eGovWatch: IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad launches Open Forge, India’s open platform for collaboration on e-gov apps

Open Forge is a platform for open collaborative software development of e-governance applications based on open data and open standards

Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad officially launched the government’s open platform – Open Forge. Open Forge is a platform for open collaborative software development of e-governance applications based on open data and open standards. He also unveiled the Digital India Global Roadmap, an action plan connecting the focus areas of Digital India with sustainable development goals of UNDP.

While inaugurating a three-day international conference on e-governance called “ICEGOV 2017” in New Delhi, Prasad said, “Through Digital India, we are deploying initiatives like MyGov, Common Service Centers, verified digital identity of 1 Billion plus Indians through Aadhaar, digital delivery of services, subsidy to poor directly into to their bank accounts through a very judicious use of technology, to make India an e- empowered society with a conviction.”

During his address, he made several announcements aimed at digital transformation. To support PhD scholars in digital technologies, he said, India will offer PhD scholarship to 100 students from all the participating countries in Indian universities, including IITs, IISc and other universities.

National Knowledge Network (NKN) will now be connected with the Knowledge Network in Portugal – FCCN.  NKN connects nearly 1600 universities and research centres in India on Gigabit network, provides a platform for collaborative research. NKN is already connected to TIEN 4 and GEANT of Europe and Internet2 of US making it possible for researchers in India to work closely with their counterparts in these two regions.

Prasad also said that to ensure the country’s digital march and a more cyber secure world, the Government of India is going to host the next meeting of CERTs from Asia-Pacific in India later this year.

Themed on ‘Building Knowledge Societies: From Digital Government to Digital Empowerment’, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) in collaboration with United Nations University and UNESCO, is organising the 10th ICEGOV 2017 in New Delhi.

Along with Prasad, Minister of State (MoS) for E & IT, P. P. Chaudhary, cabinet secretary P. K. Sinha and MeitY secretary, Aruna Sundararajan also participated in the conference.