Located at Umsawli in the outskirts of Shillong city, the Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) will be used for surveillance, management of disasters, dissemination of information and management of daily city operations. “This is a platform that can connect different activities in the Information Technology field and it being an open Application Programming Interface (API) makes it even special and the potential of the ICCC is immense and this center will be a mechanism and technology that can assist in making right and timely decisions,” Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma explained. The Chief Minister underscored that technology is only as good as it is applied and having this ICCC does not mean there will not be any challenges and issues, but the information from ICCC and its application will assist in decision making. The Chief Minister urged departments like IT, Urban, Police, Municipal to work out the SOPs, protocols and have the systems in place at the earliest so that the technology that is now available can be used for the improvement of Shillong city and actually make it a smart city. He informed that the next step is to create a massive data center at the ICCC. “Meghalaya should become the data center hub of not only the North East but the entire eastern region because we have the potential for it,” he informed. He also said that the government is putting up optical fibre connectivity to every block and every district will ultimately be connected to the ICCC. “We are also working aggressively to ensure that we are able to land the submarine cables in Shillong and our goal is to connect every block and every district in a complete IT network,” he said. He added that the ICCC will empower for bringing in better governance in a smarter manner because it’s not only about a smart city but a smart governance. The ICCC, Shillong is model driven and instead of a traditional API, the ICCC platform takes a declarative language approach to model devices, it is also vendor agnostic device model and any vendor can integrate in to the ICCC digital platform irrespective of the communication protocol. The ICCC platform being an open API it is available for integration with existing apps of city or integration with upcoming applications. He informed that the next step is to create a massive data center at the ICCC. “Meghalaya should become the data center hub of not only the North East but the entire eastern region because we have the potential for it,” he informed. He also said that the government is putting up optical fibre connectivity to every block and every district will ultimately be connected to the ICCC. “We are also working aggressively to ensure that we are able to land the submarine cables in Shillong and our goal is to connect every block and every district in a complete IT network,” he said. He added that the ICCC will empower for bringing in better governance in a smarter manner because it’s not only about a smart city but a smart governance. In conclusion he sought the participation and cooperation of the people and the community and added, “A city can only be smart when all work together not only to make it a smart city but a great city.” He also said that cities like Tura and Jowai will be integrated into the ICCC in future.