Government launches National Urban Digital Mission

The Central Government on February 23, 2021, launched National Urban Digital Mission- NUDM with an aim to create a digital infrastructure for the Indian cities.

According to the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry, the step will institutionalize an ecosystem-driven and a citizen-centric approach to Urban governance and service delivery in cities by the year 2022, and across all the towns and cities of the country by 2024.

The National Urban Digital Mission was launched at a virtual event by the Minister of Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad and the Minister of Union Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri.

Other initiatives such as the Smart Cities 2.0 website, India Urban Data Exchange- IUDX, Geospatial Information Management System- GMIS, and SmartCode were also launched during the event.

Launched the National Urban Digital Mission, India Urban Data eXchange, Smart Cities Mission Website 2.0, Geospatial Management Information System and Smart Code Platform with Urban Development Minister Hardeep Puri Ji.#TransformingUrbanIndia pic.twitter.com/7qLYbCmBfN

— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) February 23, 2021

Significance of National Urban Digital Mission:

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in a statement mentioned that it will create a shared digital infrastructure that will cross-leverage and consolidate various digital initiatives of the Ministry.

The mission will enable towns and cities across the country to benefit from the diverse and holistic forms of support, in accordance with their needs and local challenges.

About India Urban Data Exchange: Key Points

• IUDX has been developed in a partnership between the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and the Smart Cities Mission.

• It is an open-source software platform which will facilitate the authenticated, secure, and managed exchanged of data within various data platforms, authorized applications, and third-party authenticated.

• India Urban Data exchange will serve as a seamless interface for the data users and providers, including ULBs for requesting, sharing, and accessing data sets related to urban governance, cities, and urban service delivery.

About SmartCode initiative:

• It is a platform that will enable all the ecosystem stakeholders to contribute to a repository of open-source code for various applications and solutions for urban governance.

• The platform has been designed for addressing the challenges that ULBs face in the deployment and development of digital applications for addressing urban challenges.