Thailand Eyeing ASEAN ICT leadership: April 2006 Issue

ISSN 0973-161X Volume II issue 4, April 2006

South Africa: Establishing eGov KnowEX for efficient service delivery PAGE 27 MCA 21: Fulfilling objectives of a versatile e-Governance project PAGE 35 Public sector summit 2006: Connecting government, empowering citizens PAGE 17 The e-Government magazine for Asia and the Middle East

www.egovonline.net

Thailand

Eyeing ASEAN ICT leadership

SPECIAL FOCUS A new ICT hub of ASEAN in the making Interview: Kraisorn Pornsutee

COUNTRY FOCUS: TAIWAN Stepping into the advanced e-Government stage Interview: Chuan-te Ho

REGIONAL FOCUS: MAHARASHTRA Maharashtra e-Government plan to take shape by 2009 Interview: Ajay Bhushan Pandey

UNDP, Microsoft, Asia Foundation, World Bank, APDIP, NECTEC, SIPA, Danish Technological Institute, Software Park (Thailand), Ministry of ICT (Royal Thai Government), National Computerization Agency (Korea), WWF Sweden, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sun Micro Systems Pvt. Ltd., The Computing Technology Industry Association, National Informatics Centre, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Tata Consultancy Services, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, World Organisation on Digital Equality, BRAC, Ministry of Information Technology (India), National Institute for Smart Government, National Information Technology Centre from KOICA (Nepal), Institute of Rural Management, Australian National University, Feng Chia University, VESIT (Mumbai, India), Khalsa PG College (Delhi, India), Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare (Government of India), Maharashtra State Centre (Mumbai, India), Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Quaid-I-Azam University, York University, Police DMS (IIT, Delhi), Centre for Good Governance, Ministry of Communications & IT (Government of India), Al-Barkaat Institute of Management, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (Pantnagar, India), Indian Institute of Public Administration (Delhi, India), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (NIC, Delhi), Food Corporation of India, Shah Jalal University of Science and Technology, NIC-HRSC (Department of IT, Government of India), DEIT (Government of Haryana, India), Jadavpur University, Ritsumeikan University (Japan), International Institute of Information Technology, Indian School of Business, Medical University of Mashhad, Programme Management Unit (National eGovernance Plan, India), University of Engineering and Technology (Lahore, Pakistan), Sylhet International University (Bangladesh), Technometrics Aids for Developmental Actions, Arab Academy of Science and Technology, University of Manchester, Iran Telecommunication Research Centre, The Information Society Institute, National University of Singapore, United Nations Centre for Regional Development, ECC International, Wipro Infotech, Asian Institute of Technology and HP Labs. UNDP, Microsoft, Asia Foundation, World Bank, APDIP, NECTEC, SIPA, Danish Technological Institute, Software Park (Thailand), Ministry of ICT (Royal Thai Government), National Computerization Agency (Korea), WWF Sweden, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sun Micro Systems Pvt. Ltd., The Computing Technology Industry Association, National Informatics Centre, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Tata Consultancy Services, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, World Organisation on Digital Equality, BRAC, Ministry of Information Technology (India), National Institute for Smart Government, National Information Technology Centre from KOICA (Nepal), Institute of Rural Management, Australian National University, Feng Chia University, VESIT (Mumbai, India), Khalsa PG College (Delhi, India), Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare (Government of India), Maharashtra State Centre (Mumbai, India), Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Quaid-I-Azam University, York University, Police DMS (IIT, Delhi), Centre for Good Governance, Ministry of Communications & IT (Government of India), Al-Barkaat Institute of Management, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (Pantnagar, India), Indian Institute of Public Administration (Delhi, India), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (NIC, Delhi), Food Corporation of India, Shah Jalal University of Science and Technology, NIC-HRSC (Department of IT, Government of India), DEIT (Government of Haryana, India), Jadavpur University, Ritsumeikan University (Japan), International Institute of Information Technology, Indian School of Business, Medical University of Mashhad, Programme Management Unit (National eGovernance Plan, India), University of Engineering and Technology (Lahore, Pakistan), Sylhet International University (Bangladesh), Technometrics Aids for Developmental Actions, Arab Academy of Science and Technology, University of Manchester, Iran Telecommunication Research Centre, The Information Society Institute, National University of Singapore, United Nations Centre for Regional Development, ECC International, Wipro Infotech, Asian Institute of Technology and HP Labs. UNDP, Microsoft, Asia Foundation, World Bank, APDIP, NECTEC, SIPA, Danish Technological Institute, Software Park (Thailand), Ministry of ICT (Royal Thai Government), National Computerization Agency (Korea), WWF Sweden, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sun Micro Systems Pvt. Ltd., The Computing Technology Industry Association, National Informatics Centre, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Tata Consultancy Services, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, World Organisation on Digital Equality, BRAC, Ministry of Information Technology (India), National Institute for Smart Government, National Information Technology Centre from KOICA (Nepal), Institute of Rural Management, Australian National University, Feng Chia University, VESIT (Mumbai, India), Khalsa PG College (Delhi, India), Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare (Government of India), Maharashtra State Centre (Mumbai, India), Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Quaid-I-Azam University, York University, Police DMS (IIT, Delhi), Centre for Good Governance, Ministry of Communications & IT (Government of India), Al-Barkaat Institute of Management, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (Pantnagar, India), Indian Institute of Public Administration (Delhi, India), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (NIC, Delhi), Food Corporation of India, Shah Jalal University of Science and Technology, NIC-HRSC (Department of IT, Government of India), DEIT (Government of Haryana, India), Jadavpur University, Ritsumeikan University (Japan), International Institute of Information Technology, Indian School of Business, Medical University of Mashhad, Programme Management Unit (National eGovernance Plan, India), University of Engineering and Technology (Lahore, Pakistan), Sylhet International University (Bangladesh), Technometrics Aids for Developmental Actions, Arab Academy of Science and Technology, University of Manchester, Iran Telecommunication Research Centre, The Information Society Institute, National University of Singapore, United Nations Centre for Regional Development, ECC International, Wipro Infotech, Asian Institute of Technology and HP Labs. UNDP, Microsoft, Asia Foundation, World Bank, APDIP, NECTEC, SIPA, Danish Technological Institute, Software Park (Thailand), Ministry of ICT (Royal Thai Government), National Computerization Agency (Korea), WWF Sweden, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sun Micro Systems Pvt. Ltd., The Computing Technology Industry Association, National Informatics Centre, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Tata Consultancy Services, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, World Organisation on Digital Equality, BRAC, Ministry of Information Technology (India), National Institute for Smart Government, National Information Technology Centre from KOICA (Nepal), Institute of Rural Management, Australian National University, Feng Chia University, VESIT (Mumbai, India), Khalsa PG College (Delhi, India), Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare (Government of India), Maharashtra State Centre (Mumbai, India), Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Quaid-I-Azam University, York University, Police DMS (IIT, Delhi), Centre for Good Governance, Ministry of Communications & IT (Government of India), Al-Barkaat Institute of Management, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (Pantnagar, India), Indian Institute of Public Administration (Delhi, India), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (NIC, Delhi), Food Corporation of India, Shah Jalal University of Science and Technology, NIC-HRSC (Department of IT, Government of India), DEIT (Government of Haryana, India), Jadavpur University, Ritsumeikan University (Japan), International Institute of Information Technology, Indian School of Business, Medical University of Mashhad, Programme Management Unit (National eGovernance Plan, India), University of Engineering and Technology (Lahore, Pakistan), Sylhet International University (Bangladesh), Technometrics Aids for Developmental Actions, Arab Academy of Science and Technology, University of Manchester, Iran Telecommunication Research Centre, The Information Society Institute, National University of Singapore, United Nations Centre for Regional Development, ECC International, Wipro Infotech, Asian Institute of Technology and HP Labs. egov Asia 2006, Bangkok, 26-28 April, 2006, www.egovonline.net/egovasia/

CONTENTS

Special Focus: Thailand

8

A new ICT hub of ASEAN in the making Interview: Kraisorn Pornsutee

10

Thailand citizen centric approach Somboon Mekpaiboonwattana

11

Providing effective services through efficient use of technology Interview: Supachai Jongsiri

12

Central population e-Registration project: Champion leads the way!

Kraisorn Pornsutee

Interview: Surachai Srisaracam

News Review

Commentar y

6 25 30 31 33

23

Asia World Geo-Informatics

Ajay Prasad

35

Middle East India

CISCO systems: Creating next generation of government services Interview: Mark Badger

17

Public sector summit 2006: Connecting government, empowering citizens

22

Gartner view point event: Global best practices on government performance management

42

Goh Seow Hiong

24

Conference curtain raiser in Bangkok

Regional Focus: Maharashtra

37

Employment guarantee scheme monitoring system on board now Moiz Hussain Ali and Ireni Akoijam

39

Maharashtra e-Government plan to take shape by 2009 Interview: Ajay Bhushan Pandey

Stepping into the advanced e-Government stage

Regular Features

Interview: Chuan-te Ho

44 45 46

Countr y FFocus: ocus: South Africa Country

27

Software security: Myths and realities

Event Diar y

Countr y FFocus: ocus: TTaiwan aiwan

19

MCA 21: Fulfilling objectives of a versatile e-Governance project Danish A. Khan

Industr y PPerspective erspective

14

Taking e-Governance to rural millions. But how fast?

Establishing eGov KnowEX for efficient service delivery

egov by numbers Whats On Facts and Data

Nickie van Zyl | April 2006

3

Editorial Guidelines egov is a monthly magazine providing a much needed platform to the voices of various stakeholders in the arena of e-Government, apart from being a repository of valuable information and meaningful discussion on issues of e-governance in general, and e-Government in particular – both to the specialist and the generalist.

Contributions to egov magazine should be in the form of articles, case studies, book reviews, event report and news related to e-Government project and initiatives, which are of immense value for practitioners, professionals, corporate and academicians.

We would like the contributors to follow these guidelines, while submitting their material for publication.

• Articles/ Case studies should not

•

•

•

•

exceed 2500 words. For book reviews and event report, the word limit is 800.

An abstract of the article/case study not exceeding 200 words should be submitted along with the article/case study.

All articles/ case studies should provide proper references. Authors should give in writing stating that the work is new and has not been published in any form so far.

Book reviews should include details of the book like the title, name of the author(s), publisher, year of publication, price and number of pages and also send the cover photograph of the book in JPEG/ TIFF (resolution 300 dpi).

Book reviews of books on e-Governance related themes, published from year 2002 onwards, are preferable. In case of website, provide the URL.

ad page 4

•

The manuscripts should be typed in a standard printable font (Times New Roman 12 font size, titles in bold) and submitted either through mail or post.

• Relevant figures of adequate quality (300 dpi) should be submitted in JPEG/ TIFF format.

• A brief bio-data and passport size photograph(s) of the author(s) must be enclosed.

• All contributions are subject to approval by the publisher.

Please send in your papers/articles/ comments to: The Editor G-4, Sector 39 NOIDA (UP) 201 301, India Tel +91 120 2502180-87 Fax +91 120 2500060 Email: info@egovonline.net

EDITORIAL

ASEAN and Thailand’s e-Government vision

Vol. II, Issue 4

April 2006

President Dr. M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta Sr. Assistant Editor Anuradha Dhar Assistant Editor Dipanjan Banerjee Designed by Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Web www.egovonline.net Editorial and marketing correspondence eGov G-4 Sector 39 NOIDA 201301, India Tel: +91 120 2502181-87 Fax: +91 120 2500060 Email: info@egov.csdms.in Printed by Yashi Media Works Pvt Ltd New Delhi, India egov does not neccesarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors. egov is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided. egov is published in technical collaboration with GIS Development (www.GISdevelopment.net) © Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2006 www.csdms.in

| April 2006

In an interview to egov, Kraisorn Pornsutee, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Royal Thai Government, told that Thailand is aiming to emerge as the new ICT hub of the ASEAN region by 2008. The Royal Thai Government is committed to increase the required visibility in the region. Even, Chadamas Thuvasethakul, director of Thailand’s National IT Committee Secretariat, drawing on analysis in the UNDP Human Development Report 2001, remarked that in the coming decade Thailand would aim to move from being a dynamic adopter to a potential leader in the ICT domain. And, for this, Thailand needed to increase the proportion of knowledge workers from 12% in 2001 to three-fold by 2010.

In terms of e-Readiness, Thailand currently ranks third after Singapore and Malaysia in the region. However, as for now the penetration rate of broadband in Thailand is very low being about 1% (600,000 users of broadband), which according to plans is to increase to 10% in the next two years. Given this scenario, realising the goal to be the ICT hub in ASEAN seems rather difficult if not impossible.

It may be recalled that on 25th November 2000 leaders of the ten member countries of ASEAN signed the eASEAN Framework Agreement to begin a collective effort to plug ASEAN into the global networked economy. Nevertheless, the Agreement commits ASEAN members to an implementation schedule to achieve digital readiness for the region in order to develop the basis for ASEAN’s competitiveness into the future, better the lives of their citizens through the application of information and communication technologies and foster the spirit of ASEAN community. Also, according to the Agreement, eASEAN member countries have resolved to encourage the development of skills and proficiency in using ICT through training and exchange of experiences. Besides, the more advanced countries have also agreed to assist less ICT enabled members in their capacity building effort through the sharing of training resources. The member countries have also committed to deliver more government services using ICT to make it more efficient and more widely disseminated.

Thailand, in the given context, is genuinely aspiring to don the mantle of the ICT leadership in the ASEAN region. But, the task ahead is daunting. It needs to tread cautiously and committedly, to achieve the desired leadership that it strives for.

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

5

NEWS REVIEW

ASIA Sri Lanka takes steps to legalise e-Transactions Sri Lankan parliamentarians have unanimously passed a new law that strengthens the legal validity of electronic transactions thus paving the way for safer e-Commerce in the country. In bringing the law to parliament, the ICT Agency – a state agency established to promote the use of information and communications technology in Sri Lanka, played a prominent role.

Jayantha Fernando, legal advisor of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, said, “While we initiate efforts to focus on technological developments, the importance of ensuring parallel developments in the Legal framework is essential. Electronic commerce has considerable potential for developing countries, but the positive impact expected from it would be reduced if users were confronted with doubts as to the legal value of electronic

commercial transactions after conducting costly modernisation of communication systems,” and added, “The law would provide a firm foundation for e-commerce transactions and give formal recognition to e-mail communications. It also gives recognition to electronic signatures, and provides a structure to be established for rules to be laid down in the future.”

It may be noted that entrepreneurs had so far been refraining from high value business to business transactions due to uncertainty surrounding e-Transactions, which resulted in the slow growth of eGovernment activities. “Most countries including India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Korea and Singapore have introduced eTransaction legislation to recognise this activity based on the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on e-Commerce of 1996 and the Model Law on eSignatures (2001),” Fernando pointed out.

WHO urged for IT assistance in health sector Nimal Siripala de Silva, Sri Lanka

Chinese daily urges politicians to set up weblogs The Chinese newspaper People’s Daily has urged the Chinese lawmakers that they would be provided assistance in setting up and maintaining blogs or weblogs that would enable them to communicate with the people better. The newspaper said that the delegates at the annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) can apply to start their own online journal, which will be hosted on the People’s Daily website at blog.people.com.cn, which is available in Chinese.

Tang Weihong, the manager of the blog site, said, “The public wants to know what the NPC deputies and CPPCC National Committee members are doing. Many deputies and members are also willing to tell the people about their work. Although 5,000 deputies and committee members are eligible to post blogs, only eight have so far taken up the offer. We hope such blogs will help the NPC deputies and CPPCC National Committee members to better communicate with the public.”

Currently, there are some 16 million Chinese citizens who have their own weblogs.

6

Healthcare and Nutrition Minister, has urged the World Health Organisation (WHO) to assist Sri Lanka in introducing easy and cost-effective IT system for the transformation of the health sector. He made this appeal while addressing a workshop to introduce the IT system to Sri Lanka’s health sector jointly organised by the Health Ministry and the WHO. Pointing out that Sri Lanka was moving towards e-Governance, de Silva said, “Many elite organisations have come forward to help developing countries to transform the health sector from manual to computer management system. They even provide new highly profile computer systems as a gift. But when we are to replace them in five years it becomes a burden due to its high cost. We have to achieve high productivity. Our health indicators are on par with international standards. We have to go one step further.

What we urgently need today is a comprehensive system to have a detailed report of our human resources and other assets in the health sector.”

Citizens, officials hold online dialogue in Vietnam The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) in Vietnam for the first time enabled the Minister and five deputy ministers and high-ranking officials and the Vietnamese citizens to talk online regarding issues that included natural resources, water, the environment, hydrometeorology and minerals. The online dialogue was held on March 16 by the MoNRE on its website, www.monre.gov.vn. www.egovonline.net |

NEWS REVIEW

Mai Ai Truc, Natural Resources and Environment Minister, said, “Direct dialogue through the Internet between government offices and the people is one of the necessary and practical activities of e-Government. The participation of more officials ensured that citizens’ questions were answered more quickly and more specifically. Importantly, through talking with the people and enterprises also made MoNRE’s officials more sympathetic to the requirements, problems and aspirations of the people and enterprises, making them increasingly responsible in their jobs.”

Hoping that the relations between MoNRE and the people and businesses would be further strengthened through this ‘new bridge’, Ai Truc further said, “The areas that MoNRE manages are mostly sensitive.

The ministry wants access to the facts through direct opinions from the people and businesses while the people and businesses, I think want to express or ask for responses from our ministry. MoNRE has organized direct meetings with people and enterprises, announced its email address and telephone numbers of officials and established a hot line.

