In collaboration with LSR-IQAC and with the guidance of the Teacher in Charge, Dr. Renu Kaul, students of the Department of Statistics were given an opportunity to intern at Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) under their Social Statistics Division, Central Statistics Office. It was a 2-month long internship wherein students were allotted different projects under SDG Monitoring Unit of Social Statistics Division.
The central theme around which each project revolved, i.e. Sustainable Development Goals – the 2030 Agenda holds a great significance. Projects were quite diversified in terms of the work that was to be done in the stipulated time period. The projects included development of a mobile app for visualization of National Indicator Framework developed by MoSPI; SDG Dashboard updating and data visualization for the available data on different indicators on aggregate and state level; examination of the methodology of Tier I and Tier II indicators of the allotted Sustainable Development Goal, their data availability and relevance to India and suggest adoption of global indicator for national monitoring framework; and analysis of SDMX, prepare concept document and suggest the procedures in developing the SDMX and suggest for adoption for the country.
All the projects aimed at tracking India’s progress towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. Planned monitoring of the progress would help the country identify areas that required improvement and look for efficient solutions for the same. The internship program, certainly, gave the undergraduate students a chance to make an impact.
Some interns, owing to the requirements of their respective projects, learnt different technical tools like Android Studio, Tableau and other tools which are high in demand nowadays. To ensure students’ progress in the right direction, they were made to interact with experts from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Social Cops, Technical Wing (MoSPI) and other organizations. At the end of the internship period, students were required to submit their project reports and make a presentation summarising their work to be eligible for an internship certificate from the Ministry. All in all, it was an enriching experience for the students to be able to intern at MoSPI at undergraduate level.