Government working on guidelines for use of drone services in public sector

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The Centre is working on a set of guidelines for procuring drone services for government projects and initiatives after states complained that companies were not forthcoming in sharing information on costs, sources said.

States are increasingly looking to use drones for land mapping, maintaining power transmission lines, delivering medicines and deploying these unmanned flying vehicles for crowd control as well as disaster relief such as floods. The states rely on private players to avail of these services.

In a meeting on July 22, the Centre directed stakeholders to form a three-member team and gave it two weeks to come up with draft empanelment requirements, keeping into consideration both technical and financial requirements.

“It should also be kept flexible so that young startups can come and compete in the process and not get limited by the net worth criteria,” sources quoted a government official as saying during the meeting.

‘Minimum role for govt‘

Separately, the government think-tank Niti Aayog will create a draft Request for Proposal (RFP) document for procuring drone services.

The draft RFP should work in such a way that the work of government sponsor, consultants and the bidding community was “just reduced to little deviations”, the official said.

"For example, if one wants to mention deviations on net worth, project timelines, then the discussion will only be on the deviations from the draft, and the rest of the draft will be the same for all across the country."

Also read: Rs 80-crore fledgling drone industry in India spreads wings for Rs 15,000-crore long haul

The official said the draft RFP should not be very long to make it easier for startups to take part in the bidding process.

“There should also be options of unbundling the services,” the official said, setting a month’s deadline for the draft RFP.

“Unbundling” in a tender means to “break” a contract into sub-contracts, with multiple contractors performing separate works for the project.

In the meeting with the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Niti Aayog, several states said it was tough to assess the pricing of drones as a service model.

“Companies are not very open in sharing the information about the actual cost of operations,” a state government official said during the meeting.

The official requested the Centre to come up with standardised rates, similar to what the National Informatics Centre has done for software deployment and technology solutions.

Also read: Developed for Swiggy deliveries, Garuda Aerospace drones being used in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh floods

The state government official said such rates could be attempted at the national level so that states would not have to scrutinise every single bid and with “asymmetrical information because we don't have complete information from the drone companies”.

The Centre, however, is not too keen to meddle when it comes to pricing.

"When we are talking about competition, then there is a market discovery of price. Why should the government be in judgement of what the benchmark should be" a senior central government official was quoted as saying by sources.

In a country the size of India, drones can make service-delivery efficient. Drones were recently used in Assam to drop food and medical supplies as incessant rain flooded swathes of the northeastern state.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently said he used drones to monitor development works in Kedarnath.

The government is estimating a Rs 5,000 crore investment and 10,000 jobs on the drone-manufacturing side over the next three years, Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia has said. He also said the government was looking to create a Rs 30,000-crore drone industry.