However, all of those things seem to be insufficient. Apart from the above forms of communications, we are thinking of organizing direct dialogue with the people and business on Vietnam Television (VTV) and the Voice of Vietnam radio.”

1,600 local governments in Philippines are now web-enabled According to National Computer Centre | April 2006

estimate, over 1,600 local governments in key cities, provinces, and municipalities in the Philippines have put up their own websites till December 2005. The NCC records indicated that there are currently 74 provinces, 112 cities, and 1,489 municipalities having their own websites – roughly 98% of the total of 1,696 local government units in the Philippines. It may be noted that the e-Commerce law in the Philippines mandates that government should have some form of web presence.

as schedule of hearings as also making details accessible to the public through the Internet.”

Tess Camba, director of NCC Field Operation Office, said, “The NCC began helping local governments set up websites since May 2002. In September 2002, the NCC spearheaded the eLGU project to facilitate development of local government websites. The NCC is now following the United Nations-American Society of Public Administration (UNASPA) standard for putting up websites.

It comes in five stages, starting with web presence as the first stage and a fullintegrated and interactive portal as stage five. To date, no local government unit has reached Stage 4 or 5 of the UN-ASPA stages for e-government.”

e-Governance for Bangladesh’s Titas Gas

by April

“This year, our focus as far as web presence is concerned is to continue to assist the provinces, cities and first, second and third class municipalities with Internet access points in their locality to upgrade their websites to either Stage two or three. We also hope to be able to establish more citizen-centric websites with the piloting of at least one LGU website per region,” Camba added.

Marikina to set up e-Court The city government of Marikina in the Philippines has decided to set up an eCourt and has allotted PHP5mn (US$978,091) for this. Currently, the city has two courts under the Metropolitan Trial Court and four under the Regional Trial Court.

Ma. Lourdes Fernando, Mayor of Marikina, said, “The city government is coordinating with the Supreme Court for the E-court. The setting up of an e-Court would facilitate inquiries of the cases such

The E-court would feature a video camera and television for video conferencing, where the statements of children involved in cases would be taken in a separate room thus protecting them from trauma.

E-court would also computerise the transcription of court hearings so that a computer can reproduce the notes within hours.

The state-owned gas company in Bangladesh, Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Ltd, would be introducing e-Governance application by April 2006 so as to process its new industrial connections. Titas and Bangladeshi software company Business Automation Ltd, recently signed an agreement under which an online application processing and tracking system for the industrial clients of Titas Gas would be developed. Besides, an Intranet and Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity between the head office of Titas and its regional sales offices at Savar and Joydevpur would also be set up.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Communication Minister Nazmul Hoda while addressing the 21st annual conference of Roads and Highways Engineers Association said that his ministry would also launch Information Communication Technology (ICT) with e-Governance for further development as well as proper maintenance of the country’s communication network.

7

SPECIAL FOCUS THAILAND

Thailand

A new ICT hub of ASEAN in the making Presently ICT growth in Thailand is about 5% and to speed-up the progress, Thailand needs to build its own brand in ICT similar to India and China. The Royal Thai Government is envisioning Thailand emerging as the new ICT hub of ASEAN by 2008, tells Kraisorn Pornsutee, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Royal Thai Government, in a candid conversation with Anuradha Dhar and Dipanjan Banerjee of egov Can you briefly tell us about the vision of Ministry of ICT, Thailand?

We have the vision to become the new ICT hub of ASEAN by the year 2008.

According to the ranking, Singapore is number one followed by Malaysia and then Thailand. Since the target must always specify the year, I have mentioned 2008. According to International Telecommunication Union (ITU) there are many indicators to measure ICT readiness, for example, number of fixed line, percentage penetration of mobile, broadband, etc. We realize that it is not going to be easy to achieve this vision but we are going to try out best. Taking the case of mobile penetration in Thailand, which is 32.39 % (Dec 2005) while in Malaysia it is around 60% and in Singapore it is about 94 % (Source IDA, February 2005). We would like to co-rank with them. Ministry is giving the policy directions but for implementation there is an organ called National Telecommunication Commission. In Thailand, the penetration rate of broadband is very low 8

about 1 % (600,000 users of broadband) but we have the plan to increase it to10% in next two years. So we want to jump from 600, 0000 to 5 million users, which is a challenging target. We have two companies under our supervision – CAT and TOT for broadband implementation.

Out of this 5 million target users, 3 million should be on the fixed line and 2 million on the wireless. Since there are also private companies providing broadband connections, we have to urge them to maximise the number of users.

What are the challenges you are facing to implement the IT infrastructure projects in Thailand?

Connectivity is one of our big problems and that is why we have launched the Mega projects. We have the Internet for our villages but the speed is less than 56 Kbps so it is very slow. We cannot let the problem stay on. In our mega project we plan to cover 70,000 villages and to connect each village with high bandwidth at least 2Mbps. It will be a broadband

connectivity and will depend on the decision of the interested party to choose any model. It is a part of the Government Nervous System (GNS).

What is the role of MICT in terms of implementing the Mega projects that has been launched through Partnership for Development Summit in January?

We are going to act as a co-coordinator or you can call as a co-agent. We will be setting up the management committee to evaluate every proposal. This committee would be chaired by the ICT Minister and will have 15 members from different ministries. There will be also 5 experts in technical committees and one financial committee.

In the first phase we do not need any financial proposal. We need the base technical proposal only. Therefore the interested party need not worry that they are going to compete on the cost. Initially they will be evaluated only on the technical parameters. After we evaluate, www.egovonline.net |

SPECIAL FOCUS THAILAND

we are going to send our recommendations to the second level committee, which is going to be chaired by the Prime Minister. This committee will look into the broad view of different applications like e-Health, e-Education. Our task is to provide the ICT infrastructure so that other ministries can then successfully carry out their e-Government applications.

We expect to finalize our partners within 2 months after 28th May. We plan to start all these projects in this year.

It is a general perception that changes in political environment of a country delays, or at times derails, visionary projects like that of Thailand Mega Projects. Is there any such foreseeable risk under the present political crisis in Thailand?

As everybody already knows that the submission date for the Mega project was earlier 28th April but now the government has decided to postpone it to one more month. So it means that the political instability has just delayed the projects by only one month. This will give interested parties more time to submit their proposals. In my view, there won’t be any risks for the companies to invest in these Mega projects due to cabinet reshuffle.

In implementing the Mega Projects, huge amount of investment is involved.

What is the amount budgeted for this project till now?

Our Prime Minister said not to worry about money. We don’t know how much money has been sanctioned till now but this is for sure that huge investment would be made.

What is the role played by Ministry of ICT in taking further the vision of eGovernment?

We were the one who had set out the standards. We are not going to get involved in each Ministry’s internal business. They are independent to implement e-Government projects on their own. Each ministry has a Chief Information Officer (CIO) and we must educate them and ask them to cooperate in following the guidelines set by us. There is also an e-Government committee headed by Prime Minister, which coordinates among different ministries. | April 2006

Can you give us an idea on how much government is spending on e-Government in Thailand?

The amount of government budget that has been spent on buying hardware and software (not really on e-Government) was about 6.37 billion bath in year 2004-05.

Before the mega projects were launched, we had created an e-Government roadmap and had asked for a budget of about 500 million baht. But this amount did not get an approval. Now we are waiting for the Mega projects to start.

Regarding the technical expertise and know-how to implement these projects, what are the agencies within Thailand and outside you are involving for consultation?

Up till now the reply is no. But there are some offers. Recently we got an offer from Cisco that they would like to have a workshop to educate how to evaluate the project. We also have the plan to set up our own e-Government agency.

In many international studies of e-Government it has been found that most of the e-Government services benefit the urban citizens because they have more access to Internet. What are the plans in Thailand to benefit the rural population through the means of ICT? Government has a programme to buy 250,000 computers to be installed in schools in villages. In Thailand we have about 43,000 schools and the project will be completed within this year.

Another project is ‘100 US Dollar laptop’. We are planning to place an order of about 1 million of such laptops. The project is going to start in 7 countries around the world. In Asia, it is going to be implemented in India, China and Thailand.

We also have computer installed already in the office of the chief of each village and villagers have access to that.

But the Internet speed is very slow and we are planning to improve that to broadband. Apart from this, we also have project called ‘One temple, One e-Learning Centre’ (OTEC), where computer facility is provided within the temple. Our ministry just started the I-Community project, where we are providing telephone, banking services also to the villagers.

Success of e-Government is often defined by the rate of service uptake by citizens, which depends on proper public promotion of such facilities? What is your strategy of promoting e-Government after you have implemented the eGovernment projects?

We have to educate the people and that is our responsibility. Not only us but also we are going to urge our companies like TOT Academy who are teaching in villages. Maybe we are also going to use the University’s capacity to fulfil this responsibility.

Generally it is observed that government officials resist changing from manual to computerized systems.

How did Thailand government cope with the problem of change management?

If given a choice, no government officer would like to change. But government should force it. We have about 76 provinces and each province has a Governor as the head. We have a project called CEO Governor, which initially started in 5 provinces as a trial and now they cover all of them. You have to know that being a civil servant for the government, you have to be very active.

What is your opinion of the progress of ICT development in Thailand?

It is very good to get a view from outside about what you are doing. Last week the senior vice president of the famous consulting company, Gartner, Bob Hayward spoke about the global ICT business in Thailand. He said that the ICT growth in Thailand is about 5 % and he recommended Thailand to do three things.

His first recommendation was not to change ICT Ministers too often because in one year we have had 3 ministers.

Second was, Thailand must have their own brand. Like when we talk about India, it is known to be best in software. Similarly China is good in hardware, Singapore is good in ICT infrastructure and Philippines is very good in call centre business. But when you talk about Thailand there is nothing in ICT. So Thailand must have a brand. Suppose we are keen in animation, we should set up our brand for animation.

His last recommendation was to devote time and resources on research and development (R&D).

9

SPECIAL FOCUS THAILAND

Thailand Citizen-centric approach Somboon Mekpaiboonwattana

R

oyal Thai Government emphasizes on e-Government flagship as one of the appliance to reforms government by utilizing ICT to enhance management efficiency – effectiveness and capability to deliver services to the citizen. Since 2003, Royal Thai government launched the e-Government Development Plan to navigate the eGovernment initiative in Thailand, consisting of 15 milestones. As a result of these, every government agency owns the websites and central government advances integrated – front office & back office, one-stop services, contact centre and centralize citizen portal etc, to serve the potential customers. Presently, many of these milestones have already arisen and acquainted.

e-Citizen concept Under the concept of Citizen-centric, eCitizen (Electronic Citizen) was issued.

There is shifting from traditional concept, Department-centric to the new one – Citizen-centric. The integrated electronic citizen-based management system, eCitizen, aims to decrease the redundancy on the execution and consumption of management resources; bring about work collaboration and specially underline on the citizen advantages, the ultimate outcome of e-Governance. Assembled with one-stop-service platform, e-Citizen is able to serve all citizens, at many points of service and by citizen self-service via

10

Internet on a 24 x 7 basis. Because of the unequal access, Thai government supplies various service delivery channels for instance, portal website, single-point-service, kiosk and so forth, to support e-Citizen. e-Citizen portal (http://www.ecitizen. go.th/), one of the channels mentioned above, is the citizen gateway to public information and services. This portal would eliminate the need to logon to several government websites. And people can connect to as the alternative to make contact with government agency. e-Citizen portal provides not only the essential public information but also provides the online services. Information and service compiled in the e-Citizen portal is categorized based on agency, category, target group and life cycle. eCitizen portal was launched in April 2003 as the first phase of e-Government service delivery, and has ever since obtained a good reaction as well as a stimulant to government agency to transform to eServices. Currently, the second phase has already finished.

The other channels, which are furnished to fulfill the e-Citizen are the single-point service and kiosk. This is a resolution to bridge the digital divide. To facilitate the citizen, Royal Thai Government has a single-point-service called Government Counter Service (GCS) located in the community or business centre. Besides, kiosk is another point of service that can be placed anywhere to comfort the citizen. Now, single-pointservice and kiosk are just at the beginning and the government desire to expand throughout the country. e-Citizen is just a piece of jigsaw to complete the e-Government picture that featured in e-Services, government ICT infrastructure, rule & regulation modification and so forth. If we have all of these, it will generate the integrated Citizen-Centric e-Government.

About the author: Somboon Mekpaiboonwattana is Director, e-Government Promotion & Development Bureau Ministry of Information and Communication Technology Royal Thai Government

www.egovonline.net |

SPECIAL FOCUS THAILAND

Thailand Ministry of Finance

Providing effective services through efficient use of technology “The Royal Thai Government’s Ministry of Finance is successfully using IT tools for fiscal and monetary planning, budgeting and analysis,” tells Supachai Jongsiri, Information and Communication Technology Advisor, Chief Information Officer, Ministry of Finance, Royal Thai Government, in an interview to Dipanjan Banerjee of egov Can you briefly throw light on the ICT policy of Ministry of Finance?

The ICT policy of Ministry of Finance, Thailand, strongly focuses on computerising and integrating the operations of the Ministry as well as that of other departments and offices under its authority, through efficient use of technology. We are already using IT tools to perform our Fiscal and Monetary planning, budgeting and analysis. Apart from that a number of services of the Ministry have been made available online. Particularly, with regard to taxation, initiatives like e-Revenue, eCustoms and e-Excise are running quite successfully.

What is the role-played by the ICT Centre of Ministry of Finance?

The ICT Centre of Ministry of Finance plays a major role in enhancing the overall working efficiency of this Ministry. It primarily acts as a Data Centre/Data Hub of the Ministry, and takes care of all data and information services. It collects, collates and compiles data generated from various other offices and/or departments to prepare financial and budgetary reports/analysis, as and when required.

It also assists in the process of policy research and development undertaken by the Ministry from time to time. In addition, the Centre also looks after the maintenance of IT infrastructure of the | April 2006

Ministry and provides in-house training services for staff and employees. The ICT Centre has got well-equipped training facility, with two dedicated computer labs and qualified trainers.

How are you addressing the needs of training and capacity building of civil servants to work with ICTs? In order to address training and capacity building needs of our members, we regularly organise workshops and programs. These programs range from very basic IT fundamental courses to advanced technology courses.

What policy reforms would you like to see to encourage higher involvement of financial institutions in e-Governance projects?

Any electronic process that involves financial institutions (either through online monetary transactions or otherwise) needs high security standards to ensure safe and smooth operations.

Existing policies do not have a dedicated focus on electronic security issues. I would like to see the introduction of adequate policy measures that genuinely addresses security concerns.

Can you explain how IT initiatives are going to help the Ministry in bringing better transparency?

I do firmly believe that effective use of IT

certainly brings greater transparency and accountability of any organisation. We have already started working in this direction. At present, you can easily find a strong online presence of our Ministry, through our websites and portals, wherein we publish a lot of information in the public domain. You can find our annual expense statement, budgetary information and many other data in our website. In addition, our intranet services for employees (called “vayupak.net”), which is initiated by Khun Suparut Kawatkul, Permanent Secretary, serves to publish and disseminate information among and within all our offices throughout the country.

To what extent do you think the projects like e-Revenue will help to increase revenue collection for the department?

Are these e-Government projects helping to reduce the operation costs of the Government?

Definitely, projects like those of eRevenue and other e-Government initiatives will make many Government processes much easier and cost-effective for both, government and its citizens.

Electronic and online processes greatly reduces time and cost involved in traditional form of manual procedures. At times, it also helps in making our processes more transparent and removing unnecessary delays in work cycles.

11

SPECIAL FOCUS THAILAND

Central population e-Registration project

Champion leads the way!

The largest national level project in Thailand, Project Population Registration (PPR), began 20 years ago with the vision and dream of one man, Surachai Srisaracam. The mammoth project collected, updated, computerised and centralised the entire nation’s population data, presenting an unique 13 digit identification number and identity card to each Thai citizen. Identity cards with smart chip also have now been introduced.

The centralised database serves as a basic infrastructure for e-Government services and consists of the residential records database, the ID card database, the election database, the marriage and divorce database, etc. It took two years for him to set up the management, staff and facility to truly begin work on a centralised database.

Surachai Srisaracam Documentation, computer feed forms and data entry came in from Pioneer, Central Population e-Registration over 1000 locations in 76 provinces. Mobile units travelled across the project, Thailand country to make a soft copy of all data to send back to the centre. The hard work and dedication of the project team won them Computerworld Smithsonian award in 1990 and many other awards for using IT to improve the management of mankind.

But the story does not end here and the project is yet to reach its final goals. Two years back, the brainchild and Director of the project, Srisaracam was shifted and promoted to the position of Vice Governor of Sisaket province.

Sine then the project is lying suspended and Srisaracam is hopeful that he would come back to finish the project successfully. “I am really upset that the project is suspended now and cannot accomplish the final goals.

I am looking for a come back. I have 9 years more in this service. If I get a chance to come back and we push it, I think within 5 years we can finish”, says Surachai Srisaracam in a candid and heart-warming talk with Anuradha Dhar of egov.

Could you tell us about the objectives and implementation plan of Central Population registration project?

It is the basic infrastructure of the new era of public administration. To implement e-Government to the people, we need centralised population registration database. Without this, we cannot develop e-Government services for the people. Otherwise the country cannot develop into a developed state.

The identity system or citizen authentication system or Smart Card is the need of a country in the new era.

It was not easy to create and computerise a central database for a country with 60 million population. The Central Population database is the result of 20 years of hard work of the team. The objective of the project was to have 12

“e-Government in Thailand need not be a mega project because we have already invested a lot and we now just need integration. We already have the concept and the infrastructure. We can do better than people coming from overseas because we know what all we have.” population profile in terms of population registration database. It is done under the Civil Registration Law. We have 50 million houses in Thailand and each house was given a unique 11-digit number.

