The government sector in India has recently experienced a significant surge in the adoption of technology and innovation. From digitalising public records to implementing sophisticated data analytics, the rate at which technology is integrated into government operations has accelerated. This shift is a testament to the recognition of the potential that technology holds to enhance efficiency, transparency, and service delivery across sectors.
In an effort to bring these advancements and developments to light, Express Computer, a B2B IT publication of The Indian Express Group organised the 36th edition of Technology Sabha from 23rd to 25th of August in Lucknow. The mega conference witnessed a gathering of eminent personalities from across government departments and industry stalwarts from leading names in the IT industry.
Digitalising public administration and enabling revenue intelligence
The fast-paced technology adoption and phenomenal growth in digitalisation of processes have helped governments tackle several challenges across domains, aiding in managing and optimising resources effectively to better serve the nation. The expansion of critical sectors such as agriculture, education, health, and public distribution requires careful allocation and management of budgets. With vast amounts of resources allocated to these areas, there is an ongoing need to ensure that expenditure stays within budgetary constraints while maximizing outreach and impact. Another area where technological solutions help, is in identifying and eliminating waste, along with optimising expenditure to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these essential services.
Similarly, the provision of public services such as power, transportation, and clean water is fraught with difficulties. Limited budgets often mean that these services operate at a loss, with the government struggling to recover even a fraction of the expenditures. Optimising services within these financial constraints is vital to ensure citizens have access to key utilities and can lead better lives. Leveraging technology to streamline operations and improve service delivery can play a pivotal role in addressing these challenges.
Representing SAS at the Technology Sabha, Subramani Palaniswamy, Head of Fraud and Security Intelligence, SAS India delivered an intriguing presentation highlighting how SAS is aiding the government departments in their AI and ML adoption efforts to enable effective public administration and public finance management. He said, “The incremental revenue year on year is minimal for the government and there is an increased gap in terms of the budget and actual expenditure. Hence, every government official in terms of public administration and finance is looking forward to adopting initiatives to minimize costs in terms of reducing expenses and promoting revenue-generating activities.” However, as far as leveraging advanced technology solutions goes, be it AI and ML, rule-based analytics, or dashboarding, it is important to understand how the department and officials are looking at enabling themselves to be on the enhanced revenue track.
Emphasising on the importance of AI and ML solutions in resolving tax evasion issues or frauds, Palaniswamy underlined, “Our AI and ML solutions running on sophisticated system algorithms and models help the government to predict how a taxpayer is behaving, which taxpayer is likely to pay with duplicate or bogus invoices, and more. So this is one of our strength areas… further, the government is looking to leverage external data like social media data, work profiles, etc., to expand their insights on citizens which is otherwise limited to their behaviour on the government portal, in this case, the tax portal.”
He shed light on how mere static dashboards are not adding value to the departments. What they need today is an actionable dashboard that can track and monitor work updates and generate data-led insights to improve decision-making. This helps to detect the outcome of a particular demand and AI models feed on the insights to train and detect any anomalies or frauds effectively.
“In order to improve municipal revenue collections, especially through property tax, SAS provides GIS integration and data analytics… Moving ahead, the next level of analytics that customers want us to take up is the geo satellite image analysis to track and understand construction activities or changes on a particular piece of land,” he added.
Meanwhile, Aashish Jain, Principal Business Solutions Manager, Public Sector, SAS India addressing a panel discussion at the Technology Sabha highlighted, “Training our models is crucial for reducing manual effort and enhancing efficiency. By leveraging GenAI within our models, we can improve their productivity and effectiveness based on historical data patterns. This advancement ensures that our solutions are more scalable and accessible to a broader audience.”
Strengthening security with SAS
In the realm of security, encompassing police, defense, and investigative agencies like the CBI, technology has the potential to revolutionise how trends are forecasted, crimes are predicted, and responses are executed. Real-time data analysis and predictive modeling can enhance the ability to address crime proactively, leading to quicker resolutions and a more secure environment for citizens.
“In the law enforcement area, we support multiple departments. Primarily our strength is around anomaly detection, network analysis, collusive behavior, criminal activity detection and prediction. So apart from our core investigative use cases, we also have capabilities of responding to citizens emergency response system. Like a dial 112 and dial 100 are helplines where citizens will keep calling the control operations and the control operations don’t know how to assign resources on an immediate basis. So using the historical data we were able to detect when a crime could happen, what is the likelihood of a crime in a particular area, on a particular time, and based on that the resources can be reallocated to the particular location. So that’s the kind of analysis we could achieve,” Palaniswamy underlined.
A peek into use cases
As a leader in analytics with decades of global expertise and domain-specific solutions, SAS has enabled governments to address multiple complex challenges. Amongst many others, SAS has helped entities like Mumbai’s Municipal Corporation (MCGM), Maharashtra Sales Tax Department, Odisha Mining Corporation, and the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) with optimising decision-making processes through advanced analytics to create better outcomes for individuals, families, and communities.
As one of the use cases, SAS has significantly enhanced the efficiency of Mumbai’s Municipal Corporation (MCGM) by deploying its Property Tax Intelligence Solution. This system helps officials monitor and collect property taxes more effectively, addressing issues like rate validations and policy formations. It streamlines revenue augmentation and reconciliation, while linking networks and harmonising inter-departmental efforts. As a result, MCGM has reduced tax leakage, controlled pilferage, and increased revenue by identifying new or unassessed taxpayers, ultimately improving overall tax coverage.
Conclusion
Looking ahead, the impact of innovation promises to bridge gaps and drive meaningful improvements in the public sector, with trust at the center. By harnessing the power of advanced technologies like AI and ML tools, automation, robust security measures, and maintaining a focus on transparency and accountability, India’s government sector and the communities they serve can look forward to a brighter future.