Government going big on digital: Arvind Gupta

“Last year, people asked me are we ready for GST? Today we are live on GST. The volume of GST transaction is 2.5 billion invoices per month. It not only uploads data on cloud; it does all the reconciliation in the cloud. The volume of transaction makes GST the biggest cloud system in the world today,” said Arvind Gupta, head of Digital India Foundation which works on digital inclusion, internet governance, and smart cities.

Gupta talked about the various initiatives the government has taken in the last two and half years to move towards digitization such as India stack, banking digitization through BHIM and UPI, JAM (Jandhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) and also the direct transfer of benefits.

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Gupta who also leads Bhartiya Janata Party’s Information and Technology team said that the Aadhar has helped save $9 billion or Rs 57,000 crore in the last two years while the cost to build it was just Rs 6400 crore.

Going further, the government plans to make use of Artificial Intelligence and BOTS. A special committee set up set up by the ministry of commerce is exploring how Artificial Intelligence can be used to disrupt manufacturing industry. The government is also exploring ways to integrate BOTS with Aadhaar. The message here is India is transforming at every level. However, where we are lagging is in companies making innovative models to serve people.