The government has discovered the future. And it comes with a two-page note. The cabinet secretariat has issued an office memorandum directing senior officers across ministries to step out of their files and into the future at the India AI Impact Summit.
According to the memorandum dated February 16, every officer of the rank of deputy secretary and above must attend the summit, walk the exhibition floors, sit through presentations, inspect demos, and absorb the buzzwords — machine learning, generative AI, predictive analytics, digital twins, and whatever else the future throws up between coffee breaks.
But this is not a sightseeing tour of shiny dashboards and humanoid robots. The directive makes it clear: look closely, think harder.
Officers have been asked to identify “significant ideas, innovations and practical applications” of artificial intelligence that could actually work in their respective ministries and departments. In other words, no returning with just tote bags and selfies — return with use cases.
And then comes the part every civil servant understands: write it down. Each officer must submit a crisp note — not exceeding two pages — to their secretary. The brief? List the most promising AI innovations spotted at the summit and propose specific, workable applications for their domain. Agriculture must think beyond rainfall; Railways beyond timetables; Health beyond hospital beds. AI, apparently, is now everyone’s business.
The secretaries , in turn, will compile these brainwaves into a consolidated report and send it back to the cabinet secretariat by February 27. Ten days to distil the wisdom of a national AI jamboree into something actionable.
The memorandum, in classic sarkari prose, underlines that the instructions are to be adhered to strictly by all concerned. So for five days at Bharat Mandapam, India’s top bureaucrats will trade corridor conversations for code talk, policy notes for prompt engineering, and perhaps discover that the future does not wait for file notings.