Professional Documents
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PR Aditya
PR Aditya
Commissionerate of e-Governance
Internship Report
Submitted by
A V D Pallavi -2001144
P R Aditya – 2001182
Of
On
June 2021
We would like to express our gratitude to TNeGA for providing us with an opportunity
to do a two-month summer internship. It was an enriching experience.
We would like to thank Ms. Shobana K. for ensuring that the internship happened
smoothly. Our sincere thanks to Mr. Krishnakanth, Mr. Chockalingam M. and Mr.
Priyanjit Ghosh for their constant guidance through the course of the internship. We
would like to thank everyone from TNeGA who helped us enjoy learning and made
the two-month experience an enjoyable one.
We hope to build upon the experience and knowledge that we have gained and make
a valuable contribution towards nation in coming future.
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Table of Contents
Executive summary ............................................................................................................ 4
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5
Background of TNeGA .................................................................................................... 5
Objective ............................................................................................................................ 7
Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 8
Description of Internship................................................................................................. 9
Citizen Charter ................................................................................................................. 9
IT Garage ..........................................................................................................................14
AI Use Cases ....................................................................................................................16
Healthcare ........................................................................................................................16
• Anaemia Diagnosis: ............................................................................................17
• Malnourishment: ..................................................................................................18
• Telemedicine .........................................................................................................20
Agriculture ........................................................................................................................22
• Centralization of data: .......................................................................................22
• Smart irrigation ....................................................................................................26
TAICon ...............................................................................................................................29
AI Policy ............................................................................................................................31
Cataract .............................................................................................................................32
Miscellaneous work .......................................................................................................33
Experience gained during Internship .........................................................................35
Working with TNeGA .....................................................................................................35
Skills gained from the internship .............................................................................35
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................36
References ...........................................................................................................................37
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Executive summary
The internship at TNeGA was started on 7th April 2021, under the guidance of Mr.
Krishnakanth (Dy. Head, CEET) and Mr. Priyanjit Ghosh (Business Analyst, CoE).
Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA), as a State Nodal Agency has been formed
to support and drive all e-Governance initiatives of the Government of Tamil Nadu.
TNeGA is implementing various e-Governance projects intending to make all
Government services, wherever feasible & accessible to the common man efficiently
and transparently.
In a path-breaking ICT Initiative, the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu had set up
a “Centre of Excellence in Emerging Technologies (CEET)” under the aegis of Tamil
Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA). CEET is mandated to work with Government
Departments and help them solve their key Governance problems with help of
Emerging Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Data Analytics
and others. CEET has started conceptualizing and developing solutions for problems
from Health, Education, Rural Development Dept, Agriculture, and Land Registration
Departments. The main objective of the internship was to understand how TNeGA
functions as a State Nodal Agency to support and drive all e-Governance initiatives
of the Government of Tamil Nadu.
This report is divided into three board parts. The first part of this report deals with
an introduction that presents the Company background, Objectives and Methodology
of the study. The second part is a detail of the various tasks and deliverables that
we had for the internship. The third part is about the experience that we have gained
through this internship and how it has benefited TNeGA. The last part is about
conclusions and recommendations which are drawn by analysis of the whole
experience.
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Introduction
Background of TNeGA
Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA), as a State Nodal Agency has been formed
to support and drive all e-Governance initiatives of the Government of Tamil Nadu.
TNeGA is implementing various e-Governance projects intending to make all
Government services, wherever feasible & accessible to the common man efficiently
and transparently.
Vision
To fulfil the vision of Good Governance using the tools that information technology
provides, such that working within Government becomes transparent and efficient,
with concomitant transparency and efficiency in the delivery of services to our
Citizens.
Mission
The mission of TNeGA is to improve the quality of life of our Citizens through efficient
delivery of Government Services using the tools of Information Technology and to
create cost-effective, scalable solutions for Governance, making full use of Emerging
Technologies like Blockchain, AI/ML, IoT, Drones, Data Analytics, AR/VR, etc.
Objectives
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● Proactively engaging with Government Departments, NGOs and International
Organizations and institutions engaged in program and objectives similar to
TNeGA, in developing a shared vision of Governance.
