egov April 2013

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-governance Kapil Sibal, Minister for Communications and Information Technology

` 75 / US $10 / ISSN 0973-161X

april 2013 | VOLUME 09 n ISSUE 04 n ISSN 0973-161X egov.eletsonline.com

Rajiv Gauba Additional Secretary DeitY, Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

eGov Magazine

N S Kalsi Joint Secretary (Police-II), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India

Sanjay Jaju Secretary, Information Technology & Communications Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh

ict for good

governance Knowledge Exchange

SRINAGAR May 9-10, 2013, Taj Vivanta President Mumbai

May 23-25, 2013 The Lalit Grand Palace, Srinagar

Sanjiv Mital CEO, National Institute of Smart Government (NISG)

Lt Gen Rajesh Pant, AVSM, VSM Commandant, Military College of Telecommunication Engineering and Colonel Commandant Corps of Signals

N Ravi Shanker Administrator (USOF) & CMD, Bharat Broadband Nigam Ltd

Arun Mishra Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)

V P Baligar Chariman & Managing Director, Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd (HUDCO)

Prof S Sadagopan Director, IIIT-Bangalore

Major General (Dr) R Siva Kumar, CEO NSDI & Head NRDMS

grid name

second grid

april 2013

Contents issue 4 n  volume 09

10 Cyber Security

A Proposed National Policy on Information Security in India

18

Special Feature e-governance launches Launch of NIELIT Web Portal

08

30

in person

in person

N Ravi Shanker

Sanjiv Mital

Administrator (USOF) & CMD, Bharat Broadband Nigam Ltd

14

32

in person

in person

Prof S Sadagopan

16 in person

V P Baligar Chariman & Managing Director, Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd (HUDCO)

20

Director, IIIT-Bangalore

48 in person

Aditya Mohapatra Head, IT promotion Cell & Under Secretary, Department of IT, Govt of Odisha

50

in person

in person

Sanjay Jaju

Shivaji Chatterjee

Secretary, Information Technology & Communications Department Government of Andhra Pradesh

24 in person

Rahul Agarwal Executive Director, Commercial Business, Lenovo India

28 in person

Aditya Sekhar Joint Managing Director, Micro Technologies Ltd

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / April 2013

Launch of National Internet Registry (NIR)

34 Digital Economy

Arun Mishra Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)

4

CEO, National Institute of Smart Government (NISG)

26

Special Feature IRINN

Vice President, Enterprise Services, Hughes India

56 in person

Dave Hansen President & CEO, SafeNet

Policies An Initiative of Centre for Digital Economy Policy

eRecords

38 Financial Inclusion

Helping the Rural Poor

52 Social

Development

Developing Public Services for Prosperity and Posterity

66 g-gov

The Migration to G-Governance

68

Defence Technologies The Evolution of Indian Army’s ICT Infrastructure

further reading Editorial 05 eodisha 40 viewpoint 54 Secure IT 58

70 book review

eGovernment: The New Frontier in Governance

e-Governance to m-Governance

W

hile addressing a national seminar on IT and IT-enabled services on March 29, 2013, Dr Killi Kruparani, the Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, said that with 930 million wireless connections already in the country the next e-governance revolution will happen through mobile devices. The Minister also stated that the Government of India has already created a special programme to ensure that all the services that are being provided online through internet kiosks are also made available on mobile platform.

In order to ensure that people from all sections of the society are able to equally benefit from the digital technologies, the minister informed that the government is planning to set up 2000 new cell phone towers to improve signal coverage in tribal areas at an estimated cost of Rs 3,000 crore. Such statements coming from India’s Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology show that e-Governance in the country has now matured to such an extent that now we can plan to achieve the next pinnacle of good governance, which is m-Governance.

There is no denying that a host of challenges remain to be addressed, related to digital inclusion, social factors and even regulatory policies, but these should get addressed in due course of time. A large section of our society has now become convinced about the potential of e-Governance and m-Governance, and the rapid rollout of these systems will provide an unprecedented opportunity for the IT companies, telecom players, system integrators and government agencies.

During the month of March, the eGov magazine contributed to the discussions on e-Governance through two key events. We had the e-Odhisa Summit in on 6 March 2013 at Bhubaneswar, the state’s capital city. And on March 8th, 2013, we had the SecureIT 2013, the National Conference on ICT in Security and Disaster Management, at New Delhi. Both these events were attended by key officials from centre and states, and also by captains of the industry and other stakeholders. In this issue of the magazine we have provided a comprehensive coverage of all the sessions in both these events.

The April 2013 issue of eGov has the coverage of e-Governance implementations that are happening in many certain crucial areas like Civil Aviation and Ministry of Home Affairs. Then we also have the interview of the CMD of Bharat Broadband Nigam Ltd (BBNL), and of many private organisations that are playing a seminal role in e-Governance implementations. In packaging this issue of eGov our attempt has been to give a comprehensive coverage to a whole range of ideas that are floating in this area.

On May 9-10, 2013, we are having the e-Maharashtra Summit at Mumbai. And on May 23-24, 2013, we are organising the eGov Knowledge Exchange in the picturesque city of Srinagar. The agenda of these two events is to contribute to the development of new ideas in e-Governance. We hope you will be there to attend these two events; all of us need to join hands for taking the agenda of e-Governance forward in the country. ravi guptA Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

Email at subscription@elets.in to get previous issues

March 2013

March 2013

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APRIL 2013 issue 4 n volume 09

Partner publications President: Dr M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief: Dr Ravi Gupta Group Editor: Anoop Verma (editorial@elets.in)

Consulting Editor: Ashis Sanyal

Editorial Team governance Manager – Partnerships & Alliances: Manjushree Reddy Assistant Editor: Rachita Jha Research Assistant: Sunil Kumar Correspondent: Nayana Singh

WEB DEVELOPMENT & IT INFRASTRUCTURE Team Lead - Web Development: Ishvinder Singh Executive-IT Infrastructure: Zuber Ahmed

education Senior Correspondent: Pragya Gupta, Mohd. Ujaley Correspondent: Rozelle Laha

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Information Management Team Executive – Information Management: Khabirul Islam

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world education summit 2013 April 23-24, 2013, Le Méridien, New Delhi

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in person

N Ravi Shanker

Administrator (USOF) & CMD, Bharat Broadband Nigam Ltd

Broadband for Rural Masses

P

rovide us with an overview of the progress in the project for taking broadband to all the Gram Panchayats?

Let me begin with the details of the three pilot projects that have been launched by Bharat Broadband Nigam Ltd. We have launched the project in Arian block in Ajmer district. Another project has been launched in the Paravada block in Visakhapatnam district and the third pilot project has been launched in Panisagar block in the North Tripura. Under these pilot projects 58 gram panchayats are being provided broadband access of 100 Mbp speed. The response of the telecom industry to these services has not been that enthusiastic. So we had to come up with strategies for implementing these projects. The Department of IT came forward to do part of the funding by deploying equipment in each of the various government institutions in the 58 gram panchayats. They are also paying for the connectivity. NIC has also shown interest in the task. NIC will be procuring the bandwidth from BSNL and will in a way be the bandwidth provider of government services to the citizens. BBNL is the aggregate bandwidth service provider, and BSNL will avail our bandwidth. A tariff committee has been constituted at BBNL to come up with the rates for different slabs. We want to trigger a broadband revolution in the country by coming up with better tariffs.

“NOFN has the potential of transforming many aspects of our lives including video, data, internet, telephone services in areas such as education, business, entertainment, environment, health households and e-governance services,� says N Ravi Shanker, Administrator (USOF) & CMD, Bharat Broadband Nigam Ltd

8

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / April 2013

Broadband revolution can be fuelled only when a larger section of the population gets acquainted with the benefits of the Internet. What steps are you taking to ensure this?

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) is already developing applications that will prove useful to the local populations. In Andhra Pradesh, the e-Governance applications are being launched in Telugu; in Ajmer, it is in Hindi; in Tripura, it is in Bengali. The idea is to make the content relevant to the locals. The applications will facilitate the delivery of a gamut of government services like ration card, land record documents, and the like. We will also be moving in the areas of skill development and e-learning and telemedicine, both of which require high bandwidth.

In inperson Person

But how are the applications going to be useful in rural India, where the penetration of computers is quite poor?

Rural India does not have adequate penetration of computers. We have to ensure that people procure some kind of devices that are capable of connecting to the Internet. The devices have to be affordable. For instance, there are the Aakash-type tablets, which are priced around `2,500 to `3,000.

In the market we are having lot of economically priced tablets. But just having the tablet is not enough. You also need to have the relevant content that can be accessed through the tablet. So the service provider has to ensure that they are able to package the relevant content, which is designed to serve the needs of the local population. There is also the issue of the tariff. We have already seen in the voice market how competitive tariff can fuel growth. We need competitive tariff in the data market also. With BBNL’s optical fibre network connecting all the gram panchayats, the costs can come down. The connectivity can be integrated with wireless infrastructure to bring maximum benefits to the consumers.

What initiatives can be taken to ensure effective connectivity with the wireless infrastructure?

We already have over 1.5 lakh towers in rural areas owned by both private and public sector.

The people who have been successful in the 3G auction will also roll out the services and perhaps expand the towers. So there is good scope for the towers and the terminals to be integrated. High bandwidth of the terminals can become available to the towers and from there passed on to the end consumer. To make all this feasible, a good business model has to emerge so that maximum possible benefit can be brought to the people. We are hopeful that in the next few weeks we will be able to sort out a number of issues and then we can come up with the notice inviting tenders for various tasks associated with the project.

What benefit will the common citizens get from National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN)?

NOFN has the potential of transforming many aspects of our lives including video, data, internet, telephone services in areas such as education, business, entertainment, environment, health households and e-governance services. These services are going to be provided by the Telecom Service Providers and the Internet Service Providers.

Central noc

district block gps

OP1

OPn

Existing Networks BBNL Domain Access Domain

BBNL PoP polat Block BBNL PoP

polat GP

Access Provider’s PoPs

Interconnect Agreement between BBNL and User SPs To be arranged

by User SPs

Retail Customers

“We have already seen in the voice market how competitive tariff can fuel growth. We need competitive tariff in the data market also” You have been conducting surveys to find the extent of the incremental OFC that needs to be laid down. Tell us about it.

providers in pilot projects.

Are you developing any plans for making the project more attractive to the private players?

BSNL is playing a crucial role in this. Three PSU execution agencies, namely BSNL, Powergrid and Railtel, have been assigned the States where the survey work has to start immediately. BSNL has been assigned about 70 percent of the Gram Panchayats in the country for OFC laying and POP creation. BSNL has to implement the network in 18 States/Union Territories by extending the OFC of the existing of the PSUs. In the remaining States/UTs, Powergrid and Railtel have to lay the network. It had earlier been calculated that on an average two kilometres per Gram Panchayat is the incremental OFC. However, during the course of the pilot project implementation we found that on an average three kilometres of OFC in Ajmer and 6 Kilometres in Tripura. The exact length for panIndia is now being calculated. Once the survey is complete, we will be able to determine the cost of the project because the length will be a major influence on the cost per unit.

The voice market and the data market are little different in their economics and dynamics. It is imperative to share the pie with the downstream players in the data market. The voice market is something unique to operate. But in the data market, you need to work with intermediaries like cable operators and ISPs. I think the problem is that the private players have not been able to visualise any profits out of the project.

Earlier you had said that you are not getting adequate response from the telecom service

Is cost a factor? It is said that cost per kilometre for laying cables is quite high.

You see, the government is ready to lay the lines at a price that will be decided by an open tender process. The government is also keen to ensure that the laying of cables does not prohibit or inhibit the telecom service players from providing services. They are using telecom towers to provide services at the customer end, which is in the rural areas. The eco-system will ultimately be driven by a combination of factors. There has to be local content, the cost of devices has to be affordable and there should be competitive tariff.

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

9

Cyber Security

A Proposed National Policy on Information Security in India Security attacks pose serious threats to the sensitive information, possessed both by public and private sector, and could potentially jeopardise national security. Security of the information requires a focused policy initiatives to sensitize public and private sectors towards national security concerns and drive their actions for securing the information Dr Nirmaljeet Singh Kalsi, Joint Secretary (Police-II), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India

T

he Digital World is a reality today in all of our lives.

Digital infrastructure is increasingly the backbone of prosperous economies, vigorous research communities, strong militaries, transparent governments, and free societies. Lacs of people across the country rely on the electronic services in the cyber space everyday. As never before, information technology is fostering transnational dialogue and facilitating the global flow of information, goods and services.

These social and trade links have become indispensable to our daily lives. Critical lifesustaining infrastructures that deliver electricity and water, control air traffic, and support our financial systems, all depend on networked information systems. The reach of networked technology is pervasive and global. For all nations, the underlying digital infrastructure is or will soon become a critical national asset.

Information Security is one of the important components of cyber security and is gradually taking centre stage in the national security deliberations and discussions. In fact, it has become a key component of national security design architecture and is shaping international strategies

10

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / April 2013

Cyber Espionage: Stealing Sensitive Info Operation ‘Shady RAT’

Widespread cyber-espionage 5 Years/14 countries/ 70 Public & Private Cos

Operation ‘Night Dragon’

Trageted Oil & Energy Cos 5 Years/ 14 countries/ 70 Public & Private Cos

Nitro Attack

Info on B1 Bomber 25000 pages of sensitive info

Rockwell & Boeing

Info on B1 Bomber 25000 pages of sensitive info

German Insider

Economic Espionage Helicopter technology

Large Data Breaches

US Cyber Consequences Unit

TIX Max

45 million card info

Heartland Payment

130 million card info

Nation Archives

76 million records

Cost of

Economic Cost of

Cyber

Cyber Attack

Attack

USD 3.7-6.9 Trillion

Cyber Security

of the nations too. Information Security brings up a set of different problems that have the potential to challenge the comfort in the conventional methods of managing security issues. Cyber threat does not respect the physical and political boundaries.

It explores and innovates new methods to defeat and compromise security. The identity of the attacker and the source is difficult to ascertain.

Attribution in cyberspace is difficult. In most cases, it is extremely difficult to collect irrefutable evidence against a cyber attacker, and almost impossible to link any cyber attacks to nationstates with certainty, even if clearly established.

In strategic discussions, cyber space restraint is being equated with nuclear restraint.

Dr Nirmaljeet Singh Kalsi

Current Symptoms of Problem in India Securing sensitive information is increasingly becoming important for maintaining the strategic deterrence capability of a country. Economic stability, which is becoming an important parameter of defining country’s national security, is also critically dependent on Information and Communication Technologies, as financial sector in India found a leading adopter of technologies.

On the other hand, intellectual property developed both in public and private sector contributes to the fate of a nation in a knowledge based economy. The examples of Stuxnet and Flame provide us an evidence of how a cyber attack could lead to a kinetic and long lasting damage to the strategic capabilities of a nation.

Public sector, although increasingly relying on ICT, has not been completely awakened to the challenges of information security. While private sector, otherwise seen investing in information security for intrinsic requirements, may not be alive to the concerns of the national security. The time has come to drive both sectors towards a strong information security culture, which is sensitive to the national imperatives. There have been revisions of Departmental Security Instructions to streamline and tighten up the various aspects of documentation, personnel and physical security procedures. However, a comprehensive approach for managing the information security affairs is still to be implemented fully.

Problems in Global and Indian Context Global Context In an estimate of US Cyber Consequence Unit, the total economic impact of cyber attack is between USD 3.7 to 6.9 Trillion’. There have been alarming instances of cyber espionage, stealing of sensitive April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

11

Cyber Security

information and challenging commercial and security interests of nations. The cyber espionage instances revealed as ‘Operation Shady Rats’ “ ‘Nitro Attack 8, and ‘Operation Night Dragon” demonstrate how security attacks are becoming focused, organized and targeted against governments, defence establishments and private companies looking for most sensitive pieces of information. This warrants a very high level of attention in securing the key information assets.

Economic Cost of Cyber Attack by Sector

Indian Context

Water and sanitation 0.1-0.1

India also observed a significant increase in the number of cyber security attacks on vital installations and key government ministries like PMO, External Affairs, Home Ministry, etc. A total of 8,266, 10,315 and 13,301 security incidents were reported to and handled by Cert-In during 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively.

India has also become a target for cyber espionage. Over 250 Indian websites including the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Railways and several Indian missions abroad have been attacked in the recent past. And, worse, the number and frequency are only growing According to data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in the Ministry of Home Affairs, 1,791 cases were registered under the Information Technology (IT) Act in 2011 against 966 in 2010 - an increase of over 85 percent. Cyber cases under the Indian Penal Code also went up by 18.5 percent in 2011.

Chemical industries

0.3-0.6

Airtran sport

0.1-0.3

Ground transport

0.3-0.6

Consideration of the underlying basic causes of the problem Information security derives its strength from

Sector

Estimated Cost (in U.S.$ Trillions)

Electric power

0.3-0.4

Oil and gas

0.1-0.4

Telecom/Internet 0.4-0.7 Banking and finance 0.9-1.3

Healthcare 1.0-2.2 Total

$3.7-6.9 Trillion

the legal and regulatory framework. However, for successful and optimized implementation of security, organisations need to weigh their strategic options, establish a policy framework to set directions, define or comply with standards for ensuring baseline, establish procedures for ensuring consistency of operations and issue guidelines for implementation. However, drivers of security go beyond securing ICT Asset and protection of IPR, where public and private entities seen investing their resources and efforts.

