Gov. Tech-Thon 2020 : Daily Current Affairs

Gov. Tech-Thon 2020

Gov-Tech-Thon 2020, a 36 hours, pan-India virtual hackathon organized by IEEE, National Informatics Centre (NIC)and Oracle, under the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, witnessed a successful conclusion on 1st November, 2020.

Over 1300 bright minds across India come together at Gov Tech-Thon 2020 to solve grassroot problem.
Shortlisted 447 enthusiasts from 100 teams participated in the Hackathon on the five problem statements provided by 3 central Government Ministries – Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Ministry of Road Transport and Highway and Ministry of Education.
The virtual hackathon received registrations from over 1300 aspirants forming 390 teams. The hackathon webpage witnessed over 15,000 visitors in 2 weeks.
First place was secured by FitForFuture team from Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Private Limited, for demonstrating an innovative solution prototype for automating vehicle fitness checks, second prize went to HackDemons of Indian Institute of Information Technology Vadodara for providing secure solution for delivering unsupervised tests remotely and Orange team from PES University Bengaluru secured third prize for providing a unique solution for seed certification using BlockChain technology.

For Gov-TechThon 2020, NIC has shortlisted five key problem scenarios in collaboration with the ministries-

AI based crop recommendations: This aims to help farmers get their crop rotation planning right and improve yields and profitability.
Blockchain based seed certification: This aims to ensure quality check throughout the supply chain of seed distribution via track and trace and audit capabilities so that farmers are provided with the best quality seeds for improved yields.
Automated vigilance in exams/ tests: This aims to support educational institutes manage unsupervised tests, by minimising the need for invigilators/ examiners/ supervisors to travel to (or be present in) multiple locations by enabling remote monitoring/ observation.
Automated fitness check process for commercial vehicles: This aims to curb malpractices among commercial vehicle checks and improve assessment time and vehicle owner experience.
Easy document uploads: This aims to permit citizens to scan and submit necessary documents while availing different government services.

A unique government-industry collaboration has been formed to spur new ideas to solve on-ground problems in agriculture, education and transportation. The tripartite agreement between National Informatics Centre (NIC), IEEE and Oracle see a virtual hackathon, Gov-TechThon 2020 from October 30 to November 1, 2020.
It aimed to incubate new ideas, boost innovation and use technology in agriculture and allied sectors.
The event was facilitated by IEEE Computer Society, a known body for engineering, computing and technology information.
It was open to students, working professionals, startups, freelance technologists, faculty, and IT services firms in India. Shortlisted teams had operated virtually.
During the hackathon, they received mentorship from domain experts from NIC, IEEE Computer Society, Oracle and experts from the ministries of agriculture, education and transportation.
Participating teams had access to the latest tools from Oracle, including Oracle Autonomous Database, built-in and easy-to-use cloud security, and compute – to help them develop prototypes that are practical and scalable
Additionally, they were able to leverage open source technologies that bring in benefits of high performance, reliability and data security.

National Informatics Centre (NIC) is attached office of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). NIC was established in 1976.
NIC has been closely associated with the Government in different aspects of Governance besides establishing a Nationwide State-of-the-Art ICT Infrastructure, it has also built a large number of digital solutions to support the government at various levels, making the last-mile delivery of government services to the citizens a reality.

IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.
IEEE and its members inspire a global community to innovate for a better tomorrow through its more than 419,000 members in over 160 countries.
The IEEE Computer Society is the premier source for information, inspiration, and collaboration in computer science and engineering.

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