NIC to jointly form new data analytics centre to work with govt depts

The centre will work with different departments to analyse their data in the hopes of improving project performance. For example, the new centre could find patterns in data about citizen services delivery or in digital payments to present a more accurate picture of where the transaction might be failing.

According to sources, the NICSI board initially proposed the idea and has provided the initial funding for infrastructure, manpower, and tools. The ground floor of NICSI will house the 11-member team and the entity is in the process of buying new advanced servers in their Laxmi Nagar facility. As the centre grows, the plan is for individual departments to pay for the centre’s services.

The centre will work with vendors that NICSI is already working with, such as PwC, and other small vendors to provide the skilled data scientists. NIC Director General Neeta Verma told The Indian Express that this centre will use “prescriptive and diagnostic analytics.”

Rama Hariharan, who will head the new centre, told The Indian Express that many government departments are increasingly searching for new ways to extract knowledge from the data they are now collecting. “We will build the system in such a way so that they are empowered to do the data analysis on their own,” she said.