I-STEM - Atma Nirbhar initiatives

Atma Nirbhar initiatives

I-STEM is an initiative of the Govt. of India and the purpose of this initiative is to serve the nation and take the people of India towards the goal set by the Government from time to time to make us “Atma Nirbhar” in terms of technology development, reduce dependency of foreign products/technologies upto some extent. This will not make us only “Self Reliant '' but also, it will provide opportunities to support our partner countries to make use of the indiginous technologies and products as well as the scientific knowledge developed.

The I-STEM team is planning to introduce a new plan for the scientific community to promote “the development of the equipment” needed for the research purpose. To do this, a survey/review is being done by the domain experts listed at I-STEM to elevate the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the Technology products listed at the portal as a part of the Digital Catalogue initiated under the mission by the “Empowered Technology Group” which came into existence on approval of the cabinet in Feb 2020.

This initiative will link the start-ups, MSME, academic/national labs to each other who are working for the development of the R&D equipment. Arrangements will be made under the proposed program for indigenously developed R&D products/services to be made available to young researchers in their parent institute, for testing them and for experimentation, and validation. This will enable comparison with “standard products”, so that feedback can be provided to the developers/ manufacturers for improvement and further value addition. The I-STEM team not only will be providing the technical support but also help to arrange the partial funding, if needed.

The portal today lists more than 20,000 equipment and facilities, serving as live inventory for custodians and funding agencies such as DST/MHRD etc., and as a repository for the researchers from national labs, strategic sectors, academia, and industry, especially start-ups.

The various features of the portal are:

The “single login facility” to the unique I-STEM portal is designed to avoid confusion among Users in the academia/industry as well as among Custodian Institutions. It is also designed to be updated constantly with the functional status of facilities and keep a record of their usage. I-STEM is expected to minimize the duplication of efforts and wastage of resources in developing similar portals by the other agencies (if any).

The unique I-STEM portal has provision for providing customized dashboards for each Funding Agency and for each Custodian Institution so that they can readily obtain a comprehensive, up-to-date equipment inventory, the functional status of each, equipment usage statistics, outcomes of research, issues that arise if any, etc. The single-login facility to the I-STEM portal (with approved homogenous format for outcomes, such as, reports/publications/patents arises from funded projects) will provide appropriate statistics to the Govt. to enable achieving targeted objectives.

The payment gateway has been tested comprehensively and certified for its security.

The I-STEM Portal is designed to be the gateway for users/researchers/start-ups/Industry to locate the specific type of facility they need for their R&D work and to identify the one that is either located closest to them or available the soonest.

The I-STEM portal is built with a hierarchy of access – by the Nodal Office, Head of Institution, Head of the (Custodian) Department, Facility-in-charge, and Eqpt Operator.

The I-STEM portal has a Dashboard for the Custodian institution to provide a live inventory of all public-funded equipment in house, the functional status of the same, and the usage and sharing of the equipment.

The portal has a Dashboard for Regional Representatives too, so that they can have a live inventory of facilities in a region, their status, and their utilization.

The I-STEM portal has a built-in secure payment gateway so that Users can pay the User Fee directly to the Custodian Institution, which prescribes the Fee to be paid.

The I-STEM portal has been designed to provide a Dashboard to all GoI funding agencies so that they can (a) obtain a live-inventory of all equipment funded by them; (b) monitor the functional status of the equipment; (c) monitor the usage of equipment both by researchers of the custodian institution and by external researchers.

Registered Users can search and locate for the equipment/facility they need and correspond directly with the Operator/Technician to reserve it for use in a mutually convenient manner.

Each “sharing event/job request” is assigned a unique 10-digit Facility Booking Record (FBR), such as, IRCTC PNR, through which a User and the Custodian/Operator are aware of the status of a particular request for sharing a facility. The FBR is “closed” only after the “sharing event/job request” is completed to mutual satisfaction. The FBR makes the process of sharing transparent and fully accounted for.

Users will receive the online receipt for the payment s/he has made as well as bills/invoice to claim it with the parent institution (as per their institution norms).

Users may fill the feedback form on their experience during the availing the services for their research needs.