Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday said Andhra Pradesh was in the forefront of adopting Information Technology (IT) and prepared to deploy latest technologies in diverse fields. It was going to extend all possible support to innovators coming forward to transform the rural landscape even as the urban areas benefited the most from the digital revolution, he asserted.
E-Pragati
Speaking at the Open Innovation Forum organised by K.L. University (KLU) and Haas School of Business of the University of California Berkeley here on Thursday, Mr. Naidu said the government had given priority to changing people’s lives with the help of technologies. The e-Pragati project, into which the functioning of all departments is being integrated, was a major accomplishment in that direction, he added. Andhra Pradesh made rapid strides in Real Time Governance (RTG) and was scaling up the applications of Internet-of-Things (IoT). The mapping of soils with the help of drones and combining it with soil samples data, which is aimed at improving the agricultural yield, was one good example of deployment of technologies at the grassroots level, he said.
Advice to universities
“In A.P., we have left behind the corporate entities in adopting emerging technologies, unlike in the US where private companies have been pioneers,” he observed, and insisted that Indian universities quickly shifted their orientation from theory to practice to give the best results in R&D, which was the crux of innovation.
Solomon Darwin of Garwood Centre for Corporate Innovation at the University of Berkeley, who is heading ‘Berkeley-Andhra Smart Village’ mission of developing prototypes of smart villages in A.P. and scaling them up in a phased manner, said some of the world’s best-known companies came forward to contribute to the project and wished the A.P. Government would extend its cooperation for achieving that goal.
Ministers N. Lokesh and Kamineni Srinivas, and KLU president Koneru Satyanarayana participated.