● Creating a vibrant ecosystem of academic institutions, research organizations,
start-ups, funding agencies and eminent individuals, to innovate, design and
implement solutions for pressing Governance issues.
● Capacity Building of all Government employees at all levels in Information
Technology to enable efficiency in Governance.
● Organize workshops, seminars, conferences on e-Governance.
● Publish research papers, journals, workshop proceedings, newsletters etc., at
National and International forums.
Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency aims to fulfil the Vision, Through the use of
Information Technology in Governance and the delivery of services to the public at
their doorsteps. This e-Governance Agency was formed under the Information
Technology Department, Government of Tamil Nadu to function as an intrinsic arm
of the Government with a mandate to drive e-Governance in the State. This agency
has been registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Act. The Policy is to achieve the
vision of integrated service delivery to the Citizen at the nearest location at an
affordable cost. To achieve this, a simple front end delivery mechanism, robust back-
end computerization, connectivity with adequate bandwidth (TNSWAN) and support
infrastructure (SDC, SSDG, State Portal and other stakeholders) along with the
application software integrated with the required MIS is necessary.
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Objective
The main objective of the internship was to understand how TNeGA functions as a
State Nodal Agency to support and drive all e-Governance initiatives of the
Government of Tamil Nadu. Also, to understand the different areas in which TNeGA
has been creating a difference to the public through the implementation of emerging
technologies. To achieve these main objectives the following specific objective has
been taken:
● Drafting the inception and operating model document for setting up IT Garage,
an incubation center under TNeGA. The IT garage is designed by TNeGA to
leverage the potential of a plethora of start-ups by providing them with a
platform where they have access to state-of-the-art facilities to be seated in,
technical mentorship and one of a kind access to working closely with the state
government departments. It aims to provide extensive support to nurture
budding entrepreneurs to make technology-based ventures successful.
● Proposal for conducting TAICon, a National level AI conclave that could be the
flagship event for TNeGA. The event aims to spread awareness about AI and
other emerging technologies. The aim is to collaborate with leaders from
different industries and academia to help the Departments know the uses and
potential of AI. A hackathon was proposed in continuation of the event. The
hackathon will be a source of ideas and startups for IT Garage, the proposed
state incubator for startups.
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● Drafting of new AI Adoption policy for the state: In the year 2020 TN came up
with Tamil Nadu Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence Policy 2020. The goal of
the Safe and Ethical AI Policy was to allow harnessing the power of AI for the
public good while keeping it safe and ethically compatible with human values.
And now TN is planning to come up with a new policy on Artificial Intelligence
in Governance. We helped the team with the drafting of the policy.
Methodology
● Collecting data about the schemes offered by the government from the citizen
charter document of various departments, existing policies and data available
on the internet. Some data were collected through interactions with the
employees of TNeGA.
● Reading and analyzing the AI policy documents of countries like the United
Kingdom, Mexico and UAE to gain insights for preparing the draft AI Adoption
policy document.
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Description of Internship
The internship here at TNeGA was two months in duration and we worked on
numerous deliverables in this duration. Here is a detail of all the work carried during
this internship.
Citizen Charter
This project was undertaken with a novel objective to implement predictive services
to provide timely assistance to citizens with schemes they are eligible for.
Currently, each department has its standalone websites, citizen charter and physical
records to enlist the schemes and details about the schemes are distributed at
multiple locations. The implementation of this project will collate all the details about
the schemes offered by different departments and implement services to prompt the
citizen about the schemes he/she is eligible for.
The initial stages of this process of providing unified services catering to the citizens
have begun by the implementation of e-Sevai, with the vision to deliver all services
online to the Citizens even in the remotest corner of the state. Anil chatbot has been
created to aid the e-Sevai portal to provide information about various services offered
and avail them.
The end goal of the project is when a child is born and his/her parents register
him/her as a member of the family. When he turns 3 the head of the family will get
a prompt to add him/her to the ration card and when they are 18, voter ID and other
ID cards will be delivered to them instead of them running around to create it.