Recently, privacy as a consumer rights has been catching the attention of the public and private sectors in response to the increasing regulatory pressures. Cyber Security and National Security have emerged as significant drivers in the recent times. These drivers expect a certain level of

The objectives sought from the National Policy and Critical Constraints The objectives of the National Information Security Policy are as follows: • Ensure the new age goals of national security are met convincingly and confidently, namely strategic information security, economic stability through reliable information security and protection of intellectual property • Establish an ecosystem in the country for information security with proactive role and participation of the private sector • Establish a sense of information security in the sectors, entities and units that are involved in creating and processing sensitive information • Provide coherent; reliant and convincing directions to information security initiatives in the country • Drive security initiatives, desired actions and investment for information security in the country.

• Harmonise and standardise security in order to bring consistency in managing information security affairs • Provide guidance for the implementation of information security policies, procedures and guidelines.

12

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / April 2013

response from organisations. Organisations may see awakened to these drivers. However, there has been significant gaps in the alignment of their efforts to the cause of national security.

Information security policy measure should address the requirements of legal framework, strategic measures and should have a mechanism to prescribe and constantly improve standards, procedures and guidelines. The policy needs to be aligned to the bearing it has on the National Security, Cyber Security, IPR and Privacy.

To achieve the national goals of information security, sensible behaviour of the organisations in both public and private sectors is imperative.

This calls for a policy response that defines the direction, sets expectations, stipulates compliance norms and guides security implementations. The policy initiative should also outline a mechanism, which is empowered to direct, coordinate, and seek assurance over information security initiatives undertaken by different sectors, entities, and units.

Information Architecture: National Security Perspective Distribution and spread of information across different entities and sectors add significant complexity in achieving goals of national level policy for the security of the information, which is critical for national security. There is a need for comprehensive and close security watchover the sensitive information that is being created, received-accessed, processed and disposed across the entities and sectors. Comprehension should lead to evaluate priorities from the perspective of national security. The following figure reflects the information architecture from that perspective. Information that is in the domain of nuclear, defence, space and energy is strategic in nature.

Sensitive information leakage in these sectors, intentional and unintentional, has a potential to cause great damage to the prospects of the country’s national security. Internal security functions and external affairs forms the next most important level from the/national security perspective.

Increasing the efforts of computerisation and rising momentum towards e-Governance has lead to the transformation of sensitive physical information into digital form, exposing it to a much graver security threats. Financial information is critical for economic stability and economic security of the country. Commercial information is critical for competitive advantage of the country. Personal information, collected by companies and governments, may be another lucrative target for cyber attacks.

in person

Arun Mishra

Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)

Safe and

Comfortable Flying

W

hat steps are being taken for enhancing the security of the national skies? In your view what else can be done to make it even safer to fly in

the country?

DGCA is a regulatory body that is mandated to govern the safety aspects of civil aviation in the country. In DGCA we are totally committed to ensure safe sky for civil aviation. Safety is our first and foremost priority.

We are always constantly engaged to promote safe and efficient Air Transportation through regulation and proactive safety oversight system. We understand very well that ensuring safety in the sky is not an one-time exercise. One has to constantly upgrade the systems and make continuous efforts to ensure that we have the infrastructure and the systems in place for safe air transportation in the country. New challenges keep emerging all the time, so we have to keep innovating. We are now planning to induct more technical officers in the DGCA.

Some of the airlines are not doing that well. Is that having any impact on the security and safety?

We have a very robust supervision system in place. We also have an annual surveillance programme through which we conduct regular safety audits of all the airlines. Our regional offices oversee the operations of various airlines in their sector and keep track of air safety and air worthiness related issues. We don’t think safety is being compromised in any way.

Tell us about your State Safety Programme and Safety Management System.

Arun Mishra, Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), provides an overview of the steps that DGCA is taking to ensure that the Indian Civil Aviation industry continues to function in a safe, transparent and efficient manner

14

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / April 2013

International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) places responsibility on Contracting States to formulate a State Safety Programme (SSP).

The Programme is an integrated set of regulations and activities aimed at improving safety. The SSP is based on comprehensive analysis of the State’s aviation system, safety policies and risk management, safety assurance and promotion. Safety oversight of DGCA is now focused on areas of significant safety concerns or higher safety risks. At DGCA, we have adopted the systems as recommended by ICAO. The Safety Management System is a well laid out procedure that every organization connected to civil aviation has to follow. We are ensuring that the officers at every level are adequately trained and the Safety Management System is implemented in every area of operation. We also encourage different air-

in person

lines to disclose each and every incident, even if it is of minor nature. Voluntary disclosure does not lead to retribution or punishment. We will like airlines and other operators to come voluntarily and disclose their problem, so that we can find the right solutions. The problems of one airline can also serve as a learning experience for other airlines. So if the problems are shared, it will act as a learning experience for everyone.

Mostly the Indian skies have been relatively free of air accidents. But recently, report on airline safety by the UN body ICAO reportedly clubbed India with some of the African countries.

The air navigation system that we have in the country is one of the best in the world. In fact, we have recently received two international awards for efficiency in air navigation and communication systems. As I said earlier, safety in civil aviation is an ongoing process. We have to keep developing and implementing new technologies and systems as they become available.

But it is also true that the expertise and systems that we have now is being valued all over.

On your website, you have a feature through which the passengers can know the details and reliability of the aircraft that they plan to fly on for their own safety and the safety of people they care for. How popular is this service?

Well, this service is for those who are interested.

We have not got much response on this yet. But still, it is on good information for everyone who is flying. I would also like to add that there is nothing called the best aircraft. Every aircraft that is being allowed to fly in the Indian skies is safe, even though different aircrafts have their own features and advantages.

One critical area that DGCA is looking after is the training and evaluation of pilots for different airlines. Now you have started an online system for pilot application and examination.

Is this leading to more transparency?

The online system for pilot examination that we have started is working very well. As there is great deal of transparency in the online system of examination, there is no scope for complaints at a later stage. Another advantage of the online mode is that the results become available almost immediately. It has made the task of evaluat-

ing pilots much simpler. Now we are trying to graduate to a system for on-demand online examination. Anybody who wants to give the examination, he has to just give date and time.

There is a prescribed fee for this service.

What are the steps are you adopting to ensure that there is improvement in the quality of flying training?

Flying training comprises of two things, the ground training and the actual flying. Although we have some very good flying training schools, we also have some average flying training schools. An example of a good training institute is the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi.

We are working with the idea of bringing up the standards of the training that is being imparted in all the institutions for flying. We are constantly doing audit programmes; the institu-

can see all the details. If somebody has applied for licence, the person will be able to access the details on our website. But we are not stopping at this stage; we are working to bring about further improvements in our website. The aim is to enrich the content and the usability of the website. In this area the feedback that we receive from the users of our website is very helpful, as it enables us to implement new ideas.

DGCA is trying to tackle some of the environment related issues by setting up of an Aviation Environment Unit. Tell us about it.

One of our priorities over here is local noise.

We have now taken several steps to monitor the noise levels from various aircrafts. With new advancements in aviation technology, the level of noise from aircraft has decreased, but it is also true that now we have much larger number of

“Safety is our first and foremost priority� tions are being accessed on a regular basis to access the quality of flying training that they are providing. The list of DGCA approved flying training institutions is available on our website.

Tell us about the e-Governance initiatives that you are implementing within DGCA to bring more efficiency to your operations.

The online examination of pilots that we are holding is an example of a successful e-Governance project from DGCA. We have now embarked upon a major new e-Governance project that will lead to a total computerization of the various processes within DGCA. It will also lead to a re-looking at some of these processes. Once the project is fully implemented, the entire range of operations will be fully streamlined and important information for decision making will be available to the DGCA at the click of a mouse. This is a Rs 120 crore project. I think by middle of next year, we will be able to fully implement this project.

What are the key features of your website?

Our website is very user friendly. If somebody has applied for pilot examination, the person

aircrafts, so the level of noise from all of these is quite substantial. We need to find a balance. We have also undertaken a survey of our carbon footprint. We came up with a carbon footprint report for 2011. Now we hope to do that exercise every year. Such monitoring of carbon footprint will enable us to devise new ideas for preventing damage to the environment. We are also trying to improve our flying processes so that there is less consumption of fuel. Recently we have decided in coordination with Ministry of Defence that we will have flexible use of air space. Right now the military space is closed for civilian aircraft.

We have now an agreement that whenever military does not require that space will be used for civilian aircraft. That will reduce route length and bring down the time taken for flights to fly from one to another as well as fuel emission and the environmental issues related to fuel emission.

What are the steps you are taking to offset the carbon footprint of India’s civil aviation sector?

A large number of trees are being planted in the area around Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad airports. Environment Cells have been established in stakeholders such as Airlines, Airports, Air Navigation Service Providers.

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

15

Infrastructure Development

V P Baligar

Chariman & Managing Director, Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd (HUDCO)

Affordable

Housing for all

H

ow do you see the mandate of Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (HUDCO)?

Also, tell us about your personal vision for HUDCO.

As you already know, HUDCO is a public sector undertaking wholly owned by the government of India. The organisation is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. The mandate of HUDCO is to build affordable housing and carry out urban development. We are providing long term finance for construction of houses for residential purposes. We undertake housing and urban development programmes across the country. HUDCO is involved in the development of satellite towns. We also undertake setting up of industrial enterprises for building material. My vision for HUDCO is to enable the organisation in fulfilling its mission of promoting sustainable habitat development, which can enhance the quality of life of all sections of our population.

We are also striving to promote sustainable building technologies and ideas.

Provide us with an overview of the initiatives that you are taking to ensure that in the long run HUDCO is able to fulfil its mandate.

See if quality of life is to be improved, the government agencies, specially the state government and the urban local bodies, have to be involved in building better infrastructure. It is must to create better housing facility for the public, especially the weaker sections of society. HUDCO is working closely with State Governments, State Agencies and various Urban Local Bodies. Lending is a critical activity for infrastructure development. Funding to the tune of 3 lakh crores is required every year. HUDCO has constantly been looking for projects that can be funded. We have been lending to housing related projects and also to the projects that are focussed on developing urban infrastructure.

The housing projects, that we are involved with, range from constructions for economically weaker sections of society to the development of large infrastructure projects having to do with water supply, drainage, ports, airports, roads, townships, SEZ and almost every other kinds of infrastructure. At HUDCO, we also have a consultancy wing through which we provide consultancy related services to Urban Local Bodies and State Agencies, that are involved in creating better habitats for the people. In order to encourage the development of more environment friendly and affordable housing options, HUDCO has initiated the HUDCO Design Awards, which gives recognition to the most innovative ideas that contribute to making our cites inclusive, live-

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V P Baligar, Chariman & Managing Director, Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd (HUDCO), sheds light on the initiatives that HUDCO has taken to catalyse the development of affordable and environment friendly housing

able and environmentally sustainable. To facilitate the development of knowledge on better construction techniques, HUDCO operates a training wing called the Human Settlement Management Institute. It deals with training, research and consultancy in the areas of housing development and finance computer applications, urban development and poverty alleviation, urban infrastructure and training of trainers programme.

Infrastructure Development

The cost of housing in the urban areas keep rising, despite the fact that the government is taking large number of steps to ensure that the price remains stable. What is HUDCO doing to ensure that the common man has access to better living conditions at affordable price?

I would like to point out that it is possible for us to drastically reduce the cost of construction through the use of affordable construction techniques.

There are many cost effective building materials and technologies developed by various R&D bodies. The works of Late Laurie Baker really stand out in this area. We can use Laurie Baker’s ideas for meeting our needs of affordable and environmentally safe housing. With a view to propagating, disseminating and promoting these innovative and cost effective housing technologies and to transfer them to the field situation, HUDCO has launched a major programme for the establishment of a National Network of Building Centres or Nirmithi Kendras or Nirman Kendras. One thing that many people don’t know about, is that one in fifteen houses in India are being financed

by HUDCO. We are strongly focussed on the rural areas as well. Currently 60 percent of our projects are in the rural areas, the rest are in urban areas.

The main thing contributing to the high cost of houses in urban areas is the cost of land. But we can do hardly anything about the cost of land, which is mainly driven by demand-supply related factors.

However, we are doing a lot to promote cheaper construction technologies. We have developed systems that allow a drastic reduction in the time that it takes to construct a house. Recently they constructed a house in Chandigarh in just two weeks. HUDCO has launched a programme for developing Model Villages and Model Improved Slums in all the States and Union Territories of the country with all infrastructure facilities, as part of its programme in commemoration of 50th year of India’s independence celebrations.

You have said that one in fifteen houses in India is financed by HUDCO. But the housing sector in the country is prone to defaults from home buyers. Is HUDCO getting sufficient returns on the money that is providing as home loans?

The thing is that we are not looking for returns from economically weaker sections. Our focus

Design and Development Wing at HUDCO has successfully completed a number of projects in diverse sectors such as: • Housing & Slum Rehabilitation Projects • Landscape Projects • Disaster Rehabilitation Projects • Cost Effective and Ecologically Appropriate Alternative Building Materials And Technologies • Heritage and Tourism Projects • Preparation of DPR for BSUP & IHSDP under JNNURM • Commercial and Institutional Building Design

is not making profits; it is to ensure that we have good projects. However, our NPA in the sector is very low because our loans are basically given to housing board or State Housing Corporation or the urban local bodies or the state government.

Usually our projects are guaranteed by the State Governments, so whatever we lend, will in most cases come back to us. We are happy with the limited returns on investments that we are making.

Where are the technologies for rural housing that you are promoting? Are you looking at modern technologies or at the traditional systems of building for rural projects?

The technology that we promote is closely linked to the environmental conditions of any specific area. In Rajasthan, for example, each district has got different culture, different ambience, different climate. We focus on promoting technology that can make use of the locally available material. In fact, HUDCO is one of the first organisations in the country to promote the construction ideas of Laurie Baker in Kerala and elsewhere. Influenced

by Mahatma Gandhi, Laurie Baker sought to incorporate simple designs with local materials and achieved fame with his approach to sustainable architecture as well as in organic architecture. Baker became well known for designing and building low cost, high quality, beautiful homes, a great portion of his work is suited for lower-middle to lower class clients.

But such techniques for affordable construction might not work in urban areas where we are having the flat system of construction.

That might be the case, but there is still enough scope for bringing innovative ideas in construction. In urban areas the flat system is a norm because land is scarce. As horizontal land

is unavailable, cities have to rise vertically. We are promoting a range of green technologies for development of green buildings.

What is the durability of the construction projects that HUDCO is involved in?

For how long can a house or infrastructure created through the involvement of HUDCO expected to last?

Our construction projects are known for their durability. The houses, that we are involved with, generally last for more than 30 years.

Actually if you see some of the houses in the rural areas, they have lasted for ages. Most people don’t realise that a mud house can last for many decades. The technique for creating better houses through naturally available materials has been there in our society for ages.

Please tell us about your infrastructure projects like road buildings, bridges etc.

As I told you our infrastructure projects range from water supply to airports, the ports, roads, and the metro. Recently we have started getting involved with metro projects. In this regard we have given `1,200 crore to Bangalore metro; another `500 crore has been sanctioned for Kochi metro; another `500 crore for Jaipur. We have done the BRT project in Bhopal. We are also committed to ensure that our major urban areas have access to world class systems for mass-transportation. We have funded for more than 12,000 buses in different cities. Whatever is needed for improving the quality of life in urban areas HUDCO will consider doing it. We have developed a range of housing products for economically weaker sections in society. We also contribute by facilitating the construction of Schools, Colleges, Hostels, Health Centres, Nursing home, hospitals including medical equipment, Community Centres, Park and Playgrounds, etc.

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

17

Special Feature

e-governance launches

L to R: Dr Rajendra Kumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology; Rajiv Gauba, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY); Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and Information Technology; Dr Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), J Satyanarayana, Secretary, Dept of Electronics & Information Technology.

Launch of NIELIT Web Portal

K

apil Sibal, the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, launched the new website of National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT) at a glittering event held on March 25, 2013 at the e-Governance Hall of Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at Electronics Niketan, New Delhi.

The web portal located at www.nielit.in is colourful and pleasing to the eye, besides being GIGW (Guidelines for Indian Government Website) compliant. It boasts of several new features for supplementing the CSC (Common Service Centre) scheme; NIELIT accredited institutes have been mandated to provide G2C services to the citizens.

With NIELIT accredited institutes also performing the task of CSC kiosks, there will be a vast improvement in the delivery of such services in the States.

NIELIT students will benefit as the new web portal is designed to provide placement related facilities. It provides free online assessment test on employability and soft skills, in association with Wheebox.

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Dr Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, NIELIT

“NIELIT has constantly endeavoured to upgrade existing technologies and has considered it appropriate to invigorate its web presence by way of a new web portal. The new website launched by NIELIT is dynamic, interactive and user friendly. It is designed to provide a multitude of online services. As the website is integrated with the payment gateway, NIELIT students can now register online and also make payments online.�

e-governance launches

Special Feature

Launch of Electronic Payment & Application System of Scholarships (e-Pass)

T

he Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, also launched the e-Pass application (Electronic payment and application system for scholarships) for Himachal Pradesh and Tripura on March 25, 2013 at the e-Governance Hall of Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at Electronics Niketan, New Delhi. e-Pass, developed by Centre for Good Governance, Government of Andhra Pradesh, is an end to end solution right from registration of application by the student to the transfer of money to the bank accounts of colleges and students. It has been has been operational in Andhra Pradesh since November 2009.

