eGovernments Foundation has partnered with IIT Madras Alumni Association.  This is a unique model of alumni volunteering and engagement for societal impact, to achieve enhanced e-governance services across India. eGov and IIT Madras Alumni Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Friday, September 16, at the office of eGov in Bangalore.

Over the past two decades, eGov has been working with the Government, citizens as well as ecosystem partners to catalyse transformational programs within urban systems. Industry-Academia partnerships are vital to the elevation of quality service and technological advancement and eGov is a pioneer in collaboration and innovation in areas such as governance, SDGs, etc. This collaboration seeks to construct an intersection of eGov and IITM alumni in order to tap relevant skills and expertise.  The objective is to empower, support and advance eGov’s open-source platform DIGIT (Digital Infrastructure for Governance, Impact & Transformation), which has been set up as a Digital Public Good. Furthermore, by building a platform of collaboration by the community, it serves to democratise the end-product.

A specific outcome of this partnership with volunteers from the community is the development of the unified services and schemes delivery platform, which will provide citizens with a consistent and seamless experience while accessing digital government services.

Krishnan Narayanan, President of the IIT Madras Alumni Association, said, “We are pleased to collaborate with eGov on this important undertaking. Our collective missions include, among others, the Mission 5000 Ignited Minds, through which, we will facilitate the services of 10% of IIT Madras’ alumni, who will join forces with eGov as committed volunteers.

IIT Madras and eGov will work together to conduct ‘hackathons’ to crowdsource new ideas and innovations that could later progress to becoming features on the DIGIT platform. Furthermore, our work will expand the reach into the academic world allowing the latest technological advancements emerging from our premier technology institute to reflect on DIGIT. We look forward to brainstorming with our partners at eGov to construct state-of-the-art solutions that will drive superior urban governance and improved standard of living for citizens.”

Speaking on the occasion, Manish Srivastava, CTO, eGov Foundation said, “eGov Foundation is co-creating open-source Digital Public Goods (DPGs) that accelerate achievement of sustainable development goals at speed and scale. The partnership with IIT Madras Alumni Association will enable us to speed up the development and deployment of DPGs”.

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