HYDERABAD: The state government will launch one of India's largest Artificial Intelligence (AI) skilling programmes for governance, aimed at training over 180 nominated officers from various departments. The AI Champions & Catalysts Workshop, to be organised at the Dr MCR HRD Institute in Hyderabad, will be inaugurated by IT and Industries Minister D Sridhar Babu on Monday.
The programme, designed by the Emerging Technologies Wing of the ITE&C Department in collaboration with the Wadhwani Centre for Government Digital Transformation (WGDT), is being positioned as a first-of-its-kind effort to institutionalise AI readiness across the state's governance ecosystem.
The three-day in-person training sessions will be held at the Dr MCR HRD Institute from 10.30 am to 4.00 pm in three cohorts: cohort 1 (August 18 to 20), cohort 2 (September 1 to 3) and cohort 3 (September 8 to 10).
According to officials, the initiative, a follow-up to the workshop titled 'AI-Led Digital Transformation in Telangana: From Vision to Action' conducted on June 24, seeks to build internal capacity to harness AI for improved service delivery, operational efficiency and effective policymaking. The training will equip nominated officers with AI fundamentals, data readiness, no-code tools and agile solution development techniques.
Over the next three days, the nominated officials will engage in intensive sessions to identify AI use cases in governance, develop datasets, explore privacy and security issues, and collaborate with industry experts.
Following the workshops, participants will enter a three-month mentorship and proof-of-concept (PoC) development phase, culminating in jury presentations scheduled for November–December 2025.