The Rapid Replication Roll-out Initiative comprises of selection of some of the successful applications of one State and replicating them in other States that are willing to adopt them with customisation as per the Seeker States requirements.

Technology Used Attribute Details Software e-Pass Platform

Java Struts 1.2, Tomcat

Database

Postgres SQL

Environment Linux Hosted at

Centre for Good Governance, Government of Andhra Pradesh

Rajiv Gauba, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India

“The e-Pass application is being replicated in Himachal Pradesh and Tripura under the pilot implementation of Rapid Replication Roll-out Initiative. Such replication will lead to significant savings in terms of time, efforts and costs.

We have been talking about not reinventing the wheel every time an e-Governance initiative needs to be launched. The replication of e-Pass application in Himachal Pradesh and Tripura is a step in this direction.�

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

19

In Person

Sanjay Jaju

Secretary, Information Technology & Communications Department Government of Andhra Pradesh

e-Governance at its best The Ultimate objective of Mee Seva is to bring public services closer home to citizens, as articulated in the vision statement of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), which takes a holistic view of e-Governance initiatives across the country, integrating them into a collective vision, a shared cause. In State of Andhra Pradesh a massive state-wide infrastructure reaching down to the remotest of villages has come into place, and largescale digitization of records has made it easy for citizens to access easy, reliable services through the Internet or through the Mee Seva centres

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M

ee Seva has turned out to be a very successful project. What is your view of the project? What kind of further developments can be expected?

The progress of Mee Seva is taking place on two fronts. On one hand, we are expanding Mee Seva in our state by adding new services and including more government departments. During the time when we had the eINDIA 2012 in Hyderabad in the month of November last, we were having about 30 services under Mee Seva. The number of services has now come close to 100. By the end of September 2013, we wish to have about 250 services under Mee Seva. We are trying to include all the government departments, which have a citizen interface under Mee Seva. Recently we took the initiative of bringing the police department under in Mee Seva by adding four new services that pertain to the most common services that a citizen can avail from the police department. Mee Seva offers very high degree of transparency and accountability. We are able to keep track of the receipt of applications from the citizens and find out how much time it takes for the services to be actually delivered. This enables us to bring much further improvement in the efficiency of the system.

What kind of response is Mee Seva receiving from other states?

Within the state the Mee Seva Programme has witnessed a massive territorial expansion. As you must know, now the Mee Seva services are being delivered to the citizens in all parts of the state through more

than 6,000 centres. We are now working with the aim of further expanding the scope of the programme by integrating mobile delivery platforms into the Mee Seva platform. A project report has already been submitted to Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY). It is possible for us to provide all kinds of services from Hyderabad. You see, currently Mee Seva is a software that is tightly related to the key e-Governance requirements of the State of Andhra Pradesh. We are now trying to enhance the scope of Mee Seva by converting it into a system of multiple products, which can be customised according to the needs of various states. Currently we are waiting for other states to respond. I would also like to point out that lot of features of the Mee Seva have been replicated as a part of the e-District project. The salient features of Mee Seva such as the identification of services as well as the classification of services and also introduction of digital signature have been included in the guidelines that have been developed for the e-District project.

Tell us about the initiatives that you are taking to fulfil your vision of providing 250 services under Mee Seva by September 2013? How do you identify the e-Governance services that are most critically needed by the people?

For identification of services, we began with departments, which have high visibility. We started with the Revenue Department and the District Administration, both of which have a substantial citizen interface. As a part of the project, we covered the Tehsil offices, the district offices as well as the regional collector’s office. After that, we took a

In Person

Sanjay Jaju

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

21

In Person

In Andhra Pradesh, the Mee Seva centres are playing the role of Common Services Centres (CSCs). What kind of reach do these centres have? Are all the citizens able to avail of the services? After all, the success of the project must depend largely on the reach that the CSCs have.

All the CSCs in the state are called Mee Seva Centres. These centres are there in almost all parts of the State. The amount of transactions being done at the centres is on the rise. Currently we are having close to 70,000 transactions per day. We are envisaging a system where the various centres are able to co-exist and serve

are able to provide seamless service to the citizens. Once the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project is fully implemented, the panchayats will have access to high-speed broadband. This will lead to further expansion in the scope of Mee Seva. As I already said, in our next generation model of Mee Seva, we want to include 250 services to its spectrum.

We want to have an exclusive Mee Seva centre for every Panchyat. This will make it easier for people in different parts of the state to access services from the government.

As Mee Seva expands in its scope, what kind of technological changes will it incur?

The thing is that Mee Seva is an evolving

“By the end of September 2013, we wish to have about 250 services under Mee Seva� look at the various municipalities. We started with the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, and in a short period of time we were able to develop solutions that were quite beneficial to the people. As it showed results, we slowly expanded it to other municipalities in the state.

It has been our strategy to work very closely with various departments in the state. We have taken the initiative of holding stakeholder consultations and joint workshops with the departments. Through these consultations and workshops we are able to discover the most beneficial services under Mee Seva that any particular department in the state can have. We have also asked various departments to tell us about their most important IT requirements. We are also doing an audit of the IT preparedness of various departments.

Wherever we see a gap in the IT preparedness, we try to bridge it by using the budget that is available with us. I must say that the departments in the state have been very cooperative.

Mee Seva has been welcomed with open arms by every department. Without such cooperation we would not have been able to deliver so many services to the citizen in such a short period of time. Currently we are adding two to three new services to the Mee Seva project every month.

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the people. In fact, now the Andhra Pradesh IT Department will be offering its Mee Seva service platform to help people get their Aadhaar numbers and ease the rush at the existing enrolment centres. One of the services offered through the Mee Seva centres is for those who have enrolled, but did not receive their numbers or lost their enrolment slips. A new service, Online Slot Booking for Aadhaar Enrolment, is being developed through a centralised portal to facilitate people to book their slots as per their convenient time. People can update their details, such as name, phone number, residence address and other family members for enrolment, through this service. Once the enrolment slot is booked, the information will be passed on to them through mobile SMS.

e-Governance project. There is going to be an upgradation of technology at every stage.

There will be process upgradation and infrastructure upgradation. Currently we have crossed one crore and twenty lakh transactions. We want to achieve a mark of one lakh transactions per day. As you already know, we have tied up with Airtel Money, which helps people to pay utility bills. Technological changes will continue to happen at regular intervals so that Mee Seva is able to deliver increasing range of services to the people.

Connectivity is the key element for the proper functioning of e-Governance initiatives like the Mee Seva. What steps are being taken to ensure that all the Mee Seva centres are well connected to each other and there is no interruption?

Currently the implementation of NOFN in Andhra Pradesh is at its pilot stage. Basically the project is being implemented in pilot in Andhra Pradesh as in the other two states in the country. Parawada district in Vishakhapatnam is one of the sites for this pilot project. In this pilot project we have taken broadband to 15 Panchayats. Once the experiment proves to be successful, it will open vistas of opportunities for expansion of broadband in the state and in the country. There is potential for unlimited benefits from NOFN.

Connectivity is the prerequisite for a Mee Seva centre. Currently we are having a Mee Seva centre for every four to six panchayats.

These centres enjoy a good connectivity and

Tell us about the progress that is being made when it comes to implementation of the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project in Andhra Pradesh?

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in person

Rahul Agarwal

Executive Director, Commercial Business, Lenovo India

e-governance

Presents Tremendous Opportunities

W

hy Lenovo India decided to restructure its business in India and focus on government and education segments?

Lenovo India’s new enterprise business verticals -- global, very large enterprise (VLE), large enterprise (LE), government and education are unique in many ways, and require a focused approach. The restructuring works well with Lenovo’s ‘Protect and Attack’ strategy and helps drive increased growth.

The trends observed in the adoption of IT in the government and education sector further justified the need to restructure. There is a tremendous market opportunity in both verticals and our Protect & Attack strategy has helped us in maintaining our lead in the Enterprise PC market in India (for the past five consecutive quarters), and we currently have a 28.8% market as per IDC data for Q3, CY 2012 (Asia Pacific PC shipment tracker).

Please brief us about the government projects in which Lenovo is involved on significant level.

Rahul Agarwal – Executive Director, Commercial Business, Lenovo India, talks about Lenovo’s strategy in enterprise business with Nikita Apraj, Elets News Network (ENN)

24

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / April 2013

Lenovo focussed on participating in key government projects related to e-governance and govt-sponsored education projects. Some of the significant projects that we secured in the last few years are • Maharashtra eGram/ MahaOnline Project: Lenovo All-In-One PCs were installed at 27,000 villages for ensuring e-governance at the Gram Panchayats.

• UIDAI: Lenovo has provided laptops for enrolment kits to several service providers for the UIDAI enrolment scheme.

• NPR: Lenovo supplied about 20000 laptops to CPSUs for the National Population Registry project.

• Tamil Nadu Students Laptop scheme: Lenovo provided customised laptops to about 365,000 students across the state as a part of the deal with Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT). Lenovo has been the largest supplier for this project that has covered bout 2000 institutions across multiple districts and talukas across Tamil Nadu. As a part of this win, we have

In inperson Person

and Attack’ strategy, which protects our core businesses in commercial PCs, while simultaneously attacking market opportunities in Consumer, SMB and emerging markets.

Lenovo has outgrown the market through effective execution of its strategy, product innovation, intelligent pricing, and excellent customer/channel relationships.

Our retail presence has helped us expand our brand awareness and presence in the Tier II, III and IV cities of India. Significant investment in R&D has ensured that we are able to offer cutting-edge computing solutions like the ThinkCentre Tiny M72e and M92p Desktops and ultra portables. Our winning product portfolio has contributed greatly to our success in the Indian PC market.

The PC industry is moving on to the PC+ era where PCs will sit at the heart of an ecosystem that includes smart connected devices, as well as all major operating systems, chipsets, apps and cloud-delivered services also set up 72 dedicated After-Sales support centres to provide efficient field support to the students.

What future consumer trends do you see in the segment of personal computing?

What are the key features that make Lenovo India stand out from its competitors?

The PC industry is moving on to the PC+ era where PCs will sit at the heart of an ecosystem that includes smart connected devices, as well as all major operating systems, chipsets, apps and cloud-delivered services.

Our focused approach in offering mobile computing solutions to the market has been successful. It is ably supported by the ‘Protect

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Lenovo believes that the future of personal computing will be across four screens - smart phones, tablets, PCs and smart TV. While we are already present in the PCs, tablets and smartphones segments, we will enter the smart TVs business, once we have the right products and right channel relationships in place.

What are the business prospects in the government segment in India and how does Lenovo India plan to leverage it?

Government efforts in increasing e-literacy and PC penetration in the country are heartening.

Today State Governments across the country are investing or planning to invest in implementing projects that would increase adoption of computing devices among the masses.

More importantly, many of these projects are being implemented in tier II, III and IV cities and this will call for strong capabilities on the part of PC manufacturers in the servicing and distribution end. Lenovo has also been a leader in bringing new technology into the market quickly and this will help us implement projects that require high-end computing.

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Special Feature

IRINN

Launch of National Internet Registry (NIR) On 7th March 2013, at 10.30 AM, Kapil Sibal, Minister for Communications and Information Technology, launched the portal of National Internet Registry (NIR) at a glittering ceremony held at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi. Speaking on the occasion Kapil Sibal said that launching of NIR will ease the allocation of IP addresses within the country

N

IXI was recognized by Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) in March 2012 to become the NIR for the country after successful demo of the indigenous software and systems developed for the allocation and management of Internet resources. National Internet Registry (NIR) coordinates the allocation of Internet Protocol address with other Internet resource management function at a national level in the country.

APNIC is a regional Internet registry which coordinates the Internet Protocol address allocations and other Internet resource management is the Asia-Pacific region. NIR functions under the overall umbrella of Regional Internet Registry (RIR) which is Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) based in Brisbane, Australia.

The NIR has been named as Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN).

Collective efforts of NIXI and ISPAI have led to the formation of IRINN in the country. It is a major milestone towards setting up of Critical Internet Resource management function in the country. Setting up of NIR under NIXI will not only reduce cost in procuring IP address but will also facilitate faster access to information for cyber crime investigators and Government authorities.

Creation of NIR will help promote activities related to research, education and training covering the areas of Internet Resources and its proliferation.

26

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / April 2013

Dr Govind Senior Director, Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications & IT, and CEO, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)

“NIR will facilitate the allocation of IP resources to large number of small and medium companies within the country.

The services can be charged in local currency to avoid exchange losses. It will also facilitate local training and development, thereby providing local language support to the entities in India�

Established in 2003, the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is the neutral meeting point of the ISPs in India. Its main purpose is to facilitate exchange of domestic Internet traffic between the peering ISP members. This enables more efficient use of international bandwidth, saving foreign exchange. It also improves the Quality of Services for the customers of member ISPs, by avoiding multiple international hops and thus reducing latency.

Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India, has endorsed the operations of National Internet Registry (NIR) to National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).

IRINN is a division functioning under NIXI and provides allocation and registration services of Internet Protocol addresses (IPv4 & IPv6) and Autonomous System numbers to its Affiliates .It is a not-for-profit, Affiliates based entity, with the primary goal of allocation of Internet resources to its Affiliates.

IRINN

Special Feature

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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In Person

Aditya Sekhar

Joint Managing Director, Micro Technologies Ltd

Developing Better Security Solutions

Aditya Sekhar, Joint Managing Director, Micro Technologies Ltd, talks about the journey of Micro Technologies and the technological innovations that the company has engineered. In conversation with Nikita Apraj, ENN

T

ell us about 21 years’ journey of Micro Technologies.

Micro Technologies was formed in 1992. In first ten years of our beginning, we totally focused on modernisation, computerisation and upgradation of government and government organisations. All the projects that we did were converted into a range of products for commercialisation for other entities.

Two years after we got listed in 2000, we came out with our first security product for internet access security (Micro IAS) for a major bank.

Mobile market had just started picking up then; we decided to base all our security solutions on mobile phones.

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Micro IAS was our first security product for secured netbanking. It informs the user through an SMS about every login into his account from any website where internet access security is distinct. If the user has not logged into the account and he suspects that it is hacked, he can block the account by replying with an SMS ‘BLOCK’.

In 2004, we launched our first SMS-based hardware security device –‘Micro Vehicle Black Box’ (Micro VBB) that enables the owner to control his vehicle even after it is stolen. In case of theft, the owner simply needs to send an SMS to the vehicle saying “Engine Off”. It will stop the vehicle within 30 seconds wherever it is and it will not start even with the original keys. ‘Micro VBB’ also tracks the vehicle movement live on the map using GPS. Our security product for home informs the home-owner through an SMS in case of a door intrusion, gas leakage, fire, motion detection.

The same product is featured on GSM phones.

It looks like a simple landline phone with all emergency numbers fed into it. In case of emergency, simply dialling one number will send the contact an SMS saying there’s emergency at home. Today we have a range about 350 products dealing in security segment.

You recently launched an application with Maharashtra Police for ensure better security for women, children and elderly people.

It is not just for women or elderly people; it’s for everyone. This application is very simple. Once installed on the mobile, all I have to do in case of emergency is dial “000”. It activates the panic mode and sends a message to the family members telling them about my emergency. The application also provides a link in the message which will indicate them my location on the map.

Even if a person is abducted and he manages to enable the application, the application will start tracking his movement on GPS unless it is

stopped manually. We are configuring other numbers in the application to bring more customisation, like “001” for medical emergency, “002” for fire emergency and an option to customize your emergency messages as per user requirement.

Brief us about your Bermuda City Surveillance Project.

Bermuda City Surveillance Project required us to install face recognition system into the surveillance cameras. The technology has been made so efficient that it can detect a person even if he changes his appearance, say removing beard or cutting hairs. We installed such video analytics there which would tell the police immediately on detection of a particular person.

You have won a project from Aadhaar in Maharashtra. Can you share some details on this?

We have won this project for four cities in Maharashtra. We will cover a population of around 1.7 crore people. The overall project value is about Rs. 50 Crore. In one of the big PSU banks in north India, we have installed an attendance system based on face-recognition. Its employees simply stand in front of the machine to mark their attendance. We have made it very advanced so that it scans the skull, and not just the face. It means that the machine will detect a person even if he/she wears a scarf around his face. It was one of the main reasons that UIDAI decided to grant us the Aadhaar project.

What are Micro Technologies future plans?

In next five years, we aim to become the biggest security solutions company in India. Thereafter, our aim will be to become a renowned global company. We believe in following certain principles in business and that could be a reason why it took two decades to reach where we are today.

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in person

Sanjiv Mital

CEO, National Institute of Smart Government (NISG)

Creating better infrastructure for e-Governance

W

hat is your Vision for NISG? What is the mandate and how do you plan to take the mandate for the NISG?

Sanjiv Mital As India attunes itself to the knowledge-led world economy, e-Governance has come to the forefront. For more than 10 years NISG has been engaged in providing services for effective e-Governance implementations in various government departments in centre and the states.

