Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad inaugurated the National Data Centre here and said it was part of PM Modi’s vision of Digital India where IT + IT = IT, Information Technology plus Indian Talent for India Tomorrow.

The same system was there, the manpower is also the same, but in four years it has made wonders just because of the drive and vision of the PM, he claimed.

On Monday over 700 districts across the country are linked and governance, payments, services are provided on one platform, he said. Eight more BPOs will be set up in Odisha, over 800 people hired in one year.

A 200 crore electronic manufacturing cluser has been sanctioned for Bhubaneswar since September 2017 and the Centre has released over 18 crore but it is yet to come up, he remarked while asking the state government to be more pro-active.

The new cloud-enabled National Data Centre aims to offer round-the-clock operations with secure hosting for various e-governance applications of Central and State Governments and has ability to support 35,000 virtual servers.

He said the Data centre is important because data sanctity is important and in the IT ecosystem, data centre adds to the digital clout of a State or location and raises its global profile.

Mr Prasad said, Digital India is steadily being made a peoples movement. He said, over 4.5 lakh jobs has been created in the electronics manufacturing sector during last three years.

Addressing the gathering, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan said, Odisha has enough talent in the Digital Sector.

Hundreds of educated Odia youths are working outside the state. If a strong and viable Digital Infrastructure is created, then Odia youths will return to their states and serve here. National Skill Trainers Institute in Bhubaneswar will be established soon, announced Pradhan.

A mobile app Bijuli Bati under the Soubhagya scheme was also launched on Monday. Pradhan took several jibes at the state government and said there was no point morphing photographs to claim credit and undermine the contribution of the central government.

This is unethical, he remarked while requesting a bureaucrat present at the meeting to persuade “ those above” to desist from such games. Let us compete to eliminate poverty in Odisha instead of such stunts , chided Pradhan while adding that cooperation of the state is a must for any programme to succeed.

Pradhan said that, under PRAGATI Digital initiatives Prime Minister has been monitoring the progress of unfinished projects in the country. Odisha, Bihar, UP and J&K are lagging behind in toilet construction.

“With a slew of Government apps including mygov, eWay bill, public finance management system, eHospials all being hosted by NIC, the demand for computing and storage has increased many folds,” Neeta Verma, Director General of NIC said at the launch.

NIC currently has 4,500 people across India in its various operations and will hire 800 professionals in the next one year, including for 355 cybersecurity experts, to tackle rising risks of cybersecurity.

NIC provides technology support to all governance services and hosts nearly 10,000 websites of the Government The new cloud-enabled National Data Centre will provide benefits like on-demand access to ICT (Information and Communication Technology) infrastructure for easy availability and quick deployment of applications and standardized platforms of deployment.