Method
the citizen charter data of all the departments were provided. The citizen charter
documents had no standard format and the data had to be organized manually in a
consumable format.
A standardized set of criteria were decided to capture the details of schemes provided
by various departments. The schemes chosen were the ones that impact the public
directly. Each department presented with a different set of criteria that were to be
fulfilled for a citizen to avail of the scheme.
The criteria identified for the standardized scheme were based on:
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o Gender: Some schemes are offered for a particular gender type. The
details are captured in this field e.g. Government Working Women’s
Hostel by the Social Welfare Department is available only for women.
o The age range for which the scheme is being offered: Many schemes are
offered to citizens who fall between an age range e.g. Government
Working Women’s Hostel by the Social Welfare Department is offered
only to women aged between 14 and 45.
o Caste details: Several departments and schemes are for the benefit of
particular castes. Thus, details about the caste are captured in this field.
E.g. Adi Dravidar and the Tribal welfare department cater to specific
castes and tribal population.
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o Board: A few schemes require the citizen to have a particular
educational qualification to be eligible for the scheme. E.g. only students
studying in the State Board are eligible to avail of Textbook schemes
from the Adi Dravidar department.
● Scheme details: Specific details about the scheme containing the benefits
offered, or any additional requirement is captured in the following fields:
Solution
The details of schemes offered by the different departments were captured and stored
in excel files in a standardized format. The schemes from multiple departments were
stored in an excel file to create metadata of the schemes offered by the government
of Tamil Nadu.
A POC was created by creating a sample form and retrieving the schemes that a
person filling the form is eligible for. The retrieval of the schemes was done with the
help of a Python program that takes input from an excel which contains the details
of a citizen and retrieves the relevant schemes from the excel containing details about
the scheme.
Following is our proposal about how the system will work once this application is
implemented completely.
According to this proposal the UI/ app that is facing the user will be required to send
only the form details that the user enters. The application implemented by TNeGA
will be responsible for querying SFDB or any other similar department and use the
data as the use case demands. For example: For demographic details of the user,
SFDB will be queried and the result will be used for further processing and creating
the response to the user-facing application.
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UI application/website
Information specific to department
Demographic information
selected by the user
Makkal No., Name, Age etc User selects
a dept
List of departments Submit
Query Return
Scheme schemes
Table
TNeGA
application
Scheme DB
The application aims to return the set of schemes a user is eligible for. Following is
the workflow of the application:
1. The application gets a request from the application implemented on the user
end.
2. The application expects to receive the details of the user, the schemes already
being availed by the user and another department-specific data that the user
has entered
3. The application will return a set of schemes the user is eligible for.
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Problems faced
Multiple departments have citizen charter which presented us with unstructured data.
Our task was to use the data provided in the citizen charter.
The unstructured data about the schemes were manually converted into a usable
Excel format by identifying important criteria based on which the applicability to the
schemes will be decided.
Result
The schemes from 43 out of 47 departments were extracted into separate department
wise excel sheets.
A consolidated excel sheet was created with the standardized set of criteria
mentioned above. A python program has been written to complete the POC and
retrieve the eligible schemes for a citizen with the details entered in a form.
Future scope
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This solution can be scaled to all the departments and with minor modifications to
the Python program, the citizen can view all the schemes he/she is eligible for.
IT Garage
During our internship, we worked on creating the operating model for IT Garage.
● Proposed and presented the vision mission and the operating model for IT
Garage
● Came up with the objectives for the incubator
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o To create an ecosystem for the growth of start-ups through extensive
collaboration with the various departments of the state.
o Provide infrastructure Collaborative Workspaces crafted for Startups with
easy checking.
● Designed an operating model and decided on the selection criteria and the
admission process of the various schemes that were made available.
In the course of the creation of the document, a collaboration with NASSCOM was
initiated. Meetings were organized with the regional head of NASSCOM to find
possible synergies with them. Try to make them as sources, to bring in ideas and
start-ups to IT Garage.
