AWS PUBLIC SECTOR SYMPOSIUM – NEW DELHI – 2023 - A Report

Recently, the AWS Public Sector Symposium in New Delhi. AWS is helping the government and public sector organizations in APJ and India to accelerate cloud-enabled innovation, drive economic growth, and improve citizens’ lives.

The event started with opening remarks from Rahul Sharma, Regional Managing Director, Public Sector at AWS.

Here are some excerpts -

The world’s most dynamic region, and the biggest driver of global growth in 2023. Using the cloud, governments across APJ are rapidly accelerating the delivery and modernization of citizen services, enabling faster innovation and increased agility, so they can deliver better value to their citizens.

AWS has made substantial investments in India, playing a pivotal role in the country's digital transformation. Their world-class infrastructure has bolstered India's productivity, innovation, and economic growth. AWS's investments contribute significantly to the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries across the Asia-Pacific and create both direct and indirect job opportunities. By establishing cutting-edge data centers in India, AWS has facilitated innovation, increased productivity, and fostered a digitally skilled workforce.

In May 2023, AWS announced a groundbreaking $12.7 billion investment in India by 2030, supporting 131,700 full-time jobs in various sectors. This commitment underscores AWS's dedication to the Indian market. Currently, AWS operates two data center infrastructure regions in India, ensuring high resilience, data security, and low latency for Indian customers.

AWS's collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) aims to propel India's space technology sector forward. Through this partnership, AWS provides space startups, research institutes, and students access to advanced cloud technologies, fostering innovation in space technology.

MeitY has recently granted AWS India with CSP empanelment for their cloud services, utilizing the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region. This marks the second AWS region in India to receive full empanelment by MeitY. In 2017, AWS India became the first global CSP to receive empanelment for their cloud offerings from the AWS Region in Mumbai. This new empanelment will provide customers, including public sector organizations and financial services institutions, with more options to access secure, resilient, and low-latency cloud infrastructure.

Additionally, it will offer more opportunities for AWS Partners to create innovative solutions and cater to customer needs. Notable AWS customers that will benefit from this empanelment include Acko General Insurance, Axis Bank, Clevertap, CropIn, Digital India Corporation, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Government of Telangana, HDFC Life, Jupiter, Lendingkart, National Skill Development Corporation, Numaligarh Refinery Limited, PhysicsWallah, Prasar Bharati News Services, Tata Elxsi, and the University of Delhi.

AWS has two data center infrastructure regions in India – the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region, launched in 2016, and the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region, launched in November 2022. The two AWS Regions are designed to provide Indian customers with multiple options to run workloads with even greater resilience and availability, securely store data in India, and serve end users with low latency. In 2022, both AWS Regions in India – in Mumbai and Hyderabad – were among 19 AWS Regions globally whose electricity consumption was attributed to 100% renewable energy.

Moving Further, the next keynote was by: Shalini Kapoor, Country Leader and Chief Technologist, Public Sector, AWS India Pvt. Ltd.

Shalini Kapoor explained how cloud services are critical to the country's digital economy. Here are 5 main points that explain AWS's association with the growth of India's digital innovation.

• Cloud Crucial for Digital Transformation: Cloud services are essential for India's digital transformation, providing agility, cost savings, innovation, and global deployment opportunities, especially highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Economic Growth Ambitions: India aims to build a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025 and a $5 trillion economy shortly after. Embracing cloud technology is vital to achieving these ambitious goals.
• Public Sector Innovation: India's public sector is leading in digital innovation, exemplified by initiatives like Co-WIN, a vaccination platform that supports 10 million daily vaccinations, and services like DigiLocker and UMANG, which run on AWS, promoting citizen-centric digital services.
• Cloud's Impact on Indian Economy: Studies suggest large-scale cloud adoption can contribute $380 billion to India's GDP, accounting for 8% of the GDP, and create 14 million direct and indirect employment opportunities by 2026, highlighting cloud's substantial economic impact.
• Generative AI and Future Prospects: Generative AI is set to revolutionize various sectors, from healthcare, aiding diagnosis and accelerating drug discovery, to education, enhancing personalized learning experiences. AWS is democratizing access to cloud-enabled technologies, empowering public sector organizations to address pressing citizen challenges.

