Urban Governance: Can ICT Sort Out the Mess?: August 2008 Issue

ov e-Governance in Municipalities: A Boon for Citizens IT Empowered MCD: Making a Difference in Health Sector City Chief Information Officers: Role and Functions

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VOLUME 4

| ISSUE 8 | AUGUST 2008

w w w .e g o v o n lin e. n et

THE E-GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE FOR ASIA & THE MIDDLE EAST

M-CONNECT

CONNECTIVITY WITH EFFICIENT BUSINESS TRANSACTION PROVIDING COMMUNICATION SERVICES FOR GOVERNMENT

PERSPECTIVE

INDIAN SOCIETY: IS IT READY FOR ONLINE GOVERNMENT SERVICES

COUNTRY PERSPECTIVE: JORDAN

REVIEWING JORDAN’S e-GOVERNMENT DEVELOPMENT: SEVEN YEARS OF PROMISE

Urban Governance: Can ICT Sort Out the Mess?

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COVER INTERVIEW: GOVERNMENT SPEAK

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e-Governance in Municipalities: A Boon for Citizens

Interview: M. Ramchandran, Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India

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On the Fast Track of Digitisation

Interview: Dr. CVSK Sharma, Special Officer and Municipal Commissioner, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, Government of Andhra Pradesh

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Services at the Click of the Mouse

Interview: Praveen Singh Pardeshi, Pune Municipal Commissioner, Government of Maharashtra

Marching Towards Digitisation Interview: S Aparna, Surat Municipal Commissioner, Government of Gujarat

COVER FEATURE

COVER INTERVIEW: INDUSTRY SPEAK

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Providing One-Stop-Shop to Municipalities Interview: Dr. Bhanu M Gundugollu, Chief Technical Officer, Speck Systems

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e-Governance in Urban Local Bodies

Limited

Lokesh Sharma, Business Development Manager, Government, Education and

Health Care, Oracle India

MCONNECT

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IT Empowered MCD: Making a Difference in Health Sector

Arti Mehra, Mayor, Delhi

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Open City Portal: Promoting e-Participation

Motoo Kusakabe, Counseller to the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)

e-Government at Municipal Level: Factors and Barriers

Ensieh Abri, School of Management, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Ehtesham Rashidi, Allameh Tabatabaee University, Tehran, Iran

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News Connectivity with Efficient Business Transaction

Interview: Ajay Ranjan Mishra, Global Head Business Development for New Growth Markets, Nokia Siemens Networks

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Providing Communication Services for Government

Interview: Bharat Bhatia, Regional Director, SAARC, South East Asia, Global Government

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Solution for 24X7 Water Supply

Affairs & Public PolicyMotorola India Pvt. Ltd.

Dr. Sanjay Dahasahasra, Member Secretary, Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran,

Mumbai

Madhuri Mulay is Assistant Engineer, Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran, Thane

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City Chief Information Officers: Role and Functions

PERSPECTIVE

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Indian Society: Is it Ready for Online Government Services

Ajay Ahuja, IT Architect, Sun Microsystems Ltd.

Dr. Anupam Saraph, Chief Information Officer, Pune City, Maharashtra

COUNTRY PERSPECTIVE: JORDAN

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Reviewing Jordan’s e-Government Development: Seven Years of Promise

Samer Mofteh, Engineering Management Group, University of Bristol, UK.

PRODUCT PROFILE: SAFENET

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Information Security Solution Provider

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For more details call: 9818736811 or write to us: marketing.india@emerson.com • Visti us at: www.emersonnetworkpower.co.in or www.liebert.com Toll Free No. 1800 209 6070

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

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ARTICLES / CASE STUDIES should not exceed

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

ALL ARTICLES / CASE STUDIES should provide proper references. Authors should give in writing stating that the work is new and has not been published in any form so far.

BOOK REVIEWS should include details of the book like the title, name of the author(s), publisher, year of publication, price and number of pages and also send the cover photograph of the book in JPEG/TIFF (resolution 300 dpi). Book reviews of books on e-Governance related themes, published from

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August 2008

EDITORIAL

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COVER INTERVIEW: GOVERNMENT SPEAK

e-Governance in Municipalities: A Boon for Citizens

“Mission Mode Project on e-Governance in municipalities focuses on improving national element of citizen services through defining service levels and outcomes; facilitating effective interaction between local government, citizens and other stakeholders,” says M. Ramchandran, Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, to egov magazine.

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What role do you want the municipality Mission Mode The funding pattern is as under: Project to achieve? How do you think that such an For cities/urban agglomerations, with four million and above initiative is going to provide efficient and transparent population – centre and state will provide grant funding upto government at municipal and urban local body level?

35% and 15% respectively, of the project cost. 50% of the Mission Mode Project on e-Governance in municipalities project cost will be borne by the ULB or parastatal agencies. focuses on improving national element of citizen services For cities/urban agglomerations, with population between through defining service levels and outcomes; facilitating one million and four million – centre and state will provide effective interaction between local government, citizens and grant funding upto 50% and 20% respectively, of the project other stakeholders; improving quality of internal operation of cost. 30% of the project cost will be borne by the ULB or local government; enhancing transparency and accountability; parastatal agencies. enhancing citizen interface and improving service delivery What is the current status of municipalities Mission to citizens.

The ULB (Urban Local Body) is the first interface Mode Project? How many municipalities you think are between citizens and the government. Introduction of working as per expectations? e-Governance in municipalities will assist them in the The MMP on municipalities has been launched by the Ministry of Urban Development recently. Currently, the ULBs are in the following manner.

• Improve their quality of services - by reducing the initial stage of preparing their detailed project reports (DPRs) to access funding under the number of customer Mission mode project. visits, reducing time Presently, the MMP on e-Governance required to request What is the role played in municipalities shall cover all ULBs in and for provision by the private sector in 35 cities with population of above one of service, reducing implementing Mission million as per 2001 census. Coverage to fees and enhancing Mode Project? other towns/cities will be expanded based on the existing revenues, The guidelines clearly outcome of this MMP in the 35 cities and others. state that the MMP on • Improve efficiency e-Governance will be and transparency through streamlined processes & information implemented at the municipal level through a business management system – by professionalising service model preferably by public-private partnership (PPP). delivery, reducing cost of processing transactions, Private sector will play a significant role at various levels and stages during the mission. Private sector may bring in etc.

Thus, Mission Mode Project (MMP) will help improve technical support for managing/implementing the mission at service delivery and improve quality of ULBs’ internal central, state and ULB level. As per the guidelines, the State Implementation Consultant (SIC) is expected to be a team operations to support and stimulate good governance. of expert consultants who will support the state and ULBs Under how many phases do you think the digitisation of in preparation of Detailed Project Report (DPR), rolling out municipalities would be completed in the country? the e-Governance project and monitoring implementation.

Presently, the MMP on e-Governance in municipalities shall ULBs may seek private sector expertise in preparing DPRs, cover all ULBs in 35 cities with population of above one implementation of the project, operating and maintaining million as per 2001 census. Coverage to other towns/cities several services on a PPP basis, training and capacity building will be expanded based on the outcome of this MMP in the of the ULB. 35 cities.

What is being done on the capacity building front of the What is the criteria of selection of municipalities? How municipal staffs? do you decide which municipality has to be given a Upto 5% of the funds under JNNURM, is allocated for training and capacity building. These funds are to be accessed preference?

The municipalities have been selected on the criteria of by the cities/towns. The Mission Directorate has undertaken population (all ULBs in 35 cities with population of above training of ULB/parastatal staff and elected representatives one million as per 2001 census). Preference has not been from municipalities, under Rapid Training progarmme under given to any specific municipality. the mission.

What is the budget of the municipal e-Governance project and how is it shared between centre and state?

The MMP on e-Governance in municipalities would be implemented under JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission). Central government share would be met out of the earmarked funds under JNNURM. ov

August 2008

Lastly, how long do you think will it take to get all the municipalities in India digitised?

JNNURM is proposed for a seven year duration from 200506 to 2011-12. The mission mode project, for the 35 cities, is expected to adhere to this mission period. The coverage and time frame for other town/cities will based on the outcome of the MMP in 35 cities.

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COVER FEATURE: INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

e-Governance in Urban Local Bodies The core operations of the municipal corporations are to deliver key citizen centric services such as grievance redressal, issuing of certificates, tax collection and providing vital civic services. All these services are primarily focused on improving the quality of life of the citizen in the urban local body.

Lokesh Sharma INTRODUCTION

Sustainable development, access to services, equal opportunities, safety, governance and citizen participation are some of the key issues administrators of the modern cities face today. The urban population in India is set to grow to 40% as per publicly available estimates. This is going to put a considerable pressure on the infrastructure.

To improve the quality of life of the citizen, Government of India has launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) with the aim of improving urban infrastructure and governance. Similarly, the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) has undertaken a Mission Mode Project (MMP) for introduction of e-Governance in Municipalities across the country. This project is an important component of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), and is expected to impact a significant population of the citizens in the urban areas.

One of the measurable outcomes under JNNURM is deployment of e-Governance applications to meet the expectations of government, citizens, as well as businesses.

Infact, introduction of e-Governance systems is one of the mandatory reforms at the municipality level, and is expected to result in reduced cost and time of service delivery to the citizens.

Basic services delivered by local authorities include education, health, public transport, water supply, sanitation,

and environmental issues can benefit tremendously by the use of Information Technology (IT). IT has the potential to improve service delivery to the citizens at the local level and thus improving the relationship between governments and citizens.

Municipal operations, from an IT perspective, can be divided into three categories: • External (Government to Citizen, Government to Business) • Internal (Government to Employee) • Intra-governmental (Government to Government)

CITIZEN DATA INTEGRATION

For a government, it is important to know who the citizen is, what are the key attributes that define him and how various benefits and welfare schemes can be delivered to him. Having an IT framework that enables Citizen Data Integration can help the government know the citizens better.

For example, initiatives such as Multi-purpose Household Surveys help in collecting information about a citizen from the housing perspective. The data collected includes basic biographical information and detailed information like property owned, employment status, details of land holdings, educational qualifications and more. Such information can also be used to determine the eligibility of citizens for various welfare schemes being planned by the government. This is what Citizen Data Integration can enable. By drawing together a complete set of citizen data, Citizen Data Integration enables increased efficiency, reduced error rates, lower level of fraud and faster, higher quality decisions – leading to better outcomes and a superior customer experience.

MUNICIPAL OPERATIONS Government to Citizen

The core operations of the municipal corporations are to deliver key citizen centric services such as grievance redressal, issuing of certificates, tax collection and providing vital civic services. All these services are primarily focused on 10 }

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COVER FEATURE: INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

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improving the quality of life of the citizen in the urban local body.

The key for the citizen delivery framework is to render services to citizens quickly and hence help in reducing the overall cost. All citizen interactions should be integrated and provide true 24x7 and multi-channel communication. In one of the major local body in UK the citizen satisfaction level went up by more than 98%, whereas in another European city the number of services being offered on an integrated framework is close to 250. In Andhra Pradesh, the e-Seva project is delivering more than 20 citizen centric services.

The framework is such that the number of services can be increased without much additional effort.

One of the important component of a complete e-Governance solution is the Geographic Information System (GIS).

The objective is to develop a system to assist in strategic planning and resource mobilisation and utilisation, streamlining municipal taxation and management functions and planning and management of day-to-day operations in all areas GOVERNMENT TO BUSINESS

Local government also provides services to businesses.

Businesses can be of two kinds - Business from which revenue is generated eg., trade licenses and procurement of goods and services by the government from vendors.

Establishments carrying out specific businesses are required to obtain a trade license. It is important to regulate this to ensure that this does not adversely affect the citizens. The issue of trade license is a means to ensure that the manner in which business is being carried on is in accordance with the relevant rules, standards and safety guidelines.

Procurement of goods and services for municipal functions are daily activities. e-Procurement holds immense potential in terms of effectively and efficiently leveraging information technology to centralise and standardise the procurement function. It streamlines the purchasing process and reduces costs thus providing better quality of goods and services to departments. With better view of procurement spending it helps in budget-based procurement and provide total spending visibility. In one of the biggest municipal corporation in south India the complete cycle of bill presentation to payment was reduced from 7 to 2 days, whereas one of the county councils in UK is on track to saving close to 1 million pounds.

The development of an integrated HR system including payroll and self-service applications is envisaged to culminate into a Government to Employee portal that will increase the value proposition of the services provided to the employees.

This gives employees direct access to HR information and transactions. Employee self-service not only reduces administrative costs but also makes more time available to HR staff for strategic activities.

National Municipal Accounting Manual mentions regulatory requirements and guidelines. This is another area for which solutions may be put in place for an integrated management of budgets and control spending; simplify fund accounting; maintain cash- and accrual-based sets of books and manage projects, grants, and programs. This will help in reducing time to consolidate financial information as well as provide the officials with real time intelligence to take actions on. In one of the European cities the back office costs were reduced by over 20% and the administrative overheads were cut by over 5%.

GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNMENT

Some of the key services like issuing of trade licenses require action from different departments.

A simple rule-based case management system helps the movement of files between different departments in the urban local body and helps in automating the complete process. This enables an organisation to provide consistency of service over time and across all of its staff and organisational boundaries.

It also fundamentally changes the focus of transactions from individual service activities to a more planned set of citizen outcomes. In fact, one of the urban local body in western India was able to streamline their processes and were able to increase the revenue collection by more than 125%.

Today there are a number of applications deployed by urban local bodies to deliver better citizen services. However, the complexity and heterogeneity of IT infrastructure and applications present a signiďŹ cant challenge in integrating the processes across departments.

This environment presents a challenge for business users to have a quick availability of performance measures

GIS AND SPATIAL DATA GOVERNMENT TO EMPLOYEE

The employees form a major asset base. Efficient and effective utilisation of this asset is important to ensure effective administration. The focus is increasing on attracting, retaining, and developing a skilled workforce to align with the goals. To do this, human capital systems are becoming increasingly important.

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One of the important component of a complete e-Governance solution is the Geographic Information System (GIS). The objective is to develop a system to assist in strategic planning and resource mobilisation and utilisation, streamlining municipal taxation and management functions and planning and management of day-to-day operations in all areas. This not only helps the officials to view details in graphical format but also help them take decisions. For example if there are 20 www.egovonline.net

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schools under a municipal jurisdiction, then GIS can actually help in knowing how many of these schools are serving what section of the population and whether there is a need to increase the number of schools.

There are four primary applications: Revenue Mapping - Showing details of all municipal taxes and charges like property tax levied on various assesses. This will help the officials by improving assessment and thereby increasing collections and revenues

processes across departments. This environment presents a challenge for business users to have a quick availability of performance measures.