TNeGA aims to collaborate with NASSCOM, and use TechShack as a source for ideas
to be incubated in the IT Garage. The collaboration will be mutually beneficial as
TNeGA will be promoting TechShack through its various social media channels and
the ideas presented by the finalists of the hackathon will act as a potential source of
ideas for the IT Garage.
Conclusion
A concept document for the IT Garage has been created. The vision and mission
statements have been developed. A layout and strategy to approach the setting up
of an incubator at TNeGA have been set up.
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We will be attaching the detailed operating model document along with the report.
AI Use Cases
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to provide large incremental value to a good
variety of sectors globally and is predicted to be the key supply of competitive
advantage for companies. From an applications perspective, the approach is to spot
sectors that will have the potential of greatest externalities for adopting AI solutions.
We have identified two sectors Healthcare and Agriculture in which AI can make a
huge difference to the lives of the people.
Healthcare
The capacity to gather data, process it, and provide a well-defined output to the end-
user separates AI technology from traditional healthcare technologies. Machine
learning techniques and deep learning are used by AI to do this. These algorithms
are capable of recognizing patterns in human behaviour and developing their own
logic Machine learning models must be trained with a large quantity of data to get
relevant insights and predictions. Artificial intelligence algorithms vary from humans
in two ways: (1) Algorithms are literal: once a goal is established, the algorithm
learns solely from the incoming data and can only comprehend what it has been
taught to accomplish, (2) and some deep learning algorithms are dark boxes; they
can predict with exceptional precision but provide little to no clear explanation for the
rationale behind their judgments other than the data and method type employed.
As payment structures evolve, patients demand more from their providers, and the
volume of available data continues to increase at a staggering rate, artificial
intelligence is poised to be the engine that drives improvements across the care
continuum.
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has been adopted across several districts to provide timely intervention in screening
for cataract among the citizens of Tamil Nadu.
Here are some of the other use cases that can be adopted for AI in healthcare in the
state at the earliest:
• Anaemia Diagnosis:
Anaemia is a condition in which your body's red blood cells are insufficient in
number or quality. Red blood cells need a protein called hemoglobin to
transport oxygen throughout your body. Anaemia occurs when the number of
red blood cells or the amount of hemoglobin in the blood is lower than usual.
According to estimations by the WHO 1.6 billion people suffer from anaemia.
This has prompted the WHO to define the fight against anaemia as one of its
critical sustainable development goals for 2025. According to National Family
Health Survey-4 for the year 2015-16, 54.8 per cent of women aged around
15-49 years and 50.4 per cent of children under 5 years of age were reported
to be anaemic in Tamil Nadu. Hence, it can be one of the potential AI use cases
for the future.
Anaemia can cause specific body areas to be paler than others, such
as the lips, just below the whites of the eyes, the creases on our
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hands, and our fingernails, as physicians are taught in medical school.
When opposed to other regions of the skin, fingernail beds contain
very little melanin, making the procedure suitable for people of all skin
tones. People with anaemia from various causes including sickle cell
disease, beta-thalassemia, hemophilia, and a variety of cancers. A
mathematical algorithm can be developed to calibrate the data from
the participants that determined a hemoglobin-level value based on
nailbed colouration calibrated to their levels from a complete blood
count test obtained during the same visit. This can be then trained
further to identify the anaemic people. People who are chronically
anaemic require frequent hemoglobin-level testing to monitor their
disease and to guide their clinical treatment, this app will prove to be
very useful for them as well.
Anaemia can also be detected by scanning the face as the person gets pale.
Mobile phones are part of the communications infrastructure far and wide,
including in low-resource settings around the world. Screening through a
mobile phone camera is very easy and can be widely used. This reduces the
time of screening and only when the AI detects anaemia, a person gets actual
hemoglobin values [from blood testing].
• Malnourishment:
Malnutrition refers to when a person’s diet does not provide enough nutrients
or the right balance of nutrients for optimal health. The indicators stunting,
wasting, overweight and underweight are used to measure nutritional
imbalance; such imbalance results in either undernutrition (assessed from
stunting, wasting and underweight) or overweight. Child growth is
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internationally recognized as an important indicator of nutritional status and
health in populations.