Then each citizen was given an identification number of 13-digit. The design of the system took 2 years. The house registration document was created 40 years ago but it was not updated. We

took 5 years to capture all the data and took 4 years to centralise and computerise the database. We now have1000 registration centers all over Thailand in 76 provinces and all these centers are connected online with the central database. Regular changes from these centers are updated and maintained in the central database.

We have also created Khonthai.com, www.egovonline.net |

SPECIAL FOCUS THAILAND

a portal for Thai citizens. It is the gateway for people to get services from the government and can certify their registration document, and ID card online.

Smart Card has just been introduced and is into the first stage. 10,000 cards have already been issued. But it still has to get utilized and for that, system needs to develop first. At present, it just contains basic information. How to utilize is going to be the next step. It is still in the half way and we have to work more on this project to utilize smart card to deliver eServices.

What are the factors that helped to successfully manage and implement a project of this magnitude?

Efficient management is the key.

A good design and architecture has to be there. It is also important to ensure that the vision and policy are made very clear to the government. Detailed plans on the implementation of the project and the return on investment are all marked out. This helps to circumvent political involvement, which may hinder the process and the success of the project.

| April 2006

Issue of smart card

At last, most important is good leadership and hard work of the team. We worked, lived and played in office for so many years for this project.

“I am really upset

What challenges and problems did you and your team faced to implement such a huge nation-wide project? How did you overcome them?

We realised long ago that to implement a huge national long-term project, lots of problems would come along. A thousand problems arose, which we had overcome over the past 20 years.

The first problem, which we faced, was limitation of technology.

You can imagine the level of technology, infrastructure, education level of the people 20 years ago. We overcame this by smart design and careful planning.

The other challenge was management.

How to motivate a large staff to co-ordinate and support the project?

As you know teamwork is required for success of any project. Another challenge was how to convince the government. It was difficult to show them what benefits would happen to the country once this project gets implemented in terms of improved government efficiency, etc. If they recognise that and they share our vision about what will happen 10 or 15 years later then only they would support and approve the budget. This is very difficult, but we overcome that.

cannot accomplish its

that the project is suspended now and final goals. I am looking for a come back. I have 9 years more in this service. If I get a chance to come back and push it, I think within 5 years we can finish.

Then I will spend last 5 years of my service to transfer technology to other countries.�

Support of the people is very important because people have to recognise the benefits of the project when we implement for them. It was a big challenge to explain to people what benefits will happen to them in short-term and long-term in terms of national security, national development, improved services.

13

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Cisco Systems

Creating next generation of government services

“Cisco’s vision is linked to the government’s vision. Our first job is to understand what the government or the society is trying to achieve. We try to increase government value for their citizens. We are committed to the public sector — to helping government’s worldwide use the power of the Internet as a catalyst for change and to build “connected-government” strategies that support the needs of the people,” says Mark Badger, Director, International Connected Governance, Internet Business Solution Groups for Cisco Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd., in an interview to Ravi Gupta of egov 14

Please tell us something about the background of the Public Sector Summit, which Cisco Systems hosted?

What everybody is talking about today is that you need to take the eout of e-Government. Without it you cannot have good governance.

You cannot think of governments without the capability of operators.

Cisco has an a multifaceted relationship with governments — we do not sell — in fact, we are agonistic about what solutions are deployed — we just work to achieve the highest goals each government is attempting to achieve. We were born in the era of the Internet revolution. So, for the past 7 years, people have been coming to Cisco to understand what is it to work in a networking environment — to work in a company that works in the manufacturing focuses on networking, all of the systems to be an connected workforce. The Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) has then moved into distance learning. We have 230 centres; we are into software, manufacturing and all of that. Even people from different industries were coming to us to know what is the flowingnetwork-environment, which was so new. We fundamentally understand

networks. Cisco is a networking company. We build networks; we operate them. So we understand it well before it becomes commonly understood. So, part of my job, is that I am an interpreter. We work not just like a manufacturer but also to understand the clients, especially governments, to engage with them, with their mission and their plans.

Then tell the other governments how to go about it.

Then we evolved as innovations team focused on just top performing governments, working to solve problems, and working with governments, to help them to improve their services. Our engagements are ongoing, and it is to support the business and public services. www.egovonline.net |

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

So, can you explain that a bit further?

So, it is not just an engagement, it’s a bit further than that. It is showing our commitment to the governments. We are meeting with governments regularly. We hire policy analysts, and so we understand the government challenges are. We have been focusing on these challenges.

What is the vision and mandate for Cisco’s e-Governance initiative?

Cisco’s vision is linked to the government’s vision. Our first job is to understand what the government or the society is trying to achieve. We try to bring together our innovations capabilities to increase citizen services. We are committed to the public sector, to helping government’s worldwide use the power of their networks as a catalyst for change and to build e-Government strategies that support the needs of the people. We try to enable government’s capabilities to become more responsive to people’s needs. The technology tries to help in making the governmentcitizen interface a more meaningful experience.

IBSG’s mandate is a simple concept that demands new ideas: But it simply is to “accelerate government and citizen success” through Internet concepts. Cisco has a research centre, to find out people factors- what people feel, conversations between states and national representatives. In the federated society, local needs are important. That is why India is a both a challenge and a good place to apply these efforts. In the federal society, governance is a mutually driven process.

How have you evolved with changes in the various government departments, the software industry etc. What have been the transformations? | April 2006

That is a good question too. First for government there was the web, then it offered downloadable forms, and then transactions for basic services. That is how e-Government evolved. The last stage, the fourth of the traditional e-Governance platform is “transformation” the offering of services across multiple levels of government—which is much harder to accomplish because it requires policy and management changes—not just technological.

But all of this is not enough, there is still much more progress to be made. But we at Cisco, being a networking company have redefined these 5 stages: web, forms, transactions, transformation and then “co-production” or opening the process of designing government services in partnership with citizens. Once you have transformation, you have another threshold. We can see this in Canada, in Australia, etc., where the governments have looked at improved services. It is really a policy of being proactive.

Government service design is becoming more sophisticated. The transformation is already happening.

Countries of Asia are ten years behind the western countries.

Many of them did not even experiment with the basics. Therefore, in your opinion are there chances for tripping since there is desire to move fast and catch up.

There are always chances of tripping. Yet, society allows for trips if a government is trying to implement better programmes (improving civil life, for example). There are now advantages for countries starting at the foundational level.

Technologies are cheaper and are more adaptive. We at Cisco systems, help governments and States to realise their goals. We understand the many complex challenges facing modern governments today and in the foreseeable future. We are committed to the public, to helping governments worldwide use 15

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

the power of their networks as a catalyst for change and to build e-Government strategies that support the growing needs of the people.

You have been travelling around the world; tell us the different scenarios, for example, the e-Governance scenario with respect to the rest of the world?

Asia is the world now. I cannot generalise. Many countries are now leapfrogging—jumping over others’ and pitfalls. This term is commonly used to describe what is happening in Asia.

People are always trying to learn from each other very quickly—every country has its challengers, whether it is fear of change, illiteracy or suspicion of government policies.

I will here elaborate the initiative of the government of Ontario, Canada. The government installed a robust, Internetbased network to serve the needs of more than 60,000 government employees and 12 million citizens, and a Shared Services Bureau was created to optimise delivery of human resources, finance, and procurement services. Major initiatives including business transformation, e-services, Web strategies, and outsourcing have quickly delivered results. In less than a year, the Government of Ontario increased citizen satisfaction by more than 90% and projected benefits in efficiencies of more than US$35mn.

In India, e-Government is about improving services and making them available: “Bringing urban amenities to rural areas”

as President Kalam has mentioned before. Parts of Australia are working on more citizen participation in policy development.

So, there is a huge range.

This “adaptive government” or “co-production of government services,” where citizens design the services of the future is what we call The Connected Republic. Adopting the Connected Republic approach produces more agile and efficient government that delivers services that citizens truly value.

Equally important, it helps government reengage with its citizens, and increases trust and legitimacy.

What are the key opportunities in the governments in Asia?

This goes back to the “leapfrogging concept” and the challenges it creates. For example Korea, there is an effort to create more 16

mobile governments (m-governments), having a web browser in the mobile phones.

Another example is that police departments are using wireless video to monitor situations in crisis directly from their police cars. In case of bank robbery, a clerk can send surveillance video to the police force. It sends another simultaneous alarm to the police cars; the police cars can actually see what is happening inside the bank before they reach the location. So they can strategise on how to go about it. This is a very interesting example of an m-Government.

So m-Governments are also allowing “integrated inspectors”. Instead of a punishing government that issues a lot of citations, many steps in bureaucracy, it presents a mechanism of meeting the people’s needs in the friendlier way. m-Governments led to a similar initiative called t-Government. t-Government is for people who are not computer literate. The TV remote has options for government services, apart from games and cable network. You just need to punch in your PIN number and it asks where you want to be delivered, because it knows your home address as it is in your cable. And it is friendly.

This initiative is in pilot stage in Seoul, Korea. So using your digital TV, you can have 24-hour on call government services. It is like an open door to a helpline. Asia can take the best practices for optimisation. The exponential increase in the technology is going to give huge inputs to network.

All of this when matched with improved government organization and focus on a more participatory policy process in improved public and effective governance capability to meet 21st Century needs is possible. www.egovonline.net |

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Public Sector Summit 2006

Connecting Government, Empowering Citizens

C

isco Systems and National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) co-hosted the 2nd Annual Public Sector Summit on Infrastructure for e-Governance at New Delhi on March 9-10, 2006. The theme of this year’s summit was ‘Connecting Government, Empowering Citizens’. Over 120 delegates from across the country comprising senior officials from Department of IT (DIT), National Informatics Centre (NIC), National e-Governance Programme Management Unit, IT Secretaries, IT Directors, System Managers from state governments and various key agencies involved in the implementation of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) participated. Speakers from foreign countries included Andrew Thomson, Minister of Finance & Information Technology, Govt. of Saskatchewan, Canada; Lawrence Knafo, First Deputy Commissioner & Deputy CIO, City of New York; Jeff Kaplan, Founder & Director, Open ePolicy Group, Harvard University; Ho-Chuan-te Director, Executive Yuan, Taiwan; and Joan McCalla, Chief Strategist, Office of CIO, Canada.

The objectives of the summit included providing a framework for developing State-level infrastructure strategy that supports e-Governance roadmaps; presenting and discussing business models and technology options for top-priority ICT infrastructure issues; addressing key implementation challenges of State-level ICT infrastructure; sharing lessons from different jurisdictions inside and outside India to leverage best practices; providing an opportunity for feedback and discussion on the national e-Governance Roadmap blueprint; and exploring trends and issues on key ICT infrastructure issues such as DataCenters, Storage and Wireless.

Brijesh Kumar, Secretary, Department of IT, Government of India (GoI) inaugurated the summit. Speaking on the occasion, Kumar highlighted the criticality of the suitably designed infrastructure in any e-Government project. He stressed that it was necessary to manage infrastructure efficiently as also the security issue related to the IT infrastructure.

In his address, R. Chandrashekhar, Joint Secretary (e-Gov) DIT, explained about India’s National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).

He said that some 25 e-Governance projects in mission mode are to be launched shortly by the GoI. One of the 25 projects is that of MCA 21, which would enable companies to file returns electronically. Other projects include setting up of common service centers (CSCs) and assigning unique ID to belowpoverty line families. Chandrashekhar also reiterated the Government’s intention to bring a number of services online in a web-based mode.

J. Satyanarayana, CEO of NISG, also addressed the inaugural session of the summit. He expressed the hope that the Public | April 2006

Lamp Lighting at Inaugural Ceremony - Brijesh Kumar, Sudhir Narang, R Chandrashekhar, J Satyanarayan

Sector Summit 2006 would enable sharing of knowledge and experience of countries on the various facets of establishing a robust and scalable infrastructure for e-Government, which would go a long way in increasing the pace of implementation and realizing the goals of providing better public services in the country.

Welcoming the participants, Sudhir Narang, Sr. Vice President, Government & Service Provider Businesses, Cisco Systems, India & SAARC, informed that Cisco has been collaborating with Governments all over the world in their eGovernance efforts including India. He announced that Cisco has committed US$5mn to NeGP for setting up e-Government lab facilities in each State of India.

The inaugural session was followed by interesting sessions spread over two days, where the prominent practitioners and experts from across the world shared their knowledge and experiences in various areas such as that of connectivity and access solutions, infrastructure for information sharing and collaboration, infrastructure for content and applications, business models for supporting ICT infrastructure, governance and standards issues, and the role of the CIO. Through presentations, the summit showcased innovative models that have raised the levels of connectivity and competence of national and international governments.

The summit also blended together workshops providing an opportunity for the delegates to have more in-depth discussions on specific issues related to the rollout of State Wide Area Networks, e-Governance roadmaps, and the NeGP. Summarising the summit, Satyanarayana remarked, “The 17

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

measurable commitments from top government down to the various departments.”

Joan identified some of the CIO challenges and how to respond to them.

Some of the challenges includes horizontal decision-making and funding models in a traditionally vertical organisation model, maintaining business and IT alignment at corporate and ministry level, demonstrating the value of IT in a tight fiscal environment, attracting and maintaining the necessary human resources, engaging leadership, ongoing communications, education, awareness and involvement of staff and stakeholder within and beyond the organisation.

Eminent international & Indian speakers at the Panel Discussion on e-gov best practices “Avoiding duplication of efforts, establishing and communicating a clear summit has offered a platform for delegates to identify common vision and action plan, building corporate directions, priorities challenges in implementing NeGP, prioritizing them and and commitments into performance management plans and suggesting possible recommendations to Department of IT and pay for performance, annual results-based planning and state governments to address these challenges”. Reflecting on new IT employee classification levels with increased the challenges to e-Governance as identified by participants in compensation are some of the ways to respond to these the workshop, Satyanarayana said that significantly the top challenges,” Joan said.

Chaterjee emphasized on the need of making people realise challenges to e-Governance in India include last mile connectivity, availability of power, line of sight etc.; the need to have CIO, especially in India. One way to do it is to sustainability and maintenance of infrastructure created (SWAN, link state IT funds to CIO. She said, “The pre-requisite to CSC etc.); lack of standards and architecture especially in attracting these funds should be the implementation of information management; lack of content; backend e-Governance”. computerisation of departments; lack of local language content; Chuan-te presented an interesting definition of IT in Taiwan. lack of awareness of what content is available; quality of content; He said that IT is ‘India+Taiwan’. According to him, the needs assessment and community participation; issues in government of Taiwan is encouraging its citizens to come to sharing infrastructure and information between departments; India to learn. He suggested that the third Public Sector Summit projects designed in silos; lack of suitable legal frameworks; should have representation from the highest level of and complexity of dealing with multiple government departments government, attended by the Prime Minister of India. This will for private partner. give the required push to e-Governance.

Recommendations to DIT included assistance to Truly, the summit provided a platform for government departments from concept to solution; drafting clear policy for leaders, decision-makers, policy designers and international last mile connectivity, bandwidth charges, content management, experts to share, compare and learn from e-Governance best security policy, standards and architectures, information sharing, practices in India, Asia, and the World. The highlight of the Central MMP on Data Digitisation; link rollout of CSCs to state summit was the interactive workshops where participants had a e-Governance readiness to institutionalise them; providing chance to express viewpoints on what are the barriers and its exposure of e-Readiness reports among bureaucrats and solutions to connectivity and access solutions, infrastructure politicians (through seminars, media etc.); and consolidating for information sharing and collaboration, Infrastructure for best practices for business models. content and applications, business models for supporting ICT The summit concluded with a panel discussion. The infrastructure, governance and standards and the role of CIO. panelists included R. Chandrashekhar, Jeff Kaplan, Ho ChuanWhen asked to comment on the summit, Dominic Scott, te, Joan McCalla and Zohra Chatterji, IT Secretary, U.P. The Principal Consultant, Public Sector- Asia Pacific, Cisco, informed panelists deliberated on issues such as the role of regulator in e- that CISCO had organised the summit to provide a forum for Government, how to promote development of right content, central, state, governments and consultants to share ideas and e-Readiness and the role of CIO. international experiences. The uniqueness of the summit was Kaplan elaborated on the concept of e-Governance to the large workshop component that provided delegates to include integrated services for citizens. He said, “e-Governance interact and debate on the national e-Governance programme. is not about business, IT, but it is about changing how the The summit concluded with the common resolution of government works, how citizens interact with the government. daring to dream.

Prachi Shirur This requires a political commitment for change, specific 18

www.egovonline.net |

COUNTRY FOCUS TAIWAN

Taiwan

Stepping into the advanced e-Government stage With the start of the third phase from 2005-2008, Taiwan is stepping into the advanced e-Government stage. It is not just the issue of implementing e-Government programme, but is significantly more than that. Taiwan is in the throes of implementing what is called as mobile government or m-Government programme, says Chuan-te Ho, Director, Department of Information Management, Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Executive Yuan, in an interview to Prachi Shirur of egov What is the vision and mandate of Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Executive Yuan?

The function of my department is firstly to develop national eGovernance strategy for the central government; secondly, to evaluate the performance of e-Governance; thirdly, to set up standards for e-Governance and the fourth function of my department is security and data protection. In Taiwan Government, every Ministry has got its IT unit; there is a head of Information Management. My department has a good representation in the Cabinet. So, all the government agencies, if they want to implement e-Governance programme, have to submit a proposal asking for funding. We go through the proposal to see if it is technically and financially feasible, and then give a go ahead. So we control the budgeting and the implementation of all the e-Government projects.

