Rajnath Singh launches AI-powered app to improve grievance redressal in govt

Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered grievance management application to improve grievance redressal in the government
Rajnath Singh launches AI-powered app to improve grievance redressal in govt

New Delhi: Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered grievance management application in New Delhi on Thursday. The application has been developed by the Ministry of Defence with the help of IIT-Kanpur. On the occasion, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions Dr Jitendra Singh, Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances' (DARPG) Additional Secretary, Ministry of Defence's Additional Secretary V Srinivas, IIT-Kanpur's Director Nivedita Shukla Verma, Prof Abhay Karandikar and other senior officials of Ministry of Defence were also present.

According to the Ministry of Defence, this is the first AI-based system developed to improve grievance redressed in the government. The AI tool developed as part of the initiative has the capability to understand the content of the complaint based on the contents therein. As a result, it can identify repeated complaints or spam automatically. Based on the meaning of the complaint, it can categorise complaints of different categories even when keywords normally used for such search are not present in the complaint. It enables geographical analysis of complaints in a category, including analysis of whether the complaint was adequately addressed or not by the concerned office. Easy user-friendly search enables users to formulate their own queries/categories depending on management requirements and seek performance results based on the query.

Given that lakhs of complaints are received on the CPGRAMS portal of DARPG, this application will have great use in understanding the nature of complaints, geographies from where they emanate and policy changes that can be introduced to create systemic improvements to address these grievances.

A tripartite MoU for the project was signed among the Department of Defence, Ministry of Defence DARPG and IIT-Kanpur on August 4, 2020. 

The release of this application marks the introduction of AI-based innovations into governance and administration. This project is the first-of-its-kind initiative of the government for using AI, data science and machine learning techniques in grievance redressal. The success of this project in MoD will pave the way for the extension of this application across other ministries. The MoD and IIT-Kanpur intend to drive their collaboration forward in the coming years, seeking to better leverage the use of AI for the disposal of citizens' complaints. The web-based application has been jointly developed by the Department of Defence, Ministry of Defence, DARPG and a team of IIT-Kanpur comprising of Professors Shalabh, Nisheeth Srivastava and Piyush Rai.

Speaking on the occasion, the Defence Minister described the application as a product of good governance, which reflects the growing synergy between the government and academia. He said this initiative is another citizen-centric reform of the government that aims to empower the people at large.

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The minister lauded the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG) for playing an important role in the reform of the Public Grievances Redressal System, saying that resolving the grievances of people is a great service in itself. He added that the active involvement of reputed institutions like IIT Kanpur will further bolster the system and resolve the grievances of people in a transparent and effective manner.

Singh was briefed that this AI-powered application will automatically handle and analyse the complaints of the people and would reduce human intervention, save time and bring more transparency to their disposal.

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