There are two ways in which malnourishment can be detected in kids and the
same can be done through AI.
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malnourished, with values below 11 cm being severe acute
malnourishment.
• Telemedicine
o Recommending Treatments
After the patient has been diagnosed, the following stage is to provide
the best therapy possible. AI can assist in recommending the optimal
therapy choice for the patient. AI systems may examine the targeted
patient's previous medical information and provide treatment options
based on them. This cuts down on doctors' time spent going over a
patient's medical history to prescribe the appropriate therapy
alternatives for the circumstance at hand. AI can provide better
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treatment recommendations with less effort on the part of humans. IBM
Watson is currently recommending treatment plans for cancer patients.
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Agriculture
• Centralization of data:
“Better data and statistics will help governments track progress and make sure
their decisions are evidence-based; they can also strengthen accountability. This
is not just about governments. International agencies, CSOs and the private
sector should be involved. A true data revolution would draw on existing and new
sources of data to fully integrate statistics into decision making, promote open
access to, and use of, data and ensure increased support for statistical systems.
” (HLP Report, P23)
With the data revolution on the cards, it is key for the government to collect,
consolidate and use the abundant data from the resources accessible to them.
Government has access to very sensitive citizen data which is hard to access for
any other entity.
The Government has ensured that their policy and objectives bring stability to
agricultural production and promote the increase the agricultural production in a
sustainable manner to meet the food requirement of a growing population. The
agricultural produce also acts as a raw material for agriculture-based industries,
thereby providing employment opportunities to the rural population.
Data then can be used by experts from across the departments to gain meaningful
insights which will lead to new ideas and innovation in the field of agriculture.
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● Better use of data: Currently, data with each department exist in silos.
Collating them and presenting them in a consumable form will provide the
analysts with a wider view of the industry thus increasing the scope of
finding new problems and solutions to them.
2. Specific data: refers to data collated by the farmer and his service providers
about the production of crops and the seasonality, information such as soil
classification maps, chemical grids, historic per acre chemical and fertilizer
application, historic crop and variety use, harvest monitor information and
yield performance based on millimeters of rain. This information is collected
by satellites and remote sensing technology as well as the physical
observations of the farmer, and the Government departments.
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further used by companies to perform analysis about the overall condition
of the agricultural fields.
● Farmers: By sharing the data possessed by them, the farmers will be able
to garner better support from the state agencies. Also, with data and
appropriate analysis available to them, they will be able to make better-
informed choices.
● IT Garage and startups: With the inception of IT Garage on the cards, the
startups will have an opportunity to leverage data of vast quantity and high
quality to come up with solutions for their problem statements.
The following are the sources of data that might help in creating this single
metadata database:
Proposal
Once the data has been procured from all concerned departments a team has to
be engaged to mold the data to a consumable form and work has to put into the
normalization of the database.
To come up with metadata containing all the details about the existing arable land
ranging from historical data that the farmers possess to the details about the
weather soil type, soil health etc.
● Data integrity: Data collected and stored at a single point will help the
analysts access trustworthy data collected from various credible sources.
This data will help analysts get better a broader view of the agricultural set-
up in the state and provide better insights and perform accurate data
analysis.
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● Time-saving: Once data has been consolidated at a single point, a lot of
time required for finding and gathering data gets saved. The time can be
used to do work that adds more value to the system.
With the centralization of data, analysts and experts from the agriculture
department will be presented with a wide range of data. The solution to the
problem statement can be designed keeping in mind the data at hand.
Scattered data: It is tough to reach all sources of data and consolidate it in one
place. Data exists in silos, every department involved has been brought to the
same page and data has to be collected from them in a standardized manner
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Single point of failure: As data centralization and standardization is a result of
removing the redundancy from the data, a hardware failure may result in data
loss if not safeguarded with a failsafe approach.