How is your department engaged in e-Government initiatives of Taiwan?

We started our programme in 1996. Ever since 1996 we initiated three-phased programmes. The first phase, from 1998-2000, concentrated on information building and penetration. If you have to implement e-Governance, you have to train your civil servants; you have to build a super-highway platform for the government. The second phase lasted from 2001-2005. After the structures were complete, our government started to create major e-services for our citizens, for example, taxation, motor vehicle registration and so on. We call this stage as service-online phase. The third phase is from 2005-2008. We are stepping into the advanced e-Government stage. We call it integrated government because once you have created infrastructure, created lots of e-Government services, the next step is | April 2006

connecting them all together. That is what is a connected government, integrated government —government –togovernment and government-to-citizens.

However, in Taiwan we do not just have e-Government programme. We are also implementing what is called as mobile government or m-Government programme. More than 15% citizens use mobile phones to connect to Internet. Our government is trying to create m-Taiwan, which is not just Wi-Fi based/ Wi-Max based. In this initiative by the end of this year, in the capital city of Taipei, people will be able to access the Internet wirelessly. They will just have to pay US$13 per month. So to integrate the government, you have to go beyond the traditional way of delivering services.

Previously the government delivery system was agencycentric and not citizen-centric. The government agencies just used to create their websites, they just did not think about how to make the things easy from citizens’ point of view. So the citizens had to visit a number of government websites to collect information, for example, if you have to start a business, you have to visit the ministry of economic affairs, then you have to visit the ministry of public health, and so on. But through our government-centric programme, we can connect all the ministries together.

Within 2-3 years, Taiwan will enter into advanced eGovernment stage. Through the government service platform, general public can access government services just like Yahoo and Google, and it will be user-friendly. Through this platform the government would be able to make it services reach every home and every school. For instance, in Taiwan we have 5 million college students. The government is now introducing the e-payment system through which one can pay tuition fees online.

19

COUNTRY FOCUS TAIWAN

efficient, effective and equitable. So those are our goals. We want to be a fair and equitable society; we want to make the government information and services more accessible where people can monitor, criticise, join and participate in the decision making process. That is our optimist goal. In Taiwan, just like other countries, there are lot of government agencies, like islands, we want to connect all of them together. We want to make our government just like globe — once you touch anywhere in the globe you touch the entire government. That is our vision.

This will make the fee payment procedure very easy, you do not have to go to the counters, just visit the website on Internet and pay the tuition fees online. This means 5 million households can connect with the government. This is a very important strategy to extend your service to every home.

The second application in Taiwan is the e-Taxation system.

In Taiwan, we have close to 5 million taxpayers. In 2005, more than 34% tax payers filed their income tax returns online. Around 16% used digital certificates to download text information electronically. Within 5 minutes one can thus file income tax returns.

There are a number of such initiatives going on in Taiwan.

If you are a small or medium-sized company, you will usually have to go through lots of government websites to have some kind of training programmes. There are so many training programmes and one has to visit so many websites to know about them. We connect them, to provide them with a single window services. For example, you want to take some financial help; you have to go to the government agency, to the bank or some kind of organisation. The government is connecting all of them together.

In Taiwan, we have 1 million small and medium sizedbusinesses (SMBs). They can access the government services very easily. We have created a government service website called ‘my e-Government’, ‘my’, ‘its mine’. No matter you are general public, citizen, student, SMB, you can very easily log on to the government service portal and get the service immediately. So the government service portal can play the role of service broker, the service engine. Just tell me who you are, what do you need, what do you want to access. And then it is my job to give you right answers, right services.

So this is a paradigm shift — from the traditional way the government operated. Taiwan government has thus tried to transform the government through the use of technology. We want to create a knowledge-enabled society. That is our national strategy.

What is the strategy to achieve these goals?

We have four strategies. Simplification — simplify all information structure. We do not want government agencies to prepare data centres for themselves, to create sub-layers for themselves, to duplicate. We want to consolidate this strategy. The second strategy is Standardisation. If the government agency wants to change their messages/information online, then the better way is to follow the international organisational standards, which is ISO standards. We want to use the software components prepared by our government agencies. And service integration, we want to integrate the legacy system all together through our government service platform. The second strategy is very interesting, we do not do everything ourselves but get it done through private sector. This is because e-Governance involves investing a lot of money. The third strategy is to be a follower and not to be an inventor. Learning from others, just like India can learn a lot from Taiwan and vice versa.

What are the budgetary allocations for e-Taiwan initiative?

Taiwan government has planned to invest US$1bn to implement e-Taiwan initiative. This has provided an opportunity to our local industry. However, investing money is not just all. We have to change the mindset of government staff; we have to change the organisational culture. So transforming governance is not an easy task, it is not just a technological issue. It involves

In this context, what is the vision of e-Government of Taiwan?

We set up goals; we want to make our government more 20

www.egovonline.net |

COUNTRY FOCUS TAIWAN

a lot of training. Of course, there is the issue of security and privacy and data protection. Once you step into the e-Governance data structure, these kinds of challenges do occur. My opinion is that money is not a constraint.

Human resources, imagination and determination are a constraint — “Dare to dream”.

As you said, e-Governance involves a lot of changing of the mindset of the government staff. Same thing needs to be done in the case of India. We can learn from Taiwan. How has Taiwan achieved this?

This is very important step. So we have lots of training programmes — from a very high level, middle level and elementary level — all government staff need to be trained. They need to be educated on what is ICT and how ICT can transform government. Changing the mindset involve becoming citizen-centric, respecting the choices made by the citizens. It is not so easy. So training, communication and I think leadership at the highest level, are the prerequisites. We have to find out some kind of change-agents — the Prime Minister, CIO or Secretary of State. Also, there should be interlearning. The country should not be embarrassed to learn from the private sector and from other countries. The essence of eGovernance is not ‘e’ but on governance. e-Governance has many legs, technology is just one leg. Then there is social, economic and political leg. One should not neglect these legs and over-emphasize on just the technology.

What are the challenges you faced while implementing eGovernance in Taiwan?

The main challenges we faced are privacy and security. We are very much concerned about it. The second issue is that you have to have a very competitive local IT service sector because we get most of our work done from local private sector. The third challenge is how to transform, re-engineer the workflow and provide them with greater services. Then another challenge is to communicate the programme — to communicate to the Prime Minister, to the Congress, to the popular media, to get the buyin for the programme. We need to communicate to the people that e-Government is for the good of the citizens. For that we need change agents. Previously we had more than 35 ministerial level agents, in the small island of Taiwan. We want to cut down the number of ministers.

Do you think that private partners can add value to eGovernment and their role need to be strengthened?

Yes, definitely. Private sector can provide the government with various technologies and expertise. They are very efficient. They can manage the software, so government does not have to make the software, it can just buy it from the private sector. Private | April 2006

sector is very active, they are very creative. They can input all kinds of new ideas into the government sector.

In the e-Government ranking survey 2005, Taiwan is ranked number 1. How can developing countries especially south Asian countries like India, learn from Taiwan?

Taiwan is ranked number 1 in 2004 and 2005. In 2003, Taiwan was ranked number 3. In World Economic Forum, e-Readiness Report 2004-05, we ranked number 3 in e-Readiness. In e-Usage, in the same survey, we ranked number 5. We would be very happy to share our experience. We are implementing the Asia-digital Opportunity South-east Asia Programme to transfer our experience to the Asian countries for example in Philippines, Indonesia, to create digital opportunity center. We work together with their government to provide the needed skill, the needed expertise.

What do you think will be the big issues in e-Governance in the next five years?

I want to give a new formula to e-Governance – E2 P2. The first ‘e; is easy — to make government information and services more easier to access for the citizens. The second ‘e’ is engagement — citizens to be not just the customers, not just the receiver of e-Services but the masters of the country, decider of the e-Services. The two ‘Ps’ in P2 means privacy and protection (data protection). These will be the big issues in e-Governance in the next five years.

Governments do not have to be innovating public service, but maximise public value. They have to build trust, confidence for e-Government. Governments have to create a more just society, more participative society, create a more civic society. e-Government is not just a technical service, government has to open up its information to the general public. In my view how to maximise the public value will be the big issue in the coming years.

21

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Gartner e-Government viewpoint event

Global best practices on government performance management

G

artner, IT research and advisory company, conducted the Gartner Viewpoint event on 7th March 2006, to present its e-Government viewpoint to the public sector. Senior bureaucrats from Ministries and Departments of Government of India as well as State Governments, besides CIOs and Directors from Government-owned Public Sector Undertakings participated. The objective of the meet was to present the Gartner insight and recommendation on the global best practices on Government Performance Management, Customer Services along with Enterprise Architecture. This was part of the Gartner’s public sector initiative to provide IT solutions that ensure the public is well served. Experts from Gartner, Richard Harris, Vice President, Research, and Deborah Weiss, Enterprise Planning and Architecture Strategies, put across the company’s viewpoints and highlighted the company’s expertise in Government research and advisory that spanned over all aspect of information technology and best practices recommendations to the governments worldwide.

Welcoming the delegates, Rajeev Banduni, Director-Sales, Gartner, told that Gartner uses the terms e-Government and eGovernance interchangeably while acknowledging the fact that the term ‘e-Governance’ gained currency in India. “Gartner has been in India for the past 4 years working in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC). Gartner understands the challenges in e-Governance in India and is capable of suggesting ways to overcome them,” said Banduni.

Prasanta Kr. Das, Director, Government Vertical, said, “Gartner has plans to reach out to Central Government Ministries, State Governments, Public Sector Undertakings and Defence with research and advisory offerings from Gartner.”

The entire event was structured in four sessions — Government Service Scenario, Enterprise Architecture Futures, Government Performance Management, and Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture.

Richard Harris gave a talk on the Government Service Scenario explaining as to how IT systems help to do things differently in government. Harris said, “e-Government has not been able to reach out to the vision of the government. Single financial system for management, single procurement system, integrated data management system and integrated data management, will go a long way towards seamless way of providing e-Government solutions. e-Governance is an agile government, it is beyond technology and beyond web.”

Speaking on the Enterprise Architecture (EA) Futures, Deborah Weiss stressed on indispensability of a sound EA. 22

Richard Harris

Deborah Weiss

According to Deborah, change is the driving force behind EA. “We have to better manage change in our organisations to deal with complex IT environment. We have to look at IT planning – business response, government response- to manage change.

One of the greatest challenges to EA is the impregnable wall of technological apathy- the mindset of senior management that technology rarely matters in ‘big offices’.”

Deborah further explained: “Enterprises that are managed end-to-end have the greatest potential for optimizing value.

Thus, the value network becomes the design-viewpoint of EA. We need to look at the inter-operability issues. It is here that eGovernment comes handy as it cuts across the boundaries of organisations. The emphasis should be on the service-oriented architecture and real-time enterprise. EA is not a stand-alone discipline. It is driven by technology and by the needs of the customers and business. Pursuing independent EA and IT investment management process improvements will not result in an optimized portfolio.”

Regarding Government Performance Management, Harris discussed in detail how performance management drives IT use. He discussed about how government CIOs and IT organisations use of scorecards approach to respond to business-centric performance drives, how scorecards be tailored to different needs of the different stakeholder groups and what are the common pitfalls to avoid while using them.

An interesting question-answer session followed the talks

by Richard Harris and Deborah Weiss. Overall, the questions centered on scorecards, empirical study on measurement and implementation of EA, study on what it takes to implement eGovernance in India, what is the basis of integration of governance and compliance. The participants appreciated the useful insights provided by both the speakers.

Prachi Shirur www.egovonline.net |

COMMENTARY

Taking e-Governance to rural millions. But how fast?

Ajay Prasad

I

ndia’s booming economy and growing middle class are largely fueled by high growth rates in the Services and Manufacturing sectors.

Since these are mostly urban centric, it is important to ensure that India’s rural millions are not left behind and the benefits of future prosperity and modernization are equally available to them through effective e-Governance The government of India has launched an ambitious Rs 12,000 crore National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) to make all government services accessible to the common man through the Internet. This will make transactions with governmant departments much easier and more transparent. e-Governance requires the citizen to have a computer with an Internet connection preferably a broadband connection with a minimum speed of 250Kbps. The Government is making an all out effort to reduce the price of computers and increase broadband coverage. Entry level computers are now being marketed for as little as Rs 10,000 (US$224.87), and Internet is also spreading.

Nevertheless, providing a computer with Internet connection to a sufficient number of citizens to make eGovernance meaningful will take many years. At the end of 2003, only 3.9 fixedline phones, 0.4 Internet connections and 0.19 broadband connections were available per 100 persons.

Moreover, the disparity in Internet connectivity between urban and rural areas is increasing. Internet connections are mainly given through fixed line connections which are difficult to provide in the highly dispersed rural environment. As a result, the benefits of eGovernance will take a long time to percolate to the rural areas thereby deepening the rural-urban divide.

Mobile phones as alternative to e-Governance The rapid growth of Mobile phones offers an immediate and low-cost alternate to the conventional computer-Internet road to eGovernance. Significantly, Mobile phones are no longer luxuries for the rich but a cheap and cost effective communication tool for the working class.

Mobile phones using SMS are already being used for eGovernance. Information on Railway bookings and air flights can be obtained through SMS. Private operators are bringing out new schemes every day for getting information through SMS on diverse subjects ranging from share prices and availability | April 2006

of cinema tickets to cricket scores, popularity ratings and opinion polls.

Use of Mobile phones in ePolicing SMS is ideal for communicating small amounts of precise information. A concrete example will illustrate how SMS works. A person whose car has been stolen wants to know the status of the police case and whether the car has been recovered. He will actuate a program resident on his Mobile phone which will ask him to key in the registration number of the car. A menu will then be dislayed with a choice of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) out of which he will choose — Whether car recovered or Status of the case.

The Mobile phone will then send a coded SMS to the Service Provider who will interact with the police database and send the reply also by SMS. In West Bengal, the West Bengal Police Wide Area Network (WAN) connects all Police Stations in the state. Criminal cases and Missing Person information is recorded on computers at all the Police Stations and kept in a central database. Much of this information is in the public domain and is not sensitive or confidential in nature. Making this available to the public would definitely be a big step forward for e-Governance. A private service provider can be asked to develop and service a SMSbased program to provide this information to the public. Revenue raised through the large number of SMS generated by the scheme would finance the project at no cost to the government.

The SMS Advantage Mobile phones using SMS will immediately give e-Governance to the public. Sufficient infrastructure already exists in urban areas to provide this service.

The people have already given their verdict and chosen the Mobile phones as their gadget of choice for entering the digital world. The government must respect this choice and set up a mechanisms for motivating and coordinating all efforts in the government and private sectors for making programs for enriching e-Government content on Mobile phones. e-Government through SMS is a powerful technology to bridge the gap between the backward regions and our new urban prosperity.

About the author: Ajay Prasad is a retired IPS (Indian Police Service) officer, and was formerly Director General of Police, West Bengal

23

EVENT DIARY

Conference curtain raiser in Bangkok

T

he ‘Curtain Raiser Ceremony and First Meeting of the Program Advisory Board’ of the forthcoming triple conference - egov Asia 2006, digital LEARNING Asia 2006 and the Asian Telecentre Forum 2006 to be held from 26-28 April, 2006, in Bangkok, Thailand, was organised on 17th March under the aegis of the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), India, in association with Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and Ministry of Education, Royal Thai Government.

The ceremony saw the participation of more than 40 delegates, comprising members of the Program Advisory Board, representatives from Supporting Partners and Institutional Partners, senior executives and leaders from the IT industry and mediapersons.

The meeting started with a entrancing ‘Opening Address and Welcome Note’ by the Chairman of the Program Advisory Board, Kraisorn Pornsutee, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Royal Thai Government.

In his speech, Mr. Pornsutee highlighted the fact that nowadays the governments and communities have realised the enormous potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for accelarating their developmental process as also the undeniable need for mutual learning and knowledge flow. “There is an overriding importance for creating enabling opportunity for encouraging new learning paradigms and intellectual networks through platforms such as those being provided by the forthcoming triple conference - egov Asia 2006, digital LEARNING Asia 2006 and the Asian Telkecentre Forum 2006,” Mr. Pornsutee stressed.

A detailed presentation about the 24

triple conference by Ravi Gupta, Director, CSDMS, and Convener, egov Asia 2006, digital LEARNING Asia 2006 & Asian Telecentre Forum 2006, followed the Chairman’s opening address.

Speaking on the background of the triple conference, Mr. Gupta explained the relevance of these events in context of various initiatives of CSDMS (viz. egov, digital LEARNING & i4d magazines and portals) and its commitment towards promoting and advocating for ICT-led development of societies across the AsiaPacific region. Mr. Gupta also gave a vivid portrayal of the 24 national and international organisations associated with these events in diverse roles and capacities. He also presented the details of conference programmes, covering each plenary and parallel session, the invited speakers, paper presenters and special workshops of the conference.

An open floor discussion followed thereafter, wherein the members and representatives of the Programme Advisory Board gave their remarks and suggestions. While all of them endorsed the draft plan, some valuable feedback came forth from some of the members,

which were accepted with due respect and acknowledgement, and would be shortly incorporated into the overall programme.

Also, views and suggestions were invited from members of the IT industry.

Although many of them refrained from putting forth any comment citing their role as observers, a few valuable inputs did come in that were laced with words of inspiration and intent of the industry to provide support for the conference.

The meeting concluded over some reassuring words from Mr. Pornsutee about the strong commitment of Thailand to carry forward the e-Government and ICT for Development vision of the country, irrespective of whatever political turmoil the country has to go through, and pledged to lend their helping hand in building capacities of Asian countries.

