ICAR conferred with Digital India Awards - 2020 under Open Data Champion Category

ICAR conferred with Digital India Awards - 2020 under Open Data Champion Category

The Hon’ble President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind virtually conferred the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi with the “Digital India Awards - 2020” under the Open Data Champion category today. The ICAR was felicitated with the Award for its Research Data Management Portal.

In his address, Shri Kovind emphasized that due to proactive digital interventions, the country has been able to ensure operational continuity of important government services during and after the lockdown period. The Hon’ble President stressed that the role of digital warriors has been commendable in helping the country overcome the challenges posed by the Pandemic. The proactive implementation of platforms, such as, Arogya Setu, e-Office and Video Conferencing Services backed by a robust ICT infrastructure has helped the country reduce the Pandemic hardships. He urged to keep exploring innovative solutions for the functioning of government offices in paperless and contactless mode for security and benefit of every citizen that will also help in making administrative processes more eco-friendly.

The Hon’ble President stressed that during the COVID-19 Pandemic, the education, health, agriculture, judiciary and other sectors continued to operate uninterrupted with the help of digital technologies. He also urged to make the best use of digital technology and contribute towards the Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat Campaigns of the Government of India. Emphasizing about the inclusion of digital technology in various aspects of human lives, he stressed that the revolutionary changes are visible in the society.

Highlighting the Open Data Champion Category, Shri Kovind emphasized that the digital technology will help to preserve the research data in a digital form that may be accessed by the future generations anywhere at any point of time with ease. The Hon’ble President stressed that the use of digital technology will reduce the communication divides in the society.

Outlining the main objective of the Awards Ceremony, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of Electronics & Information Technology regarded the occasion as a mark of accomplishments to felicitate the winners for their invincible contributions in the field of digitalization. Shri Prasad stressed that to enable the smooth functioning of work from home initiative during the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Ministry levelized all the regulatory ecosystems. This helped the country’s Information & Technology sector to run nationally and internationally uninterrupted during such challenging times of the Pandemics. The Union Minister applauded the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi’s initiative of digitally transferring an amount of Rs. 18,000 Crores into the Bank Accounts of 9 Crores farmers’ families.

Shri Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology briefed about the Digital India Awards - 2020.

Earlier, Dr. Neeta Verma, Director General, National Informatics Centre, Government of India delivered the welcome address

The Open Data Champion Award is to acknowledge the Ministries / Departments / Organizations / States for proactive, timely and regular release of datasets / resources through Web Services / APIs on the Open Government Data (OGD) Platform (https://data.gov.in) in compliance with the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP).

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research is committed for organizing its knowledge and making it available to the fullest extent possible through Open Government Data Platform (https://data.gov.in) and its own Portal - KRISHI (Agricultural Knowledge Resources and Information System Hub for Innovations) Portal (https://krishi.icar.gov.in). The Portal has been developed as a centralized data repository system for Research Data Management in the Council.

(Source: ICAR-Directorate of Knowledge Management in Agriculture, New Delhi)