Smart India Hackathon 2017 starts today, PM will address in the evening

It is said that Smart India Hackathon 2017 will be the biggest with 10,000 programmers trying to solve 598 digital problems.

New Delhi: The smart minds of the nation have come together to participate in the world’s biggest hackathon on Saturday. Grand Finale of Hackathon starts on 1 April and ends on 2 April in 26 diferent locations in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to address Hackathon 2017 via video-conference but got delayed and he will interact with the Hackathon participants in the evening.

With more than 10,000 programmers participating in this Hackathon, the main intent of the event is to promote inntion, out-of-the-box thinking in young minds. The exercise would see nearly students and pros producing digital solutions to 598 problems.

The 598 problems have been identified and posted by 29 central government departments, and include issues like geo-fencing of airports, online toll collection, smart traffic management, cyber-attacks and smart drones to make the airspace safer.

 

The 36-hour non-stop digital programming competition would start at 8 am on Saturday in 26 different locations in the country, with each location handled by one central department or ministry.

The top three teams would be awarded Rs 1 lakh, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively, and the digital solutions so awarded would be used by the ministry/departments for improving their governance systems, if necessary, with suitable upgradation.

All the prize winners would be connected to form a Community of Innovative Minds. The hackathon also aims at improving awareness about patents in the country.

According to World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), India registers 40 patents per million populations.