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A not-for-profit company incorporated in 2002 by the Government of India, the National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) is a specialised organisation that works to develop understanding of the various nuances of e-Governance. NASSCOM, Government of India and Government of Andhra Pradesh are the promoters of NISG; ILFS, Government of Chhattisgarh, Government of Meghalaya and Vizag Municipal Corporation are the other stakeholders. The mission of NISG is to facilitate application of Public and Private Resources to e-Governance in the areas of solution and network architecture, consultancy and training. We basically play the role of providing guidance and other assistance to various government departments that are keen to develop e-Governance solutions. We extend help for development of e-Governance to central and state level government departments. Many government departments lack requisite expertise in e-Governance. They need advice on the tasks that need to be re-engineered and automated, on the manpower and technology related resources that are needed and much more. So they seek assistance from an institution that can bring e-Governance to their department in a timely and cost-effective manner. This is the job that NISG has been doing for last ten years. Forged as a public-private partnership, NISG offers

in person

the orientation and efficiency of the private sector combined with the accountability of the public sector. NISG is helping the Government of India and State Governments realize the national e-governance vision.

What kind of strategy does NISG use in ensuring that the e-Governance implementations happen in a timely and efficient manner?

NISG has contributed significantly to the growth of e-Governance that we see around us. We perform the task of what we refer to as strategic consulting; in this we look at any particular department and try to understand what its processes are, how these processes can be improved and finally what are the areas where a difference can be made through ICT implementations. At the end we come up with a detailed project report (DPR), which provides the details of all the transformations that can be engineered and also the cost for making that possible. Once the project has been conceptualised, the financial approvals for spending the money are taken. After that we go into the second stage of the project, where we try to find out who will implement the systems that are required for e-Governance. So we need to come up with an RFP, which gives a succinct overview of the scope of the work, the hardware and software that are required, the terms of payment and other things. After the bid process is over, the qualified vendor is selected. Then we have the third stage of the project, where we set up a programme management unit for addressing the various issues that can crop up during the implementation process. The programme management unit also performs the task of interacting with the project owner in the concerned ministry and keeping them informed of the progress that is being made. Finally there is the fourth stage of the project, where we do capacity building. This entails training of lot of people, doing change management and providing large amount of manpower to the ministries and departments.

The MCA21 Project is today regarded as a very successful e-Governance initiative. What kind of role has NISG played in this project?

We were the consultants right from the beginning, when the project MCA21 was initially

conceptualised. We were involved in the process of deciding how this project was to be executed. Based on our internal studies we came out with a comprehensive RFP and thereby contributed to the selection of an appropriate agency, which then was TCS. We also created the Project Management Unit for monitoring the progress of the project.

About a year ago when the contract with TCS was coming to an end, we were asked by the Ministry to make a study once again. So we relooked at the project and studied the ways by which we could handle the transition from one company to another. After that the RFP was floated once again. In this several companies participated and in the end Infosys emerged as the lowest bidder. Now we are helping in enabling a smooth transition from TCS to Infosys to take place.

Tell us about the capabilities that NISG has developed in the area of capacity building.

Currently NISG is providing a one-year full-time residential Executive Program in e-Governance in order to contribute to the pool of professionals required in domain of e-Government in the Private Sector and Government. The program is envisaged to be implemented by support of Government and partnership of Private Companies, Consulting Organisations and selected reputed Educational Institutes in the country. We are also providing support for institution capacity building at State Level. As all States are not in a position to switch to e-Governance, NISG addresses the major gaps at State Government level. We fully understand the need for bridging the gaps in capacity building. For the

“NISG strives for excellence and lays great emphasis on generating value for clients” Do you think that e-Governance can be made more effective if you have the policy of ensuring that the same company manages the project for a longer period of time, because then you won’t have to manage the transition?

successful implementation of Mission Mode Projects under NeGP in the country, NISG is keen to equip the State level Training Institutes to take up activities related to Capacity Building of States, like designing of course curriculum and imparting specialized training in e-governance.

When a contract is given to an agency, what would be the right duration? Is five years good enough or 10 years good enough or is 15 years the right thing? What is the right duration? Initially the project MCA 21 was developed for a term of five years, which we then felt was a fairly long time. Now the experience shows that five years have gone by in a jiffy. So we keep learning from past experiences and then try to decide the maximum duration of each project.

What is your vision for the next five years, where you are seeing the organisation going?

You are also doing some of the work for CCTNs also. Tell us about it.

When the CCTNs project came up, we were the main consultants involved with the Ministry of Home Affairs. We were involved in deciding the various modalities of the project. We did our analysis and came up with criteria for the kind of scope the CCTNS project should have.

Well, as NISG is a not-for-profit organisation, we are not prone to blindly chasing revenues.

We work with the aim of developing e-Governance in the country. Whichever ministry or department we are working for generally provides us the payment for the services that we are rendering. Our consultants bring experience and expertise from industry, government and a variety of other backgrounds to enhance NISG’s consulting capability.

To support our clients with far-reaching impact, we partner with the best consulting firms to develop e-Governance solutions for them. Our teams work with client staff at all levels, from the frontline to the senior-most, knowing what will work and how to make it happen.

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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in person

Prof S Sadagopan Director, IIIT-Bangalore

A Research

Oriented Institute

P

lease provide us with an overview of the courses that are being taught at the IIIT. What are the ways by which the institute ensures that the courses that are being taught are in line with the needs of the industry?

We are primarily a post-graduate institution. We offer two-year M Tech, MS by research, which is two to three years and PhD programmes are between three to seven years. In addition to this, we teach IM Tech, which is for student who have passed XIIth Standard. We ensure that what we teach to our students is relevant to the industry.

It is done more by our colleagues who have worked in the industry.

Many of them have one to 10 years experience in the industry. As we are a post graduate institution we aim to make our students ready to take on the industry not only in near future but for the next several years to come. They should be able to sustain the industrial needs. We are not a finishing school, we only expect to make them tech-ready for the next several years.

The Centre for Public Policy and IT at the IIIT has been promoting new ideas in e-Governance.

Please tell us about some of the new ideas that you have developed. In your opinion for a country like India, what are the main challenges in e-Governance?

Let us take a step back and look at many of the e-Governance projects those were executed earlier. Many of the projects use cutting-edge technology. But does it address the need to sustain the long term benefits of the citizens? For example, lets take the Bhoomi Project. We should be focusing on long-term impact of e-governance projects. It is not enough to do things well; it must be ensured that good things are done. The idea of e-Governance is not only to solve the problem of today, but to see how technology can make a difference. Government has to take care of citizens; technology has to look into how far it can take care of the citizens of the country. How it can make the system malpractice proof. The emphasis of e-Governance must be more on governance and less on ‘e’.

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Prof S Sadagopan provides a succinct overview of the educational, research and social activities that the IIIT, Bangalore, is involved in. In conversation with Aparajita Gupta

In inperson Person

The IIIT is also involved in doing research work. Prof GNS Prasanna has been granted a US Patent.

Prof Prasanna was a product of MIT and he also received gold medal at IIT Kanpur. Everyone knows chess. Normally people say chess is an intelligent man’s game. What Prasanna has done, suppose one has reached the tail end of the game, where one is doing checkmate, now from that point can you take back all its coins back to the original position? That is inverse chess, that is, you start at the last position and then use normal rules of the games to get back to the starting position. Obviously, it is more demanding than playing chess in the normal way. It has multiple uses, one is, it has novice value. The second thing is playing inverse chess will enhance the mental ability of people. If chess is a treadmill, inverse chess is a super-treadmill!

Tell us about the other research that is being done at IIIT. A team of student researchers led by one of our professors, Prof Debabrata Das, have made key contributions to next generation wireless standards. We all use the phones, and as we make the phones compatible with more features, one of the problems is the battery life. Now the question is, how do we get the same service, with much smaller amount of battery usage?

They have found out ways by which at least 5 percent energy can be saved and battery life can be increased. And if we can do it for billion of handsets, it will make a huge difference.

I would also like to point out that we have put up three 15 kilowatt solar panels. This is purely for research purpose. You generate solar power and connect to the main electricity grid, so that the excess solar power, which is not been consumed is passed on to the main grid. The electricity companies buy this and give certain discounts. One of the main problems in this, is you need control circuit, which connects the solar panels to the main grid. This thing must be done with sophistication. The main function of control circuit is synchronization. We are trying to make this control circuit with sophisticated electronics, so that the synchronizing is done smoothly and more efficiently.

CEEMS – Centre for Electronics & Embedded Systems, has led to the creation of several award

winning projects. Tell us about these projects.

We have two electronics laboratories – one is Centre for Electronics & Embedded Systems (CEEMS) and the other one is Next Generation Wireless Technology. I will give you the example of an award-winning project called ‘Intel-embedded challenge’. All the malls have this parking problem, when you enter the mall you have to go to the parking and search for a free slot. What the students did was, they used a fairly low priced technology. They did experiment with it in one of the parking lots in Bangalore. The idea is to place a small electronic circuitry in the parking lots of the malls. When you enter the parking lot, a slot will be assigned to you and you will get an SMS (you have to register with the system first) and after you have parked it locks your number. So that you don’t have to remember where you have parked, it is already been SMSed to you. And when you take your car out, it will send you an SMS saying you are taking out your car. This type

which one to use and which one not to use and finally the whole thing gets the shape. This is how music is produced. Now that we are all staying in the internet age, what Kolabia says is can we create music over the internet? May be one artist is sitting at Singapore, the second one at San Francisco and another in Bangalore. All of them have access to internet and in internet there are various devices easily available. Then the artist A is creating something and putting it in the cloud and similarly the other two are also doing the same thing. Finally, the master comes in the scenario and from it he is picking up what he likes and finally he is producing the product. At this time it is little farfetched to produce a Hollywood or a Bollywood number.

What is immediately possible is using for college functions. At present, Kolabia is used for fun. Luckily Kolabia is working with some Bombay-based artists. Kolabia provides with lot of tools. Kolabia is a tool with which people can collaboratively create music and in some point of time, even to sell music.

“The emphasis of e-Governance must be more on governance and less on ‘e’” of technology has been used somewhere else also. But that is fairly expensive and many of them need a gadget in the car. But in a country like India, you cannot expect people to install another gadget. The only assumption over here is, everybody has a cell phone. This does not need a high-end cell phone. A normal cell phone which can receive SMS is good enough for this. This project was developed by CEEMS.

The IIIT is also engaged in incubating nine companies, one of which, Kolabia, has done some interesting stuff in the collaborative music creation space. Please provide us an overview of this project.

Kolabia is run by one of our students, who graduated about two-and-a-half years ago.

Today you can collaboratively create a word document. It is called collaborative document generation. What Kolabia does is, can we do the same thing with music? In music the flow is very genuine. Each person puts their music in any channel and finally, the composer decides

The IIITs have been initiating quite a few projects to promote green and environment friendly ideas. Recently the institute has commissioned 3 solar panels.

What is your experience with these solar panels?

We look at green from three points of view.

One is physical green–every inch of the campus is full of greenery and water resource.

The second one is from energy point of view and we use natural light as much as possible, so that in most part of the campus, in the day time, we do not need electricity. For cooling also there is sufficient natural air. Three years from now, we are planning that our campus be quite a bit green and completely powered by solar. The third thing where we wanted to look at green energy is ecological form. Instead of putting the sewage water in the drains, we try to treat it and recycle it. We need a lot of water to maintain the greenery in the large lawns inside our campus, instead of using the clean water we use the treated water. We feel it as our social responsibility.

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Digital Economy Policies

An Initiative of Centre for Digital Economy Policy

eRecords Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya, President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research; Director, South Asia, Hewlett Packard

I

ndia has a rich heritage of culture expressed in manuscripts, folk songs, paintings, classical dances, classical music, stories, sculptures etc. However, with modernization, we are loosing them at a very rapid rate. Very soon, we will loose the unparalleled rich heritage that we have inherited.

The loss is happening not just because of physical deterioration but also because we do not have Digital Sovereignty and hence records that are kept in electronic form are also being lost as there is no holistic approach or vision to maintaining these records. As an example, precious recordings of renditions by Gangubhai Hangal when she was 19 years old are lost as there are no machines that can read the tapes on which the recording was done.

Our citizens face daily problems with regards to their own records provided by the government and government agencies. Governments themselves regularly ask the hapless citizen to bring documents such as caste certificate or birth certificates or even educational certificates that have been given by the government itself. We feel that it is bad governance if the government itself does not have the documents that it issued to the citizens and thus harass the citizens. It also leads to fraud as paper docu-

ments can be forged leading to further degeneration of governance.

Such risk of frauds also push up the borrowing rates for capital for purchasing income generating assets such as trucks and tractors as banks are not sure if the same asset is being hypothecated with multiple banks.

We therefore propose to digitize all government records, government provided documents and capture the Indian heritage digitally in formats that do not compromise our digital sovereignty. All land records and property records will be made available on click of a button, thus reducing property related civil cases that clog our courts. All citizen records, Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya

President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research; Director, South Asia, Hewlett Packard

We therefore propose to digitize all government records, government provided documents and capture the Indian heritage digitally in formats that do not compromise our digital sovereignty 34

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / April 2013

including birth records, deatch records, marriage and caste certificates will be made available online. Caste certificates will be issued automatically based on the caste of the parents.

All educational degrees will be kept online for verification and authentication.

The National Manuscripts Mission, that was launched by the Vajpayee Government, will be implemented vigorously with digital archiving standards that are not controlled by foreign companies but are universally shared.

A similar mission will be launched for protecting the invaluable intangible heritage of India, expressed through music, oral history, folk arts etc.

And to set up a Central Electronic Registry to track all income generating movable and immovable assets in order to make it easy to get loans to purchase such assets.

And so in India in future, no government department will harass a citizen by asking the citizen to bring the ownership documents of land for a loan, or to bring educational certificates, or caste certificate or passport as the government itself will have it as e-records. And it will create many more jobs by making it easy and cheap to take loans for purchasing income generating assets. It will help transform India into an efficient, world class economy.

special feature

Juniper Networks India

Enabling Superior Service Through Datacentres and Mobile Security A

s our society becomes more information driven, expectations of public service are changing, with rising demands for improved quality of service and electronic access.

And while it is understood that government needs to collect a wide variety of data on individuals, businesses and other organizations, citizens rightly expect that this data will remain secure and their privacy respected.

This putsa lot of focus on the quality of eGovernment infrastructure, both at core and the periphery.

Securing the data centre At the core, today’s data centre architectures are in the crosshairs of several significant technology trends, each with fundamental implications for security and IT management.

This matters a great deal because government data centres are the repository for a great deal of sensitive and commercially valuable information that makes them a compelling target for cybercriminal organizations and foreign entities. At the same time the disruption of public services, driven from data centres, must be avoided.

For the security teams responsible for safeguarding national, state and local government IT assets, data centre consolidation, virtualization, application componentization and fabric networks present a host of

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Ravi Chauhan Managing Director Juniper Networks India challenges. New approaches and capabilities are needed to address the requirements of scale, visibility and intelligent enforcement to ensure proactive, effective security ofnextgeneration data centres.

Data centre consolidation is now well-established as a way to maximize economies of scale.

Consequently, extremely large data centres are increasingly the norm and this concentration of computing, storage, and networking is creating unprecedented scale requirements for network security.

As virtualization becomes more mainstream, the nature of computing inside the data centre has fundamentally changed, with workloads increasingly moving from dedicated physical servers to multiple virtual machines. As

a result, a typical application workload is now completely mobile; it can be initiated anywhere in the data centre, and it can even be moved from one physical server to another while running.

Most importantly, virtual machines running on a single server communicate via an internal virtual switch (vSwitch).

This has fundamental implications for traditional network security architectures, which were not designed with a focus on intra-server traffic.

Applicationsare also becoming more componentized to allow for more code reuse and, given that each component can be scaled separately, provide better scalability and workload distribution.One effect of this, however, is that it multiplies data centre network traffic, with “East-West” traffic – between different servers with the data centre – growing fast and surpassing the amount of “North-South” traffic between the data centre and external destinations. This not only pushes the scale requirements of security mechanisms in the data centre but can expose additional areas of vulnerability, since conventional data centre security architecture was not really designed for this.

Both in reaction to the above trends – and in an on-going effort to improve data centreefficiency, scalability, availability, and agility – “fabric” network architecture is increasingly being

adoptedby data centres. Thisenables many physical networking devices to be interconnected so that they are managed and behave as one logical device.

Correspondingly, network security infrastructures need to be adapted to the management and integration implications of fabric network architecture.

Traditional data centre security approaches, which are characterized by a focus on relatively static patterns of communication and the network perimeter, will no longer suffice in the face of these trends.

To meet the challenges of the next-generation data centre network security needs to scale to accommodate increasing traffic, more processing-intensive intelligence to combat increasingly sophisticated threats, and more deployment options and scenarios. To be effective, network security solutions also need more contextual visibility into relevant traffic while security teams need the abilityto efficiently enforce policies on both physical and virtualized workloads.

Juniper Networks has been working for some years on data centre security solutions that intersect these parallel trends and deliver the flexible, robust and proactive security needed in the next-generation data centre.

One of the cornerstones of our approach to the data centre is to simplify wherever possible, which is the thinking behind Juniper

Juniper Networks India

Networks® SRX Series Services Gateways. The SRX Series are multi-service devices that combine a firewall with a range of other security options including intrusion detection and prevention, virtual private networking and application level security, eliminating the need to deploy and manage separate devices for each of these services.

At the same time, the SRX Series is designed to enable organizations to scale multidimensional security, without compromise, in line with data centre workload and network performance in hyper-consolidated data centres.

And since the SRX Series run the same Juniper Networks®Junos operating system as our switches and routers, security is deeply integrated and orchestrated across the data centre network infrastructure.

This includes the virtual level of operations where our vGW Virtual Gateway solution, running on a VMware hypervisor, enables network security policies to be automatically replicated from an SRX gateway and enforced on traffic flowing between different virtual machines.

