Vision Document for digital North East launched with big plans

Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday released the ‘Vision Document’ for a digital North East by 2022 that aims to enhance peoples’ lives by capacity building of government staff and doubling BPO strength in the region.

Unveiling the plans under the ‘Digital North East: Vision 2022’, Prasad said the document emphasises leveraging digital technologies to transform lives of people of the North East and enhance the ease of living.

He said a cloud hub for North East will be created in Guwahati and capacity building for 50,000 government staff will be taken up in using digital technologies, including Goods and Services Tax and payment platforms.

The number of seats planned for BPOs in the North-eastern states will be doubled to 10,000 from 5,000, while the network of common service centres will be expanded to cover all villages, Prasad said.

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The document said high speed broadband connectivity in all the uncovered villages in the North Eastern region shall be provided.

The document identifies eight digital thrust areas— digital infrastructure, digital services, digital empowerment, promotion of electronics manufacturing, promotion of IT and IT enabled services including BPOs, digital payments, innovation & start-ups, and cyber security.

The Vision Document aims to empower the people of the North Eastern region and state-wise roadmaps have been developed for implementing digital initiatives.

The document was released in the presence of chief ministers of Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura along with senior government officials.

Coinciding with the unveiling of the Vision Document, several other projects were launched for the Northeastern states.

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Three parallel sessions were also held in the morning, comprising a networking workshop on hub-and-spoke model for the BPOs, a session on expanding the role and reach of common service centres and another session on government e-market place.

Before the event, Prasad and Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal laid the foundation stone for a common facilitation centre and smart meter manufacturing facility at the Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) in Tech City at Bongara village, near Guwahati.