• Smart irrigation
Tamil Nadu is one of the water-starved states in India. It accounts for 7% of the
population (62.11 m) and 4% of the land area (12.99 m.ha) of the country but is
endowed with only 3% of water resources in the country. The state receives an
average annual rainfall of about 911.6 mm. With the existing resources, the state
has a total surface water potential of 853 TMC. The total annual groundwater
recharge potential in the state is 790 TMC. The total water potential is estimated
at 1643 TMC. The current scenario is that almost the entire surface water potential
in the state has already been tapped and there is no scope for embarking on any
new major/medium projects. This resulted in the tapping of groundwater potential
on an increasing scale, and 86% of groundwater potential has already been
tapped. The state’s irrigation potential in terms of per capita is only about 0.08
ha. when compared to the all-India average of 0.17 ha.
The economic growth under rainfed and irrigated conditions show that more scope
for development lies in rainfed areas. The cropping intensity a function of
availability of irrigation facility and various other inputs hovered around 120 per
cent up to the 1990s and subsequently, it declined to 116 per cent during the
decade.
Smart irrigation is to control the water supply to the crops to the amount essential,
avoiding over-irrigation or under-irrigation which often leads to the spoiling of
crops and affects the soil health.
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that have irregular precipitation, irrigation improves crop growth and quality. By
allowing farmers to grow crops on a consistent schedule, irrigation also creates
more reliable food supplies.
Irrigation helps in providing the soil with the essential water supply to grow crops,
to maintain the soil moisture levels which is important to ensure that the soil
remains healthy.
Thus, in places that lack a natural system of irrigating the fields, a smart irrigation
system can be used. These systems are capable of deciding the amount of water
required by a particular type of soil.
With vision given by Government of India for irrigation “Per drop more crop”. It is
a great opportunity for the state to engage in the implementation of smart
irrigation systems in the state.
Considering the current scenario, with global warming affecting the rainfall
patterns, depleting groundwater levels and the state geographically lacking
abundant water resources. The state can start looking into alternatives powered
by the abundant technology resources around.
The implementation of smart irrigation has led to a 40% reduction in water usage
in some cases(Sula Vineyard).
Several start-ups have developed solutions for creating smart irrigation systems.
Kisan Raja
Kisan Raja is a GSM-based controller, which allows the farmer to control the
agricultural motor using his mobile or landline from the comforts of his home. It
is specifically designed to change the way the farmer interacts with motors.
The device allows the farmer to remotely control the motor using a GSM mobile
connection. It enables the farmer to switch on or off their motors from their
homes. This helps in controlling the time for which the crops are fed with water
and saves the time and energy spent by the farmer to personally go to the farm
to switch on/off the motor.
It works as a device for predictive maintenance of the motor and lets the farmer
know the cause of suspected failures.
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Further, the historical data about the farm can be used to predict the soil moisture
and the amount of water required for the field. This would help a great deal in
saving water, a scarce resource and save time as the farmer will be able to control
it remotely.
Soilsens
Provides a sensor-based smart irrigation system for the farmers who can remotely
control the irrigation of their fields. The device uses IoT to measure the moisture
level of the soil and stores and predicts the amount of water required for the soil.
This will reduce the chances of over-irrigation which drains the nutrients from the
soil.
The Government of Tamil Nadu can work on the weather updates which currently
displays static content in the Uzhavan app and can work on sending push
messages/ notification of weather updates dynamically to the farmers. This will
help the farmers make better-informed choices.
Further using the historical data of the farms and simple IoT devices, the structure
of soil i.e. the micro and macro composition of the soil can be identified instead
of the current process where the farmer has to send the soil sample to a lab.
Benefits
Saves water: In a state like Tamil Nadu, where water is a scarce resource it is
very important to find solutions for the farmers to use water judiciously and
generate maximum output from their land.
Better soil quality for sustainable agriculture: Using smart irrigation technique
takes into account the soil structure and moisture content of the soil. Thus,
reducing the possibility of over-irrigation or under-irrigation.
Reduces manual labour: With the use of IoT sensors in the farms and on motors,
less human intervention is required to irrigate the land. The time and effort of the
farmers will be saved.
