IT minister wants use of blockchain tech for improving govt schools

Telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday asked National Informatics Centre to come up with a blockchain technology-based solution to improve quality of government schools.

The minister said that he also wants both the Centre and states to open up their doors for start-ups working under defined norms.

"I am very keen how we can leverage blockchain in primary education. In fact today I am going to give you a task NIC team. Can you think of a good application of blockchain technology for improving the quality of government schools all over the country. Public schools are good, private schools are good but my take would be that we shall be able to leverage technology when transformational change takes place," Prasad said.

The minister was speaking on the occasion of inauguration of a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Blockchain Technology set up by NIC in Bengaluru with to provide blockchain as a service.

Blockchain technology is upcoming and niche technology and adoption of the same in sectors such as health, finance, agriculture and various other sectors would aid the government in implementing various programmes and provide trust and immutability to the assets.

The minister asked the NIC to work on mechanism to involve start-ups also in its technology space.

"India is home to close 26,000 start-ups. Out of which 9,000 are tech start up. NIC can become a big patron of start-up movement. I always recommend even the centre and state governments must open doors for induction of start-up moment obviously under defined norms and condition to maintain transparency," Prasad said.

He said that blockchain technology will open up new frontiers in the area of governance, treasury management, excise operations etc and he would like to see its use in the field of agriculture, health, primary education etc.

The CoE has developed Blockchain based Proof of Concepts (PoCs) for select government use cases to understand potential benefits provided by this emerging technology.

According to NIC, new and previously unforeseen applications of Blockchain in the Government are expected to enhance transparency, traceability and trust in e-governance systems.

The CoE on blockchain will facilitate the government departments in building proof of concepts for use of Blockchain technology in different dimensions of governance leading to large scale deployment of some such applications, an NIC statement said.