NE NEWS SERVICE
AHMEDABAD, JULY 16
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday launched an Artificial Intelligence-powered application developed by the ministry and IIT-Kanpur to improve grievance redressal in the Central government, says a Defence release.
“The Defence Minister was briefed that this AI-powered application will automatically handle and analyse the complaints of the people and would reduce human intervention, save time and bring more transparency in their disposal,” the ministry said in a statement.
The AI tool has the capability to understand the content of the complaint, and identify repeats or spams automatically, it said. Based on the meaning of the complaint, it can categorise them even when key words normally used for such searches are not present in the complaint, the statement noted.
The AI tool enables geographical analysis of complaints in a category and identifies whether it was adequately addressed by the office concerned, it mentioned. This is the first AI-based system developed to improve grievance redressal in the government, it said.
“Given that lakhs of complaints are received on CPGRAMS portal (Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System portal) of Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, this application will have great use in understanding the nature of complaints, geographies from where they emanate and policy changes which can be introduced to create systemic improvements to address these grievances,” it mentioned.
Speaking on the occasion, the Defence Minister described the application as a product of good governance, which reflects the growing synergy between the Government and academia. He said this initiative is another citizen centric reform of the Government that aims to empower the people at large.
Rajnath Singh lauded Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG) for playing an important role in the reform of the Public Grievances Redressal System, saying that resolving the grievances of people is a great service in itself. He added that the active involvement of reputed institutions like IIT Kanpur will further bolster the system and resolve the grievances of people in a transparent and effective manner.
A tripartite MoU for the project was signed among Department of Defence, MoD, DARPG and IIT, Kanpur on August 4, 2020.
The release of this application marks the introduction of AI-based innovations into governance and administration. This project is first of its kind initiative of the Government for using AI, data science and Machine Learning techniques in grievance redressal. The success of this project in MoD will pave the way for extension of this application across other Ministries. The MoD and IIT, Kanpur intend to drive their collaboration forward in the coming years, seeking to better leverage the use of AI for the disposal of citizens’ complaints. The web-based application has been jointly developed by Department of Defence, MoD; DARPG and a team of IIT Kanpur comprising of Professors Shalabh, Nisheeth Srivastava and Piyush Rai.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions Dr Jitendra Singh was also present at the launch event.
Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar; Additional Secretary, DARPG Shri V Srinivas, Additional Secretary MoD Nivedita Shukla Verma, Director, IIT Kanpur Prof Abhay Karandikar and other senior officials of MoD were present on the launch of the application.