Better services to citizens require insight and visibility into municipal operations.

The need to adapt processes quickly using existing infrastructure and services has led to the use of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Being able to analyse the performance impact of processes is a key advantage of SOA. This platform enables rapid development and adoption of processes using Business Process Execution Language, which allows the processes to be orchestrated across many complex systems using web services. New York uses a uniform, standardised reporting format across all agencies and all data types, and provides a single point of access for all users. Most notably, it aggregates data across agency into ‘citywide themes,’ which represent groups of related services such as infrastructure, education, or public safety. This will increase accountability by making it easier to monitor agency performance for the most important measures.

CITIZEN INTERACTION CHANNELS

Citizens expect that the improvements that they see in private sector should be available in public services. Adopting technology that accommodates multi-channel access has become a prime concern for most governments. The complete framework of e-Governance multiple channels need to be taken into account.

In a country like India the Internet connectivity is still low, government has to look at alternative ways of delivering the services. The penetration of mobile phones is increasing exponentially and this is one channel for applications that needs closer look.

Municipal Infrastructure Mapping - Showing the details of municipal infrastructure like roads, solid waste management system, streetlight, building etc., thereby helping the city planners in town planning Resource/Assets Mapping - Showing specifically the assets for optimum utilization and hence providing better services to the citizens.

Poverty Mapping - Showing socio-economic attributes of the poor households. This will help in targeting the correct citizen for the correct services.

SUMMARY

A more demanding and vocal citizen and fierce competition from the private sector means that the government agencies must make efficiency their top priority. It has become vital to deploy systems that empower government workers to follow processes and deliver the high levels of service expected.

Today, there are hundreds of successful government IT deployments that prove the power of modern IT infrastructure.

Deploying integrated, cutting edge IT solutions that are open standards based is not a matter of choice anymore, we have to embrace them.

INTEGRATION AND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Today there are a number of applications deployed by urban local bodies to deliver better citizen services. However, the complexity and heterogeneity of IT infrastructure and applications present a significant challenge in integrating the

Lokesh Sharma is Business Development Manager, Government, Education and Healthcare, Oracle India

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COVER FEATURE: GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE

IT Empowered MCD Making a Difference in Health Care Sector

http://mcdonline.gov.in/

IT enabled MCD serves as a catalyst for enabling more effective governance by enhancing efficiency, providing transparency, allowing for citizen’s participation, providing better access to services, creating a wider access to information, effective decision making by the officials and an improved service delivery mechanism.

Arti Mehra

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), an autonomous body, is the second biggest civic body of the world. It organises civic services for nearly 94% of geographic area of Delhi. 97% of the population of Delhi resides within the jurisdiction of MCD. Recognising the importance and need of Information Technology (IT) in all spheres of civic services, MCD initiated IT application in the civic body. In 2002, IT Department was established with a mission to ensure enterprise wide implementation of current standards in IT. MCD provides a range of services to more than 15 million of citizens residing within its jurisdiction. Therefore, the civic body focuses on the use of IT in the services provided to people. The best example is the health department which collaborated with IT Department and took a pioneering step in application of IT in different fields of health care administration and tried to improve the operational efficiency and better productivity of the units. Implementation of IT in health department is being organised by the Bureau of Health Intelligence.

The experiences gained by civic body in application of IT to health sector are worth sharing as we feel that there is tremendous potential for using our experiences by other civic bodies in India in delivery of more effective health services.

authorised to issue birth and death certificate in their zone.

Since January 1971 the registration of birth and death for the Union Territory of Delhi is carried out as per the provision of Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD) Act, 1969. The average number of registration of birth and death per year is 3,25,000 (approximately). The computerisation of birth and death registration system in MCD commenced from 19th February 2003.

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AREAS OF DIGITISATION AND THEIR BENEFITS

The various areas in which digitisation has been accomplished are:1. Registration of Birth and Death (RBD): This was the first area to be digitised by health department.

Registration of birth and death occurring in the jurisdiction of MCD is being done by the health department. Municipal health officer is designated as the Additional Chief Registrar, MCD. OIVS (heads Bureau of Health intelligence and assist Chief Registrar), is the Additional Chief Registrar and DHO (assists Deputy MHO in day to day work and office administration) of each zone are designated Registrar. The sub-registrars posted at each zonal Citizen Service Bureau (CSB) are 14 }

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Digitisation of Records: The Central Record Room, inaugurated on 6th May 2005, preserves all the birth and death records from 1879 to 1990. The records from 1991- 2008 are in the zones. The health department has started digitisation of records of birth and death through outsourcing and has completely digitised all records up to 1998. These records have been up-loaded to the MCD website and act as a back up for preservation.

The Online Institutional Registration (OLIR) scheme was implemented on Ist January 2004. In this scheme all the MCD hospitals and most of the government and private hospitals/institutions were empaneled and provided user ID and password. Today, nearly 400 hospitals have been empaneled with the MCD for online institutional registration of birth and death.

Computerisation of RBD has helped in providing quality services, and has facilitated quick search and ability to handle large volume of data. It has also helped in generating reports and in developing transparency by reducing response time through simplification of the procedure.

Registration and Renewal of Health Trade License: Issue and renewal of health trade licenses has also been computerised. The health trade records from all zones have been digitised and have been uploaded in the MCD website. All the DHOs have been provided Management Information Scheme (MIS) reports in their login.

Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NDSS): A unique web based software has been developed and implemented for effective disease surveillance of www.egovonline.net

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notifiable communicable diseases.

This surveillance system is useful in quick identification of patient and in organising immediate remedial measures in the locality.

All 400 empaneled hospitals in 12 zones of MCD are availing this facility.

Computerisation of MCD Hospitals and Development of Hospital Information System (HIS): An agreement was signed with WIPRO Health Care Ltd. on

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14.10.2004. The activities involved training of all staff in computer basics and software, installation of LAN, software procurement, desktop, server, printers etc. were initiated in 2005. In 2008, HIS has successfully been implemented at all six hospitals of MCD. Swami Dayanand hospital was selected as a pilot hospital for HIS implementation. In the remaining hospitals HIS was implemented in a phased manner.

This has helped in improving the quality of patient’s care, nursing productivity, communication, and in developing a common clinical database, with faster and easy access to information and better hospital management. Besides, it also allows for sharing of information on investigations and treatment of the patient between hospitals.

Implementation of e-Tendering Process: The health department started implementation of eTendering process in 2005. All concerned officials have been

on different activities organised by health department is given in the home page of MCD (http:// mcdonline.gov.in/) in the form of FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), citizen guide etc. with the aim of improving services to the citizens by introducing electronic capabilities and practices so as to reduce cost, increase efficiency and ensure transparency as also to foster quality and accountability of services rendered. This along with the RTI Act 2005 has reinforced the thrust for an informed and participatory citizens for efficient e-Governance.

10. Linking of Immunisation with Birth Records: LIBRE, an IT project for linking immunisation with birth registration was commissioned on 9th April 2008. In this, 32 maternity homes of MCD have been provided with a

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provided desktops, adequate training and digital signatures for floating tenders online. The procedure provides transparency, removes bias and ensures timely procurement.

Citizen Relationship and Grievances Management System (CRGMS): Online redressal of citizen grievances is operational in the health department w.e.f (With Immediate Effect) from 2007.

Website for MCD: Information

software which will enable them to know the exact immunisation status of the child, it allows for tracking down of immunisation drop-outs and will be helpful in monitoring vaccine preventable diseases.

It also allows identification of unregistered births and provides an interface for the parent to get their child registered.

The additional benefit to the users is generation of Management Information System (MIS) reports for internal reporting and onward communication.

11. e-Governance: The process of e-Governance in six major departments of MCD health, engineering, property tax, citizen services, HR (Human Resource)/ personnel, finance and education has been initiated in 2008. e-Governance once implemented will transform the citizen services, provide access to information and enable their participation.

12. Computerised Citizen Service Bureau: MCD started this unique path breaking IT initiative to deliver electronically its services to citizens of Delhi through a Citizen Service Bureaus (CSBs) set up in each zone. This serves as a single window port for the citizens to avail different services. These bureaus are run by a consortium of IT companies namely ECIL and Sark Systems Ltd. The services that have been offered in these citizen service bureaus are as follows: • Registration of births and deaths and issuing of certificates. • Accepting applications for all kinds of licences and issuing them once the approval is received from the concerned office.

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Booking of parks for holding private functions.

• Renewal of health trade licences.

• Accepting all kinds of payments.

Challenges Faced: To re-engineer the existing services from manual to a virtually electronic system has been an up-hill task. Implementation of these IT projects in health sector calls for: It involves • e-Procurement: installation of hardware and software for the offices/institutions, broad band connectivity. e-Readiness: One of the most important factors for the successful implementation of projects is identification of a capable coordinator and training of the users in software.

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Sustenance Measures: Sustaining the IT initiatives comes with the financial implications of bearing a recurrent cost for maintaining the hardware installed, replacement/procurement of the additional hardware, software and security measures and engagement of IT skilled manpower for ensuring smooth operationality of the IT enabled processes and the need to constantly review the system and improve it further.

It would be appropriate to mention the successful implementation of the birth and death registration system in MCD. The success of MCD has prompted the RGI and UNICEF to recommend the replication of MCD model on registration of birth and death in other parts of the country.

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Needless to say that today IT enabled MCD serves as a catalyst for enabling more effective governance by enhancing efficiency, providing transparency, allowing for citizen’s participation, providing better access to services, creating a wider access to information, effective decision making by the officials and an improved service delivery mechanism.

Arti Mehra is Mayor of Delhi.

She is an elected member of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). She graduated from Miranda House and did a Management Course from New York. Arti Mehra has a wide gamut of knowledge on almost every subject and command over current civic issues.

Multi-Lingual Portal for the Marginalised Launched in India The President, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, launched the Government’s multi-lingual portal in New Delhi, which will provide information on strategic needs of the poor and the marginalised in local languages.

The portal titled ‘India Development Gateway,’ http://www.indg.in/, will connect rural communities for sharing and accessing information in sectors such as - Agriculture, Rural Energy, Education, Health and e-Governance.

The services are available in the following languages - Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and English. It is stated that the service will be extended to more sectors and more languages very soon. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in association with the e-Governance division of the Department of Information Technology, Government of India has executed the initiative.

Government of India Launches e-Passport The Government of India plans to issue e-Passports to diplomats from August 2008 and to the citizens from the September 2010 onwards.

The biometric passports was presented first to President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and VicePresident Hamid Ansari.

Globally, 41 countries have incorporated e-Passports in the country, and India is now the new entrant in the list.

Speaking on the initiative, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee stated that “Around 80,000 e-Passports would be issued by 2010,” The e-Passports would consist of an electronic chip

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containing all relevant personal data of the holder. This would simplify the procedures of immigration to a large extent. The Central Passport Organisation, New Delhi, India Security Press, Nashik, and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur are the main organisations behind the biometric passports.

Pratibha Patil said that, “I call upon the Central Passport Organisation to take steps to upgrade their resources according to international standards. It will make the passport more secure,” She also commented that, security is a major issue in the e-Passport scheme.

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COVER INTERVIEW: GOVERNMENT SPEAK

On the Fast Track of Digitisation www.ghmc.gov.in

With the world experiencing the IT boom, it is mandatory that municipalities embrace this modern day phenomenon.

Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation leads the way.

Read this interview with Dr. C.V.S.K Sharma, Special Officer and Municipal Commissioner to know about e-Governance in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, to egov magazine.

What are the different areas of municipal services that stand to get benefited by the inclusion of IT services? How is IT being harnessed by Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC)?

We are looking at all the services and backend processes involved in delivering such services. At the same time we 18 }

are also using IT for internal processes like human resource planning and training etc. which is broadly categorised as: • A comprehensive citizen-administration interface • A government to citizen (G2C) and citizen to citizen (C2C) web platform GHMC website http://www.ghmc.gov.in/ enables citizens www.egovonline.net

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to access various products and services provided by the GHMC from the comfort of their homes. Such as: • Settlement and payment of property tax • Payment gateway for online payments • Instant birth / death registration • Instant birth / death certificates’ issuance • Submission and tracking of building plan applications • Public grievance lodging through Parishkruthi • Status of infrastructure works • Tenders’ submission and management system • Financial management system • Citizens forum • Opinion polls etc.

Almost every service extended by GHMC is being extended online, for citizen comfort.

The speed with which municipalities function has often attracted criticism, do you think IT can help in speeding up the work of municipalities? Also can it provide easy accessibility of services to people?

Yes, I admit that there is criticism in abnormal delays in delivery of services. We have taken adequate corrective steps for speedy delivery of services by adopting IT services. We are pursuing an integrated approach in providing better services to the citizens of Greater Hyderabad. Accessibility to services is being pursued through services platforms of citizen service centers, e-Seva kendra’s, facility centres and Andhra Pradesh (AP) online centres. Transparency of service delivery is enabled through less interventions of human interface between the officials and the citizens. Accountability of roles and responsibilities is ensured to have timely and quick responses to grievances and citizens problems.

There is now lesser delays in dealing with service demands or grievances.

How can IT bring in transparency in the functioning of municipalities?

We have a four-pronged agenda - accessibility, transparency, accountability and responsiveness. For citizens who do not have access to Internet, fully computerised e-Seva and citizen service centres have been set up whereby, they can pay their bills and remit all municipal taxes. They can also request for birth / death registration certificates, apply for permits / licenses, etc. The corporation website enables citizens to access various products and services provided by the GHMC from the comfort of their homes. Almost every service extended by GHMC is being extended online, for citizen comfort.

The growth of IT services in GHMC offers an opportunity as well as challenges. The opportunity is the wider scope to serve more citizens using technology at the grassroot level.

The challenge is to facilitate technology to reach every citizen to avail municipal services at his/her convenience.

What are the challenges that cropped up while implementing IT services in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation?

GHMC did face resistance in introducing IT services. We are overcoming them through job enrichment programmes 20 }

conducted regularly in our training centres. We also aim at over all personality development.

Even after training is imparted, there is a need for re-training. I am sure that our continuous training programmes are creating impact and over a period of time we will be in a position to perform better using IT services.

We also conducted a study (SWOT analysis) covering various issues and the shortcomings which helped us to take appropriate corrective measure for overcoming the shortcomings and strengthening the positive points.

What has been your experience of introducing technologies like GIS in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation?

We made a beginning by establishing GIS Centres in GHMC and in our zonal offices and started realising the benefits of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. We are the first municipality in India to introduce (RFID) technology for our solid waste management, which definitely improved the efficiency in lifting and movement of garbage. We are further improving based on our rich experience in implementation.

