT and e-governance support to the government for the last 40 years.
Ravi Shankar Prasad launched the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in blockchain technology established by NIC in Bengaluru on Saturday. At the launch event, the minister highlighted the significance of blockchain technology in enhancing the quality of education in government schools.
Prasad said that he wants to see how we can use blockchain in primary schools. He asked the NIC team to think of an ideal application of blockchain technology for enhancing the education quality of government schools all across the country.
Blockchain technology is an emerging technology, and if it gets adopted in various sectors such as finance, health, and agriculture, among others, it would bring revolutionary changes in executing several programs and help the government. The technology will also provide much-needed trust and immutability to the assets. Prasad asked the NIC to find out ways for including starts-up in its technology space.
Prasad said that India has a whopping 26,000 start-ups, out of which 9,000 are tech start-ups only. NIC has the scope of turning a major sponsor of the start-up movement. It will be ideal if the center and state governments open their doors for introducing start-up movement under set norms and conditions to maintain transparency.
The minister maintained that blockchain technology has a wide scope in starting new frontiers in treasury management, governance, and excise operations, among others and he is also keen to see its use in other sectors such as health, agriculture, primary education, etc.
Meanwhile, CoE has formed Blockchain-based Proof of Concept or PoCs for select government use cases to comprehend the significant advantages being provided by blockchain technology.
NIC believes that the latest and previous applications of blockchain in Government may boost trust, transparency, and traceability in e-governance systems.