To inject greater context and intelligence to data centresecurity, Juniper Networks has also introduced the Junos Spotlight Secure, a service that acts as the global consolidation point for attacker and threat information, feeding real-time intelligence to Juniper’s security solutions such as SRX gateways.

Enabling mobility While data centresare expanding and consolidating, the opposite is happening to the devices we use to access and manipulate data. Desktop PCs are now the exception rather than the norm while the utility of mobile devices has changed almost

beyond recognition and they are now numbered in billions.

For service-focused government information mobility – enabling a far more engaged model of public service – is just as attractive as anywhere, anytime data and application access is to businesses.

For every positive development in the mobile market, however, there is often a risk.

For example, while application stores give users unprecedented ease of access to a plethora of programs; they are also proving to be a fertile environment for the distribution of malware.

Likewise, the increasing power of mobile devices also increases their potential to compromisesystems and government data.

direct attacks, organisations and users are increasingly susceptible to devastating compromises of mobile devices. Therefore, woe betidesany IT manager who enables mobile access to data and applications without putting robust and proactive safeguards in place.

Within a given organization, a number of mobile device operating systems are typically in use, and these must be factored into an organization’s security framework. Also, typically, as consumers adopt a new device type they don’t abandon their existing devices. So, for example, getting a tablet doesn’t mean you give up your smartphone. The upshot of this is that security teams need to account for a broad set

Applications are also becoming more componentized to allow for more code reuse and, given that each component can be scaled separately, provide better scalability and workload distribution

Finally, the very portability of mobile devices means that they are highly susceptible to loss and theft.

While just about every aspect of mobiles devices – including screen size, processing power, storage, user interface and applications – have advanced by leaps and bounds, mobile device security has remained static. It is as if, beguiled by the flashy features of our iPhones and Androids,we have lost sight of the fact that they are computers and share the same vulnerabilities as PCs but also have their own size-related security issues.

Not surprisingly, mobile device attack vectors are at the top of the agenda for malicious hackers and threats to mobile devices are pervasive and escalating.

Through malware, loss and theft, exploitation and misconduct, communication interception, and

of devices, a set that gets larger with each passing day.

As the use of mobile device types and platforms grows, security administrators can’t feasibly use a different management console for each, as this would prove costly, inefficient, and susceptible to errors. What is needed is a single solution that can be deployed across all major mobile operating systems, so that they can effectively, consistently, and efficiently apply security policies across each platform.

To address these issues Juniper Networks has develop a mobile security solution set that enables organizations to costeffectively guard against current and emerging threats, while retaining optimal productivity and flexibility mobile device use.

Our portfolio of multi-platform mobility solutions defend against

special feature

the breadth of threats plaguing mobile devices today, with capabilities including proactive malware protection, mechanisms that guard against the damage of lost or stolen devices, and encryption of mobile device communications.

Juniper Networks’ mobility solution, which builds on top of the existing enterprise security infrastructure, has two key elements: • Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite - a comprehensive, scalable solution that provides smartphone security, management, and control. It protects mobile devices against malware, viruses, trojans, spyware, and other malicious attacks on most of today’s leading mobile platforms and operating systems. The Mobile Security Suite also includes mobile device management features that mitigate the risk of losing or exposing corporate and personal data on devices that have been lost or stolen.

• The Junos Pulse Mobile Security Gateway management console, which offers comprehensive capabilities for configuring and managing mobile security policies.

The Mobile Security Gateway, which is available as a hosted web-based service, also provides detailed reports on virus infections, updates, and the latest threats detected on the mobile devices accessing the enterprise network.

By offering a complete, unified solution that features comprehensive OS and device support, minimal user requirements, integrated mobile device management and policy enforcement, and self-help support, Juniper Networks provides an unrivalled combination of administrative efficiency, cost-effectiveness, robust and pro-active security.

April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Financial Inclusion

Helping the Rural Poor Today Financial Inclusion is a top priority for the Government of India; this is evidenced by policy development, regulatory reform and new funding vehicles Amit Agrawal, Sales & Business Development , Infineon Technologies India Pvt Ltd Claudio Reiff, Marketing & Business Development, Infineon Technologies AG

T

he National Rural Financial Inclusion Plan (NRFIP) by Government of India has set a target of achieving complete financial inclusion by 2015. These objectives are being reached through financial instruments, such as micro credit, which have achieved positive results, helping thousands of the poor to lift themselves out of poverty.

In November 2005, banks were advised to make available a basic banking ‘no-frills’ account either with ‘nil’ or very low minimum balance as well as charges that would make such accounts accessible to vast sections of population and making the basic banking facilities available in a more uniform manner across banking system.

The Business Correspondent (BC) model has been recommended by the Reserve Bank of India to provide an alternative structure to branch-based banking to achieve financial inclusion. The Business Correspondent is an agent authorized to undertake transactions for pre-defined levels of cash on behalf of a specific financial institution. BC model with suitable technology would improve security, speed up

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Amit Agrawal

Claudio Reiff

enrolments and transactions, and extend the size of the physical territory that agents can cover.

Many banks have started implementing financial inclusion projects with the help of two broadly used technologies, Smart Card based technology and Mobile based technology

and transaction history stored within it. The smart cards are to be used at bank handheld terminals owned by a bank and operated by BC. The Terminal Operator Card and the Customer Card are mutually authenticated. The customer is authenticated using the biometric fingerprint of the customer stored in the smart card. These bank terminals are to have connectivity through communication channels such as GSM, CDMA, etc depending upon the type of connectivity. However connected, the communication finally will reach the back-end

Smart Card based Solution for Financial Inclusion Each customer is given a smart card with his primary account number, contact information

Financial Inclusion

Mobile banking provides technological support for increasing the outreach of financial inclusion intermediate Financial Inclusion Server (held by service provider/Bank). All customer details and account information including current balance is held by that server which will regularly update the bank host. The smart card is used for customer authentication, whenever transactions are made at bank terminals.

Mobile Phone based Solution for Financial Inclusion Mobile based financial services refer to a broad range of financial activities that consumers can access using their mobile phones. Unlike BCs who have to physically travel to customers’ homes, mobile banking would be ubiquitous, exist wherever there is a wireless network and a dealer network. With the mobile device itself being the “point of service” for financial infor-

Cash

Cash

* Instant Receipt * Transacrion stored on card

Bank Branch Agent Transaction Data Updates for transaction via Customer phone lines

Bank Systems

Transaction Data Service Provider’s Systems

mation and transaction, the cost of banking is reduced to an extent, where such services can be provided to the underprivileged and inaccessible citizens. Mobile-phone transactions include the use of network airtime or e-currencies for deposit, transfer of funds or credits, and payment of services. Mobile based banking services, mainly, fall under two categories.

Mobile banking (m-banking) Since mobile technology has the potential to reach out to the large unbanked population in remote areas, mobile banking provides technology support for increasing outreach for financial inclusion.

Mobile payments (m-payments) With the help of mobile payments, even a remotely located banking customer can conduct payment transactions via a mobile device without the help of an intermediary.

Likewise India, South Africa has also adopted Smart Card based solution for their social security agency having vision to provide a comprehensive social security service that assists people in being self-sufficient and supporting those in need. Infineon has embarked on a project to provide security microcontrollers for the largest government smart card project in South Africa. Since April 2012, Infineon provides Certified Secure Flash controllers to Net1’S Subsidiary Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), who is responsible for implementing this service for the South Africa Social Security Agency (SASSA). The new smart card enables more than ten million South African citizens to securely receive their social grants on the issued chip cards with less administrative expenses.

Certified Secure Flash products are offering significant value add like increased logistic flexibility and a faster time to market. The market benefits from the fast prototyping, sampling and programming without compromising security.

Infineon’s Certified Secure Flash SLE77 family is manufactured in 90nm processes technology and is certified in accordance to EMVCo and CC EAL 5+, combining the advantages of Certified Secure Flash with Infineon’s unique security expertise.

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event

eodisha SUMMIT SUMMIT Towards Towards A A Digital Digital Economy Economy

eOdisha Summit 2013 Moving Towards a Digital Economy eOdisha Summit 2013, was held on 6 March 2013 at Hotel Swosti Premium, Bhubaneswar, in Odisha. The event highlighted the various e-Governance initiatives that have been launched by the state government to bring development to the small towns and villages. eOdisha Summit 2013 was organised by Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd with the support of Department of IT, Government of Odisha, and Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC).

In the pages that follow, we have the glimpses of the eOdhisa Summit 2013. We also have small excerpts from the speeches made by various eminent speakers and guests. In its own way the eOdhisa Summit 2013 led to development of several new ideas in e-Governance

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eodisha

event

SUMMIT

Towards A Digital Economy

Shri Naveen Patnaik Hon’ble Chief Minister of Odisha The city of Bhubaneshwar bears witness to our heritage and is on its way to become the most modern in the country. The IT sector is at the top of the state governments agenda. Four of the key players, Infosys, Wipro, TCS, and Mahindra have established their development centers at Odisha. It is a matter of pride that IT exports in the state has grown from Rs 15,000 crores has grown by 17 percent since last year.

R S Sharma DG, UIDAI, Govt of India Till date there has been about 300 million enrollments in aadhar. Already 290 million aadhar has already been issued. Normally, identity projects are formulated keeping in mind security issues. However, aadhar has been formulated keeping development as its prime focus; with a purpose of those millions of citizens who do not have documented identity.

Madhusudan Padhi Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Dept of Food Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Odisha The public service delivery act has already been passed in the state. However, we always think that it is more about electronic where as it is more about governance.

People and process are the two forces and technology is the link between them.

Ranbir Singh Group Director, Government Affairs, Microsoft India Cloud is the new game changer when it comes to the probes of government leaders for engaging citizens effectively, for making processes citizen centric and delivering world class services to masses, and optimizing costs, increasing internal efficiencies and overcoming capacity gaps.

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eodisha SUMMIT

Towards A Digital Economy

Madhusudan Padhi Commissioner-cumSecretary, Dept of Food Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Odisha

Session - I: Towards Effective Electronic Service Delivery

The public service delivery act has already been passed in the state. However, we always think that it is more about electronic where as it is more about governance. People and process are the two forces and technology is the link between them.

Naval Khosla General Manager, Industry Solutions, Software, IBM India/ South Asia

Leaders must innovate across services to meet and exceed citizen expectations.

Anubhav Tyagi Sr Solution Specialist, SafeNet India Pvt Ltd

Security started as perimeter-centric, but needs to become datacentric. Solutions should focus on the data and not just on the systems holding the data.

Vidyesh Vithal Khanolkar Head – Insurance and Government Business – Asia Pacific, India and Middle East, Mastek Ltd

‘Effective’ should be the key word rather than making it efficiently delivered. Also, the focus should be on highest outcome rather than on lowest cost.

Jignesh Upadhyay Director, Technical Sales, CA Technologies

We are going to have effective systems only when we the solutions are seamlessly integrated; Application, network, Process, etc. have to be presented end to end.

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SUMMIT

Towards A Digital Economy

Session II: Urban Governance & Infrastructure: Emerging Opportunities S P S Bakshi Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Engineering Projects India Ltd.

IT has helped in quickening the decision making process. The file tracking system in Government and PSUs has helped to track each and every movement of the files, and make individuals accountable for decisions.

Sanjay Bobde Director -Microsoft Consulting Services

Citizens require several services from the government.

We have successfully transformed the system into an online one through our Citizen service Portal by putting all the information on the website and also completed the system by placing feedback forms.

Muralidhara Honnur General Manager, Wipro Consulting

We have been associated with the JNNURM programme as a consultant and we have tried providing end to end service delivery mechanisms, improving the quality of service, the infrastructure and most importantly, sustainability of the programme.

Session III: ICT for Inclusive framework of eGovernance S N Tripathi Principal Secretary, Department of Rural Development

Doer’s perspective needs to be taken care in the policy.

The other requirement is, how can we deliver easier.

Software developers and government need to come to a common platform of understanding.

Sanjeev Chadha Director, Directorate of Horticulture, Odisha In order to minimize the role of middlemen in the supply chain of agricultural products, we have started an IT initiative in Cuttack city, with which 6000 farmers have already been registered. The system was implemented in a PPP mode. An integral part of the system is constituted by a digital machine; we have also opened bank accounts for the farmers. The farmer’s portal that we have created in the horticulture directorate registers the identities of all the farmers.

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eodisha SUMMIT

Sanjay Panigrahi CEO, Srei Sahaj e-Village Ltd Suresh Vashisht IAS, Managing Director, OSCSC Ltd.

Towards A Digital Economy

It was important to create a single service centre in the villages as the people are not equipped with gadgets to access facilities which are IT enabled.

A PPP mode of business is vital in order to work in villages. We have integrated both B2B as well as G2C business models, thinking that one will compliment, in case the other one fails.

Session IV: Technology in Healthcare: Emerging Opportunities

Dr Pramod Kumar Meherda Commissioner-cum-Mission Director (NRHM), Deptt. Of Health & F.W., Government of Odhisa We created an ‘e-Blood bank’ to bridge the gap between the donor and the patient. In this we have integrated consumable inventory management system, asset management system, bio waste management system, supply chain management and employee information management system and blood bank license management system.

Dr B N Mohanty Honorary. Secretary, Telemedicine Society of India & Head, Experimental Surgery, SCB Medical College

K N Bhagat Managing Trustee, Orissa Trust of Technical Education & Training (OTTET)

Telemedicine in the state was established in the year 2001 in three phases. National Knowledge Network has provided us with 100 mbps bandwidth which helps us in tele-mentoring our fellow doctors by interacting with them and helping them witness live surgeries.

Telemedicine is a solution that addresses the problem of scarcity of doctors. It has proved a great way to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of healthcare facilities and has been utilized effectively in the state of Odisha. Several health camps are being organized in the village areas which help in preventive care.

Anurag Choudhury General Manager, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG)

IT and e-Governance infrastructure can be critical to public safety. Any damage in the virtual world causes a subsequent damage in the physical world.

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N S N Murthy General Manager & Sales Leader, Government Industry, India/ South Asia, IBM India

We have worked extensively in Rio with the government in weather prediction and in aiding disaster management. For disaster management we need three primary things.

Firstly, we need to have the leaders who need to take a call on what has to be done in times of emergency. Secondly, we need to have data which will help in the prediction. Thirdly, we need analytical tools which will help in deriving at a conclusion.

S A Khan Sr Technical Director, NIC & Project Manager Odisha State Data Centre

In Odisha we have a Data Centre working full fledged since the past one year.

Damage of data is prevented as our data centre is connected to National Knowledge Network.

Session VI: Scope of Technology in Education & Skill Training Gagan Kumar Dhal Principal Secretary, Higher Education, Government of Odisha We are keen on digitizing the libraries in the state so that there can be proper accounting of the journals which are purchased and the students will be able to access them. We are coming up with a very comprehensive scheme for the same purpose.

Prof Gopal Naik Director, IIIT Krushna Gopal Mahapatra Director, School & Mass Education Department Every year we carry out a survey called District Information System for Education which is essential to plan for the children belonging to the state. The performance around 65,000 schools across the state are monitored broadly on four points, viz, infrastructure, curricular activities, extracurricular activities, and school community linkage.

IT plays a much bigger role than just administration.

IT has an integral role to play in delivering content.

OPEPA is conducting some experiments on this subject.

Digitised content can be made available to students and it does not include huge investments.

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eodisha SUMMIT

Towards A Digital Economy

Ratnakar Rout Additional Secretary, Employment & Technical Education & Training Dept. Govt. of Odisha

In most government institutes, there is dearth of technically qualified people, which needs to be taken care.

Ajay Krishnan Vice President, National Security Solutions, Cisco Systems In order to bring about inclusive growth, we focus on three areas, viz, education, skills development and healthcare. We have used technology to solve the issue of lack of teachers in the schools. Through video conferencing, we have brought teachers to the class rooms which are located far away in the rural areas of Karnataka.

Lokesh Mehra Director, Education Advocacy, Microsoft Corporation (I) Pvt. Ltd. There is a common complain that the industries do not come forward. However, the truth is that industries operate in silos. Microsoft has taken a step for fostering digital literacy. Anyone who wants to know the basics of computer can log into dsaksharta.in. In India, we have trained 7.5 lakh teachers in the K12 space. For the Higher Education sector, we run a programme called Saksham.

Session VII: Secretaries’ Meet: ICT Policy: How should the implementation Master Plan look like?

Madhusudan Padhi Commissioner-cum-Secretary, IT, Odisha

The public service delivery act has already been passed in the state. However, we always think that it is more about electronic where as it is more about governance. People and process are the two forces and technology is the link between them.

Vishal Dev, Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation There is very little sharing of what has been done which has lead to too many agencies and duplicacies. However, NeGP gave a proper dimension and shape to the policy,which facilitates with the idea of providing infrastructure first and then build on data to channelize the service. SWAN and SDC were brought in picture.

Now the focus of the govt in the state is to take this in G2C format and to build it in a big way. With all the building blocks in place, the Master Plan now needs to think of how to use the application.

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SUMMIT

Aswini Kumar Mishra Special Secretary, Finance Deptt., Govt. of Odisha

Towards A Digital Economy

We have computersised some of our systems, like treasury computerization, where entire accounts have been compiled electronically. OSWAS system is there in place.

But infrastructure development should take a primary focus in policy. Master plan should look at massive computerization at govt level and then extending public services to the citizens.

