Oracle and the Government of Maharashtra have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to pace up the state’s digital transformation initiatives.
Taking advantage of Oracle’s Cloud solutions, Oracle and the Government of Maharashtra will develop the state’s smart city programme, with the aim of making the state’s urban landscape more livable and inclusive, while driving economic growth.
As per the MoU, Oracle and the Maharashtra Government will create a Center of Excellence (CoE) to help accelerate its smart city programme and modernising the government’s technology solutions.
The CoE, based in Mumbai, will serve as a research platform to design, develop and test new capabilities that will deliver better government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) services.
Benefiting from the power of the Cloud, the CoE will enable rapid innovation with nominal capital expenditures. In addition to this, the CoE will also offer a flexible and scalable common framework, as well as a team of experts, allowing individual cities to scale and replicate its solutions.
The proposed projects, to be finalised before the end of the calendar year, include:
Smart city in a box Mobile platform for service questions Unified app development for services like drivers license renewals or property tax payments Digital platform to deliver smart city services across the state Connected infrastructure across all devices, kiosks and citizens Infrastructure services for equipment and IT.
Resources to manage transportation logistics, including analytics, asset tracking, fleet management Resources to manage utilities, including water and power.
Many of these projects will support the government’s e-services programme aimed at citizens, visitors, business establishments and government officials.
Both Oracle and the Government of Maharashtra will invest in IT infrastructure, training and skill set resources as well as management of the CoE.
The Government of Maharashtra, the largest state economy in India initiated a programme in April to develop 10 smart cities, adding to the 33 announced by the central government in the 100 smart cities initiative.
In a statement, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, “Cloud computing has changed the landscape of governance. It has the power to enable inclusive growth and to transform the state into a digitally empowered society.”
“Together with Oracle, we want to build a new, efficient, transparent and inclusive system that benefits our people. The CoE is a step in that direction and will make more government services available with the click of a button. I look forward to working with Oracle on this important mission,” he added.
In a reaction, Oracle Corporation’s Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz, said: “We are thrilled to further our commitment in India by working with the Government of Maharashtra and the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, to help position India as a world-class design and manufacturing epicenter. The Cloud Center of Excellence powered by Oracle will play a key role in improving the lives of the people of this state.”
“By moving to the Cloud, the Government has the opportunity to create a digitally empowered society and a growing knowledge economy. We look forward to making this partnership a success.”
This comes after Oracle’s recent commitment with Prime Minister Modi to support the country’s global digital leadership.
Oracle unveiled a massive, state-of-the-art campus centered in Bengalaru, nine incubation centers throughout India, and an initiative to train more than half a million students each year to develop computer science skills.