We are about to introduce the citizen interface centres or kiosks which will bring a sea change in citizen–government interaction.

I am happy to inform you that our town planning department has adopted GIS in identifying the boundaries of GHMC. The complexity is such that GHMC is formed by merging 11 surrounding municipalities with erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH). Similarly, we realise that GIS has got a big role to play in municipalities in town planning, sanitation etc. The major accrued benefits are in the department of sanitation, towards planning of garbage bins and routing for lifting the bins, mapping polling stations and slum areas mapping for slum development programmes, open spaces and use for road works etc.

What is the future of IT services you see in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation?

I am aiming at reducing manual interventions in service delivery to citizens. The reason being that manual system has failed to deliver citizen services to the extent of citizen’ satisfaction. Technology is fine with content delivery without human interventions. Human interactions fail to deliver.

Further, manual systems have their own limitations in which case technology can be a good aid.

The future perspective is such that we want people’s expectations to soar high with realistic outcomes. We want to plug the loopholes in the process. We want to increase the impact of IT in Greater Hyderabad to the maximum extent.

Also, automation process shall help to overcome departmental drawbacks. However, challenges like language content, high costs, and maximum reach are there. The aim is to make citizens the stakeholders. The efforts for enhancement and improvement must be a continuous process in tune with changing and dynamic needs. Citizens should have a window and space in the entire process. For this the Right to Information (RTI) Act is being integrated. Overall, the reality is technology can be and is a good solution provider over a period of time. www.egovonline.net

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COVER FEATURE: INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE

Open City Portal Promoting e-Participation

www.opencityportal.net

Open City Portal is an open-source platform developed by a network of several development institutions and universities to help even small cities in developing countries to be able to install their own customised citizen-centric city portals, through which the cities can achieve most of the e-Government goals: twoway communication with citizens and creating a single window for every city service categories. Using its knowledge sharing function, the Open City Portal supports various participatory urban and regional initiatives, such as sustainable cities, and Digital Local Agenda.

Motoo Kusakabe CURRENT STAGE OF e-GOVERNMENT IN CITIES

The Open City Taskforce made a sample survey on roughly 50 cities gathered at the World Summit on Cities and Local Government on Information Society in Bilbao 2005.

Participating cities were all relatively advanced in terms of ICT having a strong motivation for e-Government. According to this survey, five cities, only in Europe and U.S., answered that they have achieved a transformation of administrative processes through e-Government (Level 5). Then, 27 cities, mostly in developed countries, had ‘full online transaction services’ for at least several city services (that means citizens can request and receive a service through online) (Level 4).

Seven cities, including both cities in developed and developing countries, had an integrated portal, but no ‘full on-line services’ (Level 3). However, 11 cities, mostly in developing countries, had e-Government websites but fragmented by organizations, and no comprehensive information according to the citizens’ needs (Level 2). There was no Level 1 city, where no e-Government initiative existed in this sample.

IMPEDIMENTS TO e-GOVERNMENT IN CITIES?

Although there is no systematic data on e-Government at city-level, many circumstantial evidences show that most of the cities in developing countries, except the capital cities or large cities, do not have city portals. And even if they have, they are fragmented and not interactive. A survey on Japanese cities investigated the major impediments of developing eGovernment at city-level in 2000. According to this survey, major impediments are lack of budget (73% of cities), lack of IT experts (46%), and lack of organisational support (60%).

WHAT’S WRONG WITH e-GOVERNMENT STRATEGY?

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e-Government strategy: They tend to start with expensive office computerisation, department-by-department.

The system is fragmented and sometimes ‘locked –in’ to the different systems difficult to integrate. As for the eGovernment, cities put too much emphasis on ‘full online services’. For exampleEuropean Union (EU’s) benchmarking criteria only measure the percentage of ‘full online services’ provided by e-Government as the performance criteria for the e-Government. Online transactions need expensive backoffice computerisation and sophisticated authentication system which many of the citizens prefer not to use for their municipal services. Cost saving is an important objective of e-Government, but it is only one of several objectives. e-Government service should be benchmarked by much multi-faceted criteria such as follows.

Criteria to measure effectiveness of e-Government: • Has the City an Integrated Government Portal?

• Does the Portal citizen-centric content classification?

• Are citizens able to get all the necessary information?

• Do citizens actually use the portal?

• Are there two-way interaction?

• Do citizens have transparent access to all public information?

• Do citizens have multi-channel access to Portals (e-Inclusion)?

• Does e-government really help solve city’s biggest issues, such as job creation?

THE NEW e-GOVERNMENT STRATEGY FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED CITIES

There is a need to create an integrated, citizen-centric, interactive city portal. The portal should support citizens’ participation in collaborative urban and community development initiatives. The portal should also provide knowledge sharing functions with peer cities so that cities can learn from each other. However, cities may not aim at creating ‘full on-line services’ initially. In stead, the city portal should 21

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provide more comprehensive useful information on city services, offer two-way communication between citizens and city officials, and provide all the government public documents and application forms. This approach is cost effective, as it does not use expensive back-office computerisation and sophisticated authentication infrastructure. Then, cities gradually add the online transaction modules, which does not require most rigorous authentication. This ‘evolutionary approach’ is not an expensive solution and still achieves most of the e-Government objectives.

THE OPEN CITY PORTAL?

The Open City Portal was developed to realise such a new approach so that cities which could not afford to develop e-Government can start moving towards e-Governance.

The goal of the Open City Portal is twofold: (a) to provide affordable city portals with an advanced citizen-centric design for even the smallest cities; and (b) to enable partner cities to share knowledge to address common challenges.

The OpenCityPortal has been developed and supported by the Taskforce consisting of the members from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), European Bank for construction and Development (EBRD), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Essex Universities and Estonia e-Governance Academy and Bilbao IT4ALL supported by the UN Public Administration Network.

UNIQUE FEATURES OF OCP

A few clicks to create a Portal Framework: After the city has identified the way it wishes to present its services (service classification), the customized portal framework can be 22

created easily with a few clicks of the mouse. The city-service content of the portal can be developed and updated by every city employee without special authoring tools. So everybody close to the service delivery can input the content. As there is no need of developers to develop software for individual cities, as in the case of traditional approach, the total 5 year cost of installation and maintenance of the OCP is between US$15,000 -20,000 for small cities and US$20,000 – 30,000 for mediumsized cities, which is almost one tenth of the comparable traditional portals, which requires individual software development.

Citizen-Centric, Single Window for Every Service Category: All the citizens’ service information is grouped by citizens’ life cycle events and customized to citizens’ needs. In cooperation with the central and regional governments, and private service providers, all the information in one service category is offered in the single window. This makes citizens retrieve information much easier, and provides a basis for administrative process reform at the later stage.

Participatory Content Development: A large amount of content can be developed by citizens, private sector, NGOs, such as schools, hospitals, libraries, tourism spots, unique local products and urban amenities.

Interaction with Citizens: Citizens can ask questions, make complaints, and give opinions. City council contact persons respond to the queries promptly.

Downloadable Forms and Documents: Citizens can download all the city council’s application forms for services, and public documents creating a document management system. e-Participation of Citizens to Policy-Making Process: The Open City Portal supports various stages of citizens’ participation in the policy-making process; agenda setting, opinion survey, collaborative strategy development, etc.

Knowledge Sharing among Cities: The Open City Portal has two ‘views’, global view and city view, which connect respectively to two servers municipal and global servers.

Citizens usually use the city view which provides cityspecific information (as a normal city portal). When people, either citizens or city employees, want to know the global knowledge or what other cities are doing, they click the ‘Go Global’ button and go to the Global View. They will get the best practices, tutorials, case studies and contacts for the global resources.

Focus on Participatory Urban Regional Initiatives: e-Government programme is appreciated by the citizens or legislature only if it contributes to creating new employment, higher quality of life and sustainable environment. The OCP supports, through its global knowledge sharing functions, five most important participatory urban initiatives: Sustainable www.egovonline.net

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Cities, Creative Cities, Digital Local Agenda, Age-Friendly Cities, and Municipal e-Government. With the Open City Network of 100 cities globally, we collect the more rigorous benchmarking data and case studies on these five participatory urban initiatives.

THE OPEN CITY PORTAL SUPPORTS e-PARTICIPATION

e-Participation is one of the key goals of the e-Government.

Many cities have launched the Citizens’ Council to discuss the sustainable city building or Local Agenda 21. In the recent years, the number of the Committee members exceeds 200 citizens, and the modality of citizens’ participation has evolved from the simple public consultation to more equal partnership of city and the citizens groups, or ‘collaboration’ where citizens will participate in the agenda-setting to drafting of the strategy, as also monitoring and evaluation. It is very important to use ICT to provide full information to the citizens and facilitate the whole participatory processes.

The unique features described above can be materialised only with the combination of three activities: development and technical support to the Open City Portal, training and installation of the Portal, and provision of advanced research and collection of city-level benchmark data and global knowledge content. In order to provide additional support to achieve the above goal, Open City Taskforce was created as the network to support the OCP activities.

INSTALLATION OF OPEN CITY PORTAL IN A COUNTRY AND CITIES

Training Programmes: The Open City Institute, in collaboration with partner universities and training institutes, provide training programmes in a country, based on a training-the-trainers approach. Cities and the national ICT ministry will jointly select 20-25 trainees comprising the CIOs of national and city governments and their assistants who will become a local training team for the Open City Portal in their own city government and other cities. Once they received training, they will in turn train the employees of municipal government on how to install the portals and how to develop content. A training-the-trainers programme for a country consists of five-day course that covers strategic aspects, such as setting e-Government goals, action plan, and organisational structure, and practical aspects, such as administration of the OCP and how to develop content.

Digital Local Agenda Training: Installation of the Open City Portal will produce more results, if it is combined with the national and municipal efforts on urban and rural Internet connectivity, ICT business development and ICT education and training. We can provide the Open City Portal training combined with broader ‘Digital Local Agenda’ training which will be more effective for cities with relatively low ICT infrastructure level.

Cost of Training: Cost of the training-the-trainers programme is roughly US$50,000 -100,000 depending upon the scope of the training, local costs for trainees (per 24

diems, travel costs) to be borne by the national and local governments. (i) In the case of high-income and middle income countries, we expect the national government and several cities will bear the cost of training. In the case of low-income countries, the Open City Foundation will make an effort to raise donor funding for the training. In that case, the national government and the participating cities are requested to cooperate with the funding application by providing necessary supporting documents. (ii) Once the local trainees completed the training course, they are awarded the certificate for Open City Portal Trainer. If they train city officials on the OCP installation, they will be awarded with the training fee from the Open City Foundation.

Call for Advisory Council Members of the Open City Foundation and Institute: Advisory Council of the OCP Foundation and Institute is undeway. The Advisory Council is to advice the strategy and policy of the Open City Portal Foundation and Institute and the research subjects. Advisory Council members will provide information on his/her city in response to the annual surveys conducted by the OCP and ad-hoc benchmarking studies. They in turn have full access to the survey data and analysis report.

SUMMARY

The goal of the Open City Foundation is to create local OCP trainers teams in five countries each year so that they start installing the portals in 25 cities within next 10 years. Within the next ten years, the OCP will be installed in 1,000 cities in 50 countries, including 20 low-income countries.

REFRENCES

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•

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LightHouses Taskforce 2005. “LightHouses Survey Result 2005”.

OpenCityPortal website,http://www.opencityportal.net/Netgrowth/ ICTWorkshop/DiagnoseResults_Category.aspArea=Global&Categor yID=STAa00&PartnerLong=OpenCityPortal&Language=English E-Municipality Forum. 2000, “Survey: Challenges for Dveloping EMunicipality” cited in E-municipality Manual, NTT Communications Tokyo. NIKKEI BP Planning 2002 (in Japanese) Wauters, Patrick. 2006. “Benchmarking e-government policy within the e-Europe programme”. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives. Vol. 58 No 5, 2006 pp389-403

Motoo Kusakabe is the senior counsellor to the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the founder of the Open City Portal initiative to promote ICT policy reform and entrepreneurship in developing world.He advises the President of the EBRD in quality of the projects, especially developing new knowledge-based industries and entrepreneurship. He may be reached at www.kusakabm@ebrd.com

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COVER INTERVIEW: INDUSTRY SPEAK

Providing One-Stop-Shop to Municipalities GIS Applications for Municipalities

www.specksystems.com

“The market for e-Governance in urban local bodies is expanding at a very rapid pace. All major software service providers entered into this market and providing solutions.

In sharp contrast to the previous era, municipalities and urban local bodies are now focused on creating single window mechanism to address majority of the citizen services,” says Dr. Bhanu M Gundugollu, Chief Technical Officer, Speck Systems Limited, to egov magazine.

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COVER INTERVIEW: INDUSTRY SPEAK

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What is Speck’s vision and goal for e-Governancein municipalities?

Improving the citizen’s living conditions is the prime objective of municipalities and urban local bodies today. However, the processes that are currently in practice at majority of the municipalities and urban local bodies do not really leverage the technological advances. Objectives of e-Governance is to provide better citizen services through technological means.

Non-availability of right information at right place at right time is the major factor that reduces the efficiency of administration and contributes to the long-list of problems that are faced by the growing cities and small-medium towns. Data that is available with the municipalities and urban local bodies is out-dated and thus decisions taken using such data neither address the need of citizen nor make intended impact. e-Governance solutions are a set of software applications that can operate on large databases and greatly reduce the manual intervention and provide accurate information/service in short span of time. Built around computers and communication, e-Governance solutions function on digital data framework.

Creation of digital data base with precise information of every piece of land and developing decision making, monitoring and presentation applications to skim through the databases are essential ingredients of e-Governance. Speck believes in empowering the citizen and envisions realising this objective through the technical know-how and process understanding it has acquired over a period of time.

What are the solutions Speck is providing for urban local bodies?

Speck has designed and developed many products addressing different segments of e-Governance. These include addressing all municipal work flow such as building permission, property-tax assessment, maintaining various records, solid waste management, transport network management, grievance redressal etc. While there are many applications built by Speck in use at various levels of e-Governance, two applications of specific importance are Speckadaster and SpeckElectrik.

SpecKadaster is supposed to help administrators in all types of land administration. Share your thought on it.

Speckadaster, a comprehensive Land Records Management solution, developed by Speck Systems Ltd. is precisely positioned to provide accurate data very quickly, thus, improving the effectiveness of government functioning manifold. Using Speckadaster, cadastral data can be entered, analysed and processed to generate individual, village, block and district level survey fields, traverse sketches and cater to create accurate and un-disputable land records. Speckadaster, combined with the light-weight indigenously developed Speck Geographic Information System (GIS) engine, allows data import and export from/to virtually any GIS format.