Santosh Sarangi Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Department of SC & ST Development When we talk of facilitation of services, it’s not only facilitation of developers, but also facilitation of users. The policy and master plan needs to open that kind of a window.

There is a lot of inhibition and apprehension at government level, what to use, how to use, etc. The ability to overcome inhibition is important.

S N Tripathi Principal Secretary, Department of Rural Development

Doer’s perspective needs to be taken care in the policy.

The other requirement is, how can we deliver easier.

Software developers and government need to come to a common platform of understanding.

Sashi Mal Director, IBM The delivery platform needs to be very simple. It is also time to look at how do we build upon the standards of service delivery. And also need to look at the efficiency level of using the standards.

Then is the cost- starting from acquiring to oprating IT. Share and break the data, to make t more meaningful and usable.

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in person

Aditya Mohapatra

Head, IT promotion Cell & Under Secretary, Department of IT, Govt of Odisha

Bringing services

under the fold of ‘e’

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hrow some light on the kind of IT infrastructure Odisha has to facilitate eGovernance. How does OCAC support to it?

Aditya Mohapatra, Head, IT promotion Cell & Under Secretary, Department of IT, Government of Odisha, is playing an exemplary role in development of ICT sector in the State. A 1997 batch state civil service officer, a M Tech in Engineering Geology from IIT Kanpur and MBA from IIT Kharagagpur, Mohapatra also serves as an Officer on Special Duty at Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC) and a nodal officer for UIDAI, Odisha.

In conversation with Nayana Singh

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As the state designated agency, the role of Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC) is to ensure that all the National eGovernance Projects are implemented in a smooth manner. The two core projects under NeGP- the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and State Data Centre have been implemented in the state of Odisha in an effective and timely manner.

The Hon’ble Chief Minister inaugurated SWAN in Odisha in the year 2010. We have successfully connected the state headquarter with all the 30 districts and 284 blocks and 60 horizontal offices. Now we are planning to connect more than 4000 horizontal offices across the state in phases. The SWAN project of the Government of Odisha provides video conferencing facilities to all the 30 collectorates. Around seven VC studios are available in the secretariat. One state-of-art Real presence video conferencing (RPX) also available in OCAC, which is unique in any of the government office in India.

The State Data Centre was inaugurated in Odisha in November 2010. Odisha is the second state in the country which Data Centre live in time. As on date, more than 13 critical applications have already been hosted in the Data Centre, some of them being Treasury, e-Registration, e-Municipality, CCTNS, e-District. SAMS and I3MS are in the process of migrating to this Data Centre. Under e-District project, we are providing six services

In inperson Person

to the citizens in two pilot districts, in Ganjam and Marurbhunj. We are planning to implement e-District projects across the entire state.

Some of the initiatives of the state government such as e-Despatch to automate the despatch system of the government departments are being taken care by OCAC. The main purpose behind this initiative is that the letters should reach the concerned officers in real time.

Also, application to Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) for conducting both large scale and small scale examinations are made online by OCAC.

IT being one of the core elements in all the departments, how is it syncing in to help in the operations of each department?

For success of IT projects, a robust application and reliable connectivity is critical necessary.

Mobile connectivity has penetrated to more than 80 percent areas in the state. BSNL has successfully reached out to all the 314 blocks in the state. Connecting the Blocks to Gram Panchyats is challenging. For the Gram Panchyats which are not connected, we are trying to facilitate connectivity through the National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN). There is a tripartite agreement to be signed between BBNL, Government of Odisha and Government of India.

citizen derives. Process reengineering is a vital thing and it is the most difficult task in the government. The redundant processes from the departments must be removed.

It is equally important to change the mindsets of government employees. They are not open to accept technology, thinking that the operations will be difficult. The secretaries are adopting several measures to make the staff technology friendly. Changing oneself and tuning one-self to ever changing technology is the key to success and this is not taking place in

“Connecting the Blocks to Gram Panchyats is a challenge. By the end of 2014, we hope to connect most of the Gram Panchyats” Powergrid Corporation is going to execute the project. By the end of year 2014, we are hope to reach to most of the Gram Panchyats.

the government sector, the way it is taking place in the private sector.

What challenges are facing implementation of these projects?

When it comes to Human Resources, what and how should be the capacity building measures?

In any e-Governance Projects, ‘e’ is least focused upon whereas ‘Governance’ is of prime importance. The project is bound to fail, if the two factors are reversed in use. The government processes require change and we must bring them in the spectrum of ‘e’.

An e-Governance project has three important components- people, process and technology. The success of any e-Governance project is largely dependent upon satisfaction that the

We believe that providing training is the key to effective capacity building. The government is spending a lot of money towards training the employees. However, the desired success is being achieved gradually. Also, employees should go for exposure visits to witness the good practices and how they are being performed.

Recognising and rewarding the employees is also equally effective. We must encour-

age events such as eOdisha summit which contributes towards this recognition process.

Employees right from the top level to the grassroots level need to be felicitated for their achievements.

All the stake holders have expectations from the Government. But fulfilling all the expectations is difficult at times. The good practices in government should be highlighted. But there is criticism in case of minor gaps in execution of projects. Instead of criticizing, we must identify the mistakes and rectify it so that the IT person working in the field gets moral boost.

OCAC is the nodal agency for IT in the state. Other than IT implementation, what incubation and R&D measures are being taken up to develop IT in the state?

A new OCAC tower is under construction, in which one entire floor will provide incubation facility. Companies will be provided with space who require incubation space for a period of two to three years. Other than this, Software Technology Park of India (STPI) and Orissa Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) are also working towards this cause.

As far as R&D is concerned, the Government has also approved a Characterization lab for semi-conductor testing. The state governments have kept a provision of five crores rupees for this special lab. The State Government, along with STPI will be setting up the lab at IIIT, Bhubaneswar. The students will be working in the lab and the companies from anywhere in the country can come and avail the facilities at subsidized rates.

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In Person

Shivaji Chatterjee

Vice President, Enterprise Services, Hughes India

Creating Infrastructure for Seamless Connectivity and State government departments and also to private organisations.

Many international organisations have stated that India is a difficult place to do business.

What is your experience? Tell us about the challenges that you have faced in India.

“When you are part of a high profile industry like telecom, there are bound to be some challenges,”says Shivaji Chatterjee, Vice President, Enterprise Services, Hughes India.

In conversation with Aparajita Gupta

T

ell us about the work that Hughes India is doing in India. What are your major achievements in the country?

We have been in India for the last 18 years. We were the first private organisation in the country to provide data services. During the early years, our services were availed by lot of corporates that were looking for reliable data connectivity. We have been profitable from the first year in India..

As you already know our parent company is the one that has invented the V-SAT technology about 30 years ago. Such a strong background has enabled us to carve a good niche for ourselves.

Today we are providing lot of solutions to Central

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When you are part of a high profile industry like telecom, there are bound to be some challenges.

The telecom industry is today bringing lot of revenues to the government, so the policy framework has to be dealt with lot of push and pull factors.

For instance, there was the judgement of the Apex Court that the natural resources should be auctioned, but later on it was sort of corrected and we learned that the auction route is not mandatory.

It is well known that there are substantial policy related issues in the telecom sector. How is that affecting your business?

There is significant effect. The good thing is that in India, when you don’t get something, you innovate. We keep on innovating to ensure that we are able to do our work under diverse kinds of policy environments. The biggest challenge is a sustainable, clear, fast action framework. It is an example of policy paralysis. But even if somebody doesn’t want to take a tough decision the work has to go on. Currently, ISRO is unable to meet all the demands of the industry, so they allow the use of foreign satellites. If there is any regulation that allows open sky framework, then the industry will be able to access many satellites. We have applied to the government of India that we wish to invest $300-400 million for putting up a satellite.

Which are the various state governments you have worked with in India?

We did a project called EduSat, which con-

nected about 12 to 14 different states. Under this programme a satellite called EduSat was set up. We set up studios where teachers in central universities are connected to various schools and colleges across the state. There was a classroom set up for virtual learning. And the schools and colleges will have at least one class for virtual learning. States like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Delhi and Lakshadeep are part of the programme.

We have also done programmes with Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

What is your view of various e-governance programmes run by government?

Well my idea of NeGP (National e-Governance Plan) is that its implementation was somewhat flawed. They have put up the SWAN and the CSC and they finished the Data Centre in the end, and only now they are starting to develop the applications. The idea to set up the infrastructure without content is like setting up internet without website. So I think much more effort should go into creating applications and contents, only then the network will be useful.

What are the government projects you have in pipeline?

We are doing a surveillance project in Mumbai and Pune city. We are also creating an e-Governance network project in Andaman. Then there are the large rural development projects in states like Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. We are part of these. For the defence sector we are doing border surveillance related projects.

There is a network called Defence Communication Network, of which we are a part. We are also doing projects for the Railways. We are involved in core banking projects that are targeting the rural areas.

digitalLEARNING

world education summit 2013

New Delhi Office United Nations Educational, ScientiďŹ c and Cultural Organization

Cluster Office for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka

Social Development

Developing Public Services for Prosperity It’s a new world for India. In recent years, the obvious story has been the country’s economic boom. India has been at the forefront of the phenomenon of emerging markets—approaching double-digit growth that brought a new prosperity in many areas Brian Moran, Global Managing Director, Public Service Operations & Management, Accenture Nilaya Varma, Executive Director for Health and Public Services, Accenture India

I

ndia is home to 20 percent of the world’s people and approximately one-third of Indians are under 15 years of age.

Economic growth in India has arrived as businesses have capitalised on the large, educated labor pool at a cost that couldn’t be matched in developed economies.

But at the same time, there are new emerging trends that can cause concern. While still climbing at a rate enviable to many Western nations, growth in India has slowed, especially in comparison to other Asian powerhouses.

India’s competitive advantage in the area of talent will need to stand up to the increasing threat from other emerging economies, that also have begun focusing on developing talent pools with key skills, including English- language capabilities.

As both the population and the GDP have grown rapidly, the country has been experiencing pressure on infrastructure. One of India’s biggest impediments is that its physical and social infrastructure has fallen far short of national needs. In the recent polling Accenture undertook, with Ipsos-Mori, a majority of Indian respondents (80 percent, as opposed to 63 percent globally) said that they often found it difficult to access the public services they need.

Serving the people The government of India must serve two very different populations. About 37 percent of its

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Brian Moran

Nilaya Varma

population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

Continued economic growth in the country will not reduce poverty unless growth is inclusive. In Accenture’s point of view, “In the worst case, India’s massive, young and growing population will be characterized by illiteracy, ill health and low employment— with all of the unrest and instability that those forces imply.”

As the level of affluence in the country grows, the expectations from public services will also grow. This will result in both increas-

ing the reach of public services and growing the quality of services.

India at an inflection point Clearly, India is at an inflection point. So what is the way forward for its public services?

Recently we undertook research to discover what public services might look like in the future, and what underlying characteristics would define them. Our premise was simple: in the face of dramatic changes in the political, societal and economic climate, governments still have a promise to fulfill for their citizens.

Social Development

They need to provide the framework that fosters flourishing societies, safety and security and economic vitality—and to do it all as conscientious stewards of the public resources in their care.

India needs to launch a new drive to find solutions. While problems won’t be solved overnight, we believe that the governments have recognised that any plan to reinvigorate the country’s economic trajectory must also include plans for bringing a much broader swath of its people along with it.

The government must tap into the strong technology orientation of the country’s youthful population. Better serving citizens means providing citizens with what they need, when they need it, in a way that is easily accessible to them. Indians themselves have a strong appetite for more digital services of all types. In our poll, 88 percent of Indians responded that it is very or fairly important for government to provide more services through digital channels in the future as a means to improving speed and efficiency and enhancing transparency.

The mobile channel For Indians, the most obvious channel is mobile.

With close to 900 million mobile users, India is the second largest market in the world for mobile devices. Even in rural areas, mobile phone use continues to grow tremendously and for governments that becomes a vital link for delivering public services and information to products to the poor and marginalized, who do not have the ready access to interface with public services.

Another key step will be institutionalizing standards for the delivery of electronic public services—something that the Electronic Services Delivery Bill (under Parliamentary Review) seeks to do. In our research, we have seen pockets of IT innovation for delivering public services. For example, the State Governments of Manipur, Nagaland and Sikkim each have moved to develop portals intended to alleviate administrative burdens, reduce citizen visits to government offices and to provide access to data and information. One other example is India Post’s end-to-end IT Modernisation project. Launched in September 2012, the ambitious project aims to achieve improved citizen and customer service, speed of delivery and reliability and improving operational efficiency across all service offerings including mail banking and insurance, government and other retail services.

Such steps are encouraging and laudable.

There are two cautions we would like to point out: one, given the ever-changing needs of governance and increased expectations of citizens, the volume and velocity of such examples must increase. India needs to replicate and scale such islands of service excellence and to accelerate implementation of similar wellconceived projects, whether those ideas come from within or outside national borders.

Second, India must avoid the trap of building a public service infrastructure that is unaffordable. This issue plagues most of the western countries today. India must take advantage of the opportunity to build a modern service delivery model that provides multiple service channels while incentivising citizens to utilize the lowest-cost options. What this practically

India must take advantage of the opportunity to build a modern service delivery model that provides multiple service channels while incentivising citizens to utilise the low-cost options

means is to minimize the high-cost in-person interactions and encourage citizens to access services through, for example, a low-cost mobile phone.

My final point is the criticality of developing India’s labor and skills markets for the future economy. In a more complex and rapidly changing global economy, it is absolutely essential that the future workforces are equipped with the skills and education necessary for the jobs of the future. According to the Planning Commission of India, thanks to the trend of aging populations, the world will have 56.7 million fewer skilled workers than it needs by 2020. That should be good news for India’s business leaders and policymakers, as it presents a tremendous social and economic opportunity. Roughly 2 percent of India’s 15- to 29-year-olds have received formal voca-

tional training. By increasing the proportion of working- age Indians who are economically active from 60 percent to 75 percent, the World Bank estimates India would add US$3.7 trillion to the country’s GDP by 2020.

Focus on skills development Given the complexity of skills development, coordination among the public, private and social sectors is critical. Public entrepreneurs can help create an environment for businesses to flourish, but if a nation’s citizens lack the skills to compete with the best talent the world over, that nation will necessarily struggle. True public service leaders will address their shortcomings by building coalitions and partnerships between businesses, public agencies and civil society organizations to better shape the skills of the future.

In this regard, the Digital Cities initiatives in Amsterdam and Guadalajara provide useful examples of how the Indian government could potentially harness technologies and bridge the private, public and non-profit sectors in ways that drive both economic and social outcome improvements. For example, Amsterdam’s ground-breaking Intelligent City program created new public-private consortia to finance the roll-out of smart technologies across the city, such as low-emission and electric vehicles and smart meters and other energy-saving technologies. Beside generating inward investment, boosting tourism, promoting a healthier environment and providing the conditions for creativity and enterprise, it is also estimated that the Intelligent City initiative will generate additional jobs in the city.

In Guadalajara, Mexico, all three levels of government are sponsoring Guadalajara’s “Intelligent City” regeneration project, with significant private sector involvement. The major redevelopment underway will recast the city center as an economic cluster for the digital creative industry and create a new paradigm for sustainable urban development in Latin America. The goal is to enhance quality of life while providing employment to a projected 30,000 people.

India undoubtedly has a bright future ahead of it, but it also has a lot of hard work to do. By concentrating on the fundamentals—developing a physical and social infrastructure enabled by technology and partnership—the country can mine its inherent advantages for sustainable and more inclusive prosperity.

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viewpoint

Education…Economic Growth…

Demographic Dividend……Converting perennial weakness into perpetual strength Government needs to appreciate direct dependency between growth in education eco-system and economic growth

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t was Mr Nandan Nilekani who had first time introduced now wellpublicised phrase of demographic dividend to this columnist, during his convocation address in TERI few years back. There are all sorts of statistics floating around about the unique demographic profile India is envisaged to have by the year 2030. It is said that by that time young middle class population in the age group of 18-45 years of this country would be more than 60% of the total population. In other words, India may become the young nation, so to say, by next 15 to 20 years time. Some experts would further refine this prediction by saying that growth f would be regionally uneven and skewed, centering around southern and western States and the western part of north-south line dividing India would achieve this feat by that time while the balance area may take another decade or so. Nevertheless, as of today, India has a relatively higher proportion of a youthful population than Europe, Japan and Korea. Experts estimate that the size of India’s workforce population will become 95 crore in the year 2026. Further, by 2020, the average Indian will be only 29 years old, compared to 37 years in China and US; 45 years in West Europe; and 48 years in Japan.

But what makes this situation so exciting? The social psychologists would say that the human brain remains most innovative and productive also, while passing through the age band of 18-45 years. By this logic Indian society is likely to wear the tag of most innovative and productive society by the year 2030! The macro-economists would say that this unique and unprecedented demographic profile of young middle class dominating Indian society would drive prosperity in all segments of the society. It is a fact that a middle class dominated economy would usher in an intense consumerism era and consequently

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would be in a position to sustain a high level of growth index for a significant period.

Is it then everything would be such hunkydory for India within next two decades of time?

