Digital India : Reflections and Practice

​M. P. Gupta is Professor & Head at Management Department, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (India); area Chair of Information Systems & also Coordinator-Center for Excellence in E-gov at IIT Delhi. Known for pioneering works in the area of e-governance, he has been spending significant amount of resources in developing cases, tools and frameworks to promote e-governance research in the country. These included 24 Doctoral thesis, 17 sponsored projects worth >5 crores, co-authored book 'Government Online', two other edited books 'Towards E-government' & 'Promise of E-governance’ and 200+ research papers appeared in National and International Journals/Conference Proceedings]. He founded the International Conference on E-governance (ICEG) in 2003 which is running into its 12th year with 14 edited volumes (largest collection of literature on e-gov). He has been closely following Government of India (GoI) National Plan on E-gov which is now rechristened into an umbrella program of ‘Digital India’. His studies have suitably fed into these programs in general and ‘Cyber Security Policy of India’ in particular. His recent interest lies into exploring some the issues of smart cities. With ready expertise of e-governance, it is logical to design studies addressing challenges of ‘smart city governance’. In pursuits of the same, he is steering an European Union funded (Horzon-2020) project ‘EU-India Cooperation Platform in Future Internet and Electronic Media’, which deals with the setting up of cluster to cluster partnerships between India and EU into areas pertaining to the convergence and/or intersection of Future Internet and Digital MEDIA (FI-MEDIA). Some of the key areas of smart cities have been identified for cooperation and knowledge sharing. He has also developed a report on ‘Smart Campus@IITD’ setting the agenda for smart campus living at IIT Delhi. This was recently presented at Frankfurt Book Fair during 14-16 Oct 2015 at the NEM summit. He is also amember of core team steering ‘Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA)’ where aim is to bring transformational change in rural development processes by leveraging knowledge institutions (IITs, NITs, IIMs etc.). He is responsible for developing resources on ‘Smart Village’ which forms an important agenda under UBA. Interesting collaboration ideas on FIWARE from European Union (EU) and smart farming in particular from the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), Ireland, have garnered significant interest in UBA, especially in relation to monitoring of animals health and the impacts to/ from their feeding practices using ‘smart technologies’. He is involved in several policy making committees on ICT in the Center and State Governments in India; also on jury of prestigious awards committees viz. National Awards on e-gov, Data Security Council of India (DSCI), Computer Society of India (CSI) Egov Awards and Web Ratna Awards which is now renamed as ‘Digital India Awards’ since 2016’. A recipient of the prestigious Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS) fellowship of Shastri Indo Canadian Institute, Calgary (Canada) 1996 and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Manitoba. Conferred Best Professor award in 2012 at Singapore World Education Congress and CMO Asia.
Arpan Kumar Kar is currently employed as an Asst. Professor in Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Prior to joining IIT Delhi, he was Assistant Professor(v) in IIM Rohtak. He is also a visiting professor in some IIMs (L, A). He has published over 70 articles in Elsevier, Springer, Emerald, Taylor and Francis, IEEE, AIS, ACM, Inderscience, etc and presented his research in leading conferences like HICSS, IFIP, ICEGOV, etc. He is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards and recognitions for his research. He also has prior industry experience with IBM – India Research Laboratory and Cognizant Business Consulting, besides having completed a number of prestigious projects for reputed organizations (e.g. EU, GoI, etc). He has completed his integrated doctorate (FPM) from XLRI Jamshedpur (highest CQPI) and graduation in engineering from Jadavpur University (gold medalist).

Shuchi Sinha is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi). A PhD from University of London, she has taught and researched in the areas of HRM, Leadership, Change Management, Identity regulation, Business Communication and other aspects of organization studies at various universities of repute like the University of London, University of Bath and University of Roehampton in the United Kingdom and IIT Delhi and IIM Rohtak in India. She has also worked as a post-doctoral research fellow with the National Health Service (NHS) South West Strategic Health Authority, UK and University of Bath, UK. Her research has been published in international journals of repute like the Journal of International Business Studies, Culture and Organization, Human Values in Management. She is an Associate Editor for the Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management (JFSM) published by Springer.She has successfully completed consulting projects, conducted industry programs and delivered sessions on Interpersonal Effectiveness, Leadership Development, Managing Change, Business Communication, Team Dynamics and designing new structures for Government and Private organizations like the Ministry of Women and Child Development, NTPC, CPRI, IIM Rohtak, National Institute of Technology Durgapur among others. Prior to her doctoral research, she has worked as a consultant and trainer in the areas of change management, leadership development and talent assessment across different industry verticals.