Land records thus imported are linked with non-spatial data and can be viewed/analysed to meet many application needs. This product is already put to use in creating the land information system for Nizamabad district (Andhra Pradesh) and potential of the tool is realised by the survey and land 26

records department. Speckadaster is designed to support many popular GIS formats and enables linking attribute information collected from field or from the local bodies. This product is built on Microsoft windows platform, and thus any novice computer user can easily work on this product with little or no training. Speckadaster empowers equally well both the municipal and urban local bodies and the common man. It empowers the municipalities to identify and develop land resources, on one side and empowers the common man by providing an identity of being a useful economic resource to the society he lives in.

What are the GIS applications that have been developed

by Speck for power, telecom and water and gas sector?

Speck, over the last two decades, has assisted utilities and infrastructure companies in aligning their supply and distribution network through precision geospatial data, to build AM/FM datasets, Scalable and robust geo information datasets at various scales employing state-of-art technologies.

Speck’s approach caters to all information needs viz., integration of core business functions with spatial information, scalability, lesser redundancy, improved data sharing, faster response and concurrent usage.

SpeckElectric, the indigenously built enterprise GIS solution is highly scalable and fully functional GIS based IT solution.

This solution is offered on desktop, client–server and webbased architectures. Employing a flexible and indigenously built integration framework, SpeckElectric integrates core GIS functionality with service-provisioning, network analysis, energy audit and asset management modules. This enterprise GIS solution can be seamlessly interfaced with all electricspecific applications like load flow and short circuit analysis, transient stability, long-term load forecast etc.

Speck SpatialTech offers value added geospatial services to telecom utilities for their operation and management.

Creation of physical network system consisting of primary and distribution networks and consumer information, providing customer identification on the map, service provisioning etc., are some of its features. Speck also offers comprehensive services to water, sewerage, petroleum and gas utility companies at all stages of operations. They include: new connection details and lateral lines, trouble call analysis - problems such as leakage and inadequate supply, capturing leak history data useful in pipeline replacement modeling etc., www.egovonline.net

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What is the current market of e-Governance in urban local bodies and how do you see Speck contributing to it?

The market for e-Governance in urban local bodies is expanding at a very rapid pace. All major software service providers entered into this market and providing solutions. In sharp contrast to the previous era, municipalities and urban local bodies are now focused on creating single window mechanism to address majority of the citizen services. This is a very positive trend and enables the industry to provide integrated solutions and benefits the municipal and urban local bodies of having a unified service provisioning.

Apart from proactively working based on the government initiatives like Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), Speck has created a dedicated team to interact closely with the municipal and urban local bodies to understand the localised needs and customise the application development to meet their needs. This enabled Speck to provide one-stop solutions to few municipal corporations within as well as out side Andhra Pradesh.

How has been your experience with municipalities so far?

Municipalities and urban local bodies have many legacy aspects associated with their functioning. These are built in to their system over long period of time and to understand and appreciate the shifted paradigm is an involved effort. Speck has evolved a novel approach by educating the people at the decision making level about the benefits and implementation process, and ease of use associated with the one-stop solution.

This awarenss campaign is carried out at different levels till it is cascaded to the lowest rung.

Speck also reailised that understanding the local perspective is another major aspect and it has become an integral part of Speck approach, while addressing any new municipality or urban local body. ov

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What are the issues and challenges that come in the way of functioning of municipalities and urban local bodies in India and how do you think it can be overcome?

Any initiative to computerise the functionality of municipal and urban local bodies is always perceived as a threat to the existence of the few who control the data and making them understand that the e-Governance systems actually ease their work and with out loosing control is the biggest challenge.

Speck has evolved a participatory approach by conducting beneficiary workshops, explaining them and making them part of the entire change process. This not only made them understand the advantages, but also helped them articulate their needs in a more scientific way.

Bringing in the local flavour to the work flow is another major aspect that helped Speck tide over and enabled it to work with different municipalities across different states, with ease.

Some of the challenges are: • Limited education and technology orientation of the working level people in the municipalities and urban local bodies • Multiple agencies to interact with to obtain data • Lack of standardisation of data • Apprehensions of the custodians to share the data • Local influences to take political mileage out of such initiatives • Hiring and training the locals for field data collection and ensuring quality of receivables.

What are the future plans of Speck towards implementation of ICT in municipalities and urban local bodies?

ICT in municipalities is all poised to leap-frog, with industry’s active participation. People at the helm of affairs in the different municipalities and urban local bodies have realised the potential of the technology and are evolving their plans around this ideology.

Public-private partnership aspects are being seriously explored to benefit the end user - the line departments and ultimately the citizen. There is an inherent healthy competition between different municipalities within the state, as well as across the states that is speeding up the pace of e-Governance activities. Serious thought is given at the apex body of the country and considerable funding is earmarked for the e-governance initiatives across the country that is making the prospects of e-Governance very bright.

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COVER FEATURE: ACADEMIA PERSPECTIVE

e-Government at Municipal Level: Factors and Barriers The long term success of IT projects, particularly electronic government, is determined by far more factors than those which are often assumed. On-line applications and their benefits are only one aspect. In fact, there is a whole range of factor such as organisational measure, strategic planning, qualifications, political support, rules and regulations issues, partnerships and much more. This article presents a critical analysis of barriers experienced in urban and public sector organisations, which prevent the successful adoption of e-Government; such barriers being presented in taxonomy.

Ensieh Abri and Ehtesham Rashidi INTRODUCTION

One of the most important emerging applications of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is e-Government. New technologies and means of communication have become available for urban managers in developed and developing countries. This changes the functioning of the urban economy of cities and of urban management. This also affects the way people communicate with authorities and the way officials and inhabitants can be trained and organised.

Applications of information technology for urban management in developed countries range from creating a ‘virtual town hall’ to registration of the movements of companies. The virtual town hall can beimportant in developing countries where people do not easily go to the town hall to investigate matters. Information technology can also be used for the purpose of city marketing, to attract business, or to provide tourist useful information.

Information technology (IT) has the potential to transform municipal government structure and to improve the quality of urban services. IT provides opportunities like increased operational efficiency by reducing costs and increasing productivity, and better quality of services provider by public organisations.

As a result, information technology and internet are transforming public and urban administration in digital era.

The municipality has a direct contact with the citizens and businesses and is responsible for providing an array of basic services. In recent years the municipalities throughout the world have made considerable efforts to establish and refine their on-line presence.

Information technology managers in municipal government must be aware of the many problems they face in IT intensive project. IT initiatives in general, and in government projects in 28 }

particular, face multiple and complex challenges. Identifying and overcoming these challenges is not always easy. Many national, state, and municipal governments are developing tools to help managers make decisions about IT investments and implementation.

FACTORS INFLUENCING DEPLOYMENT OF E-GOVERNMENT AT MUNICIPAL LEVEL

As per the research done in the field there are specific factors that influence the quality of electronic municipal services. In fact, these factors contribute to the adoption of e-Government among municipalities. These factors can be generally classified into four categories: (1) IT infrastructure, (2) Organisational and managerial, (3) Environmental and institutional, and (4) Rules and regulations (see Table 1).

INFRASTRUCTURE

Research indicates that to have a successful e-Government plan, the public sector must create an IT infrastructure that is optimised to support new information systems and applications that are necessary for e-Government. e-Government IT infrastructure may comprise of a number of technologies with a network infrastructure at its genesis; including an application server, hardware and operating systems, data and application development tools. A substantial infrastructure is needed to support municipal government with IT resources, and services. The existence of an IT infrastructure is related to the ability of municipal governments to implement innovative IT. In addition, availability and compatibility of software, systems and applications are important factors to www.egovonline.net

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consider. Adequate network capacity or bandwidth is the foundation for integrating information systems across public organisations.

Developing appropriate government-wide IT policies and standards can also provide adequate framework for e-Government initiatives to be successful.

MANAGERIAL AND ORGANISATIONAL FACTORS

INSTITUTIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

The lack of IT skills is also a bottleneck in taking to IT There are additional challenges related to a more general initiatives. It is ranked as institutional framework the number one barrier to and the policy environment The rapid pace of technological e-Government, based on the ein which government development has resulted in the Government survey in the year organisations operate. integration of computers and 2000 conducted in USA by The research has shown telecommunications to unfold within the International City/County that municipality size and public and private organisations. These Management Association and type of government are Information and Communication Technologies significant institutional Public Technology, Inc. Staff, (ICT) are useful instruments, capable of factors in the implementation citizens and council members achieving quantum leaps in the ďŹ eld of and development of etraining is an important factor enabling governments to enhance and possibly Government.

Larger in the success of IT initiatives. transform relations with citizens, businesses municipal governments are Municipal e-Government and agencies as well as other governments likely to be more proactive cannot be implemented and strategic in advancing without the expertise and active support of the staff because their ideas and information e-Government, and council- manager governments seem are needed. Council members also decide on budgets and the duration of the relevant projects. The managerial staff Factors Influencing success of e-Government at Municipal Level also need competence, qualifications and skills for local Influential Factors Sub-factors e-Government. While effective top management leadership involvement is a cornerstone of any IT investment strategy, Information Availability an compatibility of software, strong government leadership and responsive management technology systems and applications process must support an e-Government initiative, because of infrastructure Adequate network capacity or bandwidth this is the complexity and scale of changes that take place in Designing and developing website by the organisation during the implementation of e-Government. skilled staff So, employees must have the training and tools they need to Digital signature technologies do their jobs.

Security and privacy Finally, individual interests and associated behaviours like Project management resistance to change, internal conflicts, and turf issues also Strategic planning act as roadblocks. Resistance to change from the people and Administrative reforms the municipal organisations must be managed well. Strategic Active support of the staff and managers planning techniques can be seen as an umbrella for more Staff and citizens training Managerial and specific strategies such as clear milestones and measurable organizational Managerial staff and council members deliverables; good communication channels; and previous competence business process improvement. This fact indicates that Resistance to change e-Government initiatives are often pursued and implemented Coordination and cooperation between without a long-term strategic plan by many municipalities. departments FACTORS RELATED TO RULES AND REGULATIONS

Most of the time public organisations are created and operated by virtue of a specific formal rule or group of rules. For any decision making, including those in IT projects, public managers must take into account a large number of restrictive laws and regulations.

The statutory regulations do not yet meet the requirements for virtual administration at all levels of the federal state and municipal law. For example, changes may be needed in formal requirements and the provisions for fees. The legal experts are, therefore, needed to determine the need for changes in law, statutes and by-laws. ov

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Rules and regulations

Institutional and environmental

Organizational culture Sustainable securing of financial resources Changes in the law Legal provision of information technology services Security rules, policies, and privacy laws Political support Size and type of municipal government Policy and political pressures Public private partnerships Environmental context (social, economic, demographic) Participation of civil society and NGOs digital divide

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to pursue e-Government more actively than mayor–council governments. Larger municipal governments have the external pressures to make the government more efficient.

More importantly, larger municipal governments may be more receptive to and more easily afford new technological innovations than smaller governments; larger governments often have the advantage of greater administrative, technical and financial resources than smaller governments in seeking alternative managerial innovations. The council- manager municipal governments also tend to be early adopter of web technologies.

Also, public private partnership (PPP) plays a useful role in effectiveness, reducing risk and better management relating to change. Participation of civil society and NGOs must also be ensured in decision making, implementation, monitoring, and review of local e-Government projects.

Political support for the introduction of local community e-Government must be assured. Without clear support by the municipal council, the comprehensive modernization project of local e-government is doomed to be a failure. Finally, external pressures such as policy agenda and politics may affect the results of IT initiatives.

One of the more pressing issues in the evolution of the municipal e-Government is that of digital divide, or the gap in computer and Internet access across economic, demographic, or social lines.

The digital divide is potentially a serious issue, as large portions of society are purportedly left out of the digital revolution in business, and they have potential to eventually lose touch with government as the e-Government transition takes shape while other, more computer- and Internet- savvy citizens become better served by government. Evidence has shown that minorities, low-income people, the less educated, and rural dwellers have less access to the Internet, and hence e-Government, is problematic for the public sector, which by its nature must give adequate consideration to equity concerns in its decision calculus.

CONCLUSION

The rapid pace of technological development has resulted in the integration of computers and telecommunications to unfold within public and private organisations. These Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are useful instruments, capable of achieving quantum leaps in the field of enabling governments to enhance and possibly transform relations with citizens, businesses and agencies as well as other governments.

In order to enhance the effectiveness of the e-Government practices, many municipal governments will need to move towards a higher level of e-Government development, which will require more technical, personal and financial commitments. In particular, continued and vigorous need to be made to advance web-based participatory and democratic local governance. Municipal governments also need to establish systematic and comprehensive e-Government plans, in which they assess available resources and address related legal issues like privacy and security as well. Acceptance of a new public service delivery paradigm, privacy concerns, equitable access, and transition financing appear to be the major obstacles holding local government back. The literature has also suggested that trust and security were key areas that needed attention in the deployment of e-Government.

Ensieh Abri is a Ph.D. student, at the School of Management, Islamic Azad University of Tehran. She is a specialist in management of Information Technology, media studies, public management and e-Government.

She may be reached at ensiehabri@yahoo.com Ehtesham Rashidi earned his M.A. in urban management and public affairs from Allameh Tabatabaee University, Tehran. His research interests include e-Government, e- Municipality, virtual city, and urban policies. He may be reached at eti849@yahoo.com

SAP Public Sector Solutions in India: Touching the Lives of Millions In the government space, in some cases, SAP works directly with the government or quasi-government entities. Otherwise, SAP would be a part of a consortium working with systems integrators or other channel partners. Ranjan Das, President & CEO, SAP, Indian Sub-continent, says, “We want to have a model that would best suit the interest of our customer. At all levels, we believe we are automating and optimising the business processes for these government entities, making them more efficient” SAP works with the ‘Coalmines Provident Fund’ that used to be a non-automated system. Accessing the Provident Fund money was not easy. There were middlemen stealing money from them. SAP automated the entire process of

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managing the retirement funds and then we made it available to them through kiosks established across the country. Even people who do not know how to operate computers can go directly to the kiosks and access the funds.

This initiative of SAP has touched the lives of about 3.5 million people by eliminating middlemen. We have kiosks across the country. SAP also builds citizen portals such as the one for the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai. The information comes from multiple sources, but SAP offers a consolidated view to the citizen.

(Extracted from interview of Ranjan Das, President & CEO, SAP, Indian Sub-continent, eWorld)

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Services at the Click of the Mouse

www.punecorporation.org

“We have established a dashboard to monitor the progress of all development works under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) that displays the weekly progress of each project.