Let us now look for important catch in the entire assumption. It is a fact that in India the number of working age youth is bulging but the bulge is concentrated in economically poor regions, both in terms of savings and job potential. IMF suggested a caveat in the Asia-Pacific Regional Economic Outlook 2012 report that significant leap in the India’s GDP owing to this demographic dividend would only be possible when there is a right policy mix to effectively harness this livid mass of youthful energy. So the catch is that this huge young population should be employable and more so, should be gainfully employed. And unless they are adequately educated, be it traditional, professional or vocational, they cannot be employed. If they are not employed they will not earn. And if they cannot earn they cannot consume. Consequently, with less consumerism, the anticipated growth picture would be blurred and the entire prediction of demographic dividend driving the growth index would remain a fallacy. On the worst side, the entire situation may backfire. If a huge young population remains unemployed, there is a chance of unrest all over and what is currently manifested in 60+ districts in the country and is desirably on the wane, may unfortunately again surface in other districts as well.

All these above call for an immediate action on connecting the entire education eco-system to the process of growth of economy and also to develop a monitoring metrics for the same.

Growth in education would drive and sustain the expected growth profile. Government needs to appreciate the direct dependency between all round growth in education for all segments of the society and sustainable growth of the economy. This appears to be part version of the concept of welfare economics proposed

by Amartya Sen wherein he insisted that two social sectors of education and health should receive all premier investment from the government for some defined period. He further clarified that if it happens, then other aspects of development paradigm would fall in place one after another.

The entire argument gains paramount importance as shortage of skilled employable workforce is becoming apparent with CII and BCG in their 2010 report stating that by 2025 India will lack trained workforce of around 50-60 million. Bulk of the growing working population is going to be absorbed in the secondary and tertiary sectors such as manufacturing and services industry where skill is required.

The demographic dividend will only be visible when we would provide young population with good education, skill and employment opportunities. To reach the large currently untapped potential base for traditional, professional and vocational education eco-system, abundant ICT interventions are absolutely necessary. Distance education, online teaching with digital content, online examination, online on-the-job refresher courses etc are among few, to be taken up more seriously with large investment. National Skill Development Corporation has to work in a more visible manner, with a performance metrics and adopting on-course corrections. All these are essential to derive the strategic advantage of the forthcoming demographic dividend and to convert our perennial weakness of growing population in to perpetual strength of more than a billion connected people.

Ashis Sanyal Consulting Editor, egov

in person

Devices & Solutions

Dave Hansen President & CEO, SafeNet

Securing Data with Encryption and Control

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afeNet is known as one of the largest suppliers of encryption technologies to the United States Government. Tell us about the work that you are doing in India.

In India we are having approximately 300 employees. In fact, India is one of our largest centres in the world. We are doing lot of work here in India – from engineering, to technical support, to services. India is a key hub for the Software Monetization business for SafeNet. Lot of work on core programs is being handled here. Our professionals out here work on the core product R&D. Besides Software Monetization business, we also have CDP (Commercial Data Protection) business; some of the lines of work in CDP are being handled from India. Our products usually contain hardware as well as software components. Primarily the work that is being done here in India is related to software. Basically the centre that we operate in India is not project oriented; it is a captive centre for SafeNet. The products and solutions that are being developed here are for every part of the world.

Is SafeNet planning to increase its workforce in India?

Dave Hansen has extensive experience leading innovative, global IT software and security initiatives for large, multinational corporations. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada, and is a frequent speaker at leading security and technology conferences and CIO forums around the world.

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India is an important market for us. The economy has great potential. So I am pretty convinced that we will be adding more employees in the country. I have come to India after a tour of few other locations in the world where we have our development centres and I think India is one of the places where we would like to expand the scale of our operations.

I like the fact that the SafeNet centre is located close to Delhi, in Noida. Being in Delhi is an asset, as you are close to the government departments, where we are deploying many of our solutions.

Devices & Solutions

Today there is lot of concern being expressed by the government departments in the country about the security of the cyber space. As more departments move their operations online, there is rise in levels of insecurity. What kind of data protection solutions does SafeNet have to offer to the government departments?

The sense of insecurity that is there, has a genuine basis. Today we are living in a world with complex and evolving climate of advanced threats.

The threats are constantly evolving. Historically SafeNet has been providing about 50 percent of its solutions to various governments around the world. The rest of our solutions go to the private sector. Our head office in USA is near Washington DC. We do plenty of work for major government agencies that are based out there. SafeNet offers the only complete portfolio that provides persistent protection of sensitive data at all critical points in its lifecycle. From the physical and virtual datacenter to the cloud, SafeNet helps organizations remain protected, and in control.

I have been interacting with many government departments, so I can tell you for sure that most departments do not want solutions that made specifically for them. They want to have solutions that are more universal in nature and can work for equally well for both public and private sector. Government, as well as the private sector, will always have deep needs for data privacy and protection for transactions and that is creating many new opportunities for us.

Many government departments in India are hesitant to put their data into the cloud. What is your outlook on this issue?

The sense of insecurity is not confined only to India. Lot of governments around the world are

hesitant to use the cloud. But I would like to say that we have solutions that can encrypt the virtual compute instance as well as data in the cloud and provide very high degree of protection. With SafeNet cloud security solutions, government departments and enterprises can secure their data in the cloud for backup, disaster recovery and data archiving. Our solutions provide the flexibility to support evolving cloud delivery models, from today’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings and private clouds to emerging hybrid and public clouds models. I would say that it is possible to fully leverage the efficiency related benefits of the cloud environments while ensuring trust, compliance and privacy.

Worldwide SafeNet is a leading name when it comes to encryption technologies. Please provide an overview of the systems that you have developed in this area.

At the core of our encryption technologies is the SafeNet crypto foundation. Supporting the widest set of technologies and deployment scenarios, the SafeNet crypto foundation is designed to enable the creation of a centralised cryptographic platform that streamlines enterprise wide encryption deployment, and centralises policy and key management. Once data is encrypted, the centralisation of policy and key management means that this data can pass through your systems transparently, and be persistently available for decryption by authorised users. Scalable to millions of records and billions of transactions, SafeNet Data Protection solutions deliver the throughput, responsiveness, and availability organisations need for vital cryptographic processing to ensure your data is secure throughout its lifecycle. The protection system can be easily tailored to meet the specific needs of any enterprise of government.

The sensitive information will remain secure.

SafeNet protects •

The Most Money That Moves - Securing 80 percent of all electronic banking transfers, the equivalent of $1 Trillion daily

•

The Most Digital Identities - Protecting government and Fortune 100 public key infrastructures (PKI’s) with industry-leading strong authentication

•

The Most High Value Software - Over 80 million hardware keys sold, protecting intellectual property and providing efficient license management solutions

•

The Most Government Information - Proven and trusted by governments around the world, providing the largest deployment of government communications security

Rana Gupta

in person

In Person

Business Head – India & SAARC, SafeNet

“The Crypto Modules developed by SafeNet are designed for use in custom applications, personal encryption devices, handheld, wireless, and mobile handsets” You have developed a solution called KeySecure, which is an Enterprise Key Management system. Please tell us about it.

KeySecure is a dedicated enterprise key management that can work across the organisation. The solution enables a single, centralised platform for managing cryptographic keys and applications.

With KeySecure, administrators can simultaneously manage multiple, heterogeneous IT assets in disparate encryption agents and associated keys through a single, centralized key management platform in the datacentre and virtualised environments. KeySecure is designed to centrally manage keys and policies for encrypted data across an enterprise, and is also supported by advanced functionalities such as key rotation and versioning, to ensure both security and ease of use.

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secureit 2013 2013 event eventsecureit

Developing a road map for National Security and Disaster Management The 4th SecureIT 2013, the National Conference on ICT in Public Safety, Security and Disaster Management, took place at The Oberoi, New Delhi, on March 8, 2013. The conference was presented by eGov Magazine and jointly organised by Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd and Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS).

The SecureIT 2013 saw healthy debate on new technology applications and services that are already being or will be deployed in future to improve national security and moderate the aftermath of natural and manmade disasters. There were discussions on critical issues such as threat of cyber terrorism, data security, security against malware and use of ICT in border security.

National Security is a vast subject, but the SecureIT 2013 did manage to bring to light some of the most innovative ideas for national security and effective disaster management.

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secureit 2013

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The concept of state has originated from security because people want to have security. In due course of time that concept became the concept of state and kingdom. There are three type of security – physical security, security in the financial wealth and the intellectual property.

In physical security each and every person should be well protected against all kinds of problems and aggression. Secondly, there is the aspect of security in the field of finances; this means that each and every person should be able to secure his or her wealth, whether it is in digital form or in physical form. And the intellectual property. We have to ensure that intellectual property is also secured. In all these three areas ICT can play a very important role. We got to create large number of awareness among people regarding cyber security.

If we want to grow, the citizens of that society must have the sense of security. Today ICT is playing a vital role in creation of security systems being used around the world. We have to try to come with a mechanism that will ensure that all human beings are secured.

In case of terrorism and anti-social elements, we can make use of digital cameras, we can make use of UAVs. In all these systems ICT can play a very very important role. The MHA and lot of other departments and organisations are working on this area and if we can create a collaborative platform where academia, industry, bureaucracy and the implementing agencies get together, we may find solutions to many of these problems.

Shankar Agarwal Additional secretary, Ministry of Defence, Government of India The nature of external threat has changed over the years. The security threat due to cyber aspects have become far more important as compared to the physical aspects. We have to take the new technological developments into account and accordingly forumate our strategies.

I think there is need for much greater awareness, consciousness and preparedness in our security framework. This is true on a global scale. Governments are starting to become aware of the threats that emanate from cyber verticals. In order to safeguard our national interests we have to prepare ourselves fully for meeting new challenges in the cyberspace.

I think there is need for much greater awareness, consciousness and preparedness at all levels – at the operational level, strategic level and policy level. There needs to be awareness about the implications of cyber security, how it is transforming the nature of warfare, the nature of threats – internal and external.

In February 2013, the European Union issued Comprehensive New Cyber Security Directives, which mandate all its member countries to put in place new and comprehensive cyber security measures. India too needs to update its systems for meeting the cyber security threats.

Rajiv Gauba Additional Secretary, DeitY, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India

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By 2001 and 2002 we found that most of the criminal elements and most of the terrorists are making use of the Internet, which we could not follow at that point of time. Technological preparedness can do more for securing the nation than our physical presence at the borders. We have now started taking a serious look at the issues of cyber security for securing the nation on this new frontier.

Arun Chaudhary Director General, Sashastra Seema Bal

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e-Governance is All about Inclusive Growth????

Dr Ashwini Kumar Sharma Managing Director, NIELIT

Cyber-crimes are new class of crimes. The government of India is planning that services have to be delivered at the doorstep of the citizens. It has to be ensured that it is done in a transparent way. Now we have to go for a system where we can go for periodic or non-periodic survey of making a system secure.

Alok Tripathi Joint-Director, NIELIT

A K Sharma Director, Delhi Fire Service

Capacity building in IT security and cyber crime and forensic is quite different from the traditional IT environment. For traditional IT environment, we need IT infrastructure, we require people to be trained, we require software and tools and then the trainer has to train the people.

Saving life in a blazing fire situation is a tedious task. Technology can make the work of firefighters much safer. Fire services must utilise the latest technology in the field. GPS and GIS can be put effectively in our day-to-day activities.

Maj Gen Dhruv C Katoch, SM, VSM (Retd), Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) When you monitor everybody, you and me are also getting monitored and then we come to the privacy issues. We come to the question of who is going to monitor the people who are monitoring us? Because so long as the crooks are doing it, we have the police to sort them out.

And when look at privacy issues I think these issues are of very serious concern. It involves human rights.

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Dr Govind Senior Director, DeitY, Government of India and CEO, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)

secureit 2013

Dr Hanuman Prasad Shukla Director, National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT)-Gorakhpur We need to implement innovative strategies for safeguard the nation.

We have to out-think the attacker and predict his next step.

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Security is never perfect. The matter is how do we secure our things with available technologies. There will always be a next generation technology, more powerful, more costly. Privacy and security comes at the cost of the other. These are the huge challenges that we must address in the coming years.

Maj Gen (Dr) J K Bansal Member, National Disaster Management Authority

Col KPM Das Vice President, National Security Solutions, Cisco Systems

Disaster management definitely needs technology. Whatever technology we develop, it should be used and implemented. First and foremost, technology should be made available to all those who are involved in disaster managemet.

The proposition here is that while the systems are getting deployed, there should be an underlying assurance that all the security related systems are being implemented. The gaps in the network level should not be exploited by criminals and aliens.

Loknath Behra, Inspector General of Police, National Investigating Agency We have very regular dialogue with the homeland security department.

Ministry of Home Affairs is the nodal agency for dialogue on various aspects of airport security, counter terrorism or border management. It is happening regularly between India and Washington and we learn lot of things from them. We learn about how systemically they have made changes in their processes, all this is very helpful to us.

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Muktesh K Pardeshi Joint Secretary (PSP) & Chief Passport Officer, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India

event

The whole idea of passport seva project is people centric. It is service oriented project. This has set a high benchmark for the country to emulate in terms of swift project execution. It is a truly universal and global project. It can happen in India or Guatemala, where we have our embassy or consulate, you will serviced through the same application and same portal. The project has thus, global footprint.

M Moni Deputy Director General , National Informatics Center, Government of India

Lt General Rajesh Pant VSM, Commandant, Military College of Telecommunication Engineering

National animal disease reporting system and the other one is national database on fishing vessels. There are 200,000 fishing vessels which are operational and this database is being used by Navy, coast guards, marine police and is being used by all organisation associated with marine fishing.

The three issues of concern for the future of information security professional – the first one is a convergence of the electronic warfare and cyber security. Second aspect is related to embedded malware. And the third one is insider attack, or the man in the middle becoming a vehicle for attack.

Dr Rajendra Kumar Joint Secretary, DeitY, Government of India Now that we have multiple service providers, vendors, implementers, we are grappling with major security related issues. Different vendors may enter at different points of time and they may follow different procedures, which may be relevant at that point of time, but with passage of time they lose relevance. These procedures need to be changed and advanced.

Major General Ramesh Padhi Military Survey (MoGSGS) For tidal observation we have got 125-year old data. In most of the sea ports there is tidal observatory. These are online transmitted to a national data centre and integrated with the national GPS data centre so that the locations and data are located in real time and it is available to all user groups in real time.

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Ravi Saxena Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, Government of Gujarat

secureit 2013

Rajesh Agarwal Secretary IT, Government of Maharashtra Mostly we think of cyber security as something that is equivalent to fighting an external attack, but the truth is that the cyber security is being fought within the systems.

Today any database in the country is purchaseable, and that is the reality.

event

Cyberspace does not require a passport, it does not have a national boundary. The risk today is huge; the consequences of any criminal activity can be quite significant and even disastrous. This is because the systems are being managed and run through software soloutions. These software solutions can be targetted remotely leading to lot of damage.

Renu Budhiraja Sr Director & HOD State Data Centres, e-Governance, DeitY, Government of India When you talk about e-Governance scenario, the security has to be dealt end-to-end. It is a big challenge.

The number of infected computers is enormous, 20 lakh plus. That is the challenge we need to look and address. There is also issue regarding implementation of security policies.

Ram Narain Deputy Director General (Security), Department of Telecom, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India We have one philosophy and principle. The philosophy was that let us build in security into the system rather than having add-on feature into it.

Ruchin Kumar Security Evangelist, SafeNet India Pvt Ltd We cannot say that we can eliminate threat or breaches. These things will always be there no matter how secure we become. But we have to see that the breach, which has been done in any organization cannot harm the organisation.

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Lt General S P Kochhar AVSM, SM, VSM, Signal Officer-in-Chief & Senior Colonel Commandant

event

S Suresh Kumar Joint Secretary (Centre-State), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India Looking at a country like India, with different culture, different milieu, If anyone wants to do a project, he also has to look at in terms of what is going to be the evolving technologies, can you do it within three years in a very very very close fashion. Any optimism and ambition in that process is not called for.

I look at cyber security from three different angles – one is application security and the user, second is system security and the third is network security. If we have to have secured networks, it is essential we have end-to-end security. It is essential for each user to be fully educated.

Subrata Das Industry Director, Public Services, SAP India SAP tries to address community preparedness, volunteer management and critical area infrastructure management.

Sajan K Paul Director – Systems Engineering – India & SAARC, Juniper Networks We are doing device tagging, we are going beyond IP address. If the hacker is coming from website, we can actually inject (even with his privacy settings on) around 20 plus cookies into his browser and then track him from other areas.

Satyendra Garg Inspector General of Police, Mizoram For the last three years, I had been managing Delhi traffic. The traffic police is prosecuting around 10,000 people every day and the act, which governs traffic enforcement is Motor Vehicle Act 1988 and I think it looks ridiculous that every time a traffic offender is caught he is caught as a ‘first offender’ because there is no digitization of facts.

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secureit 2013

The statistic shows that insider attacks count for as much as 85 percent of computer internet related crime. Out of these majority of the insiders are priviledged users and a large number of attacks occur through them. Most of the attacks are due to weak authentication. Authentication in the security arena is a very big player.

Vibha Agrawal Vice President, Government Vertical, CA Technologies V L Kantha Rao President & CEO, National e-Governance Division (NeGD), DeitY, Government of India We have lot of infrastructure and applications in the e-governance domain.

We have realised that the measures regarding the cyber security in the egovernance domain is piecemeal.

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Vikas Yadav Senior Sales Engineer, Websense We should have modern security for modern threats. Threat comes from outside to inside, we should also analyse what is going from inside to outside.