A Press Conference followed after the conclusion of the meeting. Mr. Pornsutee and Mr. Gupta briefed mediapersons about the triple conference.

A cocktail and dinner followed the ceremony, providing valuable networking time for the delegates and an opportunity to socialise.

Dipanjan Banerjee www.egovonline.net |

NEWS REVIEW

WORLD Portugal going the e-Taxation way

100 phishing gangs based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It cautioned the net users to have a discretionary eye on what to look for in e-Mail messages to avoid the risk of getting trapped. The legal action in Europe, the Middle East and Africa would follow similar such stringent action in US also.

Intel on innovative move in health sector

The Portuguese government is moving towards e-Taxation way. It has adopted measures that would facilitate and encourage electronic submission of personal income statements or IRS (‘Imposto sobre o rendimento das pessoas singolares’). Innovative measures such as an e-mail alert service for early detection of errors is also being introduced. The system will allow citizens to correct possible mistakes in their declarations and avoid reimbursement delays.

Other services that the government envisions to provide to the citizens include a new online help desk service, improved guidelines for using electronic forms, a new e-Tax alert service notifying users of the status of their submission, and measures to improve the use and communication of passwords for the system.

In 2005, more than 1.7 million declarations were made via Internet, up 80% increase on 2004. Anticipating high demand for on-line submissions this year, the Portuguese government is recommending people to be prepared by requesting passwords well ahead of time.

Microsoft on check of cybercrime Microsoft is taking cautioned move against the phising practices. The numbers of phishing sites being in raise Microsoft is launching legal action against | April 2006

There is always a room for vast opportunities for the IT industry to flourish around healthcare in US. Intel group has identified health as an area of special study and the job of its digital health group are competing enough to fill the lacunae. Software developers attending Intel’s Developer Forum (IDF) earlier this month noticed the critical plight of medical staff in spite of 90% the of the 30 billion healthcare transactions being carried via mail, fax or phone in US every year. Immediate urgency was sought into areas that help in improving communications between doctors and patients, managing drug delivery and asset management, maintaining electronic medical records and to develop and deploy standards that would help to integrate disparate medical systems with ICT utilities.

Zimbabwe to monitor telephone, e-Mail communications The Zimbabwean government has drafted a bill that would permit the surveillance of telephone and e-Mail communications while making it compulsory for service providers to install the enabling equipment on behalf of the state.

The Interception of Communications Bill 2006 seeks to empower the chief of defence intelligence, the director-general of the Central Intelligence Organisation, the Commissioner of Police and the Commissioner General of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority to intercept telephonic, e-Mail and cell phone messages. The bill would also empower state agencies to open mail being conveyed through the post and through

licensed courier service providers. The bill stipulates that operators of telecommunications services will be compelled to install software and hardware to enable the interception and storage of information, as directed by the state.

Computerisation project for Tanzanian villages

A pioneering project on computerisation in certain select villages of Tanzania is under consideration by the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Costech). The project aims at improving the local governance through better documentation of social services and agriculture. Some select villages are Lunga-Lugoba in Bagamoyo District, Coastal Region and Dakawa in Mvomero District, and Morogoro Region. Costech is teaming up with other partners in development of the project and is to address the need based core issues of the rural communities.

Kenya restructures e-Government system Kenya is on the way to reconstruct its e-Government system with the aim to make information accessible to all the ministries with the click of a mouse. This will lead to the better networking of government offices in Nairobi. Twentyeight ministry headquarters buildings in Nairobi are to be networked in this initiative.

A state-level workshop on Government Common Core Network was held in Nairobi recently, where the government urged the stakeholders to alter their 25

NEWS REVIEW

business plan so that it can suit the government’s plan for building the government Common Core Network proposed designed.

New Zealand to revise its e-Government strategy New Zealand will come out with a new version of its e-government Strategy by mid-year, which will re-examine the document produced in 2003 from technological and social change perspective. The project aims that by this mid-year, government agencies and the public should have a clearer idea of “ what a transformed government would look like”.

Laurence Miller, deputy state services commissioner in charge of the ICT branch (formerly the e-government unit), said, “Much work has also been done internationally on the e-Government front. At the same time, the environment of the e-Government unit and the strategy has been changed by its absorption into the broader ‘networking’ goal”. The project will be accomplished with the help of a US$125,000 contract with Wellington’s Horizon Consulting Services.

UK to promote onestop shop public service website

Disproportionate e-Government Readiness in Asia Pacific The first Asia Pacific e-Government Readiness Survey 2006 shows that there are significant disparities in e-Government preparedness in the Asia Pacific region. The survey involved IT executives in 112 public sector organisations in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore, and was conducted by Fairfax Business Research and sponsored by content and business process management vendor, FileNet. The survey highlighted significant disparities between countries with many governments failing to effectively harness the Internet. Australian governments were among the worst offenders. For example, Australia and Singapore are two of APAC’s most technologically advanced countries, but almost 50% of Australian government IT execs said there were few systems and processes in place to enable their organisation to leverage the Internet, while only 14% of Singaporeans concurred.

The survey identified operational and cost efficiency as the top two business drivers for e-Government implementation. The drive enhancing citizen self-service is the third in the list. Hong Kong and Singapore are the two countries that the survey found have the highest rate of Internet-enabled process automation at around 80%. The research found that survey respondents understood the value of e-Government, with 97% of their senior management having either good or some understanding of the processes required to better serve citizens.

More than 56% of interviewees reported that they had no records management systems in place. Two-thirds of respondents said knowledge transfer was either an adhoc, informal process or was barely done at all. When asked to nominate suppliers of enterprise content management systems, 63% were unable to give a response.

aims to reduce the 2,500 public sector websites in existence in exchange through providing a one-stop-shop for most needs.

The UK government is on the promotional spree. It has launched a GBP1.8mn (US$3.11mn) marketing campaign to promote its one-stop-shop public services website, direct.gov.uk. The website allows people to access public sector services such as self-assessment tax forms, car tax renewals and course finders. The website 26

Jim Murphy, Cabinet Office Minister, said, “If you can order your shopping, manage your bank accounts and book cinema tickets online — why shouldn’t you expect the same convenience online from government? A few clicks and you’re there - that’s what people expect and demand from their services today and government is no exception.”

The government had launched the website in 2004. However, it had deliberately waited to market the website until there were enough online services to offer. The government has also planned to reduce the 130 government call centres and make one telephone number for people to call for non-emergencies as part of its Transformational Government Strategy.

This service would be launched in five areas around the country and are to be delivered by police and local authority partnerships. www.egovonline.net |

COUNTRY FOCUS SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa

Establishing eGov KnowEX for efficient service delivery Nickie Van Zyl

Recognising the increasing importance and potential of eGovernment, the South African government has established the eGov KnowEx to provide efficient service delivery to the people and meet the country’s information challenges

O

ver the past few years, e-Government has become increasingly important in South Africa. South Africans have become aware of e-Government’s potential role in improving the operations and efficient service delivery by the government. The eGov KnowEx has been established in South Africa to meet the country’s information challenges. This initiative will assist in the various ways such as bringing together government, industry and research and academic institutions to build networks and confront e-Government challenges; creating a platform for government departments to share requirements and solutions to avoid duplication; and ensuring that learning and knowledge-sharing are parts of shaping policy and action in the field of e-Government.

Communications (DoC) and the Government Communication Information System (GCIS) are equally important players in adopting e-Governance.

Although no clear vision is known in terms of e-Government, what is to be achieved by e-Governance clearly points to the future role of e-Government. South Africa’s e-Government policy is to be established in four phases: (i.) Disseminating service information to citizens by means of the World Wide Web; (ii.) Setting up ICT-based two-way communication, which is to enable citizens to provide less sensitive information (changes of address, application forms etc.) to government; (iii.) Improving security and privacy regarding information exchanged; and (iv.) Integrating several services into entities based on needs and functions.

Key departments in e-Government South Africa’s e-Government initiatives are at present supported by all government departments. It is, therefore, difficult to single out specific departments, but especially e-Government initiatives announced by the Department of Public Works and Administration (DPSA) deserves mention. In addition to DPSA, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) also appears to be active in this field. The Department of | April 2006

E-gateway Project and service delivery The South African government has launched the first phase of its “people first” Internet gateway. This is to offer individual organisations and foreigners a single entry point to government services and information. South Africa’s e-Government gateway, www.gov.za, can be subdivided into services for individuals, services for organisations and services for citizens from other 27

COUNTRY FOCUS SOUTH AFRICA

countries. At present, these services are not formally organised within particular structures.

Information on services for South Africans is organised according to socalled life events, in other words, focusing on giving birth, a place to live, the world at work, relationships and sexuality, dealing with the law, and similar matters.

It is currently envisaged that the gateway project would be extended to poor citizens and those living in remote areas by means of, amongst others, public information terminals at post offices and other points.

The next phase of South Africa’s eGovernment project is to focus on progressing from information dissemination (currently, as indicated, of a more generic nature) to service delivery. The focus will then be placed on the services which are available, who qualifies for such services and where and how to access such services. This phase, therefore, aims to enable users to become involved in online transactions.

In South Africa, the services such as pension payouts, payment of taxes, housing subsidies, and birth and death registrations are regarded as those which are in high demand and crucial to proper service delivery. For this reason, such services are earmarked as those that should first be e-enabled.

The Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) predicts that the basic access level of e-Government in South Africa will be in operation in the course of 2006 or 2007.

e-Governance delivery in remote areas Reference was already made to e-Government portals being made available in remote areas by means of Public Internet Terminals.

The setting up of such terminals, mainly at Post Offices, is at various stages of completion. No empirical information currently exists on its progress.

In addition to Public Internet Terminals, Multi-purpose Community Centres (MPPSs) are to play a vital role in rolling out e-Government application. Since July 2003, approximately 46 MPCCs have been established. Twenty-three of these centres provide services beyond those of government, and 400 services in total are made available in rural and under-serviced areas. The services in nine of the centres will initially be extended mainly through access to the central e-Government Gateway portal.

The services are delivered under the auspices of GCIS, together with provinces and local authorities, and are to be provided by the Universal Services Agency (USA). The central portal will be based on the infrastructure of the State Information Technology Agency (SITA). Other channels for government services include ATMs (Automatic Teller Machines) and Uthingo outlets.

It is envisaged that specially trained community development workers at nine selected MPCCs and 55 postal facilities would assist citizens. Thus far, 40 development workers have been trained to carry out the programme in Gauteng.

e-Government challenges and assessment At present, bureaucratic structures hamper effective service delivery. Interaction between government departments and other players takes place on a formal basis and is governed by rules, regulations and procedures.

Although such measures are required to ensure equitable and fair access to services, these rules tend to become inefficient and expensive. The exact cost of these bureaucratic measures has not yet been calculated in South Africa, but their adverse effects are sometimes evident. Legislation, such as the Electronic Communications and 28

www.egovonline.net |

COUNTRY FOCUS SOUTH AFRICA

Transaction Act, Act 25 of 2002, the Public Finance Management Act, Act 1 of 1999, the Public Service Amendment Act, Act 13 of 1996, and convergence legislation points to an effort by the South African government to regulate e-Government but at the same time to minimise bureaucracy.

Currently, various levels of success of e-Government

implemented four pilot projects using mobile and wireless technologies. Its focal areas are the identification of emerging technologies, solutions and methodologies which have not yet been applied in the public service environment but which could assist in improving service delivery and access to government services.

Future of e-Governance programmes

application are indicated in different South African provinces.

The Western Cape has recently announced progress towards e-Government to provide quicker access to various provincial government services. In 2003, a walk-in centre was launched in Cape Town, staffed by operators trained to provide residents with information they might require. Its focus is to provide information by means of online research methods to residents, researchers and students. Government documents on policy and research reports are kept and information is provided about non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other organisations. Telkom sponsors the Cape Gateway Project. e-Government projects in other provinces, their focal areas and their popularity have not been formally researched, but indications are that these are in various stages of progress, and they have not yet been reported and/or researched.

Mobile government and its significance The concept of mobile government has developed substantially over the past decade, with particular reference to the application of mobile and wireless technologies and their application towards more efficient public management. The significance of mobile government is especially evident in developing countries such as South Africa in providing access to services in particularly under-serviced (rural) areas. In South Africa, the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI), together with the Research and Development SITA and the Meraka Open Source Centre have | April 2006

The Roadmap for e-Government in the Developing World Project offers the best means of South Africa’s position. This project focuses on (developing) countries such as Egypt, India, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and others. In assessing South Africa’s eGovernment, the platform of e-Government initiatives remain country’s’ information technology (IT) infrastructures. Regarding improvements in access to voice telephony (particular mobile telephony), most countries in Africa still do not have (regular) access to communications.

Africa, including South Africa, is still behind global averages on major ICT indicators. Since 2003, there had been a growing gap between countries with access to communication services and those without. Although progress, particularly in South Africa, had narrowed this gap, but the digital divide remains a reality. The challenge, therefore, remains the establishment of sufficient infrastructure to carry e-Government initiatives, supplemented by a well-trained and skilled workforce to make a positive contribution.

The future of e-Government and other mobile government initiatives is therefore inextricably linked to the creation of a sufficient IT and ICT infrastructure, (human) capacity building and the creation of sustainable public-private partnerships.

There is no doubt that South Africans have been sensitised to the value of e-Government. Future programmes would focus on IT and ICT application, together with e-Government, in improving administration and planning by the government. It is widely accepted in South Africa that future e-Government initiatives are to be based on the vision of taking government to the people and making it accessible to all citizens. Despite the stumbling block of inadequate infrastructure, the cost of communications remains one of South Africa’s (and Africa’s) most daunting challenges.

The South African government, however, is not the only government faced by the challenge of IT, ICT and e-Government application in improving its efficiency. A recent study found that up to 80% of public sector IT applications have resulted in partial or total failure due to legacies of political patronage and histories of heavily centralised government.

About the author: Nickie Van Zyl is Researcher in the Parliament of South Africa.

29

NEWS REVIEW

Geo-Informatics

Scientists use satellites to detect deep-ocean whirlpools U s i n g sensor data from several U.S. and European satellites, researchers from the University of Delaware ( U D ) , NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Ocean University of China have developed a method to detect super-salty, submerged eddies called “Meddies” that occur in the Atlantic Ocean off Spain and Portugal at depths of more than a half mile. These warm, deep-water whirlpools, part of the ocean’s complex circulatory system, help drive the ocean currents that moderate Earth’s climate. This research has enabled the scientists to detect phenomena so deep in the ocean from space, using a new multi-sensor technique that can track changes in ocean salinity.

The research was supported by grants from the NASA, the Office of Naval Research and the NOAA. First identified in 1978, Meddies are so named because they are eddies – rotating pools of water – that flow out of the Mediterranean Sea. A typical Meddy averages about 2,000 feet (600 meters) deep and 60 miles (100 kilometers) in diameter, and contains more than a billion tons (1,000 billion kilograms) of salt. Coupling data collected by several different satellite-borne sensors, researchers from the University of Delaware, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Ocean University of China have been able to “break through” the ocean’s surface to detect “Meddies” — super-salty warm-water eddies that originate in the Mediterranean Sea and then sink more than a half-mile underwater in the Atlantic Ocean.

30

China unveils land observation satellite launch plan

China will launch 18 land observation satellites in the next ten years, China Center for Resources Satellite Data & Application (CRESDA) announced on March 17. According to CRESDA, the Sino-Brazil earth resource satellite 02B will be launched in 2007 and its data will be released for free. In addition, the overall development plan for satellite 03, 04 has been approved by the State Council. The 18 satellites made up of land resource and environmental series, together with the marine and meteorological ones, will help China build up an earth observation system for long- term stable operation.

To make sure the full use of satellite data, CRESDA undertakes the task for building China’s land satellite system, which includes data processing, data and information collection, payload management, data simulation and analysis, data distribution and demonstration.

developed by Riddhi Communications and Netguru India has been assigned the task of maintaining the site. A GIS model has been utilised in preparing the satellite map of the city.

The satellite map will be a virtual map of the entire city and will have details of the tourist destinations, hotels and lodges, among other things and will also give graphical description of how to go from one place to another. The map will also have a number of important information for Kolkata citizens. Kolkatans will now have detailed information about KMC-run health centres in the city, as well as information on whether there had been any particular disease that is on the rise in any particular ward. The map will also have details on schools and educational institutions, NGOs, the city’s transport system and other relevant details.

Singapore completes first phase of Tsunami Warning System

KMC to develop satellite map for Kolkata Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) in the Indian city of Kolkata will shortly develop a unique satellite map of the entire city of Kolkata. It will provide the entire satellite mapping of the city, which gives a satellite mapping of the entire world. Kolkata will be one of the first Indian cities to have its own unique satellite map. The satellite map, developed through picture taken either through satellite or from the air, has been

Singapore announced the completion of the first phase of its Tsunami Early Warning System on March 23. Phase one of the system provides Singapore with the capability to exchange real-time earthquake data with seismic networks operated by countries in the region.

Developed by the Meteorological Services Division of the NEA, the system worth 3 million Singapore dollars is expected to be completed by the end of 2007. www.egovonline.net |

NEWS REVIEW

MIDDLE EAST

financial and accounting system will be prepared to determine costs of treatment in government hospitals.”

UAE to deliver e-Services promptly

Middle East countries for improved telecom facilities

Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, executed a ministerial committee to ensure prompt delivery of services to citizens. The committee would be headed by Shaikh Mansour bin Zayed, Minister of Presidential Affairs.

