New Delhi, Sep 14: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday lauded the efforts of the Central Board of Indirect Tax and Customs (CBIC) and underlined the need for training Personnel for better utilisation of Artificial Intelligence and data analytics. "You keep doing good work, generating revenues, you are noticed for it, Prime Minister made a special appreciative mention recently on level of GST revenues," she said while inaugurating'Kendriya GST Parisar', the housing complex for CGST officers of Mumbai zone in Kharghar, Navi Mumbai. The Finance Minister also spoke about the need for training CBIC officials for better utilisation of Artificial Intelligence, data-analytics, IoT and other technologies to identify fraudulent practices, such as detection of tax evasion. She was also appreciative of the Central Intelligence Unit team of CGST Mumbai Zone for fantastic data analysis and mining tools used for large scale tax evasion resulting in big recovery and booking of offenders. She also lauded the effort of the department to take care of future needs and development required for the second phase for welfare of officers and staff.

As the Indian government plans modernisation of railways, the government's plans for the future of technology interactions within railways include internet of things (IoT), big data and artificial intelligence. Speaking at an industry summit in Bhubaneswar, RailTel chairman and managing director Puneet Chawla said the Indian Railways will rely heavily on technology as it focusses on the satisfaction of employees and passengers as well as in train operations to ensure safety, punctuality and line capacity. Chawla said that RailTel was the fifth-largest telecom infrastructure provider in the country and listed examples such as "video walls, WiFi, CCTVs, e-office and computer-based signalling used in railway operations". He said the future of technological engagement with railways could include "IoT platforms, big data and artificial intelligence". The modernisation of Indian railways was part of BJP's 2019 manifesto for Lok Sabha elections.

Budget 2020: India has made rapid strides in expanding the MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise) sector and adopting digital technologies. Technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer great promise and raise apprehensions at the same time and it will take the concerted efforts of all key stakeholders in the ecosystem to create a framework for maximum benefit while acknowledging the challenges in the most pragmatic manner possible. Here, we seek to explore how best the AI technology toolkit can accelerate business performance for MSMEs; followed up with a set of recommendations for the key stakeholders in this arena. The time is right and it is now. Embedding AI across key business functions has the potential of driving exponential impact on key business levers- innovation, growth and efficiency.

Calling data as the new oil, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her Budget speech announced the launch of a new policy to set up data centre parks for enabling digitisation of all public institutions in the country. While announcing the allocation of Rs 6,000 crore to the BharatNet programme, Sitharaman also said that advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, cloud computing, drones are disrupting the existent business models and rewriting the world economic order. "Data now is clearly the new oil. I propose a policy to set up data centre farms throughout the country. The idea is to skilfully incorporate data in every step of the value chain," she said.

Union Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has constituted a task force to foster artificial intelligence in the manufacturing sector. The task force is designated to prepare for industrial revolution 4.0 and digitise the manufacturing sector. In a statement, she said, "With rapid development in the fields of information technology and hardware, the world is about to witness a fourth industrial revolution." Sitharaman in her statement added that "the power of big data, high computing capacity, artificial intelligence and analytics will be used to digitise manufacturing in India." Inc42 earlier reported that Nirmala Sitharaman used her MPLAD funds for setting up an incubator and coworking space in Mangaluru.