BJ Shrinath Senior Director, CERTIn, DeitY, Government of India

Puneet Ahuja Senior Technical Consultant, Juniper Networks

Awareness about cyber security can make a lot of difference and I think that’s what w all should be doing. Technology in one hand gives you the freedom but on the other hand it immediately takes away your freedom that you will not realize.

The security threat approach has to be twoleveled approach – one is the service provider level and second at the enterprise level. Data passing from one organization to another should be logged somewhere.

PM Nair IPS, Director General, National Disaster Response Force We are looking for location finders. Once we get the exact location through GPS it is not difficult for us. So technology and innovation can make a great difference in disaster response and disaster prevention. There is a lot to be done in integrating technology with the security system.

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G-Gov

The Migration to G-Governance Major General (Dr) R Siva Kumar, CEO, NSDI & Head NRDMS

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nformation technology, as a cross cutting frontier of knowledge, has opened up several new vistas of applications of knowledge for meeting the daily needs of civil society. One of them is Geospatial/Geographical Information System (GIS) technology.

GIS is rapidly becoming a catalyst for several transformational changes; mainly in natural resources management, planning, decision making, governance and citizen engagement.

While e-Governance (e-Gov) is the current paradigm, the future is in embedding the GIS in governance and in establishing G (G signifying GIS-based)-Governance. G-Gov could emerge as the next frontier. India is poised for developing GIS based solutions that will be the next paradigm in governance.

India enjoys a good capability with topographic maps being made available on 1:50,000 scale for the entire country. India is also one of the few countries with an advanced national capacity in remote sensing and vast nationwide imagery data base at different spatial resolutions. India is also widely acknowledged for her capacity to design and develop solutions based on Information Technology (IT) tools for various applications and services. Such capabilities have powered effective utilisation of multi-layer thematic maps at national level in areas of land-use, ground water potential, urban, wastelands, forests, geology, etc. Significant efforts have been made by many agencies (viz. ISRO, DST, NIC etc and few state government agencies) in building multi-scale/multithematic structured data repositories and their dissemination to the user community.

Bringing in new technologies There exists an opportunity for the country to further build upon her existing mapping/

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imaging and IT strengths and position a National GIS (NGIS) that will enable G-Gov and bring wide ranging benefits. There is a strong motivation in the country for the realisation of NGIS as the next technology paradigm for effective Governance – thereby, enabling better planning process, delivery system, increasing transparency and efficiency in the national-level decision-making and reaching developmental benefits to the citizens in a unique manner.

NGIS would serve the country in migration from e-Gov to G-Gov in the long term. It would also catalyse and transform the methods in which GIS is practiced in the country, the way maps/images as GIS-Ready data get organised and the way customised GIS applications products get created, value added, managed and deployed as unique NGIS services. These unique and innovative NGIS Applications would serve the needs of natural resources management, planning and decision support systems and help position transparent and participatory governance by focussing on GIS-based citizen-services.

Philosophy enshrined in the proposed NGIS is to organise a NGIS Asset that would help create such innovative NGIS Data and Applications products conforming to the standards of ISO/OGC/NSDI/BIS for meeting the user needs. Such a NGIS Asset would leverage on input maps, images and tabular datasets that are generated by public-funded agencies, also harvested data from initiatives like ‘data.gov.in’ and even warrant value-addition and generation of new/additional GIS-ready data that are required by the nation.

The definition of NGIS Application products and services is being made through detailed consultations and need assessment with each ministry (and even states) and by taking into account the possible GIS data and applications needs of the ministries, State Governments, civil society and citizens.

Establishing a NGIS Platform A special NGIS Platform/Services infrastructure is proposed to be established as a state-of-art NGIS Asset/Applications hosting environment and for enabling NGIS service provision (of both NGIS Data and NGIS Applications) to different user groups and citizens. Sophisticated NGIS Portal software would be developed, it would provide a single window gateway or interface, user management and authorisations, security and validation, any e-commerce utilities as needed, metadata and search and ultimately, data viewing/download/value addition and Applications access.

If NGIS were to serve as a platform for G-Gov, it is necessary to take up activities leading to strengthening of both human and institutional capacities in the gainful deployment of GIS capacity so that

Major General (Dr) R Siva Kumar

G-Gov

government agencies and users are oriented and trained to use the NGIS in their day-to-day work flows. A large-scale NGIS Capacity-building initiative is also planned.

Innovative new NGIS data and applications products should be integrated/augmented into the practices/processes of ministries/departments/users so as to substantially increase efficiency of decisions, transparency in governance and citizen-participation in the overall

In the 12th Plan (2012-2017), the time-bound NGIS Mission is planned as a 5-year activity with phased deliverables that will position NGIS in 2 Versions, establish INGO as an organisation entity and bring in G-Gov practices. The deliverables of the Mission would include: A Version 1.0 of NGIS (18 months) based on data of scale 1:50,000 that would operationalise (a) National GIS Asset Version 1.0 from existing maps/images of input agencies, data available from “data.gov.in” and obtaining other GIS data available/ sourced for Mission; (b) GIS DSS Applications for 5 key Ministries – Urban Development, Rural Development, Water Resources, Environment and Forests, Mines and Planning Commission; (c) GIS DSS for Citizens as part of support to Public Information Infrastructure (PII); (d) concept of GIS DSS Applications of Enterprises will also be tried out in an experimental mode. Specific capacity-building activities would be taken up. Initial plan is to involve the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha for this Ver 1.0.

A Version 2.0 of NGIS (42 months) based on higher resolution data that would (a) operationalise latest/ updated NGIS Asset for the whole nation as per NGIS Vision; (b) GIS DSS for ~25 central ministries and states (c) enhanced and full-scale GIS DSS for citizens access and (d) full-scale GIS DSS for Enterprises would be positioned. Large levels of capacity-building activities would be taken up.

Development of INGO as the operational agency to carry forward the mission-mode activities on a continuous basis.

A variable geometry among the four important arms of the NGIS at the initial stages needs to be reconciled without loss of efficiency. The four arms are: • NGIS Asset Group – responsible for ensuring that NGIS Asset is organised/generated and positioned • NGIS Platform/Services Group – responsible for ensuring infrastructure and operational NGIS services • NGIS Applications/Portals Development Group – responsible for interfacing to user ministries and developing/positioning NGIS Applications required for each user ministry and operationalising the NGIS Portal • NGIS Capacity-building team – responsible for addressing the large-scale capacity-building and orientation to NGIS and G-Gov systems.

process of nation-building. NGIS would also enable citizens and engage their participation by providing unique citizen-services. This, in a broad way, would meet the goals of increasing value of Governance for the nation - NGIS would play the means for such a process.

Promoting the concept of G-Gov With this basic philosophy of the proposed NGIS to develop a PAN-India effort to generate, organise assimilate the data owned by public and other agencies into a NGIS Asset, create a NGIS data serving platform and develop demand-driven NGIS Application products and services – thereby promoting the concept of G-Gov. NGIS Asset is a seamless nation-wide GIS-Ready database element owned by various departments/agencies enabling possibilities to generate NGIS Data Products as a GIS Data Service. This should be based on supply side approach in which the existing map, image and ministry datasets are formatted/packaged and, if needed, further value-added through GIS- based processing and made available as GIS-Ready Data Products to users to carry out their own applications. This, in a sense, represents a “supply side push model” for nation-wide GIS data requirements or a service oriented architecture which will consume datasets available from various data services and provide value added services to the user community across the country. The details of the GIS-Ready Data Products based on a 41-layer content is already defined in the NGIS Vision document – and if required, other products can also be included, as needed.

Secondly, value added and customised GIS Decision Support applications would be cre-

ated in a “demand pull model” by NGIS for various users. For the creation of demand pull for GIS based Decision Support System (DSS), it is considered necessary to involve user ministries and State Governments as stake holders from the very beginning in designing the NGIS Applications Products – as these application products and services are for the users and should serve their specific requirements.

NGIS activity requires an intense “integrating organisation framework” that brings in expertise of not just traditional mapping/imaging but in-depth GIS database design/development and GIS Applications customisation capability.

NGIS also requires intense system (hard-, soft-, and virtual-) design and GIS data integration capability, along with a high-level of service-orientation. Such cross-cutting and over-arching organisational characteristics are difficult to find within any single existing agency/ministry (which are presently sectorally organised). Such an organisational character needs to be ab-initio developed – it must be capable of rendering efficient. It also needs to capable of leveraging/ sourcing from private sector for large scale bulk human resource requirements.

An enabling platform for G-Gov National GIS aims for enabling a platform for G-Gov and this would demand involvement/ enrolment of “share-holder agencies” – which includes data generating agencies and providing inputs to NGIS Asset and “stake-holders ministries/users” who will ultimately use the NGIS Data and App products for natural resources management, decision making, planning and governance as an enabling tool in their day-to-day functions. NGIS would also enable citizens and engage their participation by providing unique citizen April 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Defence

Technologies

The Evolution of

Indian Army’s ICT

Infrastructure

The Indian Army is set to trail blaze along the information pathway as it transforms into a netcentric force Lieutenant General Rajesh Pant, AVSM, VSM, Commandant, Military College of Telecommunication Engineering and Colonel Commandant Corps of Signals Colonel Dheeraj Kaushal, FCE, Military College of Telecommunication Engineering Mhow

C

ommunications are critical for all military operations. During the world war era, Armies used to rely on primitive systems and even send messages using pigeons to deliver important orders.

Modern Armies use high-tech satellite systems, ultra high bandwidth optical fiber cables, radio based mobile adhoc networks and cognitive radio technology to make sure that all personnel in the battlefield are aware of the battle situation and function as a cohesive whole. Communications have become the greatest battle winning factor after soldiers and weapon systems. Under the netcentric doctrine being followed by most modern Armies, communications are perceived as the most important combat power enhancement factor.

Communications Technologies in Defence The world has witnessed a strange role reversal as far as the relationship between Defence Forces and Communication Technology Providers is concerned. In the fifties and sixties, Defence was the most important and perhaps the largest user of communications. Communications technologies were developed keeping in mind Defence requirements. The Internet started out as the DARPANET in the US which was later adapted for civilian usage. Similarly the CDMA cellular technology was originally developed for Defence forces to avoid interception and jamming by enemy Electronic Warfare agencies. However, in the nineties, explosive growth in the sheer volume of civilian communications led to a new business model and thus the information revolution. This made service providers as the prime focus

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Lieutenant General Rajesh Pant AVSM, VSM

Technologies

of the communications industry. In an intense, market driven economy, Defence requirements have today taken a backseat. Defence forces, all over the world are being increasingly forced to look towards Commercial-offthe-Shelf (COTS) technologies to fulfill their requirements. While this is a winning situation for the industry, which is now able to service both the commercial and Defence sectors using similar technologies, this has often led to long delays in short listing of technologies for Defence usage and delayed fructification of important Defence projects.

The Indian Army’s communication network infrastructure is looked after by the Corps of Signals. In the last two decades, the ICT infrastructure within the Army has undergone a paradigm shift mimicking the telecom growth in the country. The Army boasts of its own secure national converged network called the Army One Network. While details of the network are not widely known, this network is fault tolerant to meet military specifications and includes redundancy and recovery mechanisms for automatic traffic re-routing. The Army also operates its own cellular network in J&K providing carrier grade cellular facilities to soldiers involved in counter insurgency operations. The Army’s satellite nodes are spread throughout the length and breadth of the country and provide communication facilities in remote and difficult areas like the Siachen glacier. The Army is also developing several hundred kilometers of optical fiber cabling to provide high bandwidth communications to support the exponential growth of communication traffic.

The Directorate General of Information Systems (DGIS) develops applications for the Army.

The DGIS provides IT and ITES verticals, starting from software applications which manage the clothing requirements of Army jawans till complex decision support systems. The DGIS has equipped Army units and formations with necessary IT resources to usher in Army wide automation and assist operational information gathering and exploitation. Though nascent in implementation, almost all systems which will host Army wide information systems are in the pipeline as per a sound roadmap.

Going State of the Art As in the commercial world, the Army is also now witnessing the network-application “meltdown” with applications driving network growth and network capacity in turn leading to increase in application complexity. Accordingly, today the

Indian Army is on the verge of replacing a large number of existing ICT systems with the state of - the - art.

The Army’s’ old workhorse network is called the Army Radio Engineered Network (AREN).

This indigenously conceived system for the field formations was launched more than three decades ago and is on the verge of being replaced by the Tactical Communication System (TCS).

TCS, valued at more than `10,000 Crores is India’s first “Make” program. Government owned Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) in the public sector will join the race for prototype development with a Ministry selected Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Company. Led by L&T, the SPV includes Tata Power SED and HCL Infosystems Limited. It is the first-ever program wherein three major private sector companies have formed a consortium together to provide indigenous

“As it develops new capabilities, the Army is ensuring that its personnel are fully trained to handle the challenges of the information war looming on the horizon” solution for strategically important acquisition of the Army. As is the trend worldwide, TCS is envisaged to have a large percentage of COTS technologies, albeit customized and hardened for usage by the Army in the tactical battlefield. It is envisaged to use state of the art technologies like mobile adhoc networks and emerging 3G/4G cellular technologies. As a paradigm switch, TCS would link the forward most soldier to the high capacity national networks and carry critical voice, video and data for the digitized battlefield of the future.

The Army is also set to transform its backbone network called Army Static Switched Communication Network (ASCON). ASCON was evolved to integrate the telecommunication infrastructure of the hinterland with the tactical communication networks. It is a digital, fully automated, secure, reliable communication system based

Defence

on microwave radio, optical fiber cable and satellite equipment. Value added Services such as fax, telex, data transfer were also available to defence users on this network. Currently the existing ASCON network is being expanded and undergoing a technology upgrade. Simultaneously, BSNL is developing a Pan India backbone that shall be fully owned by the Army. Called project NFS (Network for Spectrum) the OFC network will be laid over 60,000 km to provide connectivity for 129 Army, 162 Air Force and 33 Naval stations. It is being built by BSNL in lieu of the commercial mobile spectrum vacated by the Defence services.

Expanding Network The Army is also planning to expand its integral cellular network to other parts of the country in a phased manner. Priority is being decided for the rollout of the next generation cellular networks of the Army. The network will be expanded into areas of the northern and eastern parts of the country in the next few years.

While adding critical networking and infrastructure capabilities, the Army is constantly upgrading its cyber posture. Recently, the Army unveiled plans to complement ICT with Electronics and Cyber capabilities. Labeled ICTEC, (Information Communication Technologies Electronics and Cyber), the new paradigm envisages to integrate electronic warfare and cyber aspects with information and communication architecture from the ground up achieving full spectrum dominance. The recently concluded DEFCOM seminar deliberated on these aspects.

The Indian Army is set to trail blaze along the information pathway as it transforms into a netcentric force. As it develops new capabilities, the Army is ensuring that its personnel are fully trained to handle the challenges of next generation information warfare. At the Military College of Telecommunications Engineering, located at Mhow, near Indore in Madhya Pradesh, the Corps of Signals trains its information warriors in next generation warfare amidst global standards. Specializing in network control operations, network planning, electronic warfare and cyber security, personnel are being trained in specialized technical fields.

The Army which trains its own engineers at the diploma, graduate, post graduate and doctorate levels is ensuring that its key personnel are fully prepared to meet the challenges in deployment, maintenance and exploitation of planned ICT infrastructure in military operations.

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69

book review

eGovernment: The New Frontier in Governance

Author: Dinesh Chandra Misra Publisher: Matrix Pages: 524 Price: `1195

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F

or any rational government, public welfare must be the key agenda. The government must ensure that the all the benefits reach the needy in a smooth and timely manner.

This might sound simple, but in the real world it is anything but simple. A transparent and efficient way of governance has to be developed for making the administration reachable to the people. e-Governance has the ability of brining the government closer to the people. Through the use of new technology it is possible to devise a transparent and efficient system of governance that can be easily accessed by the people.

The author of the book under review, Dinesh Chandra Misra, was a former member of the Indian Administrative Service; during his career of more than four decades, he has done commendable work on e-Governance. Unfortunately his seminal work on e-Governance had to be published posthumously, as he passed away before the editing of the book could be completed. In the preface to the book that he wrote in 2010, Dinesh Chandra Misra says, “The genesis of the book can be traced to my one year assignment in Mauritius under the aegis of Commonwealth Secretariat, London, as an e-Government expert, in the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Port Louis. The main task assigned to me was to drive the Chief Information Officer (CIO) concept in various ministries and departments of the Republic of Mauritius.”

When he was back to Delhi, his interest in e-Governance concepts continued. He says that he could find only two ways by which he could make meaningful contribution to the field. The first way was by undertaking content creation for e-Governance and by attending the conferences and other events on the subject.

The second way of making contribution was by acting as a resource person at national and international conferences and training programmes. This book can be thought of as a compendium of the lifetime work that the author has done in the area of e-Governance.

It is quite pertinent that he begins his work with a chapter titled – “Evolution of e-Governance in India.”

In this chapter he makes an interesting observation – “Increasingly many features and processing power are being continuously added to computers, which tends to make them act like human beings.” The author seems to be of the opinion that the computers should not be seen as any kind of imposition on society.

Rather they are now evolving to become a part of our life. So it is quite natural to use computing solutions for dealing with governance related activities. It is a natural and perhaps an evolutionary step.

The book is lucidly written and it is full of graphs and tables to place further emphasis on the points that the author is making. As Francis Bacon had said, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” This is the kind of that is meant to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. It will be of special interest to the various stakeholders in e-Governance.

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