The move came in the wake of complaints received from various quarters on delay made by government departments. The memorandum calls for improving cash management system, decentralisation of procurement, contracting and payment procedures, and empowering the ministries to undertake processing of transactions pertaining to their own personnel. The cabinet instructed the Dubai e-Government to look into the matters. It also agreed to bring the General Authority of Information and e-Government, in the Ministry of Finance and Industry, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Governmental Development.

e-Medical files for UAE health cardholders With a view to enable national health cardholders to avail treatment at all public health facilities, the UAE Health Minister Humaid Mohammed Obeid Al Qattami announced during the tour of Fujairah hospital that an e-Medical files and records system would soon be launched.

Obeid Al Qattami said, “The next stage will see further development and modernisation of hospitals and health centres under a well-studied plan seeking to offer quality and competitive health services. We plan to compete with private hospitals not only in terms of quality of services but also in prices and appropriate | April 2006

Mobile Telecommunications Company (MTC), the provider of telecom services in Kuwait has decided to tap the Islamic market ‘in line with the company’s overall strategy to diversify the sources of funding.

It has finalised a US$750mn consolidated financing deal to make a partial payment towards a US$2.4bn loan taken to purchase Dutch-based Celtel, previous year. Early this year, MTC has asked to select banks to present their offers to finance the firm through credit facilities of up to US$5bn. This would be the largest such facility to date for a telecom company in the Middle East. The syndication of about 20 financial institutions has enabled this facility. This has been one of the largest Islamic financings for the year 2005, which has 15 million customers in Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain and sub-Saharan Africa.

Ramco systems expands to Middle East Ramco Systems, part of the US$300mn diversified Ramco Group, entered the Dubai Internet City last year, attracting clients such as Gulf Africa Petroleum Company, Schlumberger, Ducab, RAK Bank, National Bank of Oman, Gulf Helicopters and others.

Ramco Systems with a turnover of about US$60mn currently offers a suite of integrated enterprise applications in several areas such as human resources and payroll, e-governance, ERP (enterprise resource planning) for manufacturing, enterprise asset management and digital dashboards. But its strong suit is solutions for the aviation sector.

Push for e-Governance in Saudi Arabia The e-Governance initiative would help create knowledge societies that drive economic growth and development.

During recent meetings with senior government officials from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Dr Juan F. Rada, Senior VicePresident, Industries, Oracle Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), highlighted Oracle’s commitment to training and human resources development in the kingdom. He explained that support for Arabic software development was a key focus for Oracle and the company develops products and applications specifically to serve the needs of users across the Middle East and North Africa region.

Oman opens first e-School system The Sultanate of Oman marked the opening of the first of its kind e-school system at Al huda Private School, Darsait, with the inauguration taking place at the hands of Yahya bin Saud bin Mansour Al Sulaimi, Minister of Education. The new system would be applicable from the fifth to ninth classes, and would focus on utilising computers both in teaching and learning fields. A website for Al Huda Private School was launched on the occasion.

Mansour Al Sulaimi said, “This experiment is unique. Other private schools should also follow Al Huda Private School example. The Ministry of Education has an ambitious plan that includes the Education Gate Project in addition to the on-going efforts to introduce the latest teaching technologies.”

Enterprise Business Platform for Ras Al Khaimah All the government departments in Ras Al Khaimah would soon be equipped with an Internet-enabled e-communications platform of Enterprise Business Platforms (EBP). To be set up at a cost of AED5mn 31

NEWS REVIEW

rescue services etc through online channels as well. According to Ahmed, about 1766 people registered on the DP website in 2004 while the figure increased in 2005 reaching up to 6343 people.

(US$1.36mn), the EBP aims to create an efficient communication and information sharing mechanism within and between all government departments in the Emirate. An agreement to this effect was signed between the Ras Al Khaimah Electronic GovernmentAuthority (RAKEGA) and US-based B2 Technology and Consulting Services, Inc. (B2TeCS). The EBP project is expected to become operational in six months.

Dr Hashem Ar-Refaei, IT Advisor to the Government of Ras Al Khaimah and Director General of RAK-EGA, said, “The Enterprise Business Platform will implement e-correspondence, communications, and collaboration in a unified electronic repository throughout the Government of Ras Al Khaimah. This would create a seamless, easily accessible and transparent form of e-Government.”

Dubai Police to expand e-services delivery Ahmed Qaed Ahmed, Dubai Police (DP) e-Services Programmer, has said that by 2007 the Dubai Police expects to deliver over 90% of all its manually available services online. The scope of e-services delivery would be expanded. Ahmed said, “So far over 185 different services have already gone live and are being provided to the citizens and residents of Dubai via number of customer touch points, including the Internet, kiosks and IVR. Payments have also been made possible for customers who have a choice to pay using either their credit card or e-Dhiram cards, which have been integrated with the departments e-government’s e-pay system.”

The Dubai Police e-services would offer services like home safety information incident reporting, tourism complaint services and miscellaneous services like 32

Conference to counter phishing practices in the Middle East Participating in the the Identity Summit Conference, e-Company the ICT arm of Etisalat addressed to the issues concerned to a wide fraudulent practices over Internet.

Company provided an insight into measures on countering phishing threats amid growing such incidents in the Middle East. Held in Dubai, the conference is aimed at educating Middle East enterprises about the latest technologies, strategies and tactics in both physical and logical identity authentication and management.

WiMax hits a roadblock in ME WiMax is losing credibility as a facilitator of technology that helps Middle East countries to stand at par with developed nations in connectivity. As per the OECD report, much of the wireless technology’s success depends on availability of spectrum. As its mobility stands restricted worldwide to certain spectrum bands, it may pose a problem. The report also

highlighted that WiMax could raise serious privacy and security concerns by enabling wireless surveilla- nce over long distances. The report has been seen as a blow to supporters of WiMax, which has been talked of as the next step up from WiFi and third-generation mobile networks.

e-Government Procurement System in Morocco

The Government of Morocco has signed a letter of intent at the International Forum of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Strategies and Investment to deploy a new e-government system that will streamline public procurement processes, increase competitive bidding and save money for Moroccan taxpayers.

Technical assistance and seed funding for the project will come from the Development Gateway’s e-Government Grants Program, a partnership with the Government of Italy. The World Bank will provide additional co-funding. The project includes a new procurement management system and a national public tender website to increase access to government contract information. Rachid Talbi El Alami, Morocco’s Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister in Charge of General and Economic Affairs, said more transparent and efficient procurement systems will provide a strong stimulus to economic and social development in Morocco as well as it will reduce government contracting costs while helping small and mid-size Moroccan firms gain easier access to procurement opportunities. www.egovonline.net |

NEWS REVIEW

MIDDLE EAST

financial and accounting system will be prepared to determine costs of treatment in government hospitals.”

UAE to deliver e-Services promptly

Middle East countries for improved telecom facilities

Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, executed a ministerial committee to ensure prompt delivery of services to citizens. The committee would be headed by Shaikh Mansour bin Zayed, Minister of Presidential Affairs.

The move came in the wake of complaints received from various quarters on delay made by government departments. The memorandum calls for improving cash management system, decentralisation of procurement, contracting and payment procedures, and empowering the ministries to undertake processing of transactions pertaining to their own personnel. The cabinet instructed the Dubai e-Government to look into the matters. It also agreed to bring the General Authority of Information and e-Government, in the Ministry of Finance and Industry, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Governmental Development.

e-Medical files for UAE health cardholders With a view to enable national health cardholders to avail treatment at all public health facilities, the UAE Health Minister Humaid Mohammed Obeid Al Qattami announced during the tour of Fujairah hospital that an e-Medical files and records system would soon be launched.

Obeid Al Qattami said, “The next stage will see further development and modernisation of hospitals and health centres under a well-studied plan seeking to offer quality and competitive health services. We plan to compete with private hospitals not only in terms of quality of services but also in prices and appropriate | April 2006

Mobile Telecommunications Company (MTC), the provider of telecom services in Kuwait has decided to tap the Islamic market ‘in line with the company’s overall strategy to diversify the sources of funding.

It has finalised a US$750mn consolidated financing deal to make a partial payment towards a US$2.4bn loan taken to purchase Dutch-based Celtel, previous year. Early this year, MTC has asked to select banks to present their offers to finance the firm through credit facilities of up to US$5bn. This would be the largest such facility to date for a telecom company in the Middle East. The syndication of about 20 financial institutions has enabled this facility. This has been one of the largest Islamic financings for the year 2005, which has 15 million customers in Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain and sub-Saharan Africa.

Ramco systems expands to Middle East Ramco Systems, part of the US$300mn diversified Ramco Group, entered the Dubai Internet City last year, attracting clients such as Gulf Africa Petroleum Company, Schlumberger, Ducab, RAK Bank, National Bank of Oman, Gulf Helicopters and others.

Ramco Systems with a turnover of about US$60mn currently offers a suite of integrated enterprise applications in several areas such as human resources and payroll, e-governance, ERP (enterprise resource planning) for manufacturing, enterprise asset management and digital dashboards. But its strong suit is solutions for the aviation sector.

Push for e-Governance in Saudi Arabia The e-Governance initiative would help create knowledge societies that drive economic growth and development.

During recent meetings with senior government officials from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Dr Juan F. Rada, Senior VicePresident, Industries, Oracle Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), highlighted Oracle’s commitment to training and human resources development in the kingdom. He explained that support for Arabic software development was a key focus for Oracle and the company develops products and applications specifically to serve the needs of users across the Middle East and North Africa region.

Oman opens first e-School system The Sultanate of Oman marked the opening of the first of its kind e-school system at Al huda Private School, Darsait, with the inauguration taking place at the hands of Yahya bin Saud bin Mansour Al Sulaimi, Minister of Education. The new system would be applicable from the fifth to ninth classes, and would focus on utilising computers both in teaching and learning fields. A website for Al Huda Private School was launched on the occasion.

Mansour Al Sulaimi said, “This experiment is unique. Other private schools should also follow Al Huda Private School example. The Ministry of Education has an ambitious plan that includes the Education Gate Project in addition to the on-going efforts to introduce the latest teaching technologies.”

Enterprise Business Platform for Ras Al Khaimah All the government departments in Ras Al Khaimah would soon be equipped with an Internet-enabled e-communications platform of Enterprise Business Platforms (EBP). To be set up at a cost of AED5mn 31

NEWS REVIEW

INDIA India, Myanmar for greater ICT cooperation In a visit made to Myanmar, President Dr. APJ. Abdul Kalam called for greater cooperation in the fields of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) between India and Myanmar.

Addressing technologists during Info-Tech Park, Kalam said that there was a good scope in implementing the governmentto-government, e-Governance models in the country. Kalam suggested Myanmar to participate in the World Knowledge Platform, which he had floated during his recent state visit to Singapore, the Philippines and South Korea. He appealed to share experience of India in connecting the centre and the state and the union territories, as well as the use of ICT in the health grid, knowledge grid and PURA (Programme for Urban amenities in Rural Areas) grid. Myanmar’s Minister for Telecom and Posts and Telegraph, Brigadier General Thein Zaw, who accompanied Kalam during his visit sought India’s co-operation and help in strengthening his country’s training programme for government CIOs (Chief Information Officers).

Cisco India — A new, independent region Cisco Systems Inc, with its investment of over US$1.1bn in India, has elevated the status of India to an independent region signifying the country’s growing importance in the overall Cisco global set-up.

So long, India was part of the south Asia pack, which comprised of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Now, India (and | April 2006

the SAARC region) is one of the four independent markets in the Asia Pacific theatre. Cisco is now gearing up to ramp up India’s operations in a big way partnering with the Tatas, the Birlas, Reliance Infocomm and the Indian government for various projects.

e-Tendering in J&K A new system of tendering and electronic payment system for government contracts has been formulated in Jammu and Kashmir to be effective from next financial year. Muzaffar Hussain Baig, J&K Finance Minister, announced this during the budget speech. Introduction of the system of e-transfers for all transactions of government would lead to reduction in corruption and increase in transparency in the development works, going a long way towards good governance.

There will be an initial survey of the city to identify hot spots to erect towers, selection of hardware and software during the first few months. The project is expected to become operational before the end of the current financial year. PMC Commissioner Kareer said, “The INR70mn project is among the top 10 special infrastructure projects. We have consulted the information technology companies in the city about the project, and they have agreed on the feasibility of a Wi-Fi network here.”

Besides, touch-screen kiosks would also be set-up across the city for people to seek information and lodge complaints about the working of various PMC departments. Already, the computerisation of the administration of property tax and some other records such as birth registration etc has been done in Pune.

Baig said, “Both public and private actors in the procurement process may be tempted to divert goods and services or public funds for their personal use. We need to identify weak links in the public procurement process where the risk of corruption is high, to explore the best ways of improving transparency and accountability and to identify effective actions to prevent, and detect corruption in this field.”

Centre for e-Governance research to be set up

Pune plans Wi-fi communication network

Delhi will soon have an innovation centre for conducting research to provide better and more effective ways of e-governance.

This is a joint effort of Microsoft and the National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG). The centre is being set up from the US$2mn innovation fund provided by Microsoft Corporation. The research centre will be used to create a serviceoriented architecture designed specifically for the public sector under which several services will be offered simultaneously.

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has planned to set up a Wi-Fi communication network across the city as part of its ongoing efforts to e-enable the Pune city. The proposed Wi-Fi network will facilitate instant access to Internet from laptops or mobile phones.

“The research outcome, which is likely to take two years, will also be used globally by the two parties as the best practices can be shared and used across the world,” said J Satyanarayana, chief executive officer, National Institute of Smart Governance.

33

NEWS REVIEW

All villages of Chandigarh to have CSCs All the 18 villages of Chandigarh Union Territory (UT) will have kiosks or the Common Service Centres (CSCs). The setting up of CSCs is part of the Government of India project to be initiated in villages across the country to serve as delivery channel offering e-Governance and other services in rural areas.

The CSCs would provide information relating to agricultural inputs, weather, commodity prices, health etc. The services would include payment of water and electricity bills, railway ticket bookings, data entry, digital pictures, entertainment, education, e-learning etc. The CSCs would also save the villagers the trouble of coming to the city for pension or getting various certificates, like those for birth and death, issued. Through the CSCs the farmers would be able to sell their produce at the CSCs, which would help in eliminating middlemen, leading to savings in the cost.

This will be a public-private enterprise.

UT of Chandigarh would provide the space while the digital infrastructure including PCs, printers, scanners, projectors, digital cameras, software and televisions - would be provided by the private provider. The CSCs are expected to be set up at a cost of INR200,000 (US$) each.

Jharkhand set to initiate nation’s first SWAN Jharkhand is all set to launch in the next month the country’s first statewide area network (SWAN) called as ‘Jharnet’, which would combine all e-initiatives taken so far in bringing various departments under e-governance.

The initiative will make online all the applications such as transport, treasuries, commercial taxes, registrations, municipal corporations, consumer forums, and scholarships, and all the government departments such as planning, and the public distribution system. ‘Jharnet’ 34

would initially join all the 22-district headquarters, and subsequently all block level headquarters by June this year. By the end of July, Jharnet would have brought online around 5,000 government offices across the state.

Delhi leaps forward to e-Policing

The Delhi police (North-West District) in its effort for better delivery of police services, has connected all its 17 police stations through the Common Integrated Police Application (CIPA) project. Under this project, the 17 police stations will be connected by the Wide Area Network (WAN) to the Deputy Commissioner of Police, North West, who would monitor and supervise the registration of the FIR and the investigation through computers of any police station from his office. The project will enable registering of FIRs on computers and constant monitoring of detailed information about the cases.

e-Governance initiatives on tax collection by India e-Governance initiatives on tax collection takes top priority in the India’s financial ministry budget for coming year.

Government has made allocation of INR1380mn (US$) for computerisation and e-Governance initiatives on the direct tax side. Similarly, on indirect taxes, government hopes to complete the task of consolidating customs, excise and service tax on a common platform by next financial year. The revenue department also hopes to complete its work on creating a facility for online allotment of PAN and preparation and processing of returns earliest by this December.

Chennai-based Teledata acquires US IT firm Teledata Informatics, a Chennai-based e-Governance and shipping software solutions company has acquired Alpha Soft Services Corporation (ASC).

ASC, a US-based IT services firm, acquisition has been made through its subsidiary. ASC is a $28 million company offering high quality IT services in the areas of enterprise resource planning (ERP), data warehousing, e-Business and related technologies. The company also provides vendor specific technologies such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, Business Objects, Cognos and Microsoft, among others. It is headquartered in California and offers services across 30 states in US.

Hyderabad Police e-Seva centres for citizens The drive towards e-policing is on in Hyderabad with its e-Seva centres, making it simpler for citizens to access police documents such as First Information Report (FIR), post-mortem report, certificates for missing documents and even chargesheets. 28 such services were launched by Cyberabad Police Commissionerate through e-Seva centres.

The e-Seva service is available for INR.200 (US$) and this amount can be paid at the e-Seva centre itself along with the application. The intention of this initiative is to cut the long queues at police stations, timely delivery of requisite documents to citizens.

Describing the welcome change that the e-Seva centres have brought in the realm of citizen interface with police department, M Mahender Reddy, Cyberabad Police Commissioner said, “Now, the whole process is simplified for the sake of convenience of citizens.

Citizens at one time can come to the eSeva centres, apply for it, go back and the certificates are delivered at his doorstep.” www.egovonline.net |

IN PRACTICE

MCA21

Fulfilling objectives of a versatile e-Governance project

K

eeping in tune with e-Governance initiatives the worldover, the Ministry of Company Affairs (MCA), Government of India, has initiated the MCA21 project, which will enable an easy and secure access to MCA services in a manner that best suits the corporate entities and professionals besides the public. MCA21 is intended to achieve all the objectives of a versatile e-Governance project. The project is named as MCA21 as it aims at repositioning MCA as an organisation capable of fulfilling the aspirations of its stakeholders in the 21st century. Under the project, the business community would now avail MCA services from their respective homes or offices instead of physically travelling to MCA offices, which had so far been an arduous one. The major components involved in this comprehensive e-Governance project are Front Office and Back Office.

