'Smart Odisha Hackathon' kick-starts in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: With an aim to identify start-ups and provide a platform to local entrepreneurs, the Skill Development and Technical Education Department, in association with Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT), kicked off a two-day long 'Smart Odisha Hackathon' event here on Tuesday.

Odisha Skill Development & Technical Education Minister, Usha Devi inaugurated the event which witnessed participation of students of engineering and management colleges from across 12 states, including Odisha. The event will conclude on November 14.

Students, who participated in the event, will help identify innovative and disruptive IT solutions for public service delivery in areas of education, skills and entrepreneurship, healthcare, agriculture, ecology & environment, urban problems, disaster management among others.

The students will also develop IT solutions for glitches in different schemes of the government. Moreover, they will develop coding for different departments of the State government which will be presented during the 'Make in Odisha Conclave' on November 15.

"The main aim of Odisha government is to provide healthcare and other facilities to its people easily. But lack of awareness and availability of information related to the different schemes are posing as hindrance. So, we are trying here to develop a 'chatboard' instead of developing an app and it will be integrated to Facebook Messenger," said a student participant, Srishti Jaiswal.