Page 24 - 2018 October Newsletter WEBEL

24 Volume: 22
October 2018 Issue

Shri Debashis Sen, IAS, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Information Technology & Electronics, Govt. of West
Bengal, graced the summit as keynote speaker. In his keynote address Shri Debashis Sen, IAS, mentioned about the 50
acre plot of land opposite the IIIT, which the Govt. of West Bengal has earmarked to build a whole city with a theme of
Data Analytics. Hon’ble Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee named it “Samriddhi” means prosperity. Somebody from the
ICT sector of a country of the Middle East offered an investment of 5 thousand crore rupees to develop the project
and in return asked for all data from the public hospitals of West Bengal. Though Government refused the offer but
there is a lesson that somebody can spend such huge amount of money to get some data. It is said “Data is Oil”, and
Oil is money.

For public welfare public data can be used by researchers and analytics in such a way that public data can be de-
anonymised without looking at privacy issue. There is a virtual e-market place that is coming up, especially in the
Artificial Intelligence field for data curation, data levelling and data de-duplication. Referring to his experience as the
Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal Shri Sen said, data duplication is there and to solve that a human person is
needed and then only the algorithm tries to understand what it is. So the youth from districts of West Bengal can build
quick start-ups, get into this market place, earn some money, get rich from oil exploration, i.e. data exploration in the
same way as Facebook and Google is doing. He pointed out to a thing which is coming is data broking. “We need firms,
data brokers, and such people who can help us, because we cannot negotiate with big companies. Data Scientists, Data
Analytics can help and work with the Government.”

He mentioned a publicity campaign by Intel which says “The data era has arrived. Be ready”. As desktops and Laptops
are jack of all trade and good for no specialised thing, hence for data mining very very specialised type of hardware is
required. For that the Government is getting ready by making a Silicon Valley Hub, by making Falta Electronic
Manufacturing Cluster, Naihati Electronic Manufacturing Cluster, by allotting plot at Sonarpur Hardware Park. Hon’ble
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is dedicating 100 acres of prime urban land to the cause of emerging technology, to
the cause of Data Science, to the cause of any kind of research and analytics. So let Bengal get into the new era as Intel
said “Be Ready”.

Shri Debashis Sen, IAS, delivering speech Shri Gautam Banerjee, President, Data Science Foundation
presenting memento to Shri Debashis Sen, IAS

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