The MCA21 project is designed to fully automate all processes related to the proactive enforcement and compliance of the legal requirements under the Companies Act 1956 thus enabling the business community to meet their statutory obligations. From the customer perspective, the Front Office operations assume significance, which would be administered through the Front Office portal. The entire Back Office operations of the MCA would be automated so as to achieve the objective of a user-friendly computerised environment. My MCA portal is the single point of contact for all MCA related services, which can be easily accessed over the Internet by all users.

The project also envisages a cost-effective integrated software solution for computerising various in-house functions like Human Resources Management, Payroll, Accounting and Finance for internal users (employees) of MCA. Permanent documents of existing companies like memorandum of association, articles of association, current charge documents, are presently maintained in paper form across various Registrar of Companies (RoC) offices. These documents are being converted into electronic format and it is being carried out at the respective RoC offices as part of this project.

The scope of MCA21 project covers only the offices of RoCs, Regional Directors and the Headquarters at New Delhi. It excludes other offices like Official Liquidators, Company Law Board/Tribunal and Courts. The success of the service-oriented approach, the important aspect of this project, will depend greatly on analysing and responding to the needs of all stakeholders.

To that extent, the project will develop a mechanism to constantly develop and improve the MCA21 system. It will be made possible by analysing usage patterns and error/status messages as well as feedback from the customers comprising the corporates, professionals and the public. | April 2006

The Ministry of Company Affairs (MCA), Government of India, has initiated the MCA21 project to simplify the process through eFiling. Quite understandably, MCA21 aims to achieve all the objectives of a versatile e-Governance project Key Benefits MCA21 seeks to fulfil the requirements of the various stakeholders including the corporates, professionals, public, financial institutions and banks, Government and the MCA employees. The key benefits of MCA21 project include Online incorporation of companies online; Simplified and easy mode of filing of Forms/Returns; Registration as well as verification of charges anytime and from anywhere; Inspection of public documents of companies anytime and from anywhere; Corporate-centric approach; Building up a centralised database repository of corporates operating in India; Enhanced service level fulfilment and customer relationship building; Total transparency through eGovernance; Timely redressal of investor grievances; and Availability of more time for MCA employees for qualitative analysis of corporate information.

MCA set up The MCA mainly administers the Companies Act, 1956 and The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1969.

Besides, it also administers several Acts including The Competition Act, 2002; The Chartered Accountants Act, 1949; The Costs and Works Accounts Act, 1959; The Company Secretaries Act, 1980; The Partnership Act, 1932; The Societies Registration Act, 1860; and The Companies (Donation to National Fund) Act, 1951.

The MCA, which functions under overall direction and supervision of the Minister of Company Affairs, has a three tier organizational set-up for administration of the Act, namely, the Headquarters at New Delhi, the Regional Directors at Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Noida and the RoCs in States and Union Territories. The Official Liquidators who are attached to various High Courts functioning in the country are also under the overall administrative control of the Ministry.

35

IN PRACTICE

The Company Law Board, a quasi-judicial body, has its Principal Bench at Delhi, an additional Principal Bench for Southern States at Chennai and four Regional Benches located at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. The four Regional Directors are in-charge of the respective regions, each region comprising a number of States and Union Territories.

They supervise the working of the offices of the RoCs and the Official Liquidators working in their regions. They also maintain liaison with the respective State Governments and the Central Government in matters relating to the administration of the Companies Act. Certain powers of the Central Government under the Act have been delegated to the Regional Directors. There is also an inspection unit attached to the office of every Regional Director for carrying out the inspection of the books of accounts of Companies under Section 209A of the Companies Act. RoCs appointed under Section 609 of the Companies Act and covering the various States and Union Territories are vested with the primary duty of registering companies in the respective States and the Union Territories and ensuring that such companies comply with statutory requirements under the Act. These offices function as registry of records, relating to the companies registered with them, which are available for inspection by members of public on payment of the prescribed fee. The Central Government exercises administrative control over these offices through the respective Regional Directors.

e-Filing MCA21 project facilitates eFiling of various forms and applications under the Companies Act, 1956, and as per the stipulated Rules and Regulations. As such eFiling is done through an eForm, which is nothing but a reengineered conventional form proposed to be notified, and represents a document in electronic format for filing with MCA authorities through the Internet. This may be either a form filed for compliance or information purpose or an application seeking approval from the MCA. An eForm contains certain standardised features. Each eForm contains the form reference and the description as well as the particular section of the Companies Act or the relevant rules or regulations under which it is required to be submitted. It starts with the Corporate Identity Number (CIN), which works as a unique identifier of a company, in the case of an Indian Company and the Foreign Company Registration Number (FCRN) in the case of a Foreign Company that is required to be filled up. By entering the number, the company details to the extent these are available in static form in the database, are automatically filled in by using the pre-fill functionality.

For the purpose of standardisation and better understanding, the proposed eForms have been grouped under 36

the following broad categories: Company Registration – For the purpose of incorporation in India under the Companies Act, 1956, a company requires name approval from the RoCs by filing Form 1A; Compliance Related Filing – All the statutory filing of eForms, whether annually or event based, is grouped under compliance related filing services; Change Services – It covers matters in respect of Indian companies, especially those pertaining to any change in the capital structure, increase in authorised capital and increase in the number of members; Charge Management – Companies are required to file

particulars for registration of charge created or modified with the concerned RoC. The charge can be created on various types of assets such as immovable properties, plant and machinery, fixed deposits or book debts; and, Investor Services – MCA21 system accepts complaints filed against a company by an investor as part of investor services. There is a specific eForm for this purpose.

The various types of users of My MCA portal includes Authorised Signatory of Business; Professionals; Individual User; External Agency User; PFO/TFO User; and Public User.

The amount of fee depends on many parameters like type of service requested, authorised capital of the company and the stipulated rules for fee calculation. Belated filing entails additional fees as per applicable rules. Services for which fees are chargeable can broadly be categorised under following four categories: Filing of eForms/applications; Inspection of public documents online on portal; Requesting certified copy or extract of a public document; and Transfer deed endorsement. System calculates the fee and it is displayed to the user detailing the services sought. In case user has to make the additional payment as advised by MCA/Company Law Board, the user enters the amount of fee to be paid to MCA. Payment of fees can be made by user either offline or online depending upon his/her convenience. The payment options available to the user include Credit Card, Internet Banking or Challan.

Danish A. Khan www.egovonline.net |

REGIONAL FOCUS MAHARASHTRA

e-Government in Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme Monitoring System on board now Moiz Hussain Ali and Ireni Akoijam

T

he State of Maharashtra adopted the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) as early as 1965 to alleviate poverty by providing gainful employment to the poorer sections of the community in the rural area. The State Government gave statutory support to the scheme through the enactment of the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Act, 1977, which was implemented from 26 January 1979.

The success of the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Act prompted the Government of India to adopt the same idea and thus the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) took shape, was and finally passed in September 2005. The Act gives legal guarantee of a hundred days of wage | April 2006

employment in a financial year to adult members of a rural household who demand employment and are willing to do unskilled manual work. The Act would be applicable to areas notified by the Central Government and would cover the whole country within five years. The objective of the Act is to enhance the livelihood security of the people in rural areas by generating wage employment through works that develop the infrastructure base of that area. The choice of works suggested addresses causes of chronic poverty like drought, deforestation, and soil erosion. The employment thus generated under the Act would have the potential to transform the geography f poverty when effectively implemented.

The principal aim of the Employment Guarantee Scheme, Government of Maharashtra, is to provide gainful and productive employment to the people in the rural areas and in the areas of ‘C’ class Municipal Councils, who are in need of work and are prepared to do manual labour but cannot find it on their own. National Informatics Centre (NIC) Maharashtra State Centre is providing the necessary ICT (Information and Communication Technology) support to EGS Department, Planning Commission, Government of Maharashtra, in computerization of EGS for a more effective, accessible, prompt and transparent governance, which benefits not only the rural people but also the government.

37

REGIONAL FOCUS MAHARASHTRA

Employment Guarantee Scheme Monitoring System To provide e-Governance for effective implementation and monitoring of the fiscal and physical progress of Employment Guarantee Scheme, the concept of Employment Guarantee Scheme Monitoring System has been evolved. The information provided in the website helps to bring out transparency and efficiency in the working and implementation of the scheme. The website contains valuable information and data regarding the scheme, which will help to understand the basic ideas behind the launching and implementation of the scheme. It also contains districtwise weekly labour attendance of the labourers. Online application software helps the state level department to keep a close check on the authentic labour attendance, to control the expenditure, starting and completion of all the works, various stages of works, strictly follow the procedure regarding work approval, sanctioning, undertaking and implementation as laid down by the Government of Maharashtra.

The Employment Guarantee Scheme Monitoring System is an e-Governance web application, which enables the EGS department to monitor the progress of implementation of various works as part of Employment Guarantee Scheme. The software is used by the State Government for timely data collection and decisionmaking. It is accessible by various authorities and work agencies over NICNET, the high speed VSAT based national info-highway. The stakeholders include common citizens in rural areas, EGS implementing agencies, offices of the Deputy Collectors and District Collectors in the district level, office of the Divisional Commissioners at Division level and EGS, Planning Department, Government of Maharashtra. The main benefits of the application software is to make information available easily, to effectively monitor the works at different level of administration, to summarize and consolidate information effectively and to monitor the budget and payment of wages to the unskilled labourers for effective implementation of the scheme.

The Employment Guarantee Scheme Monitoring System has two deliverables - the website and the online application 38

software (http://mahaegs.nic.in or http:/ /mahaegs.gov.in and http://164.100.

150.163/egs).

Problems in EGS implementation During the implementation of EGS scheme, various problems have been identified.

These relate to Administration, Planning at District level, Execution at Village level and Budget.

Administration: Three-tier administrative set-up is used to implement the scheme to ensure close and effective liaison and continuous supervision.

Committees for planning, direction, control and coordination are set up at State, District, and Panchayat Samiti level. The State Planning Department looks after the administration, provision of funds, monitoring, and evaluation of the programme.

Planning at District level: District Collector is the main coordinator of the scheme at the District level. Every Collector is asked for blueprint of work to be made ready by the end of September every year. Projects for provision of work within 8 kms are to be planned and project budget up to INR50 lakhs (US$5mn) only has to be approved by the Collector. This process is a cumbersome one without proper computerisation.

Execution at village level: At the work execution site there are numerous data, which need to be sorted out such as maintenance of labour/muster roll at work site, fortnightly payment to the labourers on volume of work done. To make use of these data in a meaningful and organised way, the need for computerisation therefore arises.

Budget: As implementation of the scheme involves huge funds, budgeting becomes complicated. The works are invariably executed departmentally by

engaging labourers on muster rolls. The labourers are however not paid according to the number of days they remain present on the work but are paid according to the quantity of work done on the basis of rates for different items are so fixed that an average person working diligently for 7 hours a day should earn wage equal to the minimum wage prescribed for agriculture labour for the concerned zone under the Minimum Wages Act. Zonewise prevailing rates of wages under Employment Guarantee Scheme revised as on 26thMarch 2001 are as follows: Zone 1 INR51 (US$1.15); Zone 2 - INR49 (US$1.10); Zone 3 - INR47 (US$1.06); Zone 4 - INR45 (US$1.01). Without proper computerisation budget management proves to be a difficult task.

Solution The prime idea behind the computerisation of EGS is to provide easy access of the EGS information to the common man and to bring transparency in implemen-tation of the scheme. Though it is imprac- tical to address all the issues in a short period, introduction of EGS Monitoring System has provided the following benefits: Information available easily; Effective monitoring of EGS work at different level of administration; Effective and timely planning at District level; Easy summarisation and consolidation of the information; Effective implementation of the scheme; and Effective monitoring of budget and payment of wages.

The project is being implemented in four districts of Maharashtra. Training has been imparted to officials of EGS Department in four divisions of the State. The project deals with monitoring of work and labour attendance.

The project can be enhanced in future by incorporating online registration of labourers, capturing vigilance cell activities and other modules so as to cover the whole aspects of Employment Guarantee Scheme. It can also be adopted for similar other schemes.

About the authors: Moiz Hussain Ali is State Informatics Officer, National Informatics Centre, Maharashtra, and Ireni Akoijam is Senior System Analyst, National Informatics Centre, Maharashtra

www.egovonline.net |

REGIONAL FOCUS MAHARASHTRA

‘Maharashtra e-Government plan to take shape by 2009’

Ajay Bhushan Pandey

Recognising the important fact that IT is a major vehicle for process change and an effective tool to transform the entire governance, the western Indian State of Maharashtra has embarked on an ambitious plan to prepare a roadmap that would put eGovernance in place by 2009, says Ajay Bhushan Pandey in a tête-à-tête with Anuradha Dhar of egov | April 2006

What are the major e-Governance initiatives in Maharashtra?

Maharashtra embarked on e-Governance initiative in 1999 when we brought in the IT policy. We recognize that Information Technology (IT) is a major vehicle for process change, which will deliver government efficiency and provide better facilities to the citizens. So, IT is a tool to transform the entire governance.

The major works undertaken include land records registration. We have a project called ‘Sarita’, which is a system where any property registration — sale and purchase transaction — with the registrar office is done. The document is ready (with fingerprints and photographs) within 30 minutes. In the earlier system, the time taken in this process was too much, and even after spending such a long time after completing the transaction, one would not even get any written document. Thus, the whole system was so non-transparent to the general public. This system of ‘Sarita’ is currently operating in 400 centres across Maharashtra, at every taluka [A taluka or tehsil is an administrative subdivision or tier found in several South Asian countries] level since more than last 3 years.

The other initiative is land records, which too has been fully computerized. It is not only one time data entry of the past records, but is dynamic. The new transactions are being regularly entered and updated. This is also a fully functional project operational in every taluka. We are also trying to put the entire land records on the Internet so that people can visit the website, key in the survey number of their land, and find out the current owner of the land. So, this is the major advantage to the general public. We are ready to upload, but at the same time also trying to sort out with the government matters relating to privacy etc. We hope to finalise and open the website for the public in a month or so.

Within the government itself, we have a system in which we are able to track every file of the ministry. This is a major step at bringing accountability within the government. We have started this initiative right from the top ministry level — from the chief minister, secretaries, and right up to the level of desk officers. Every file in the ministries is being tracked.

Currently, there are some 7-8 lakh files in our database that are being tracked. In this system, any citizen enters a file number.

For instance, to know the status of your application for a particular thing, you could know at what level of ministry and officer is your file currently lying and how long will it take in decision-making. How many files are pending with a particular officer and for how long — this information too could be tracked. This system is called Document Journey Management System (DJMS). The Chief Minister’s Office and the Finance Ministry has made it mandatory that unless a file does not pass through DJMS, it would not be accepted. That is how this fully functional system is being implemented for the past 2 years.

We have been recently been awarded a project of INR135crores (US$30.36mn) for e-Sales-tax whereby every return filed is being entered in the system. We have about 5 lakh dealers registered for sales tax in Maharashtra. In one year the number of returns filed is about 30 lakhs.

The department can also track revenue from each company, and see whether their payment is coming on time or the payment is too less or more than what is fixed for them, and so on. This will help in tax monitoring as well as tax planning.

Another major initiative that we have taken on our own is facility management — of maintaining the backend systems.

Every department cannot have a fullfledged IT department to manage the backend. Also, the backends cannot lie in isolation. They need to be integrated.

Besides, we already have creativity infrastructure. We are now going to have 39

REGIONAL FOCUS MAHARASHTRA

statewide data network or the ‘state-datacentre’, where the servers and entire security solutions will be at one place.

Pricewater Coopers (PwC) is our consultant for this purpose.

What are your e-Governance initiatives in the area of village panchayats?

In the area of panchayats, we have prepared a plan for putting a panchayat portal for the entire 30,000 village panchayats. Each of these panchayats will have a sub-portal, which will go into the district portal, then to the statepanchayat portal and finally into the national panchayat portal. We have prepared a plan and in fact, shortly, we are coming up with a very comprehensive RFP (Request for Proposals), which will invite partners from the industry for its implementation.

What about the issue of content? Who is uploading the content in the panchayat portal?

I am glad that you have asked this question. On this very issue we have been struggling for the past one-and-a-half months because creating a one-time portal is meaningless. The information becomes outdated in 4-5 months. It needs constant updating. Panchayat [A Panchayat is the smallest unit of community-based management of local affairs at the village level] portal does not only mean name of the village, area, population and so forth.

It also requires information regarding all the schemes, what is the progress, how much money is being invested etc. All of this is very dynamic information.

Somebody has to collect the data and upload it. In our proposal we have kept it as a requirement that in one area, in each district the vendor will have to keep two persons exclusively for content gathering and updation in the database in order to get uploaded in the portal.

What about initiatives in municipalities and transport department?

Maharashtra had a very successful eGovernance project in municipality — KDMC (Kalyan Dombivili Municipality Department). Maharashtra government has recently issued a formal order that all urban bodies will compulsorily implement KDMC model. Also, the Maharashtra 40

government has bought the KDMC software for INR2crores (US$449,741). We have issued orders to all urban bodies not to buy any other software except that of the KDMC. Now, we are trying to work with the various partners on how to rollout of the various corporations. We are working on this.

Regarding the transport department, we have a project called Saarthi. For the entire vehicle registration, we are developing an application in collaboration with the NIC (National Informatics Centre).