Limitations
Costly to implement: The initial investment for the setup and installation of a
smart irrigation system will be high. But the benefits of setting up such a system
should outpower the costs.
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Basic technical knowledge required: The farmers will be required to have basic
technical knowledge of using mobile phones/ smartphones and will have to be
trained to use the apps.
Long term benefits: The benefits of incorporating such a system will be seen
gradually. Thus, the farmer needs to wait for a while before reaping the actual
benefits of the product.
TAICon
TAICon is an event that aims to spread awareness about AI and its uses to the people
of Tamil Nadu. The event is proposed to invite distinguished keynote speakers from
across the industry to educate about current uses and the potential of AI. Dignitaries
from diverse industries and academia are proposed to be a part of the event.
A hackathon was proposed as a part of TAICon which would help in shortlisting and
providing the IT Garage with a possible list of start-up companies for incubation.
Smart India Hackathon: conducted by the Ministry of HRD to provide students with
a platform to find a solution to problems that people face daily.
Contribution:
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● Ideation of the event TAICon and coming up with the working strategy, its
vision and the objectives it will fulfil.
● The following are the objectives that the TAICon hackathon aims to fulfil:
o Identify AI use cases for the departments
o Organize a 3-day hackathon to provide solutions for the identified use cases
o To identify a set of ~10 use cases for the hackathon from different state
departments
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● Four prospective departments were chosen to attend the event. The
departments chosen were agriculture, healthcare, education and industries.
These departments present us cater to the entire population and solving
problems in these departments will have a high impact.
Conclusion
TAICon can be conducted as a flagship event for TNeGA and can be used for the
promotion of various initiative by the department. It can be used to increase
awareness about AI and its potential applications. This will aid innovation and
encourage bright minds in the state to come up with new ideas which can be
leveraged to work towards creating a digital economy.
AI Policy
In the year 2020 TN came up with Tamil Nadu Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence
Policy 2020. The goal of the Safe and Ethical AI Policy was to allow harnessing the
power of AI for the public good while keeping it safe and ethically compatible with
human values. And now TN is planning to come up with a new policy on Artificial
Intelligence in Governance. We helped the team with the drafting of the policy.
Executive Summary
Recent years have seen the development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence
(AI) based solutions for addressing challenging and previously unsolvable real-life
problems. The Tamil Nadu Government, which has always been a forerunner in the
adoption and delivery of ICT-based solutions for Good Governance, is investing
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significant resources for the development of AI-based solutions for further improving
its Citizen Engagement, Service Delivery and Problem Redressal Processes so that
“no Citizen is left behind.” With incredible advances made in data collection,
processing and computation power, intelligent systems can now be deployed to take
over a variety of tasks, enable connectivity and enhance productivity. As AI’s
capabilities have dramatically expanded, so have its utility in a growing number of
fields.
While AI has the potential to provide large incremental value to a wide range of
sectors, adoption to date has been driven primarily from a commercial perspective.
Technology disruptions like AI are a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, and hence
large-scale adoption strategies need to strike a balance between narrow definitions
of financial impact and the greater good.
The forthcoming proliferation of AI in society is likely to affect all walks of life. This
calls for a pro-active AI awareness, capacity building and training for the State’s
residents, in addition to three pillars of Governance namely, the Executive, the
Legislature and the Judiciary. Collaborative partnership with private players and
Institutions are essential for ensuring that Innovation is encouraged and the State
remains at the cutting-edge of AI. The Policy concludes with practical guidelines on
how this may be achieved while ensuring that Equity, Fairness and Justice are
adequately addressed.
Contents
The document talks about the goals and objective and the applicability of the policy.
It focuses on what the government and the other stakeholders have to do for the
adoption of the AI, sectors that have to be focused on for AI implementation, AI
awareness and capacity building and the potential impact on citizens. It also lists
down the guidelines that have to be followed for implementing AI in governance. It
also mentions the things Tamil Nadu has to do to make the state a global hub. It has
been crafted after considering the pros and cons of the technology, to provide a road
map for the State’s Policymakers for the adoption of AI-based solutions. It also lists
down the progress done by the other countries and governments in the field of AI.
