Meity plans to deploy experts for streamlining internal govt data use

The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) is planning to deploy a set of designated officials, who will be trained as specialised data experts and analysts, across multiple ministries and departments of the central government, according to sources.

If deployed and trained, these “specialised analysts” will streamline internal datasets that different ministries deal with on a daily basis. Before getting down to business, these officials will be trained in the required skill set in collaboration with private entities having expertise in the field of data and artificial Intelligence (AI), said a person privy to the development.

“Meity wants to build internal capacity by deploying data analysts and data experts in various line ministries. Capacity-building for those folks is an area where private firms and non-profits working in AI innovation and research would contribute,” said the person.

An email sent to Meity seeking details about the initiative remained unanswered till the time of going to press.

The said data expert may be a single person or multiple people, depending on the requirements of a particular ministry.

“Apart from analysis, another area where these experts will also help is cross-leveraging of data across different departments, which has become very important these days due to AI. They will also help in some of the other outputs that a specific ministry might need,” said the person.

Under the India AI Mission, the government is planning to establish a National Datasets platform where anonymized, non-personal data from both government and private organisations will be accessible to Indian startups, researchers, and academia for training their AI models.

In March this year, the Union Cabinet gave its nod to the India AI Mission with Rs 10,372 crore outlay for five years.

With the goal of building a strong AI infrastructure, the plan includes setting up of AI innovation centres for multi-modal large language models (LLMs), skilling and developing a unified datasets platform for producing good quality datasets in the country.

Further, under the Mission, a key focus area is to acquire 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) to develop high-end compute capacity.

In this regard, Meity last week invited applications from private firms to procure 1,000 GPUs to provide access to AI services over cloud to academia, MSMEs, startups, governments, and other public sector agencies, under the India AI Mission.

The ministry in the tender document stated that the government will authorize end-users who will be granted access to these AI services on the cloud.

"The empanelled agencies will provide their services to these authorised end-users at prices discovered through this process. The AI services on the cloud from select agencies would be empanelled for 36 months and may be extended further based on mutually agreed terms," said the ministry in the tender document.