The dashboard also reports the expected date of completion and actual date of completion. This alerts the senior officials of any project slippage and allows for the engineering work to speed up”, says Praveen Singh Pardeshi, Commissioner, Pune Municipal Corporation to egov magazine.

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accomplished work and any shortfall. This has begun to ensure a tighter control on the projects.

IT is also being used to create a single point of access to all citizens.

Through a single point, multiple departments can automatically learn about transactions that are relevant to them.

What are the different areas of municipal services that stand to get benefited by the implementation of IT? How is IT being harnessed by Pune Municipal Corporation?

All municipal services require information, the absence of which makes the delivery of services a hard task. This becomes even more critical as the city grows. To give you an example, IT can enable information about the traffic patterns in the city. This can, in turn, lead to better planning of the road infrastructure as well as of the public transportation networks. Similarly, IT can enable better energy management across the city.

Currently, the corporation is providing all citizen services expected under the National Mission Mode Plan of the Ministry of Urban Development to the citizens in Pune. It is now moving ahead to benchmark itself against progressive cities in the West. In participation with industry the corporation has contributed to the establishment of the office of a Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the city. It is facilitating Municipal Wifi and Pune cards, as well as the creation of citizen accounts, to manage all citizen interactions and services.

The speed with which municipalities function has often attracted criticism, do you think IT can help in speeding up the work of municipalities? Also can it provide easy accessibility of services to people?

IT can ensure that information travels faster - we have established a dashboard to monitor the progress of all development work under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) that displays the weekly progress of each project.

The dashboard also reports the expected date of completion and actual date of completion. This alerts the senior officials of any project slippage and allows for the engineering work to speed up. Similarly, each contractor receives an SMS every Monday intimating him of the work needed to be done in the week. Each Friday the contractor is alerted of the 32 }

How can IT bring in transparency in the functioning of municipalities?

We are working with Right to Information (RTI) activists to create a framework of Management Information System (MIS) to provide information to ensure transparency on the website. We have also created wiki’s to enable different departments to collaborate and share information on the various activities they undertake. We will shortly have wiki’s through which citizens would be able to contribute in enabling collaborative transparency with the Pune Municipal Corporation.

What are the issues that cropped up while implementing IT services in Pune Municipal Corporation?

Developing a focus on design had been a major challenge while implementing IT services. The absence of a clear IT governance and a clear road map has also been a major challenge.

What has been your experience of introducing technologies like Geographic Infomation System (GIS) in Pune Municipal Corporation? What benefits does it have?

GIS has existed in the PMC for more than 15 years. The biggest challenge is consolidating and integrating all the digital assets of the PMC. The other big challenge is building capacity to integrate various data tables across the PMC into layers to enable decision making. With the GIS services we will allow different departments to share project information and coordinate various land-acquisition, digging and road diversion exercises. We also hope to localise problem resolution. We are already using maps to enable citizens to identify potholes, pipe leakages etc.

What is the future of IT services you see in Pune Municipal Corporation?

PMC is expected to provide information services to businesses and other government bodies- particularly property inventory, know your citizen and similar services. PMC is also looking at using IT to monitor and regulate traffic, parking, energy, water, and solid waste management. www.egovonline.net

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Solution for 24x7 Water Supply Case Study of Badlapur City, Maharashtra Intermittent water supply is one of the impediments which gets in the way of achieving the Millennium Development Goals in developing countries. In India no city provides 24x7 continuous water supply to their residents. There have been many endeavours to achieve this most challenging task. But the high population density coupled with unplanned distribution system and laxity in water loss management has been the reasons that are not allowing achieving this important hallmark.

Dr Sanjay Dahasahasran and Madhuri Mulay INTRODUCTION

India is the seventh largest country by geographical area and, the second most populous country. It is estimated that half of the Indian population will live in urban areas by 2050. Despite mammoth efforts of governments, a large portion of urban population especially poor still lack potable water supply.

In India, 86 % urban population has access to safe drinking water, but only 63 % have access to the tapped water. Even though a target of 135 liters per capita per day (LPCD) has been set, average per capita water supply ranges between 57 to 160 LPCD. In slum areas, the average supply attains a lower value of mere 27 LPCD, which results in poor level of service constituting serious health risks. One of the important causes of poor service in many South Asian cities is the intermittent water supply. Presently no Indian city gets 24x7 water supply.

Status of water supply in terms of per capita supply and hours of supply of some of Indian cities is shown in Table. Even

Table: Status of Water Supply of Indian Cities.

City

LPCD Hours of Water Supply (hours)

OBJECTIVE OF PRESENT STUDY

City

LPCD

Hours of Water Supply (hours)5

Goa

341

8

Ahmedabad

145

2

Chandigarh

332

10

Bikaner

133

1.5

Mumbai

240

5

Bangalore

123

2.5

Delhi

223

4

Gurdaspur

108

10

Patna

222

10

Batinda

106

8

Ludhiana

220

10

Bharatpur

105

1.5

Jodhpur

190

2.5

Udaipur

80

2.5

Badlapur

171

4

Chennai

32

1.5

Jaipur

149

3

Source: World Bank, October 2005

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though urban access to water and sanitation is better than rural, meeting the ever increasing demand from urban areas along with protecting the environment is a daunting task and is certain to emerge as one of the most serious challenges in times to come (indiawaterportal.org).

The fundamental objective of an urban water service is to supply adequate and safe wholesome water efficiently and effectively at an affordable price so that the citizens are released from the drudgery of seeking their daily water.

In case of India and other developing countries, water service providers do not meet this basic objective due to an intermittent water supply, which is a piped water supply system that delivers water to its users for less than 24 hours in a day. 24x7 continuous, pressurised water supply overcomes shortcomings of intermittent supply and ensures customer convenience and benefits the poor. Continuous high quality water supply system has a number of benefits.

Objective of this article is to describe the methodology that is best suited in Indian scenario which is required to achieve 24x7 continuous water supply. The approach can help cities in India and in developing countries to enhance public health of the poor masses and thus attain Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations.

APPROACH AND THE CASE STUDY

Badlapur city (Figure 1) in Mumbai Metropolitan Area has a population of 0.16 million. It has an assured water source (Figure 2) of Ulhas river. Ample water is available to meet future demand; water supply rate is 170 liters per capita per day (LPCD). Population of the city spread over an area of 68 square kilometers. There are 11,700 house connections in total 34 wards of the city. Before embarking upon the 33

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hydraulic model initiative, the system was operated in an intermittent mode and water was supplied in various zones for three hours a day.

Figure 2: Water supply system Figure 1: Location of Badlapur in India. of Badlapur

• • • • • •

Demerits of the present system are as follows: Individual domestic storage is inevitable; For housing societies, individual building etc., underground storage tanks are required; Water supply in a limited time span leads to possibility of ‘no supply’ to poor hamlets; Due to intermittent water supply, pipelines remain as hollow conduit in no supply time zones; Possibility of injection of contaminated water through joints/leakages in no supply period; Consumer’s tendency to prefer fresh water, and therefore, to let away the balance storage.

STAGES ADOPTED FOR TRANSFORMATION TO 24X7 WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM

The scheme is under intermittent operation mode since last decade. A large number of property connections have been issued without proper hydraulic study of the network. As a result, the daily operation of water supply is carried out by operating the valves zone wise. A fleet of valve operators are required to perform this job. The system which is, therefore, being operated as an intermittent supply mode is performing low.

When it was decided to convert this intermittent system into 24x7 system, a holistic approach was adapted. Achieving continuous water supply is culmination of combined efforts of various strategies adopted for improving the water supply.

The action plan of transformation is shown in Figure 3.

Satellite image was procured and the entire city was digitised.

The map showing road network, house properties (with house ID number) etc. was prepared in AutoCad drawing which was then used as backdrop of the hydraulic model. City Development Plan (CDP) was obtained from the Municipal Council. Water distribution network was plotted on CDP in AutoCad which was then superimposed on the digitised map. Population was forecasted by the density method.

Water distribution pipe network of Badlapur city was divided into 10 Operation Zones (OZ). Each OZ is further sub-divided into 3 to 4 District Metering Area (DMA)s so 34

Figure 3: Action Plan for Transformation into 24x7 Water Supply System.

that each DMA contained not more than 1000 connections.

Property survey was carried out to determine the number of people residing in all 28,000 houses. Thus demand at nearest node was computed which was then compared with the earlier population figure computed by the density method.

Distribution network has been simulated using latest WaterGem software and hydraulic model was prepared. The data was validated and the pipe network was calibrated.

THE MODEL

Modeling of the transformation of intermittent to 24x7 systems is a critical part of designing for successful operations of OZ and DMAs so that the distribution system serves the community reliably, safely and efficiently 24 hours in a day.

The hydraulic model gives commanding knowledge of the water infrastructure, and helps to take informed decisions.

Modeling is defined as a mathematical description of a realworld system.

Maps and records: System maps help in understanding the water distribution networks. These maps illustrate wide range of system characteristics such as pipeline alignment, elevations of nodes, location of tanks, reservoirs and valves etc. ov

A vast data, describing real-world network system, is collected before building a model. The maps are tested for accuracy and were corrected and synchronised with the GPS system. The source of the barrage, along with the Ulhas river is shown on the drawing. Water transmission pipelines were then skeletonised, marked and the positions of water treatment plants, master balancing tanks and the elevated service reservoirs and the entire distribution system in the Badlapur city were plotted on the AutoCad drawing. This drawing was then converted to the Drawing Exchange Format (DXF) format and was used as a backdrop of the WaterGems scaled drawings as shown in Figure 4.

pattern. A service reservoir supplies water to the operational zone. The operational zones are the most strategic blocks for transformation into 24x7 system. Badlapur city is divided into 10 such operational zones.

Figure 5: Operational zones

Figure 4: Backdrop drawing of the Badlapur city.

SYSTEM SIMULATION

While making hydraulic model, various components of the network such as reservoir, tanks, pipelines and valves etc. are required to be simulated. The term simulation refers to the process of imitating the behaviour of one system through functions of another. In the present approach, the term simulation represents the behaviour of the real system (model) mathematically.

Here simulation is used to represent dynamics of existing and proposed networks in the Badlapur city, which helps to predict the system response while transforming the system into 24x7.

Figure 6: District Metering Area.

Need of Alternatives: In the simulation study vast datasets need to be created and handled, large numbers of model runs are required and also recording of their results.

It is not possible to create various data files to edit input data in each data file. Working either with many data files or editing frequently with single data file is confusing, inefficient and susceptible to the human errors. Hence, to solve this problem alternative data sets are kept with single model data file. The alternative data sets individually represent exclusive information on network. For the purpose of present study of 24x7 three alternative datasets (Figure 7) are considered. They are namely, (a) Active Topology – Physical representation of the system and its properties; (b) Demand – Various types of demands of the network; (c) Operation – Valves, their setting and operations.

MODELING OF BASE SCENARIO AND CHILD SCENARIO OF OZS AND DMAS

The transformation study involves modeling and the various possibilities of demarcating the operation zones and DMAs. Infrastructure of entire city water supply including those of all pipelines and the valves are plotted on the backdrop drawing. Then the network is calibrated with respect to field information. Demarcating the operation zones have been carried out with respect to anticipated consumer behaviour and storage capacities. Further the demarcation of DMAs and the improvement measures are modeled.

Operational Zone: Schematic arrangement of a big sector of distribution system called as operational zone is shown in Figure 5. Source supplies water to the water treatment plant. Treated water is stored into balancing reservoir, which supplies water to various service reservoirs. OZs are demarcated from the consideration of critical study of storages of the service reservoirs and consumer withdrawal ov

Figure 6: District Metering Area.

Figure 7: Base scenario of entire city.

Figure 8: Scenario of operational zones.

Now to depict the actual/expected behaviour of the system, various scenarios are created. Scenario represents a set of models that describe character of network under specified conditions. They are created for the present working conditions as well as for future population.

Formation of Base Scenario: Modeling the base scenario is carried out to represent the actual functioning of the system before taking up any improvements. It is most critical 35

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and time consuming step. It involves modeling the entire The model was used for taking decisions in field. According transmission and distribution networks, the valve operations to the model design OZ and DMAs are made hydraulically as set in the field. All the three alternatives of active topology, discrete at site of work. As per analysis carried out by the demand and the operational alternatives are made available hydraulic model, new pipelines are laid, some old pipes are to the base scenario (Figure 7).

Once the Base Scenario is prepared and appropriately Table 2: Results of the initiative calibrated then it is suitably divided in OZs. The base scenario Parameters Pre project Post Project is then separated into various child scenario (Figure 8) for 1) Supply hours 3 to 3.5 hrs. per day for 34 24 hrs. for 8 wards· • each operation zone by making elements of other operation wards 18 hrs. for 2 wards· • zones inactive and making active the elements of the 7 hrs. for 7 wards· • 3.5 hrs.for remaining • operation zone under consideration. Thus all child scenarios 17 wards • of active topology of all zones are built. All the three child 2) Rate of 170 lpcd 140 lpcd (where underground alternatives of active topology, demand and the operational consumption tanks are not leaking). alternatives are formed from the base alternatives for each 3) Nature of human 2 to 3 cases of Dysentery, No cases are recorded. health risk Jaundice and Typhoid per OZ and are again made available to their respected scenarios. were observed.

The hydraulic network of scenario of each OZ is then solved 4) Quality of water month 100% potable as per reports 100% potable as per reports (10 and the results are checked as shown in Figure 9.Figure 9: (Source: Public (10 samples per week). samples per week). The water is Health Lab.) Sporadic turbidity problems crystal clear.

Running the model. were observed.

5 to 6 complaints per annum 5) No. of complaints about contamination of water 6) No. of visible 30 to 40 leakages rectified per month 8) Energy charges to Quite high due to storage the consumers in sump and pumping to overhead tank.

9) Awareness about conservation of water.

MODELING AND MANAGEMENT OF DMAS

Every DMA is hydraulically discrete (isolable) from adjoining area. It is fed with water from single point, the flow and pressures at key locations are continuously metered and measured, which give indication of extent of leakages as well as high flow rates. Leakages are then repaired; some pipes and ailing valves and old property connections in worst part of the distribution networks are replaced. Suitable control measures are adopted to keep a check on high flow rates. The DMA is then set for 24x7 continuous water supplies.

All the three child alternatives of active topology, demand and the operational alternatives for DMA are again derived from the base alternatives of each OZ (which were earlier derived from the base alternatives of entire city) and are again made available to their respected scenarios of DMA. The hydraulic network of scenario of each DMA is then solved and the results are checked. The present study is focused on the leakage rates by comparing the model results with the actual results in field.

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Tendency of storing excess water and later on throwing the stale water when fresh water is supplied.

