Department of IT & Electronics, Government of West Bengal, has launched a hackathon for the development of a data anonymizer, with support from data innovation firm Sapio Analytics.
Mr. Sanjay Kumar Das, Joint Secretary IT&E Department, Govt of West Bengal and Prof Bimal Kumar Roy addressing media at Press club Kolkata
The Anonymizer Hackathon, enabling trust in privacy, invites academicians, students, and technologists from across the globe, to participate in the creation of this transformative innovation. The hackathon shall be held in 2 main phases, Ideathon, to deep dive into the problem and come up with the problem statement, and Hackathon, for the actual development of the tool.
Ideated, conceptualized and framed by the Department of IT&E, the concepts of anonymized data lake, anonymization auditor, and artificially intelligent layer of data anonymization, are expected to generate a data-driven economy.
Throughout the phases, Sapio Analytics, a firm known for its intelligent data lake powering India’s livelihood, shall provide consistent mentorship and guidance to all developers, as a knowledge support partner. The mentorship for the hackathon shall be executed under the guidance of Padma Shri Prof Bimal Kumar Roy, former Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and a leading cryptologist known for his innovations across the world. A team of expert mentors shall be constituted under Prof Roy’s overall mentorship.
“The anonymizer can change the way we see and experience the current data revolution. Every solution maker, whether startups or industries, wants live public transactional data, and this live data will be passed through the Anonymizer resulting in an Anonymized Data Lake,” said Sanjay Kumar Das, Joint Secretary, Department of IT & Electronics, Government of West Bengal, at the occasion of the launch.
“This innovation is expected to transform the way we use data. It will make data truly valuable by allowing it to be rightly anonymized before being monetized for growth and impact. We are hoping that this anonymizer will become an integral part of every major government and corporate policy,” added Ashwin Srivastava, CEO of Sapio Analytics.
Launched in association with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a technology partner and WUElev8 as a hackathon partner, this hackathon is expected to engage with some of the best brains in data analytics, leading to a first-of-its-kind innovation.
The winners of the hackathon shall be provided an opportunity to do a pilot project with the Government of West Bengal, deploying the solution with real live transactional data, through the Department of IT&E, with support from the knowledge partner Sapio Analytics. The pilot is expected to deliver for the first time an artificially intelligent layer of anonymization for data used by government departments, thus ensuring privacy with trust. This shall make the state of West Bengal the first state in India to usher in a data revolution.