Cataract
In India cataract has been reported to be responsible for almost 70% of the bilaterally
blind in the country. The e-Paarvai app has been developed on free-hand eye images
taken from the smartphone. After searching for several open datasets available
online, we were unable to find any source having eye images taken from the
smartphone for cataract disease.
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The e-Paarvai app is aimed to impact the lives of more than 2 crore plus residents of
Tamil Nadu (who are over the age of 50). The biggest beneficiary of this app is senior
citizens in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu, where the senior citizens do not have access
to quality eye care screening. The e-Paarvai app is currently being used by the Tamil
Nadu State Control Blindness Society (TNSBCS) to screen citizens in more than 14
districts in Tamil Nadu.
During our internship, we went through the SRS document to understand the working
of the application and then were involved in multiple phases of usability testing of
the application. Minor bugs were reported to the vendor and fixed.
The e-Paarvai application had to be translated into Tamil. We were actively involved
in translating the English app to Tamil and ensuring there is no discrepancy between
the two versions of the application.
We actively made calls to the district hospital HOD’s to monitor their usage of the
app. We made sure they were not facing any difficulties while using the app.
Monitored the dashboard, to check if the app was being used by the district hospitals.
We could see a dip in the number of screenings performed owing to the onset of the
second wave of COVID-19.
Worked actively on creating the nomination documents for the entry of e-PAARVAI:
AI-based cataract detection system and Contact-less AI-based Face Recognition
System for Attendance.
Miscellaneous work
Apart from the assigned objectives, we were also involved in ad-hoc tasks to help the
team:
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TNeGA too participated with AI entries in healthcare, agriculture and education
sectors. We helped the team in drafting the competition submission
documents.
FICCI’s DT5 conference and exhibition online is scheduled on 4th June 2021
with the theme “Digital Technologies Transforming Healthcare Ecosystem and
Creating Opportunities”. This will enable Tech & Medical pillars to showcase,
deliberate, and explore the latest technologies, opportunities, & innovations
shaping healthcare systems. The 3 golden vectors of healthcare such as
Access, Cost and Quality will see extensive discussions. We created a draft of
the speeches for this event for Principle Secretary IT.
• Chatbot testing
Along with Anna university, TNeGA has developed a Tamil chatbot, named Anil
(squirrel in Tamil) using Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence
technology. “The chatbot will guide and advise people by answering their
queries and guide them to obtain government services like obtaining nativity
certificates, income certificates, government certificates and so on. The
application was launched in English too during our internship and we helped
the team by testing it and identifying the glitches.
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Experience gained during Internship
It was a great experience working with the TNeGA, the nodal agency set up to support
and drive all e-Governance initiatives of the Government of Tamil Nadu. We got a
good overview of the various initiatives taken by the state to adopt technology for
public good or to improve the existing processes.
We got the opportunity to work on developing a POC for the envisioned project of
providing predictive services to the people of the state. This involved us going
through the citizen charter documents of the different departments and coming up
with a set of criteria to satisfy the requirements for the majority of the schemes.
Analytical skills: To analyse given unstructured data and convert them to generalised
structured data.
Design thinking: Looking at problems from a broader perspective and finding solution
keeping all the factors in mind.
Deciding on AI projects: Gained the ability to distinguish use cases based on whether
AI can be used to solve the problem.
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Conclusion
This report is a holistic representation of all the work that we completed during the
internship. It includes details about all the objectives that we were tasked to complete
and a detailed explanation about all of them.
The internship was a great learning ride where we got an opportunity to work on a
wide array of objectives touching on various facets on which the company works.
We got to explore various fields of management that we learn in the classroom in
tasks which pertained to consulting, data analysis, project management.
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References
• https://sanguina.com/
• https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/bosch-hemoglobin-monitor-
early-detection-of-anemia-without-blood-tests-223296.html
• https://nasscom.in/ai-gamechangers/
• https://tnega.tn.gov.in/
• https://tnega.tn.gov.in/assets/pdf/AIPolicy2020.pdf
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