National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM)

The National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM) will create a shared digital infrastructure for urban India, working across the three pillars of people, process, and platform to provide holistic support to cities and towns. It will institutionalise a citizen-centric and ecosystem-driven approach to urban governance and service delivery in 2022 cities by 2022, and across all cities and towns in India by 2024.

• NUDM will create a shared digital infrastructure that can consolidate and cross-leverage the various digital initiatives of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, enabling cities and towns across India to benefit from holistic and diverse forms of support, in keeping with their needs and local challenges.
• NUDM is citizen-centric, ecosystem-driven, and principles-based in both design and implementation. NUDM has articulated a set of governing principles, and inherits the technology design principles of the National Urban Innovation Stack (NUIS), whose strategy and approach was released by MoHUA in February, 2019. The principles in turn give rise to standards, specifications, and certifications, across the three pillars of people, process, and platforms.
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• National Urban Digital Mission Objectives

> National Urban Digital Mission creates an institutional approach where citizens are at the center of urban governance, improving services through digital solutions.
> National Urban Digital Mission will create a shared digital infrastructure for cities and towns, uniting various digital initiatives across the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
> The National Urban Digital Mission intends to enhance the capacity of all Urban Local Bodies, from the largest to the smallest, to serve citizens and build partnerships for addressing local challenges.

• National Urban Digital Mission Significance
• National Urban Digital Mission provides support for existing digital initiatives from MoHUA to offer diverse support to cities and towns, addressing local needs and challenges.
• NUDM follows the National Urban Innovation Stack (NUIS), ensuring technology design principles are followed for urban governance. This includes setting standards, specifications, and certifications for people, processes, and platforms.
• NUDM aims to strengthen the urban ecosystem by unlocking the power of urban data, enabling cities to tackle complex problems quickly and effectively.
• National Urban Digital Mission Initiatives
• India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX): Developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), IUDX secure sharing of urban data across cities and local bodies.
• SmartCode Platform: A platform designed to provide open-source code for urban governance applications, helping Urban Local Bodies to leverage existing digital solutions and customize them for local needs.
• New Smart Cities Website 2.0 and Geospatial Management Information System (GMIS): The updated website serves as a central hub for all Smart Cities initiatives, offering easy access to resources, updates, and information related to the mission.

SmartCode Platform

SmartCode is a platform that enables all ecosystem stakeholders to contribute to a repository of open-source code for various solutions and applications for urban governance. It is designed to address the challenges that ULBs face in the development and deployment of digital applications to address urban challenges, by enabling cities to take advantage of existing codes and customising them to suit local needs, rather than having to develop new solutions from scratch. As a repository of open-source software, the source code available on the platform will be free to use without any licensing or subscription fees, thus limiting costs to those involved with customising the code and developing a locally-relevant solution.

India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX)

The India Urban Data Exchange has been developed in partnership between the Smart Cities Mission and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. IUDX serves as a seamless interface for data providers and data users, including ULBs, to share, request, and access datasets related to cities, urban governance, and urban service delivery. IUDX is an open-source software platform which facilitates the secure, authenticated, and managed exchange of data amongst various data platforms, 3rd party authenticated and authorised applications, and other sources. As the number of cities on IUDX expands, this will scale up to uniform and seamless sharing between data producers and data consumers across urban India.  IUDX is designed to address the problem of data silos, both within and across cities. Cities generate large volumes of data, which are recorded by a wide range of entities, both within government and across industry, academia, and civil society. The combination of these datasets can enable rapid innovation, as well as a better understanding of and planning for urban needs and challenges.  IUDX creates a secure and reliable channel for data producers or owners to share their data, with complete control over what is shared and with whom, in order to enable sharing while addressing security and privacy protections by design.

National Urban Information System

The Ministry of  Urban Development launched the National Urban Information System (NUIS) Scheme in March, 2006 on National Mission Mode. This scheme was launched for developing GIS database for 137 towns/cities (currently 152 towns/cities) in India. The maps prepared will be at two scales i.e. 1:10000 & 1:2000. In addition to this under NUIS scheme utility mapping will for done at 1:1000 scale for 24 towns.

The Spatial and attribute databases thus generated will be useful for preparation of Master/ Development plans, detailed town planning schemes and serve as decision support for e-governance.

Components of NUIS Scheme:

The Scheme comprises of broadly two major components:

1) Urban Spatial Information System (USIS) to meet the spatial requirements of urban planning. It will help in making GIS based multi hierarchical data base to support Master/Zonal plan preparation and help Urban Local Bodies in administration and utilities management. This is to be achieved by having a 3 tier GIS database for each city/town which will support the main objectives of Urban Management & Planning.

• 1:10,000 scale GIS with parameters of spatial and attribute information that will be the core of Master Planning and Zonal Planning exercises in urban Settlements.
• 1:2,000 scale GIS database with parameters of spatial and attribute information in support of detailed town planning Schemes and urban administration.
• Establish a 1:1000 scale utilities GIS on a pilot basis with inclusion of power, water-supply, sewerage and other utilities that will support Utilities Planning and Management in urban settlements.

2) National Urban Databank and Indicators (NUDB&I) to develop indicators for supporting National Urban Observatory (NUO) by integrating the database of all states and towns at TCPO/MoUD. Enable the establishment of a Local Urban Observatory (LUO) in each State which will integrate the NUDB&I databases for all towns within the State.

This will also provide necessary inputs/report on the status and conditions of urban areas to MoUD, Planning Commission, States indicators for National Urban Observatory (NUO) include:

• Socio Economic development
• Infrastructure
• Transportation
• Environmental management
• Local authorities
• Housing

This data will be used by municipal corporations/ municipalities & ULBs to fulfill their roles assigned to them under 12th Schedule of the 74th CAA. For successful implementation of this scheme data collected by USIS and NUDBI will be integrated and used for better plan making and thus ensure planned development by fulfilling the data needs.

Limitations of NUIS

• Town planning is a state subject so developing standard indicators for all town and cities will be difficult.
• Although selection procedure for towns and cities covered under the scheme is rational but some important urban centers remain uncovered
• Fund allocation for the scheme is very less when compared to other schemes like JNNURM as the per capita expenditure is about Rs.5.60/- as compared to Rs.4500/- for JNNURM for making CDPs.
• Coordination at different level is essential to fulfill the objective
• Skilled man power is required for various work at different levels.