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In this video, Mentors and Contributors of the inaugural edition share their experience of being part of C4GT 2022.

In the presence of Indian GovTech luminaries, we officially inaugurated Code for GovTech (C4GT) 2022 on 20th June! We had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Saurabh Garg, CEO, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and Dr. Pramod Varma, Chief Architect, Aadhaar & India Stack, CTO, EkStep Foundation and Co-Founder, Beckn Protocol who delivered the keynote address at the inauguration. Dr. Garg shared his perspective on the importance & experience of tech in governance, while Dr. Varma spoke about building Digital Public Goods and what it means to build for India and to build for a billion people. Out of the ~350 applications that we received this year, spanning ~ 60 colleges, a total of 13 contributors from across the country have been selected making them the first cohort of C4GT contributors. As part of the inaugural event, we introduced the cohort as well as this year’s mentors and formally kicked off the coding period of the program. C4GT’s mentoring partners and members of the Open Source community were also in attendance.

As part of C4GT's Inauguration event, Gaurav Goel, Founder & CEO, Samagra introduces and provides an overview about the Code for GovTech program. He also shares insights into the inaugural or the 'beta' year of C4GT. About the speaker Gaurav Goel is the Founder & CEO of Samagra, a mission-driven governance consulting firm. He holds a dual degree in Computer Science & Engineering from IIT Delhi and an MBA from IIM Calcutta. After graduating from IIM Calcutta, he joined McKinsey & Co. as a Management Consultant where he worked across sectors and geographies, solving diverse corporate problem statements. While he was enjoying his stint at McKinsey, he knew that eventually he wanted to work towards improving the lives of citizens by engaging with the governance process. In 2012, he set up Samagra so that he could translate his passion into reality and create impact at scale. Gaurav is a TEDx speaker, writer and his path-breaking efforts to tackle intractable governance challenges led him to be recognized in BusinessWorld’s 40 Under 40 list of changemakers in India.

As part of C4GT's Inauguration event, Dr. Garg delivered the keynote address. Dr. Garg shared his perspective on the importance & experience of tech in governance. The session also included a Q&A round moderated by Gaurav Goel, Founder & CEO, Samagra. About the speaker Dr. Saurabh Garg is the Chief Executive Officer of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Prior to this, he was Principal Secretary, Agriculture and Farmers' Empowerment, Odisha where he worked on digitalising agriculture and developing a direct income transfer scheme for farmers. Dr. Garg is an IAS officer (batch of 1991) of Odisha Cadre and has over 30 years of experience at different levels of Government - District, State and the Central Government as well as in the Private Sector. He has also worked as Adviser with the World Bank in the office of the Executive Director for India in Washington DC. He has been the Chairman / Managing Director of several Public Sector Companies. Dr. Garg holds a Ph.D. in International Economics and Development from the Johns Hopkins University, USA. He has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where he was awarded a Gold Medal, and a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. He was a Gurukul Chevening Fellow at the London School of Economics & Political Science, London.

As part of C4GT's Inauguration event, Dr. Varma delivered the keynote address. Dr. Varma spoke about building Digital Public Goods and what it means to build for India and to build for a billion people. The session also included a Q&A round moderated by Rahul Kulkarni, Chief Technologist, Samagra. About the speaker Dr. Pramod Varma is the CTO of EkStep Foundation, a not-for-profit creating learner-centric, technology enabled platform aiming to provide learning opportunities to 200 million children in India. In addition, he continues to be the Chief Architect of Aadhaar, India's digital identity program that has successfully covered more than 1.2 billion people in a short span of 7 years. He is also the architect of various India Stack layers such as eSign, Digital Locker, and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) all of which are now working at population scale in India. He has, along with Nandan Nilekani, co-founded beckn.org a non-profit creating open source protocol specifications for hyperlocal commerce. He is an advisor to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), National Payment Corporation (NPCI), Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), National Health Authority (NHA), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and helps with many digital public infrastructure initiatives. He regularly speaks at technology conferences and is part of advisory groups of various national projects from time to time.

Code for GovTech (C4GT) is a program that has been conceptualized for engineering students across the country as an annual summer program on the lines of Google Summer of Code (GSoC). This is the pilot year of the program, organized by Samagra and supported by the Omidyar Network India. We have 5 organisations as mentoring partners for the program this year. 13 contributors have been selected as part of the first cohort for C4GT. To showcase their learnings over the first few weeks of the coding period, we conducted the C4GT Midpoint Demo Showcase, where each of them presented a live demo of their work. The highlight of the event was the panel of GovTech leaders that they presented to - 👉🏻 Jagadish Babu: COO, EkStep 👉🏻 Manish Srivastava: CTO, eGov Foundation 👉🏻 Ravi Prakash: Head of Architecture & Tech Systems, Beckn Foundation Watch the full video to watch the demo's and listen to quality feedback.

Code for Gov Tech (C4GT) 2022 concluded on 17th August 2022 with a successful Finale Event. The event saw an insightful fireside chat with Sh. Abhishek Singh (CEO, National eGovernance Division; CEO, Karmayogi Bharat; CEO MyGov & Digital India Corporation), moderated by Varad Pande (Partner, Omidyar India). Further, contributors showcased the contributions done by them over the past two months to an illustrious panel consisting of Kiran Anandampillai (Technology Advisor, National Health Authority) & Puneet Joshi (Principal Architect, MOSIP). To know more about C4GT, visit https://www.codeforgovtech.in/