Senior Government officials and industry experts discussed the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for redressal of public grievances and promotion of universalised face authentication processes for simplification of service delivery during a brainstorming session, said an official statement issued on Friday.

The session -- ‘Emerging and Future e-Governance Initiatives, e-Commerce Initiatives, and Emerging Technologies’ -- was organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) on Thursday.

The session marked a significant effort to promote knowledge exchange among key players in the realm of e-service delivery, e-governance and innovative technology implementation, said the statement issued by the Personnel Ministry.

Fifteen domain experts and distinguished representatives from leading organisations, including Deloitte, PwC, Primus Partners, KPMG, QCI, and EY attended the session along with the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) officials.

During the session, V Srinivas, Secretary, DARPG, spoke about how the e-service delivery horizon has broadened across the country in the last few years with 1,574 mandatory e-services delivery being reported by the states and union territories in NeSDA (National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment) Way Forward report of November 2023, as against only 872 services in the 2019 report.

He highlighted how the states and union territories have shifted service delivery focus to unified service portals as a single stop for getting the e-services and a number of states have already achieved 100 per cent saturation.

Thereafter, sector specialists from the e-gov strategy domain shed light on the achievements, emerging scenario and future direction of e-governance and e-commerce, including the emerging technologies, and shared some global best practices case studies, the statement said.

Srinivas concluded the session by “charting the way forward to focus on promotion of universalised face authentication processes for simplification of service delivery, usage of AI in grievance redressal, push towards e-commerce initiatives and strong media outreach to disseminate best practices”, among other things.