EMERGING TECH CAN DELIVER A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE

Ashish Wattal, Managing Director, Public Sector and Commercial Sales, India and SAARC, Cisco, talks about how during the pandemic, they enabled business continuity for over 200 government organizations across 26 state and central government entities and helped them stay connected and collaborate securely and seamlessly

- Vaishnavi Desai

HOW is Cisco helping India adopt Smart Governance to streamline both its governance and business practices?

We have partnered with the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) to support its futuristic Integrated Command and Control Center (ICCC), which offers a unified management experience for Gurugram's infrastructure, simplifies control room operation, and system integration, and boosts operational efficiency, thereby lowering operating costs.

The platform also allows city administrators to collect and integrate data from multiple sensors and sources, enabling them to use data analytics to optimize city operations, improve governance, and accelerate decision-making. We have also set up an Urban Observatory with the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in New Delhi. The observatory helps data analytics to optimize city operations, improve governance and enhance the economic performance of cities across India.

During the pandemic, we enabled business continuity for over 200 government organizations across 26 state and central government entities and helped them stay connected and collaborate securely and seamlessly. We set up an Integrated Command & Control Center (War room) in New Delhi with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW).

The first-of-its-kind war room leverages Cisco's data analytics platform and cutting-edge communications and collaboration tools to monitor, measure and analyze Covid-19 related data that can assist the MoHFW to make necessary assessments and take preventive or corrective containment actions. The digital dashboarding efforts were replicated in Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, and Telangana states and 20 other cities of India for managing lockdown protocols, density monitoring, agency coordination, etc.

What technologies will play a major role in efficient and transparent governance?