How Akhilesh Srivastava is Fuelling Digital Transformation of India’s Public Sector

India has been witnessing a major digital transformation ever since the Central government initiated a drive to modernise its public sector. The modernisation campaign integrates advanced technology in each of the domains of the sector to make its processes more efficient, simple, and expeditious. The drive has made groundbreaking impact especially on the highways sector and, more recently, on the legal sector. And Akhilesh Srivastava, Chief General Manager (CGM) at the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), has been instrumental to the transformation.

CGM Akhilesh Srivastava spearheads various mega infrastructure projects under the digitalisation campaign, some of which include: Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), drones for highway projects, Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system, GPS Tolling, and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR).

The ATMS, or Traffic Incident Management System (TIMS), uses equipment such as cameras and speed sensors with databases to improve, ease, and organise traffic on highways. The system gathers real-time data from the equipment and relays it to a command centre for integration and processing. The processed data helps in providing digital and physical services, including incident management, traffic routing, congestion notifications, etc.

The functions of ATMS include real-time traffic monitoring, traffic signal monitoring and control, traffic camera monitoring and control, active traffic management, arterial management, road weather information system, and many others. Recently, the NHAI began the installation of a surveillance camera system as a part of the ATMS.

ETC, another successful project undertaken by CGM Srivastava, allows users to make toll payments electronically, easing the flow of traffic and reducing the time lapsed at Toll gantries and plazas. The RFID-encoded FASTag ETC system uses sensors and computers to instantly debit toll fee from vehicles.

Besides this, Srivastava and his team at the NHAI also are working on an advanced iteration of the ETC – GPS tolling. The system will use satellite-enabled technology such as GPS to track vehicular movement on national highways and automatically deduct the toll fee based on distance travelled.

The new system has the potential to end the need for toll infrastructure, and will bill the user only for the distance they travel as opposed to the previous ones that invoice them for the entire stretch of the highway. The pilot of the GPS tolling project is being conducted in the Delhi-Mumbai corridor.

Srivastava also has mulled the use of industrial drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for the designing, construction, and monitoring of highway projects and to help the ATMS machinery carry out surveillance of national highways.

More recently, the NHAI CGM developed a first-of-its-kind Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) portal for the automated/semi-automated settlement of legal disputes in trade and commerce. The UN-approved techno-legal software suite, which was originally developed for the construction industry, will allow the Indian legal system to focus on important cases by automating the redressal of commercial disputes.

Through these projects and more, CGM Akhilesh Srivastava has been fuelling the government’s bid to improve transparency and reduce fraudulent practices, and fuel the ongoing digital transformation of India’s public sector.

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Varshakhare is a software engineer with extensive experience and management skills and works for a hi-tech marketing company. VarshaKhare has a B.SC in computer sciences from the Lovely Professional University.