No complaints are received

10 to 12

Saving in energy charges is observed at Bungalows and individual houses as the residual pressure are now enough to supply water even to the second storey of buildings.

Reduction in consumption 0 to change in habit from storing of water to none storing.

Rs. 0.6 million Rs. 0.45 10) Assessment per million (75%) month Revenue recovery per month for 8 wards which are transformed to 24x7 11) Percentage of non 35% working meters.

12) Invisible leak Nil detection and removal.

Rs. 1.01 million Rs. 0.91 million (90%)

13) Public stand posts In slum area 3 group connections were given.

Individual connections are given. Hence, no stand posts now exist in the city.

14) Reliability and satisfaction of water supply system

•

•

•

23% 4 to 5 invisible leaks are detected per month with Sounding rods and other equipments and then the same are repaired.

• Inconvenient supply hours affected poor people.

Large size of storage was required and consumers had to pay • for pumping.

Results in poor sanitation leading to increase in health risks • and mortality.

•

15) House wives time Anchored to water supply schedule, i.e., 3.5 hours per for house hold day. activities

A better demand management is possible due to elaborate metering and effective leakage control.

Reduction in consumption due to change in habit from storing of water to none storing.

Excellent consumer satisfaction Enhanced willingness to pay even in the slum pockets.

Since water is readily available house wives can effectively manage time for other activities and house responsibilities.

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replaced. Using DMA methodology non revenue water (NRW) for each OZ and DMA was worked out. The OZ and DMA where NRW is maximum (profusely leaking) were tackled first for leak detection and repair. Toll free contact number is provided for consumer redressal. 8 Wards out of 34 Wards tackled in first phase for 24x7 water supply system. Rest of the areas will be covered in two phases. The results of the initiative pre-project and post-project are shown in Table 2.

optimised by this unique model. INR eight million were saved using this model.

5. Using the model for transformation to 24x7 system helped MJP to increase revenue and improve service delivery.

6. The approach presented in this article can help cities in India and in developing countries to achieve 24x7 continuous water supply.

SUMMARY

REFERENCES

1. A hydraulic model for transforming intermittent water supply to 24x7 continuous water supply was prepared for the first time in India which is used for the city of Badlapur.

2. The model described simulated behaviour of system and particularly helped Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP) engineers to hydraulically isolate the operation zones (OZ) as well as district metering areas (DMA).

3. Merely by hydraulically discreting OZ and DMAs, and repairing visible leaks, they were able to transform water supply of 8 wards (out of 34 wards) into 24x7 continuous water supply.

4. The model so prepared has been proved to be very useful tool for metering strategy.The number of costly bulk meters used for determining net night flow are

1.

2.

3.

Chary, 2005, “24- Hour Water Supply: A Goal Achievable?”, Nagari, A Publication of ASCI,Hyderabad.

Haested, Walski and et al, “Advanced Water Distribution Modeling and Management,” Haested Methods, First Edition, 2003.

A Report of World Bank, October 2005.

Dr. Sanjay Dahasahasra is Member Secretary, Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran, Mumbai.

Madhuri Mulay is Assistant Engineer, Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran, Thane.

e-Inclusion Drive for the Marginalised in Poland In an attempt towards bridging the digital divide and bring e-Government services to the digitally marginalised groups, the Government of Poland has started a tendering process for e-Inclusion projects.

The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund, reports ePractice.

The government has kept the bid open for local government units (either individually or in consortia), as well as in partnership with Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs). Potential candidates can apply for support of up to 85 per cent of qualifying expenses.

The projects aim at helping households to receive different forms of social security support, children and school-age youth from limited-income families, or people with a severe to moderate degree of disability.

Further, the projects would impart computer and Internet training to target end-users and the stakeholders such as local government and NGO staff to reach the marginalised groups.

e-Signature Services Expanded in Lithuania The Lithuanian government has announced that BITÄ (country’s second largest telecom operator) would be allowed to offer e-Signature services for accessing the services offered under e-Government in the country.

The e-Signature services will enable the accessibility of Social Insurance Fund, the State Tax Inspectorate and the e-Government portal. As reported by ePractice, Omnitel was the only operator which was allowed to use e-Signatures in Lithunia. Customers have to replace their SIM cards with an e-Signature enabled SIM for subscribing to the new service. The users would be able to perform up to 600 digital operations.

For viewing the e-Sign social security documents, the customers would submit their mobile phone numbers and they will receive a request to enter their six-digit PIN code in their phone.

Corrigendum: The following are the correct logos of ICICI Bank and Visa. Please ignore those published in egov magazine July 2008. Any inconvenience caused is purely unintentional.

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Marching towards Digitisation Surat Municipal Corporation

www.suratmunicipal.org

www.suratmunicipal.org

“IT services would enable the municipal corporation to provide an effective, prompt and cost effective response to the citizen needs, in a manner that takes care of the citizen’s individual needs and convenience.” says S. Aparna, Municipal Commissioner, Surat Municipal Corporation to egov magazine.

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double entry accounting system in 1992.

Almost every income related function has been computerised for timely issuance of bills, faster tax collection at single points of contacts like the citizen facilitation centres across the city.

Moreover, SMC has used Management Information System (MIS) for monitoring and grading services like sanitation, maintenance and efficiency of street lights, preventive and curative health activities, complaint management service, etc. Long time familiarity with computerised budgeting has helped tracking capital projects for their scheduled commissioning and reducing the time-to-benefit for the citizens. SMC has also a well designed and highly informative website where all relevant information is available to the citizens.

How is IT being harnessed by Surat Municipal Corporation?

Being a local government at the city level, Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) provides a wide range of services to citizens. These include services pertaining to health, sanitation, education, safety and utilities such as water supply, drainage, street light, roads etc. Apart from optimal utilisation of finite resources with the corporation, efficiency, promptness, quality and cost-effectiveness are the critical parameters on which the delivery of these services are evaluated.

IT enabled systems have been put in place in SMC to enable standardising the processes, obtaining timely and accurate information and reducing the response time. The following functions/activities of SMC are benefited by the use of IT: • Utilities/ Services Management • Project Management • Quality Monitoring • Energy Efficiency • Finance and Accounting • Revenue Collection • Material Management • Human Resource Management Surat Municipal Corporation is one of the pioneers in harnessing the power of IT. It started way back in 80’s before IT use became ubiquitous. The corporation developed and implemented computerised payroll, property tax, vehicle tax and pension systems during 1982-85; put the property tax system online (Intranet) in 1990 and started computerised ov

August 2008

Do you think IT can help in speeding up the work of municipalities? Also, can it provide easy accessibility of services to people?

Most of the services offered by a municipal corporation involve interface with citizens. Generally a chronological history of interaction with citizens for all the services offered need to be maintained for functions like birth/death registration, electoral lists, professional and property tax collection, vehicle tax collection, shops and establishment registration, etc. All this is required to be carried out in accordance with the statutory provisions of the acts and rules governing them, which pre-date the advent of computerised record keeping and data movement. Earlier the physical movement of papers and files was necessary to comply with the procedures. Delays in some of these cases gave a general feel of slow speed of the overall systems.

But with computerisation of these systems, the response time has improved drastically. A user friendly registration mechanism helps in capturing the information quickly and accurately. A robust data management system helps in retrieving all these data quickly, whenever citizen visits for any follow up or new transaction. Now, with better case tracking and summarised MIS, delays and exceptional time lags get noticed by the upper management and overall speed of transactions is faster. Most of the retrieval of computerised records is over-the-counter and follow-up transactions get committed over the counter in single visits.

Surat Municipal Corporation has started ‘city civic centres’ that act as single-point outlets for the citizens to access various civic services. These centres have a string of computers on the network and allow the citizens to avail various facilities.

The following services are being offered through the 16 city civic centres in Surat: • Birth and death registration and certificates 39

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• • • • • • •

Shops and establishment registration, issuance of licenses, renewal, duplicate license, closure of establishment All types of revenue collection including property tax, water meter charges, vehicle tax, professional tax etc.

Revenue collection of tenements, Economic Weaker Section (EWS) houses and shopping complexes Complaint registration Booking of auditorium, halls and open plots Submission of all types of applications Distribution of all types of forms/publications of SMC

training was imparted to the staff so that they attained the working knowledge and gained confidence in handling the applications. The departments/employees having tested the fruits of computerisation are now eager to try to incorporate IT enabled solutions in more and more processes. However, some departments and employees are more attuned to computerisation than others. Integration of applications and systems developed in different departments and at different points in time is also a major challenge for the Corporation.

This is where the IT department comes into play with a standardisation policy and norms.

How is IT bringing in transparency in the functioning of What has been your experience of introducing municipalities?

Use of IT helps in standardising the procedure to be followed technologies like Geographic Information System (GIS) for delivery of the service. Also, if the rules, regulations and in Surat Municipal Corporation? procedures are properly mapped, little discretion is left to Almost every service delivered by the SMC has geographic/ the staff involved and the service delivery mechanism can be locational attributes attached to it. GIS based decision standardised. Defining the standard time-lines for completion support systems help in closer integration of these services of tasks and incorporating that into the system helps in and enable the Corporation to plan ahead for introducing, identifying points where the time consumed varies vis-à-vis implementing and augmenting these facilities. This is as true the permissible time span. for correlating planning with building permissions and tax With computerised system of property tax, the due collection statistics, as for monitoring birth statistics with date for taxes, the time stamps of bill generation and tax- reproductive and child health care programmes, correlation paid receipts, interest calculation and further treatment of between sanitation efficiency, parasite proliferation and collection is very objective public health statistics, and without any human fresh water pipeline leakage, Almost every service delivered by the SMC intervention; this has helped resolving water pressure has geographic/locational attributes to strengthen the confidence discrepancies, correlating attached to it. GIS based decision support of citizens in equitable drainage congestion with systems help in closer integration of treatment and fairness in all throughput capacity planning these services and enable the Corporation to cases. Automated credit of and many other functions. plan ahead for introducing, implementing salaries for more than fifteen In view of the earlier and augmenting these facilities. This is as true thousand employees of SMC manual systems SMC, like for birth statistics with reproductive and child has achieved confidence from other municipal organisations health care programmes, correlation between employees for assurance in the country, has different sanitation efficiency, parasite proliferation and of timely compensation right maps for every departmental public health statistics, fresh water pipeline from an unskilled worker to function like property tax leakage, resolving water pressure discrepancies, executives. wards, election and census correlating drainage congestion with throughput As far as development wards, health and sanitation capacity planning and many other functions works are concerned, the wards, town planning City Development Plan, scheme boundaries, etc. the list of JNNURM projects and works sanctioned under This has led to some start-up challenges for GIS integration.

Corporators’ Fund are all accessible to people through the However, the effort is to start with spatial planning maps website. The annual budget and monthly and weekly revenue- and build layers on it relating to the various services in a expenditure statements are also available on the website. phased manner to create an integrated GIS based enterprise The Corporation is now developing a system for granting wide system. approvals of building plans online. A pilot project in the West Zone, for linking the property tax database with spatial plans What is the future of IT services you see in Surat Municipal has been launched on a GIS platform and the same is to be Corporation? extended to the remaining zones. These systems will enhance IT services would enable Surat Municipal Corporation to transparency in planning and development functions of provide an effective, prompt and cost effective response to the citizen needs, in a manner that takes care of the the SMC. citizen’s individual needs and convenience. We look towards What are the challenges that cropped up while implementing enhancing the optimal utilisation of material resources as IT services in Surat Municipal Corporation? well as time, effort and manpower by proper deployment The biggest challenge was the change management. of IT services. An efficient interoperable infrastructure Adopting keyboard for running the systems and processes, can also get operationalised once the central government at first, appeared daunting for hundreds of frontline clerks finalises and operationalises the technical standards and and counter operators. Computer and system related gateway services.

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COVER FEATURE: GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE

City Chief Information Officers: Role and Functions The office of a Chief Information Officers for the urban centre is perhaps the most appropriate forum for this. Each district should also have a similar CIO. Such positions should be based on public private partnership and not part of any single authority to ensure the ability of the office to create collaborate and address the need.

Dr Anupam Saraph

The office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), Pune City, is set up as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP) and various government authorities. Pune is the first city in India to create such a position. Cites in United States have a CIO as do cities in Australia and some parts of Europe, these offices have evolved with time, have different degrees of maturity as citywide offices and have gained increasing importance after 9/11 and Katrina calamities.

Information is the key driver of decision, planning and design. When disasters happen, information restricts the scope and the rate at which we can contain damage or help the afflicted. In normal times information, or the absence of it, impacts the quality of decisions, plans and designs.

With or without computers and automation, information usually sits in silos each point-of-transaction, department or authority keeps its own private, unshared (and often unauthenticated, unsecured and non-private) record of the business that transpired. Very few wonder that current business processes require collecting information from different departments in various forms like No Objection Certificates (NOC’s) and other certifications. It is no surprise that this information is not trusted and needs verification or authentication. This not only limits the scope of what can be done by each office but also the rate at which it can be done.

The challenge before any CIO is, therefore, to create opportunities for establishing connections and collaborations that can change citizen experience for better, while making the business processes of the authorities far simpler and easier.

Pune’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing at seven per cent per annum in contrast with much smaller place like Surat where GDP is growing at 12 per cent per annum. If the city cannot ensure mobility, water, electricity, waste removal, good health, safety, good housing, commercial spaces, open spaces and entertainment, its GDP growth begins to slowdown as business moves to urban centres. Decisions, plans and designs that will continue to improve these experiences will help drive the growth of GDP. ov

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The municipal bodies, city police, RTO (Road Transport office), tax commissionerates are focused on roles mandated by the acts and legislature that constitute these bodies. These acts are based on an environment that had smaller and slower growing urban centres and, little automation. They are based on a time where shared information needed to be enforced through procedures requiring exchange of documents, verifications and inspections through functions with each authority.

In today’s information era, shared services and shared information is not just a possibility, it is a reality. In keeping with the needs of the day, it is only appropriate to create platforms to strengthen each authority’s ability to serve the purposes for which they exist and ensure the continued growth of the urban centre.

A shared Geographic Information System (GIS) for the city, for example, would help each authority connect and collaborate. The schedule for digging for water pipeline, telecom, electricity, road repairs and widening and traffic redirections would all be shared as layers across authorities and departments. The property and resident information would provide a shared Know Your Customer/Citizen (KYC) and provide the ability to better manage mobility, water, electricity and telecom services. It would also provide greater security, further the e-Commerce and e-Governance and ensure the authorities to accomplish the purposes for which they are constituted.

A shared ‘City-Card’ for each citizen, for example, would help facilitate not just a secure, safe city but also enable single point transactions and greater e-Commerce within the city.

