Smart Cities: CM signs MoU with Oracle

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis inked a Memorandum of Understanding with tech giant Oracle Corporation in San Francisco, USA, to accelerate the state’s digital transformation initiatives. As part of the pact, Oracle and the state government will create a Centre of Excellence (CoE) to help accelerate its ‘Smart City’ programme and modernise the government’s technology solutions.

The CoE, which will be based in Mumbai, will use Oracle’s Cloud solutions. According to Fadnavis, who delivered a keynote speech at ‘Oracle Open World 2016’, the CoE will help the government to connect 29,000 villages of Maharashtra and launch government-to-citizen and government-to-business services in the state.

“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. Using the technology, every single village will be a connected market, and health, education and agriculture will come under this,” Fadnavis said. The centre will also become a research platform to design and develop new apps to run various government schemes.

“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,” said Safra Catz, CEO, Oracle Corporation.

According to Fadnavis, the CoE can become a prototype for all other states to emulate and learn from their experiences of building a smart city. Earlier, Fadnavis had announced that the state will have 1,200 hotspots in Mumbai city by May 2017, of these 500 hotspots will be operational by November. Fadnavis added that he invites various technology players to unify Mumbai’s transport infrastructure and come up with a single ticket for all transport modes.