The state government initiated a partnership with the University of Chicago Trust (UCT) to leverage data for innovation and policy decisions to advance adoption of evidence-based research for policy inputs. The five-year partnership will support evidence-based research in areas of energy and environment, health, education, agriculture and water and sanitation and catalyse efforts to develop a high-quality data interface for enabling evidence based governance of existing programmes.

Talking about the collaboration Electronics and Information Technology Minister for Odisha, Shri. Tusharkanti Behera said, “The establishment of the DPIC is a testament to the government’s commitment to the state’s development across various sectors. Scholars from around the world are conducting research in Odisha and taking their findings to the rest of the world.”

DPIC aims to enable rigorous, evidence-based governance while using new advances in econometrics, data science, and machine learning and act as a center of excellence for collecting big data from many sources. The UCT through the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC India) and its other research centers are supporting the government in operationalizing DPIC.