A shared infrastructure for enabling communications and updating transactions across the city in real-time would also ensure greater collaboration.

Such connection and collaboration needs to be enabled in all class I and class II urban centres. The office of a CIO for the urban centre is perhaps the most appropriate forum for this. Each district should also have a similar CIO. Such positions should be based on public private partnership and not part of any single authority to ensure the ability of the office to create collaborate and address the need.

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Therefore, if city CIO’s became the best-practice in every city what would the urban centre begin to look like? What would the shared services enabled by the CIO result in? How would the experience of a city change?

With such shared services you can expect most citizens of an urban centre to use ‘City-cards’ and most of them keep track of the card-transactions through their iLife account.

Less than five per cent users would prefer a quarterly paperstatement of their iLife.

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Can India have a City Card like this?

You may log in as first name, last name at the city.gov.in site. This site will be the single point for your iLife. Single windows would be passé. No longer would you need to go to ‘singe-windows’ at different departments or offices of the local, state or central government, you simply log into your iLife. Better still your bank, insurance company, hospital and even local grocer are iLife enabled.

The pain of providing the same information over and over at different counters would be history. The first time you registered yourself to iLife, through your computer at home, you would be asked to provide information to identify yourself. You would be requested to visit any one of the ward offices to provide a photograph and your thumb print to receive City-card, your user name and a password to access iLife. That would be it.

Your City-card would provide you with cashless bus travel, parking and entry into all electronically accessed public locations as well as electronic entry enabled private locations.

It would work as a cash-card and also replace time-consuming procedures with countless forms to make applications. It would simplify and secure transactions as you can simply allow the service providers to swipe your card and take your thumb print to access information. Only information that you have marked as allow through Pune-card will be accessed at points-of-transaction. The transaction is updated in your account on iLife.

When you log in, your account would include records of every institution with whom you did a transaction, either 42

using the City-card or directly through iLife. Government departments, businesses and service providers have registered themselves to use City-cards and iLife. In one-step, through a single-point, they gain access to the reliable, authentic and consistent information that they need thus, enabling them to reduce the time it takes to service your requirements.

The cities would be unwired to create a device connectivity across the city through secure channels. Thousands of card-readers, traffic sensors, flow-meters, switches would communicate information or take instructions on secure channels across the city. This would enable the City-card readers to instantaneously access the iLife servers for to querries or updating information. iLife’s open source and open standards would enable it to create an eco-system of services by diverse service providers.

A whole industry of businesses would flourish providing solutions to enable their services onto iLife.

A vibrant collaboration to build the communities around local self-help through wiki-enabled web-pages would be the norm. This would help to bring world-class infrastructure standards to the city. The city would launch a collaborative development plan to identify visions for the next 20 years, the challenges for the city over the next 20 years as well as various strategies to address these challenges. The city would run a world-wide simcity based competition to ‘Design for myCity’ and generate a huge dialogue about the challenges and strategies for the city. It would also built a strong sense of belonging in the city, a commitment to common visions and a tremendous positive culture to address challenges and make visions happen.

As a result of this alignment, the city would make a transition to non-fossil-fuel based transportation systems, become energy surplus, would have a 100% water access for 24x7 and the countries best record on recycling and managing waste. It would also be able to get the largest carbon-credits through the huge corridors of greening accomplished across all the city’s watersheds.

Web 2.0 based technologies would have resulted in creating city-resource planning (CRP) across local-state and central government authorities.

Let’s look forward to such cities- the countries iCities that provide good-governance.

Dr. Anupam Saraph is the CIO of Pune City. His position, the first of its kind in India, is the result of a PPP arrangement between the SEAP (Software exporters association of Pune) and various government agencies.

His position has been created to evolve a platform for shared services across the city. Dr Saraph has spent over 25 years building enduring value and supporting both businesses and governments develop and accomplish challenging visions.

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NEWS SIEMENS TO HANDLE BAGGAGE SYSTEM

Siemens AG (Mobility division of Siemens) bagged INR 3 billion order from Delhi International Airport (DIA) in India, to install baggage handling system for the new Terminal 3 at DIA. The new terminal will be completed

by March 2010. The terminal will have 78 Boarding Bridges for national and international passengers and is designed to handle 34 million passengers.

Bags can be handed at 168 check-in desks at the departures level of the terminal, which covers an area of 5.2 lakh m2.

28 X-ray stations will be installed for a 100 per cent security inspection of the airport baggage.

The sorting system having a capacity of over 11,300 bags per hour and a total length of almost 13 km will be installed for the purpose. Tilt-tray sorters, vertical sorters and high-speed diverters will be used as well.

Commenting on the order, Siemens Managing Director, Armin Bruck said, “The baggage handling system that we are providing at the International Airport is the biggest in India and is at par with the best in the world.”

GUIDELINES FOR 3G SERVICES APPROVED BY MINISTRY IN INDIA Communications and IT Minister, A Raja, has approved the final guidelines for 3G services after meeting Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, according to sources. The Government’s permission to allow foreign players is significant in view of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) strong opposition to such a move.

The bidding for 3G spectrum is expected to begin within the next two months, sources said. TRAI remains persistent with its argument of restricting the participation only to existing Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) holders so as to ensure faster rollout of the services.

The Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission have supported the entry of foreign companies who do not possess telecom licences in India to bid for 3G services. Sources said that successful bidders, who do not possess UASL license would be issued new licenses to offer telecom services in the country.

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INDIA TO LEAD AMONG ASIAN COUNTRIES IN MOBILE GAMING In terms of mobile gaming revenues, it is expected that India will reach US$450 million by 2012, according to a study revealed by the global technology research firm, Gartner. India is becoming the fastestgrowing telecom market in the world.

The study finds that India is expected to lead among Asian countries in terms of mobile gaming revenues, with the 2007 figure at around US$80 million. The mobile game market has outshone the personal computer (PC) and console game market in the emerging territories of Asia largely because of the low penetration of PCs compared with that of mobile

devices. The Asia Pacific including Japan represents the largest market for mobile gaming, with end user spending forecast to a total US$2.3 billion in 2008 and reach US$3.4 billion by 2011.

According to the Gartner report, worldwide gaming revenue will be $4.5 billion in 2008, which is 16.1 percent increase from 2007. Gartner predicts that mobile gaming revenue will experience a compound annual growth rate of 10.2% between 2007 and 2011, with global end-user spending reaching US$6.3 billion in 2011. Analysts said mobile operators and other game providers should build usage by offering game demos or advertising-funded games.

MOBILE PHONES TO BE USED FOR PAYMENTS: EU

In a move towards holistic use of mobile devices, telephone operators and banks in the European Union (EU) will help customers pay their grocery, restaurant and other bills through their mobile phone.

Operators, facing downward pressure on tariffs partly due to EU rules, are also looking for new sources of revenue. The GSM Association represents major players in the mobile industry such as Vodafone. The

association has teamed up with the European Payments Council (a body that represents 8,000 banks in Europe) for making the initiative successful.

Seven mobile operators are running trials for contactless mobile payments and a further seven plan tests shortly.

EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said in a statement, “Bringing more competition to the payment services market has been my aim and agreements such as this show the possibilities that new technologies and innovative approaches offer in this regard”.

This initiative aims at adoption of a global approach to the standards used in the EU. This would enable near field communications, a contactless technology that allows data to be transmitted from the phone’s SIM card wirelessly over very short distances.

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Connectivity with Efficient Business Transaction www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com

“Nokia Siemens Networks assist in aligning its customer’s organisation processes and business model according to their chosen strategy, current assets and market conditions to achieve the structural and strategic changes that are competitive,” says Ajay Ranjan Mishra, Global Head Business Development for New Growth Markets, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) to egov magazine 44

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Nokia Siemens Networks is a global player in the matched their competitors for value and exceeded their own telecommunications industry. Briefly tell us about the internal predictions for subscriber acquisition. company’s overall success and achievements in providing Geographical Information System (GIS) solutions to its customers.

Challenge: To offer reliable and cost-effective network At Nokia Siemens Networks, we build the solutions focusing coverage, capacity and operations to most challenging on four key business issues: schedules and performance requirements Connectivity: To help streamline the network technology Solution: Fast rollout and launch of nationwide shared evolution, build coverage and capacity, and reap the business Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) benefits of a positive environmental approach, Nokia Siemens network, operated from our network operations centre. As a Networks offer technology-neutral solutions that deliver result, 3GIS was among the first service providers to launch future-proof, end-to-end communications systems.

3G services. To reduce CAPEX and meet regulatory and Efficiency: To help find the best way to reduce Operating coverage timetables, 3GIS decided to implement a network Expenditure (OPEX) and Capital Expenditure (CAPEX), sharing solution in Sweden. Another priority for 3GIS was improve productivity and optimise the use of existing to focus on their core business of serving customers. Nokia assets, Nokia Siemens Networks offer a proven three-step Siemens Networks’ comprehensive solution has enabled them benchmarking, auditing and business optimisation process. to meet their challenging objectives for speed, cost efficiency Revenue Growth: Nokia Siemens Networks’ end-to-end and service coverage in their rollout and operations. approach to business solutions helps create, test, deliver, and charge/manage innovative services that delight end-users in Please tell us about how the New Growth Markets are all the chosen markets. Our approach helps our customers’ addressing consumer needs. What is Nokia Siemens business to drive growth; increase value and improve Networks plan of action in this regard?

Nokia Siemens Networks analysis of global income shows profitability.

Business Transformation: Nokia Siemens Networks assist that 2.7bn people earn 2 USD or less per day, and have a in aligning its customer’s organisation processes and business budget of 3 USD per month or less to spend on Information model according to their chosen strategy, current assets and and Communication Technology (ICT). Slightly higher up market conditions to achieve the structural and strategic the income scale, we find that 2.8bn people have an income of between 4 USD and 40 USD per month. Addressing changes that are competitive.

The following are few of the success stories with our the affordability challenges for these income groups is a fundamental consideration. customers: Affordability is linked directly to the Total Cost of Ownership Bharti, India Challenge: To provide secure power especially for sites (TCO) for the consumer. TCO includes the service fees, taxes and mobile handset price. High TCO is a major user growth outside the grid.

Solution: Savings of USD 14,000 per site in energy OPEX barrier for accessing ICTs through mobile communications.

A TCO of less than 5 USD per month would enable the every year by hybrid solar-wind solution. Working together, Nokia Siemens Networks has helped Bharti extend the reach majority of people in emerging markets to access and use of their solar hybrid sites. In the state of Orissa, one of these mobile services. Nokia TCO study, November 2007 of consumer TCO across 80 sites is operating without Nokia Siemens Networks analysis of emerging market countries diesel 95% of the time, which global income shows that 2.7bn people found that only four countries translates into significant earn 2 USD or less per day, and have a have achieved the limit of savings. budget of 3 USD per month or less to 5 USD. VimpelCom, Russia A major part of achieving Challenge: To improve spend on Information and Communication lower consumer TCO is network and service quality Technology (ICT) the deployment of a mix of while reducing costs. innovative technology and Solution: Higher quality, lower costs and greater customer loyalty from real-time novel business models to minimise the communications visibility of live traffic and subscriber activity with NetAct service providers’ (CSP) OPEX and CAPEX. For example, Traffica (solution of NSN). With Nokia Siemens Networks networks and their support functions typically account for NetAct™ solution, VimpelCom can trace different phone more than 50% of net OPEX in emerging markets. There types, usage and problems in real time, making it possible to must also be a sharp focus on issues like reducing the power speed up trouble-shooting and manage service quality more consumption of base station sites, sharing site infrastructure to reduce capital costs, and solutions that cut backhaul costs. cost effectively.

With lower costs, the CSP is in a stronger position to Hutchison Telecom, Indonesia Challenge: To build service delivery machinery quickly offer lower-priced services to its customers and still remain profitable in its business. End-user costs are also widely from the ground up as efficiently as possible.

Solution: NSN launched a competitive service offering, reduced by the sharing of devices. Recent studies have shown supported by tailored service delivery platform and managed that 81% of lower income consumers in India do not own services for daily operations. From the very start, Hutchison a handset, yet 55% can get to a phone within five minutes ov

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(LIRNEAsia study on Teleuse@BOP in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Thailand, 2006).

Transparency of costs and giving consumers control over what they spend are also vital for building confidence. While developed markets have experienced rapid growth in data use driven by flat-rate pricing tariffs that are easy to understand, these are typically pitched too high for lower-income end users in emerging markets. Communications service providers need to find new and innovative pricing models that work with low Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) markets.

Communications services providers can help to create a better market by offering more services that can generate economic benefits for users. They can build greater trust with their customers that will generate long term growth and bring other benefits such as lower churn. But enabling affordable connectivity takes a united effort between different players in the ecosystem, particularly through public-private partnerships, so governments also have a clear role in actively helping the business ecosystem to develop.

Nokia Siemens Networks helps provide solutions for communications service providers, one of them being the village connection. The company is also active in many other fronts. For instance, it has commissioned a study (with Professor Waverman from London Business School) aiming at understanding how well ICT investments are being used.

The connectivity scorecard is being expanded already to come up with more detailed insights and more countries: the work is done in co-operation with national governments and multinational institutions.

How is NSN planning to incorporate these in its e-Governance initiatives across the globe and particularly in India?

Mobile devices have the maximum potential to stimulate the supply and demand of public services because of their pervasiveness, interactivity, multiple functions -voice, radio, Internet, payment, their ability to include the most

Providing affordable communications to the unconnected is a prime motto of Nokia Siemens Networks. Please elaborate on the success rate of ‘Village Connection’ solution that NSN has developed.

Nokia Siemens Networks Village Connection is an awardwinning Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Internet Protocol (IP) - based system that is one example of a solution that extends mobile voice and data coverage into rural villages.

Village Connection is deployed in four states of India today – and trials are ongoing with the operator Vodacom in Tanzania. In addition, trials are ongoing in several countries across APAC, Africa and Latin America.

Village Connection won a top innovation award at the Indian Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association (TEMA) National Awards Ceremony in May 2008. According to N.K. Goyal, Chairman Emeritus, TEMA, two key factors made Village Connection stand out in the Innovation category. The first is the system support for local subscriber management in the villages, enabling a franchise-based business model. The second is its solution architecture that eliminates the traditional network hierarchies for traffic between neighbouring villages, minimising the capital and operational expenditure for operators.

marginalised people in society, their potential to reduce opportunity costs associated with traveling or corrupt practices. Despite these observations, the report found that few of the stakeholders consulted recognised the importance of mobile communications, while only a minority of users thought it was important to receive e-Content through the mobile phones. One implication that arises from this is the need to raise awareness of mobile devices as tools for delivering socially-oriented content. The private sector, in particular equipment vendors, mobile device manufacturers and operators must do more to educate policymakers, civil society and users about the ability of mobile devices to deliver services, with more examples of mobile content and service provision. Currently, policy makers, civil society and users still view mobile devices as tools for voice and commercial Value Added Services(VAS) such as ring tones.

