PM Modi to Address 10,000, Digital Nomads in Smart India Hackathon 2017 today
To Endeavour Digital India Initiative, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing around 10,000 programmers in the World’s largest Hackathon today.
PMO will be addressing via video conferencing where 10,000 programmers will compete in the 36-hour event finale which is being held at 26 locations in the country.
Smart India Hackathon focuses on solving problems of social importance. 29 ministries and government departments have identified 598 problems, the initial response for which came from over 7,500 teams of approximately 42,000 students.
The Programme will start at 8 Am today and will go on until 8 pm on 2nd April.
1,266 teams of 10,000 participants from 28 states have been shortlisted for the finale. For 36 hours, the selected groups will sit locked in and find digital solutions for the problem statements by creating software or mobile apps.
The end products will then be evaluated by judges from the respective ministry and industry experts, and the top three teams with the best solutions will be awarded Rs. 1 lakh, Rs. 75,000 and Rs. 50,000. The winners will also form the Community of Innovative Minds.
The Awarded Softwares will later be used by relevant ministry or department to improve the governance systems.
In the run-up to the finale, online training was given to students by over 2,000 mentors.
A senior official of the IT ministry told, “Digital India, Start-up India and Make in India campaigns which need skilled and innovative workforce are the starting point of the Smart India Hackathon”.
Government sources say Smart India Hackathon is an effort to improve innovation by encouraging students to apply knowledge to real-life situations and find innovative solutions.