National Urban Digital Mission, India urban data exchange (IUDX), SmartCode Platform

• Be N By IAS, Delhi
• 24, Feb 2021

For : GS-2: Governance

CONTEXT:

The National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM) has been launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs along with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

NATIONAL URBAN DIGITAL MISSION:

• Digital infrastructure: National Urban Digital Mission will create a digital infrastructure for cities in the country.
• Approach: It will institutionalise a citizen-centric and ecosystem-driven approach to urban governance and service delivery in cities by 2022, and across all cities and towns by 2024.
• Three pillars of Ps: It will be working across the three pillars of people, process, and platform to provide holistic support to cities and towns.
• The NUDM will create a shared digital infrastructure that can consolidate and cross-leverage the various digital initiatives of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
• It will enable cities and towns across India to benefit from holistic and diverse forms of support, in keeping with their needs and local challenges.

INDIA URBAN DATA EXCHANGE (IUDX):

• Developed by: Smart Cities Mission and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
• IUDX serves as a seamless interface for data providers and data users, including ULBs.
• Function: To share, request, and access datasets related to cities, urban governance, and urban service delivery.
• IUDX is an open-source software platform which facilitates secure, authenticated, and managed exchange of data amongst various data platforms, third party authenticated and authorised applications.

SmartCode:

• It is a platform that enables all ecosystem stakeholders to contribute to a repository of open-source code for various solutions and applications for urban governance.
• It is designed to address the challenges that ULBs face in the development and deployment of digital applications to address urban challenges, by enabling cities to take advantage of existing codes and customising them to suit local needs, rather than having to develop new solutions from scratch.
• As a repository of open-source software, the source code available on the platform will be free to use without any licensing or subscription fees, thus limiting costs to those involved with customising the code and developing a locally-relevant solution

SOURCE: PIB

MCQs:

Recently, the National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM) has been launched to create a digital infrastructure for cities in the country. Which of the following ministry has launched it?

• a) Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs
• b) Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
• c) Both (a) and (b)
• d) None of the above

ANS: C