A private partner has been identified for implementing this project, which is in very advanced stage and would soon be rolled out in the entire state of Maharashtra.

Already, certain centres in Pune and Kolhapur cities of the State are using this application. So, it is only the case of its replication.

Do you have any feedback mechanism in place? Have you reviewed it and identified any gap areas?

We believe that any system that we bring in should not be static. We continuously review our existing system and try to make certain improvements. For that we have continuous dialogue with the users of the system, and we are constantly changing/ modifying the system as per their suggestions.

What challenges did you face while implementing e-Government projects in Maharashtra?

There are large challenges. The biggest challenge is that the government is a large monolithic structure. If you are trying to change anything, you have to initiate dialogue with the various interests groups — there are various players and interest groups, and there is a need for consensus between all of these. That is where I find a major challenge.

For successful implementation of any e-Government project, government officers need to change their mindset to adopt to new technologies. Did you take any specific initiative in this regard?

We initially faced a lot of resistance from our employees in not moving the files through DJMS. They used to cite a number of reasons. The number one reason was related to the hardware and technology. They would say that there is neither hardware or computers or connectivity, and that the server is also slow. All these things have been taken care of. The training part was also an issue.

Now, I am glad to say that every employee in the mantralaya (ministry) is well trained, user-interface is simple, sending a file electronically from one table to another is also very simple; it is just like sending email. However, the problem is that in the entire chain even if 5% employees are not using the system then the chain gets affected. So, here you need to take a lot of meetings and persuasions. But, what I believe really made a difference is making it mandatory by the finance ministry www.egovonline.net |

REGIONAL FOCUS MAHARASHTRA

(since most files have to go the finance department) that all files need to come through DJMS. Thus, all employees had to perforce enter files in the DJMS. So, I think when you are making this change, you have to think of the critical element and certain amount of compulsion, training and facilitation. We have to work out all combinations.

Is the Maharashtra government making some kind of an e-Government action framework?

Yes. We have an e-Government vision plan regarding what will be in 2009. In fact this vision plan (or roadmap) is being further redefined. We have employed NISG (National Institute of Smart Government) for preparing the e-Governance roadmap for Maharashtra. By this month-end we expect a report. Then we will discuss with the government and will come up with the roadmap.

How are you encouraging public-private partnerships?

What we want in the entire model of eGovernance is that wherever possible, instead of government putting in the money in terms of hardwares, softwares and then providing civil services, there should also be a private stakeholder who will ensure that this is done in a very useful way. In any Maharashtra e-Government project, we first try to examine whether there could be a PPP (public-private partnership) – sustainable, feasible financial model. In case we do not get any such model, only then we say that this is exclusively in the government domain.

One very successful model has been the ‘Sarita’ model, which is completely publicprivate partnership model. Wherever, we have to provide services to citizens we go in for public-private partnership model.

Can you tell something about your city project?

City project is like the common service centre. In every district and every taluka we have a city centre, where the citizens go and give their applications for the various certificates and services they want from the collector office or tehsildar office, and they get the certificates within the given time frame. So they do not have to run around from one desk to another to | April 2006

do that. These city centres have been running for the last 3 years in Maharashtra, and it is quite successful.

What is the allocated budget for eGovernment in Maharashtra?

It is a little difficult question to answer since there are three things involved. One is the public-private partnership, where the private sector will spend a lot of money. So that money does not come in the state budget. Then, there are various departments; they are spending a lot of money in their projects. For example, video conferencing, the jails and the courts are getting video conferencing, where the police and the judicial department is spending money for their own network.

So each individual department is spending quite substantial amount of money. Besides, the municipal corporations have their own budget. Then in our IT department, we basically spend money on two things: creating common infrastructure and supporting setting up of new individual infrastructures or pilots.

So, for this infrastructure and for regular maintenance work our total budget, both planned and un-planned, together could be to the tune of INR10 crores (US$2.24mn) per year. But if you sum total the other departments’ IT budget and private sector budget, it would be huge.

Do different department in state initiate e-Government project on their own or the IT department has the task to convince other departments to start the automation and e-Government projects?

I would say that both these models exist.

Sometimes, it has happened that the departments have taken the initiative and have come to us. There have also been instances that the IT department, based on what is happening across the country, have suggested to certain departments that their counterparts in such and such state is doing this. So we have both models. But we also believe that in any IT initiative, the ownership has to be of the concerned department. To be sustainable initiative, it involves a very deep involvement of the concerned department.

Are we reducing the cost of operations in any way through such initiatives?

Definitely. Again, I will give the example

of Sarita. In this project we are offering very good services. There is a sudden jump in the quality of service that we are offering, and the citizens are paying for this. So naturally, the government does not have to spend any money. Not only that, the private partner is also giving to the government certain amount of money.

Your will be surprised to know that every year the government gets INR160mn (US$3.59mn) of money from Sarita project.

So, first of all government did not spend money for this project and secondly, with the same staff, we are handling much higher volume of work. So there is a saving there.

Does e-Government create job opportunity? e-Government creating job opportunity is a good question. For example, all our city centres which are at the taluka level; so in the remote taluka places, our tehsildar office is one place where you will find the latest computers, latest networking, and few engineers there trying to maintain the system and run the system. Now that is like a nucleus for the IT growth in the taluka. It has created some kind of job opportunity in the city centre, and in the registration department. Now, when we have these kiosks (or common service centres) in the country, we can just imagine the job opportunity created in each village.

How do you think the India eGovernment scenario is progressing as a whole? Any specific observations you have?

I am quite optimistic. Considering the challenges we face within the government, the kind of progress we are making particularly in terms of creating the basic infrastructure, like common service centres, we are taking steps in the right direction. But there is always something more to do. Personally, I would not be very much satisfied with what we have done.

We need to do much more. We have islands of successes and somewhere integration has to take place. In order to integrate, we require the basic infrastructure for connectivity. Till last year, the term connectivity did not exist in India; it is now we are using this term.

That way I am optimistic.

41

COMMENTARY

Software Security

Myths and realities Goh Seow Hiong

I

n today’s software industry, few arguments have generated as lively a debate as the virtues of open source software versus their commercial, or proprietary, counterparts. While the debate makes for entertaining reading, certain myths and misconceptions have been perpetuated in the process. To help decision makers discern the facts, a clear-eyed look at some key aspects of the debate is pertinent, and accordingly fact be separated from fiction.

A good starting point is the issue of software security, as it is an industry-wide concern. It would be appropriately seen here that vulnerabilities affect all complex software programs and are not more or less prevalent for software developed under either an open source or commercial software model. The issue is in how to minimise and remedy the vulnerabilities, and not which licensing model leads to more secure software. Criminal attacks against software remain a critical consideration in the minds of all users, and it is therefore important to understand the underlying principles in this area.

Myth #1: Known Security Mechanism Means More Secure It is sometimes argued that a computer program whose source code is not disclosed cannot, by definition, be secure. This view also holds that if the source code of a product is made available, the product is, by definition, more secure. But is this, in fact, the case?

Good security is not dependent on whether the mechanism (in this case, source code) is known or published, but on how the mechanism is designed, implemented and managed. More specifically, security depends on whether qualified persons have reviewed and tested the mechanism to minimize the number of vulnerabilities that might be exploited by criminals.

While the source code in certain cases may be available for people to read, in reality, few code reviewers or writers are trained or skilled in identifying security vulnerabilities.

A good programmer does not necessarily make a good security specialist.

In the open source community, where large volumes of source code are available, it is not always possible for every single line of the code to be scrutinized by a wide range of security experts. Users who obtain open source packages often 42

The issue of software security continues to be a matter of critical importance owing to increasing criminal attacks against software. It is important to find ways to minimise and remedy the vulnerabilities affecting all complex software programs install and use the software even before taking a look at the source code or recompiling it, even though it may have been provided along with the software.

Just as there are vulnerabilities in proprietary, or commercial, software, so too are there vulnerabilities in community developed open source software, some remaining undiscovered for years notwithstanding the availability of source code.

Myth #2: Speed of Security Fix The speed through which vulnerabilities and bugs are addressed and remedied is also a point of contention among proponents of different software development models.

Some have assumed that open source software developers respond more quickly to vulnerabilities or bugs than commercial software providers. However, comparative studies of the security of products indicate that neither development model necessarily resolves vulnerabilities faster than the other.

Moreover, the assumption that a quick fix is a good fix may not always be the case. For some customers, it is important that updates or patches for identified vulnerabilities be thoroughly tested in different environments and configurations before they are rolled out, lest they lead to system stability issues.

For others, it is essential for the customer to have accountability from the software provider for the quality of the updates or patches provided. Such customers may not want just any third party to provide an update or patch, if that third party does not bear ultimate responsibility for the success of the fix, or the problems that may arise from applying the fix. www.egovonline.net |

COMMENTARY

The issue is not what kind of software is being developed – commercial versus open source – but rather, is security being implemented at every stage of the development process or simply as an afterthought? vulnerabilities. The impact of software exploits also has more to do with the popularity of the software than with its design or method of development.

Neither is inherently superior

The Reality: Implementing Security For years, many developers focused on coding software for scalability, availability, manageability and serviceability. In recent years, new and increasingly sophisticated criminal attacks have caused security to factor significantly more into the work of developers, resulting in better and more secure code.

The issue is not what kind of software is being developed – commercial versus open source – but rather, is security being implemented at every stage of the development process or simply as an afterthought? Today we see software licensed under open source and commercial models that has been developed with security in mind. Developers are using methodologies known to reduce vulnerabilities through upfront assessments, rigorous and organized testing, and post release response centres that assess vulnerabilities and provide updates. How the software is licensed is not a significant factor in this process.

While the design of security features matters significantly, total security depends just as much on how well the software is deployed, configured, updated and maintained, including whether product vulnerabilities are discovered and resolved through appropriate updates.

Many security compromises arise from the lack of proper configuration of the systems and software deployed, and the lack of a timely application of security updates, patches and fixes. The user’s role in ensuring that the computing environment is properly configured and maintained cannot be underemphasized.

Lapses from configuration errors or poor system maintenance are by far the more common mistakes and causes of security breaches than malicious attacks resulting from known | April 2006

Given these considerations, it is wrong to assume that either open source or commercial software is inherently superior in security. Conclusions about the security of a product should not be made on the basis of its software development model or its licensing model.

Instead, the three key determinants of software security are the quality of the developers, the techniques and tools used by the development team to reduce vulnerabilities, and the strength of the relationship between the customer and the software provider in addressing problems that arise. None of these factors are directly dependent or pre-determined by the method of software licensing or distribution.

Software developers across the industry are redoubling their efforts to address consumer concerns on security. Ultimately, good code is good code, regardless of whether the source is open or not.

About the author: Goh Seow Hiong is the Director of Software Policy for Asia of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), Singapore (www.bsa.org)

43

numbers 250 60% million and above birth, marriage and death certificates are to be digitised from 1837 to the present day by Britain’s Office for National Statistics.

of the population in Estonia has Internet access, a higher rate than Germany. Over 90% have mobile phones even though the country’s GDP is generally much lower than Western European countries.

305

7

840

16

lakh companies in India would now be able to make all statutory filings through the electronic mode.

Agricultural Market Committees in the State of Andhra Pradesh, India, would now conduct trade by engaging in buying and selling of farm produce through online screen-based spot trading platform.

million Chinese citizens have their own blogs. However, in China 5,000 deputies and committee members are eligible to post blogs but only 8 have so far taken up the offer by People’s Daily website at blog.people.com.cn.

million is the total number of Internet users in the world, which means that on average 13% of the world’s population is online.

Source

98% of the total of 1,696 local government units in the Philippines have their own websites covering 74 provinces, 112 cities and 1,489 municipalities.

840 http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/5001 305 http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/16/stories/2006031608630600.htm 250 http://www.pstm.net/article/index.php?articleid=678 98% http://www.uni-potsdam.de/db/elogo/ifgcc/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=19874&Itemid=93&lang=de_DE 16

60% http://www.pstm.net/article/index.php?articleid=802 7

44

http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9674863.html

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=120662

www.egovonline.net |

WHAT’S ON

This section lists upcoming e-Government conferences, exhibitions, and other public events for the benefit of our readers.

10 - 13 April 2006

04 - 05 May 2006

26 – 29 June 2006

2 International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST-2006) Portugal

Getting eGovernment out of the acceptance trap Postdam Germany

http://www.webist.org/cfp.htm

http://www.kgst.de/kgst/skripte/kgst_ veranstaltungen/show_one. phtml?snr=51-06

EEE’06- The 2006 International Conference on e-Business, Enterprise Information Systems, e-Government, and Outsourcing Monte Carlo Resort Las Vegas Nevada, USA

nd

9-11 April 2006 govNET Summit 2006 West Virginia, USA

10 - 12 May 2006

http://www.govnetsummit.com/

19 - 21 April 2006

National and Sectoral Strategies for e-Government Gaborone Botswana

Knowledge Management Conference (E-Gov) Washington DC, USA

http://www.comnet-it.org/news/National_ and_sectoral_strategies_for_egov.pdf

http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/ gurteen.nsf/id/X000D3FFA/

16 May 2006

19 - 22 April 2006 Eastern European e|Gov Days 2006 Prague (CZ) http://www.uni-koblenz.de/FB4/ Institutes/IWVI/AGVInf/Conferences/ eeegovdays2006

24 - 28 April 2006 2nd International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies: from Theory to Applications - ICTTA’06 Damascus, Syria http://ictta.enst-bretagne.fr/ index.php?PAGE=callforpapers.php

26 - 28 April 2006

e-Procurement in the public sector London United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

http://academic-conferences.org/ecmlg/ ecmlg2006/ecmlg06-home.htm

15 - 19 May 2006

Hotel Taj Palace New Delhi India

Government Technology Conference West 2006 Sacramento CA, USA

3 – 5 September 2006

http://www.govtech.net/gtc/index.php/ GTCWest2006

The EURO mGOV 2006 Sussex University Brighton UK

6 - 9 June 2006

www.icmg.mgovernment.org

4th International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS’06) Singapore

www.egovasia.net www.DLasia.csdms.in

26 - 27 June 2006

http://www.academic-conferences.org/eceg/ eceg2006/eceg06-home.htm

The European Conference on IT Management, Leadership and Governance Paris France

23 - 25 August 2006

http://acns2006.i2r.a-star.edu.sg

ECEG 2006: 6th European Conference on e-Government Marburg, Germany

12 - 13 July 2006

http://www.headstar-events.com/e-proc/

Bangkok Thailand

27 - 28 April 2006

http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/ worldcomp06/ws/EEE/index_html

International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB) 2006 Copenhagen Denmark http://www.cbs.dk/forskning_viden/ fakulteter_institutter_centre/institutter/ oekonomi/inf/h_jreboks/arrangementer/ 1151309100_icmb_conference_2006

4 – 8 September 2006 International EGOV conference 2006 Krakow (Poland) http://www.uni-koblenz.de/FB4/ Institutes/IWVI/AGVInf/Conferences/ egov2006

22 September 2006 2nd International Workshop on eGovernment and Data Protection (EG&DP-2006) Varna Bulgaria www.tu-sofia.bg/saer/

Tell us about your event at info@egovonline.net | April 2006

45

FACTS AND DATA

2006 World e-Government Ranking by Asian University The Waseda University Institute of e-Government announced the release of its recently conducted 2006 World e-Government Ranking. Now on its second year, the survey included the progress and development of e-Government in 32 countries.

The Waseda e-Government Ranking used comprehensive indicators and parameters for measuring the latest development in 32 countries’ e-governments. These are different from existing rankings, which mainly focused on websites and systems such as Customer Relation Management.

The survey findings may be summarized as below: 1.

2.

Asian countries such as Singapore (3rd), Japan (4th), Korea (5th), and Taiwan (7th) are among the top ten e-Government achievers.

Areas surveyed in the e-Government of each country include network preparedness, required interface functioning applications, management optimization, homepage situation, and the introduction of chief information officers (CIO).

3.

This year, efforts to promote e-government by each country were also analysed.

4.

The survey also examined the co-relationship between national e-Governments and the economic and social activities in the countries involved.

Table 1. 2nd Waseda University World ranking on e-Government 2006 1

United States

17

Thailand

2

Canada

18

France

3

Singapore

19

New Zealand

4

Japan

20

Italy

5

Korea

21

Brazil

6

Germany

22

Chile

7

Taiwan

23

The Phillipines

8

Australia

24

Spain

9

United Kingdom

25

Mexico

10

Finland

26

South Africa

11

Hong Kong

27

Brunei

12

Sweden

28

China

13

Norway

29

Indonesia

14

Malaysia

30

Peru

15

Belgium

31

Russia

16

The Netherlands

32

Vietnam

Table 2. Comparison between the 1st and the 2nd Research 1St

2nd

1

USA

USA

2

Canada

Canada

3

Singapore

Singapore

While most e-Government rankings in United States and Europe are conducted by universities or private companies, the Waseda

4

Finland

Japan

5

Sweden

Korea

e-Government Ranking is the first effort from Asia, and the only one available from this region. Members of the research group came from 14 different countries. Thus, the Waseda University e-Government Ranking is the very first endeavor from an Asian institute, to measure the development of e-government worldwide.

6

Australia

Germany

7

Japan

Taiwan

8

Hong Kong

Australia

9

Malaysia

UK

UK

Finland

10

Source: http://www.obi.giti.waseda.ac.jp/e_gov/

46

www.egovonline.net |

www.egovonline.net/egovindia

India 2006 www.digitallearning.in/DLindia

23 - 25 August 2006 The Taj Palace, New Delhi