Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a transformative opportunity for governments to strengthen institutional capacity, improve service delivery, and enable more responsive and inclusive governance. The Government of Odisha has adopted a deliberate and execution-focused approach to AI, positioning it not as a standalone technology intervention but as a public capability embedded within governance systems. Guided by the Odisha Artificial Intelligence Policy 2025 and operationalised through the Odisha AI Mission, the State is laying the foundation for responsible, scalable, and outcome-oriented AI adoption.
AI Priorities for Governance
Odisha’s AI priorities are anchored in the belief that sustainable impact emerges when technology is embedded within institutions, workflows, and public service delivery mechanisms. The State has identified five priority sectors for AI-led transformation: healthcare, education, agriculture, disaster management, and governance. Across these sectors, the emphasis is on moving from isolated pilots to population-scale implementation, supported by strong governance frameworks.
A key priority is improving government productivity by deploying AI tools that reduce the administrative burden on officials and enable faster, more consistent decision-making. In parallel, Odisha is investing in citizen-facing AI applications that are inclusive by design, particularly voice-first and multilingual systems that overcome barriers of literacy and access. Transforming Odia into a high-resource language is a strategic focus, enabling population-scale AI systems that interact with citizens in their mother tongue.
Institutional readiness is central to this vision. Odisha is the first state to release its AI Policy in 2025 and has thus, established a two-tier governance structure comprising an AI Taskforce for strategic oversight as well as an AI Cell within the Electronics & IT Department for day-to-day execution. Complemented by streamlined procurement pathways through operational guidelines, dedicated capacity building for officials, data readiness initiatives, and alignment with national platforms such as IndiaAI Mission, AIKosh, and BHASHINI, these measures ensure that AI adoption is responsible, auditable, and sustainable.
SushasanSahAIyak – Good Governance AI Assistant
Odisha is experimenting with cutting-edge AI tools to develop SushasanSahAIyak, a unified AI platform for governance use- cases to further embed Sushasanor good governance in the state. The platform seeks to provide every official with the same secure, high-quality interface rather than relying on individual vendors or fragmented tools.
Sushasan Sah’AI’ yak brings together multiple high- frequency government tasks in one place. Officers can draft letters and notes with AI support, record minutes of multilingual meetings,summarise files, analyse tabular data, or search across rules and circulars using natural language. SushasanSah’AI’yak is neutral to any single model, enabling best-fit solutions from the ecosystem for each use-case and avoiding vendor lock-ins. Built-in telemetry will enable the AI Cell to track adoption, usage patterns, latency, and error trends to identify improvements.
Building the AI Ecosystem: State and National Perspectives
Beyond individual use cases, Odisha’s AI strategy places strong emphasis on ecosystem development and alignment with national priorities. The State is actively engaging with global and Indian AI organisations, startups, academic institutions, and public platforms to enable structured experimentation, co-development, and learning-led scale-up.
To operationalise this, Odisha follows a funnel-based approach. The process begins with detailed consultations with departments to understand on-ground needs, followed by ecosystem landscaping to identify proven and deployable solutions. Suitable partners are then matched to departmental requirements and taken through a structured pathway comprising demonstrations with the AI Cell, proof-of-concepts, pilots with real users, and finally, full-scale deployment based on validated outcomes from the PoC and pilot stages.
A strong focus is placed on data readiness and language digitisation, particularly for low- resource languages, ensuring that public datasets are discoverable, interoperable, and reusable. Odisha is also investing in compute infrastructure and exploring the establishment of AI Parks to anchor high-performance computing and AI innovation.
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Odisha is prioritising the application of AI across key state focus areas. In disaster management and urban governance, this includes flood prevention, road traffic violation detection, and bus traffic optimisation. In healthcare, priority use cases span early diagnosis of cognitive impairment, maternal and child health, diabetic retinopathy screening, and tuberculosis detection. In education, the focus is on improving oral reading fluency for students in Grades 1-8. In agriculture, AI interventions are being deployed for the Comprehensive Rice Fallow Management (CRFM) and Digital crop survey through images and phone calls.
At a national level, Odisha views AI as a federal learning system, where States contribute deployable models, datasets, and institutional lessons to a shared public commons. By aligning with national initiatives and demonstrating scalable implementation on the ground, Odisha aims to contribute meaningfully to India’s vision of AI as a public good.
Views Expressed By: Shri Vishal Kumar Dev, IAS, Principal Secretary Electronics & Information Technology Department, Government of Odisha