Today we had a day-long conference with experts from diverse fields on Making New Town a Smart City. (The smart city is referred to as a Star City in State Government records). This was held at the Eco Island's Glass House. More than 100 delegates attended with participation from IBM, CISCO, HP, Siemens, ILFS, TCS, Essel Infra, L&T and many others. There were national and international experts. The inaugural session was attended by Mr Satish Tewari, Additional Chief Secretary (IT), Mr Santosh Nimbalkar, Dy Commissioner of Police, Mr Bhudeb Chakraborty of NISG (National Institute of Smart Governance, our consultants), Mr Gopal Ghosh, CEO NKDA and Mr Sutanu Kar, JMD Hidco. In my remarks, I said that we must be careful to avoid technology for technology's sake, and that to me smart city meant using technology -and not necessarily IT only- to improve quality of life in the city. There wee there technical sessions too.
After the session, several delegates took a round of the Eco Park. A sunset photo:
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In between sessions, I opened a new Pay-and-Use toilet near Children's Park/ Tea Garden site of Eco Park. This is built by NKDA. A photo:
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Here is a clipping from today's paper:
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Dear Sir,
ReplyDeleteTwo years back in Jan 2013 there was an initiative to have a GPS / RFID enabled passenger information system for new town. Is there any progress on that ? Is it still being considered for implementation or has it been abandoned due to the challenges ?
If the system could be implemented it would definitely be a feather in the cap for new town as a smart city.
I am referring to this post -
http://principalsecretarysblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/passenger-information-system-in-new-town.html
Thanks,
Sudipta.