Carnegie Mellon University partners with LBSNAA to train Civil Servants in Data Analytics

The DAMC executive program will be fully conducted in a virtual classroom setup and will be delivered from CMU-A's state-of-the-art C3 Innovations Lab.

Carnegie Mellon University Australia (CMU-A) has partnered with the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA). CMU-A will deliver a Data Analytics Master Certificate (DAMC) executive program to around 500 new public servants from the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service, Indian Police Service, and from Group A services of the Union and the Royal Bhutan Service.

The executive program will educate participants on how to effectively combine the benefits of data utilization, innovative technology, and smart policy to have a transformative and meaningful impact on the lives of their constituents.

DAMC Program Director and Professor of Information Technology at CMU-A, Murli Viswanathan said, “Data is a critical government asset that needs to be treated with respect and harnessed for the greater good. We feel that when officials imbibe this mindset in conjunction with modern AI-driven data analytics techniques, they'll be able to better manage social problems using evidence-based decision making.”

The executive program has 4 modules that will run for three hours a week. The program was launched this Friday, February 4 and is expected to conclude by the 2nd week of March.

The DAMC executive program will be fully conducted in a virtual classroom setup and will be delivered from CMU-A's state-of-the-art C3 Innovations Lab.

Executive Program Design

As experts in their fields, our world-class faculty designed the modules to tailor fit the Indian civic space based on their years of practical and theoretical experience. Prof Murli Viswanathan explained how the executive program will be highlighting some of the world’s best practices that are easy to implement so “they don’t repeat the same mistakes and will be much more efficient.”

The executive program has four (4) modules: Modern Data Management; Analytics for Public Policy; Business Intelligence and Data Analytics and Analytics Case Study Workshop - Public Administration; Finance; Law and Order.

A data-use case hackathon is integrated into the executive program to give participants a hands-on opportunity to apply a data-driven thought process in finding a solution to a real-world problem.

The goal of this hackathon is for the participants to brainstorm an area of interest related to challenges faced by the Indian Civic Services. After identifying societal or social problems, groups will jointly utilize their analytics training and come up with the concept for a data-driven solution.

Creating a New Elite Breed of Indian Civil Servants

The participants are the creme de la creme of the Indian civil service. They are part of the few who pass the coveted civil services UPSC exam - less than a thousand amongst a million applicants.

Since they will be trained right when they start, CMU-A aims to educate a generation of civil servants that can make use of transformative technologies, design data-driven solutions and deliver a more responsive, efficient, and transparent government service.

One of the main reasons why data-driven projects fail is because of the misalignment of the management and IT departments. This is where CMU-A comes in - through this executive program, non-IT Managers will have an idea of how the IT process works, manage their expectations and align their goals.

Prof. Murli said: “Unless you've tried, you’ll never know how difficult it is. It is easy to stand apart and say let's do this, but until you really step in and see how different things are, you’ll realize that everything takes time, it’s expensive, and you can't just expect results like that.”

CMU-A: Leader in IT and Policy Education

CMU-A takes pride in its strength to deliver a technology-policy education. CMU-A aims to give the participants essential skills in data management, business intelligence and analytics, and an understanding of the policy issues that must go hand-in-hand with the analytic solutions - how do you regulate, how do you develop policy that helps you use data-driven solutions.

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