Centre to launch portal for smart cities

The Ministry of Urban Development will launch a new portal, SmartNet, to aid the development of smart cities under the government’s flagship mission.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to launch SmartNet on the first anniversary of the smart city mission on June 24,” a senior official in the Ministry said.

The initiative is aimed at developing a platform for communication among cities, academia, researchers and technologists and creating an ecosystem of learning and disseminating information among city managers and stakeholders in urban transformation.

“SmartNet will become the primary portal for government to government; government to business; and business to government linkages for the urban sector in India,” the source said, adding that it will offer real time data for all cities.

Eventually, the ministry also wants SmartNet to become the preferred mechanism for knowledge sharing between the smart cities and cities under other missions such as AMRUT, HRIDAY, Swachch Bharat and Housing for All.

SmartNet will showcase benchmarked cases and best practice documentations, model RFP documents, financial models and business cases, land monetisation ideas, SPV structures and innovative practices and risk mitigation techniques, etc.

An ‘Urban Training Calendar’ will have information on city-level events being organised by urban local bodies and smart city SPVs. In order to enhance learning opportunities, the National Institute of Urban Affairs will launch its first course on ‘Sustainable Urban Land Use’, apart from new courses contributed by various agencies in India and abroad.

SmartNet will also host an Open Source Software Library, which will showcase apps developed during the smart city challenge phase and will highlight any new open source software being developed by mission cities during the execution phase.

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