Moreover, AWS empowers various sectors in India, including healthcare and education. AWS's cloud solutions have facilitated healthcare organizations in improving patient care, while also advancing genomics research. In education, AWS supports initiatives that enhance learning experiences for students and educators, promoting hybrid learning environments and personalized education.

The symposium also saw Dr. Pramod Varma, (CTO) EkStep Foundation, and former Chief Architect of Aadhar sharing his views.

1. Digital Transformation Impact: India's digital transformation has significantly impacted various sectors, including banking, healthcare, and economic opportunities, contributing to the nation's growth.
2. Financial Inclusion Achievements: India achieved remarkable financial inclusion progress, increasing banking penetration from 17% in 2009 to 80% in 9 years through shared eKYC, a feat that would have taken decades using traditional methods.
3. Telecommunication Advancements: The country witnessed a teledensity increase from 37% to 93% in 8 years due to widespread eKYC adoption. Additionally, the cost of mobile data significantly decreased, enhancing accessibility for millions.
4. Digital Payment Revolution: India transitioned from a cash-dependent economy to a global leader in digital payments, recording 10 billion UPI transactions per month and an annual transaction value of $1 trillion within 6 years.
5. Digital Infrastructure and Innovation: Initiatives like DigiLocker, with 6.2 billion stored documents, and Co-WIN, delivering 2.15 billion vaccine doses digitally, showcase India's digital infrastructure growth. The Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) revolution, driven by public and private innovation, promises to formalize the economy, urging developers to embrace cloud-native solutions for India's unique needs.

Lastly, Abhijeet Agarwal, Managing Director, MPSeDC, Department of Science & Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh threw some light on various government initiatives.

He elaborated on some points on the need for Cloud adoption in Madhya Pradesh:

• Ever-growing demands of the departments
• Keeping pace with newer technologies
• Delivering complex IT services with High Availability
• Limited capacity of State Data Center to cater to all departments
• Adopting emerging technologies for governance
• Benefits of Cloud – Scalability, PAYG, IaaS/ PaaS/ SaaS, latest Infra & Technologies, etc.

The below projects are deployed by MPSEDC on AWS Cloud under the state-wide CSP empanelment which were highlighted by Abhijeet Agarwal:

• Hosting of Smart Application for Revenue Administration (SAARA) on AWS Cloud infrastructure - By using this mobile application the farmers can view their Girdawari reports and enter crop-related information on the app, preventing arbitrary actions by patwaris and providing access to crop information. The SAARA app has resolved state cases on time and supported over 4.5 crore land parcels, providing relief to people.
• Mukhya Mantri Seekho Kamao Yojna (MMSKY) MMSKY is a visionary scheme of the Hon’ble CM of MP and the government intends to enable a Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) of a stipend ₹8,000 to ₹10,000 to the youth based on their skills to facilitate on-job training. The scheme envisions a brighter future for the youth, fostering self-reliance and opening doors to various career prospects.
• Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) – Its goal is to Integrate all municipal services onto a single web-based platform and provide automated services to the city’s 1.8 million residents. It implemented SAP for Public Sector solutions and enabled online transparent delivery of all municipal services; created visibility into citizen account history; ended time-consuming manual processes for tax computations, assessment, and account reconciliations; and more efficiently managed back-office services (including HR, accounting, etc.). BMC selected AWS cloud to host SAP S/4 Hana production workload under the construct of MPSEDC CSP empanelment.

Lastly, he concluded with the way forward on how MPSEDC plans to leverage the AWS cloud for:

Some of the key points on which MPSEDC is focusing -

• Identity resolution across data sets
•  Voice to Text conversion
•  Conversational AI
•  Video and behavior analytics
•  Face recognition Systems
•  Supply Chain Optimization

The event wrapped up successfully with some informative breakout sessions, experiential zones, and some AWS training sessions.