Former Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)

He is an IAS officer of the 1978 batch, with a distinguished career in the Government of India and State Governments, leading reforms and leveraging IT to simplify administrative processes. In the process, he has contributed to shaping India's Policies in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). He combines planning and execution skills to ensure that policies work on the ground.

He has been involved in policies related to the financing of big infrastructure projects in Railways, Ports, Airports and Highways.

Dr Sharma is presently serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Authority responsible for managing the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) and the National Digital Health Mission. Also, he serves as the Chairperson of the Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19.

Previously, Dr Sharma headed the TRAIfrom August 2015 to September 2020, in which period he brought consumer focus to reaching the telecom and broadcasting services to all pockets of the country. And where the regulatory action may have been insufficient, he advocated policy changes to the government.

He provided thought leadership through initiatives, for example, in adopting net neutrality principles in India, use of crowdsourced data to measure service quality and leveraging blockchain to achieve regulatory outcomes.

He pushed for the development of indigenous technologies, keeping the country's needs in mind, e.g. to establish a grid of Wi-Fi hotspots or to make interoperable set-top boxes for television broadcast.

He represented India at various international fora and contributed to the policy space in communication technologies and broadcasting. Before joining the TRAI, Dr Sharma worked as Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, where he spearheaded the Digital India program to develop India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy.

He brought in policies related to open source, open standards, and open APIs in all government projects and shaped eGovernance space by converting silo applications in various sectors to modern, multi-tenanted enterprise systems.

Dr. Sharma supported the development and adoption of several digital products in governance and citizen services, such as eKYC, Digital Locker, eSign, Online Reservation System (ORS) in the hospitals, Digital Attendance, Jeevan Pramaan (a system for issuing Digital Life Certificate for the pensioners) and the Digital Consent Artefact. Importantly, he crafted policies for digital payments that led to the creation of the phenomenally successful UPI payment system in India.

Before joining the Government of India as Secretary, Dr Sharma worked for one year in 2013-14 as Chief Secretary in the Government of Bihar and Jharkhand, where he provided leadership to the entire administrative system of the State. He dealt with law and order, administration of the criminal justice system, revenue system and all other aspects of the work, for which a State Government is responsible under the Constitution. While there, he modernized governance and public service delivery systems using technology in several areas, such as land and property registration systems, municipal governance, Public Distribution System (PDS) and taxation systems.

Dr. Sharma is best known for the role he played as Director General & Mission Director of the Unique Identification Authority of India in the years 2009 – 2013.Working closely with Mr Nandan Nilekani in the overall design and implementation of Aadhaar, he brought to fruition the Government of India’s ambitious project to provide a unique identity to all its residents. Today it is the world’s largest identity system, capable of biometrically authenticating every individual resident in the country.He conceptualized (and later implemented) several services that leveraged the authentication infrastructure for better governance and for bringing in cost-effectiveness in both government and private enterprise.

In his other assignments, he has worked as District Magistrate in several districts in Bihar, Director of Treasuries, Secretary in different departments in the State and as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India.

In September 2020 Rupa Publications brought out his book The Making of Aadhaar: World's Largest Identity Platform, which has been very well received.

Dr Sharma holds a PhD from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi; Master’s in Computer Sciences from the University of California, USA; and Master’s in Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.