Tamil Nadu's leap into AI, blockchain to help the state with better service

Part of the state's digital initiative involves steering the government towards evolving policies that are based more on data and analytics than on unproven assumptions and guesswork

Students turning up late is a common problem in government schools in Chennai. With students meandering in at various times of the day, teachers waste a lot of time checking attendance during different periods. Now, in a pilot project at a school in Triplicane in Chennai, the moment pupils arrive, an AI-enabled facial recognition system marks their arrival and the time. The school has seen an 85 per cent fall in stragglers.

A brainchild of the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency or TNeGA, the pilot, tested in several schools, will now be implemented in 3,000 government schools across Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu has