Telangana forges partnership on responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Indo-German development cooperation

Hyderabad, Telangana: The Emerging Technologies Wing of the ITE&C Department, Government of Telangana has worked hand-in-hand with the Indo-German development cooperation project “FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence” to build AI capacities and open-source AI projects. The project is implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für InternationaleZusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The partnership started in 2021 with the inclusion of the Telangana state into the Africa-Asia AI Policymaker Network and is now progressing further into multiple areas pertaining to AI.

A two-day “AI Crash Course and Ideathon on AI procurement for Policymakers in Telangana State” has been conducted on 06 and 07 April 2022 in Hyderabad. FAIR Forward is conducting capacity building, knowledge sharing, and peer-learning on AI-related possibilities and challenges for representatives from 10+ User Departments of the Telangana Government, NITI Aayog, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India.

The opening remarks were given by Ms. Christiane Hieronymus, Head of Economic Cooperation and Development, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, New Delhi and Mr. Rajeev Ahal, Director of Natural Resource Management and Agro-Ecology, GIZ India. This was followed by a keynote address shared by Shri Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Prl. Secretary, ITE&C Department on behalf of the Government of Telangana.

The participants in the two-day workshop included senior officials from Hyderabad Police, Agriculture Department, Directorate of Animal Husbandry, GHMC, Municipal Administration, Women Development & Child Welfare Department, Panchayath Raj & Rural Development Department, Road Transport Authority, TSSPDCL, Forest Department, and various members of the ITE&C Department.

The general awareness of AI is already very high within the Telangana Government due to a plethora of activities being undertaken. Thus, the workshop focused more specifically on the challenges and key concerns that need to be addressed to achieve the responsible use and development of AI. Various topics such as the importance of representative datasets, handling bias in the algorithms, ensuring feedback in AI models, privacy concerns with data sharing and importance of local context in AI models were taken up and debated in detail. Specific case studies were also undertaken on law enforcement, agriculture, and healthcare to deliberate the various imperatives such as data privacy, awareness amongst users for their data, security of the data and removing any unintended bias in the algorithms.

The second day of the workshop focused on discussing the current AI based technology procurement procedures in place within multiple departments in Telangana. The debates presented AI procurement guidelines and processes in use by the Government of the United Kingdom, the European Union (EU) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) and compared