In line with changing times, National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) plans to formulate new courses for training people in upcoming technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.
NIELIT, part of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, will be revamping its entire structure to meet the growing challenges in the field of IT. This has been planned after the instructions from electronics and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
NIELIT will expand its reach by setting up at least one branch in every state. Currently, it conducts about 100 courses related to information technology and electronics fields.
The government had earlier announced that all government entities with the widest reach will be used to train people across the country. As per the announcement, there are around two lakh common services centres (CSCs) which will give training to 1.2 crore people; three-lakh students will be trained by NIELIT and 37 lakh IT professionals will be trained by Software Technology Parks of India.
The minister has also asked NIELIT to prepare new programmes for enhancing skill sets of existing workforce in the government.
Prasad took a review of the functioning of the organisation at the annual general body meeting recently. During the review, the minister said an effort to improve turnover should be pursued through expansion of activity. Also, a target should be fixed for achieving annual revenues of Rs 1,000 crore in five years.
According to available information, NIELET registered a growth of over 19% in 2016-17 with a turnover of Rs 356.35 crore. NIELIT has recently been asked to train 4,000 government staff in Uttar Pradesh.
NIELIT has 40 offices apart from network presence in over 700 institutes across the country. Besides IT training courses, NIELIT is also the nodal implementing agency on behalf of Department of Electronics & IT for data digitisation of the population of 15 assigned states and two union territories for the creation of National Population Register (NPR) project of Registrar General of India (RGI).
By Baishakhi Dutta