Another important finding from the report is how governments of Ghana, India and South Africa are making efforts to provide shared access points to broadband Internet through Personal Computers (PCs) and PC like terminals. In South Africa, some of these telecenters and cyber labs were implemented as part of the universal service strategy and were considered expensive, dysfunctional and are under utilised.

In Ghana, the fall in the number of commercial Internet cafes, from 2,000 to 1,200 between 2003 and 2006, is seen as evidence of an unsustainable business model.

Tell us about the important findings of the e-Governance survey that Nokia Siemens Networks conducted along with the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation.

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sustainable operational models for shared Internet access. NSN Village Connection Internet kiosk is taking this lesson to a concrete level by advocating a franchise based business model to its operator customers to ensure sustainability.

National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of the Government of India is a big project, where mobile service providers have a significant role to play. What is your take on this?

I think that NeGP is a step in the right direction. I also agree that mobile services providers have a big role to play in NeGP. But in my opinion, taking connectivity to rural domain would mean that government, regulators, private sector (telecom vendors and operators) and Non - Government Organisations (NGOs) have to come together and work as a team to make this plan a success and also make sure that benefits of connectivity are reaped by the rural population to increase their living standards and contribute in the growth of the country.

Nokia Siemens Networks have been long working on this by bringing solutions that are cost effective and business models if applied brings win-win situation for all. Apart from this, we are already engaging in multi-stakeholder dialogue involving government, regulators, operators and NGOs. I think that getting 5 billion people connected by 2015 and making most of them reap the benefits of connectivity is a goal that is definitely achievable.

Mobile phones are a potential source of commercial transactions. Please tell us about the opportunities and hurdles in m-Transactions.

Financial services are critical for economic development and inclusive financial services for the un-banked are essential for poverty reduction. Over the last two years, pilot programmes in Africa and Asia have highlighted the potential for mobile phones to deliver basic financial services in developing countries. A report by Vodafone, Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks shows how these services provide the first real opportunity for many poorer people to get on a formal ‘banking ladder’ with benefits including reduced threat of crime, time saving and secure savings opportunities.

Existing banking regulation is currently inappropriate for the growth of m-Transaction schemes. Vodafone, Nokia and Nokia

Siemens Networks are calling for regulators to ensure they do not restrict commercial experimentation or limit the schemes to subeconomical scale. Key suggested changes to regulation detail in the report include: Review of deposit taking: Current regulation of deposit taking is shaped around the needs of banks and at present mobile systems are limited in the size of transactions they can undertake. Deposit taking regulation needs to allow new entry on a larger scale by mtransactions operators.

Access to the clearing system: As new entrants, m-Transactions operators must be able to access the clearing system.

Adaptation of ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) and antimoney laundering: KYC and anti-money laundering rules need to be adapted to conditions in developing markets where formal documentation and access to photocopiers is limited. The customer data held by mobile operators, with appropriate safeguards, offer an alternative to existing forms of regulation.

Interoperability of m-Transaction schemes: Interoperability of m-Transactions schemes must be carefully considered to enable operators to benefit from network effects but ensure that the intensity of competition in new markets and need for innovation is not stifled.

The development of m-Transactions is also expected to introduce significant improvements in financial services, such as easier and cheaper international payments especially for remittances home, or reduced risk in domestic payments by near real-time transfers.

There is a growing digital divide between the high end users of mobile phones and the low income subscribers. Please comment.

Most emerging markets recognise the need for infrastructure investments to be matched with parallel educational program to increase ICT skills. The evidence shows that greater use of ICT improves people’s economic situation and their quality of life.

Consumers gain more spending power, which naturally drives up demand for services, creating a virtuous circle of growth. Mobile access holds the key for bringing the power of the Internet to the masses in emerging markets. While, users in developed markets see mobile Internet access as a convenient complement to the fixed Internet experience, in emerging markets the mobile will be the dominant means for delivering vital services via Internet.

Nokia Outlines Initiatives Targeting Rural Markets of India Nokia is now tapping rural markets of India in the areas of microfinance, distribution and value-added services specifically for farmers. The company, which has forayed into Internet services on a global scale, is also looking to launch entry-level handsets to cater to the non-urban consumers.

Nokia is looking forward at micro-finance as a major initiative to increase mobile penetration in India from the current 26 per cent. The company is running pilots and trials to gauge consumer response in select markets and will soon come out with specific offerings to make buying mobile phones more affordable. The company is also providing agriculture-based solutions catering to the vast farmer community in India. Nokia is working with a host of content providers and has

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started programmes for farmers, which include providing solutions from information on market prices for agricultural products to weather updates to financing options. To access difficult and underserved markets, Nokia aims to leverage its distribution network to expand into rural geographies. In addition to increasing its existing fleet of rural vans, the company will also be reaching out to villages across India to showcase the relevant product portfolio and solutions to create awareness on the use of mobile technology. Nokia is simultaneously focusing on increasing its Care Service Centres in the rural geographies. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), Nokia accounted for 52 per cent of the handsets shipped into India during the quarter ended March 31, 2008.

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Providing Communication Services for Government www.motorola.com

Bharat Bhatia, Regional Director, SAARC, South East Asia, Global Government Affairs & Public Policy, Motorola India Pvt. Ltd. 48

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Please elaborate upon the growth of Motorola’s activities in India. What are your activities in the public sector in India.

Motorola has been operating in India since 1987 and was declared as one of the three strategic countries by Motorola’s global CEO. In that year Motorola Inc. USA had set up an emerging market fund to promote projects in India and China. In 1991, Motorola set up a 100 per cent Captive Software Export Unit in Bangalore to develop World Class Software for Motorola’s internal customers.

As communication advances into high data rate and multimedia services, it is important to ensure that the public safety communities are also equipped with these advancements in technology. Devices such as mobile and portable imaging to share critical information among emergency response team members at the scene of an incident or disaster and un-tethered transmission of specialised video imaging and data gathered by mobile robotic devices can be key to mitigation of environmental disasters.

This facility was rated at Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Level 5. This was the first ever software facility to be given this recognition in the world outside USA. Subsequently, another software center was established at Hyderabad in 1999. In 1994, Motorola set up its manufacturing plant in Bangalore, which won the highest exports award for two consecutive years. During 199899, two Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design centers were set up as a part of Motorola Semiconductor group, which is since been made separate company called Freescale.

Currently, Motorola has over 3000 employees in software, manufacturing, design, Research and Development labs, sales and marketing organisations based in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and other cities. Recently, we have set up our own manufacturing facility in Chennai as an Special Economic Zone (SEZ). We have also established Motorola India Research Labs in 2005.

Motorola has been actively in volved in providing communication services for the government and enterprise customers. We are the communications systems provider to most police, paramilitary and defence organisations’ in the country including the elite Prime Minister’s security organisation Special Protection Group (SPG) and National Security Guard (NSG). In the area of transportation, we provide communications for Delhi Metro and many Railway organisations.

Please tell us about the various trends in the Public Safety Services undertaken in the area of spectrum management in the world. What are the current and future prospects in South East Asia and specifically in India?

In order to provide effective communications, public safety agencies and organisations need to ensure interoperability, reliability, functionality, security in operations and fast call setup. These agencies, therefore, require dedicated communications systems operating on separate frequencies. Identification of common frequency spectrum for Public Safety Services is essential to ensure interoperability and can provide the potential for Public Protection Disaster Relief (PPDR) organisations around the world ov

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to communicate and interact quickly and efficiently, thereby speeding Public Safety Services, maintenance of law and order and disaster relief efforts to save lives. Considering that the radiocommunication needs of public safety organisations are growing, future advanced solutions used by public safety recognises the need for higher data rates, and further real-time video and multimedia.

As communication advances into high data rate and multimedia services, it is important to ensure that the public safety communities are also equipped with these advancements in technology. Devices such as mobile and portable imaging to share critical information among emergency response team members at the scene of an incident or disaster and un-tethered transmission of specialised video imaging and data gathered by mobile robotic devices can be key to mitigation of environmental disasters.

To ensure that such technologies are widely available to these organisations, especially in developing countries, at reasonable price, it is necessary to achieve economies of scale that are brought about by harmonising spectrum and regulatory requirements.

International Telecommunications Union (ITU) an agency of the United Nations Organisation (UNO) for all matters dealing with telecommunications plays an effective role in harmonisation of frequency spectrum at the global level, including treaty function relating to use of the spectrum.

At the instance of Motorola and the Government of India, during the World Radio Conference (WRC) - 2000 held at Istanbul, ITU had decided to work towards identification of common global radio frequency bands for future advanced solutions for public safety and disaster relief purposes. This had lead to ITU’s WRC 2003 identifying regionally harmonised spectrum for advanced public protection and disaster relief solutions that encourage administrations around the world to consider the frequency bands 380-400 MHz, 406.1-430 MHz, 440-470 MHz, 746-806 MHz 806-824/851-869 MHz, 4 940-4 990 MHz and 5 8505 925 MHz or parts for this purpose. The initiative of Motorola and Government of India at the ITU meeting was extremely useful and timely as this lead to more efficient the disaster management and relief work.

Many countries in Asia including south Asia have accepted the ITU recommendations on Public Protection Disaster Relief (PPDR) spectrum.

Compared to other South East Asian countries where according to you does India stands in regard to the connectivity and wireless solutions for the government?

India is way behind on the connectivity and wireless solutions for the government and public safety. Most countries in South 49

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East Asia (SEA) use dedicated public safety communications systems based on Association of Public Safety Communications (APCO) or Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) standards with integrated command, dispatch and control facilities. Only a few state governments have so far implemented these systems.

Broadband PPDR systems in 4.9 GHz and mesh systems are also being implemented in some SEA countries but India is yet to take advantage of such new technologies.

This platform also successfully addresses the deficiencies suffered by most schools, of being ill equipped, not having enough teachers, or having not so skilled teachers. On a wider spectrum, it also demonstrates the alternative application of such platform for India and similar places across the globe in the field of e-Health, e-Governance and e-Commerce. Motorola has also successfully implemented similar systems in some other countries such as Africa.

What are the major regulatory issues in the mobile sector in India and how is it different from other countries in South East Asia and SAARC region?

In India the major regulatory challenges are spectrum and regulations. India’s regulations are based on age old Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 and no attempt has been made to develop a new telecom law. Further, the spectrum management has not yet been given to an independent regulator and this is being managed by the government’s - Wireless Planning and Coordination (WPC) Wing.

Motorola India has set up an e-Learning project in partnership with Deepalaya, to bridge the islands of good education (nodal schools) with underprivileged schools (recipient schools) using a fully interactive platform with peripherals such as computers, web cameras and a Smart Board to set up a virtual class room with the capability to transmit and receive both ways live and fully interactive voice, video and data transmission The project addresses real challenges/ needs faced by India in accordance with the intrinsic In the field of Education and Health, what are the various values of Motorola of partnering and contributing to the society for promotion of education. programmes undertaken by Motorola in India?

Motorola India has set up an e-Learning project in partnership with Deepalaya, to bridge the islands of good education (nodal schools) with underprivileged schools (recipient schools) using a fully interactive platform with peripherals such as computers, web cameras and a Smart Board to set up a virtual class room with the capability to transmit and receive both ways live and fully interactive voice, video and data transmission The project addresses real challenges/needs faced by India in accordance with the intrinsic values of Motorola of partnering and contributing to the society for promotion of education.

For Instance, the two schools that are geographically apart share class room sessions for English and Science education, wherein the teacher in the nodal school is able to simultaneously teach the students of both the nodal school as well as the remote/ recipient school.

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Briefly tell us about Motorola’s Research and Development initiatives in rural India?

Motorola India has set up a India Research Lab with a mission to create innovative technologies and solutions for the next wave of communications with a focus on rural and emerging areas.

We do this in-house, as well as through academic relations with top-of-the-line academic and research institutions such as Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Science (ISc), TSE-Madurai, Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) -Bangalore.

Some of the research topics being worked at our labs are: a.

WiFi technologies to extend the range for broadband in remote villages. b. Delay tolerant networks for message (voice and text) delivery. c.

Design and ethnographic studies for mobile device interfaces d. Nano devices and materials for energy, displays and RF electronics. Particularly in view of power shortages in rural areas. e.

Residential gateways for converged communications and entertainment services delivery to rural areas.

Would you like to give some message to the policy makers in India.

I think, key work in this area is through collaborations. Most countries have adopted a system of interactive working between the industry players and the policy makers. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for example, has developed an excellent consultation process. Similar process needs to be implemented in the area of telecom licensing and spectrum management. Further, more efforts are needed to implement wireless communications for Public Safety and Disaster Relief Applications. www.egovonline.net

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PERSPECTIVE

Indian Society: Is it Ready for Online Government Services?

Ajay Ahuja INTRODUCTION

Government of India through its National e-Governance Plan has been promoting various e-Governance initiatives in India. e-Governance provides an excellent opportunity for improving governance. It is a Strategic tool, which will improve Quality of life of Citizens across various sections of the society. It aspires for an efficient and effective Government, which is transparent and open, and which provides Citizen Centric Services in quick and efficient manner. Most of the Sates across the country are also initiating e-Governance efforts at State level. A successful implementation of e-Governance will lead to an effective and efficiently working Society. For the successful implementation of Government’s e-Governance initiatives, it is essential that the Government Departments and Infrastructure be ready to support these initiatives. It is also important that the Citizens of India, for whose benefit these initiatives are being taken, should be aware and capable of utilizing and reaping the benefits of these initiatives. The question on our society’s readiness for e-Governance needs to be debated, discussed and answered.

This article presents a field study conducted to find the status of Indian citizen’s readiness and awareness towards various e-Governance initiatives and services. It is an attempt to study the awareness level and usage of computers and Internet for various online Government services, amongst a sample of citizens from the Delhi state. The findings are then analyzed and possible recommendations formulated. These recommendations are based on the actual inputs received from the prospective users of these e-Governance services, who are from various sections of the society. These recommendations can be used by the various Government agencies, Municipal corporations and the Delhi State Government to make their e-Governance initiatives more effective, efficient and fruitful.

The pilot study involved field research around a sample of citizens with a focus on studying the factors and limitations around the awareness and usage of online Government services. Samples were taken from various sections of the society. The data was collected and analysed. A diary of events (Table 1), documenting each interaction was maintained.

The diary of events was based on a framework of qualitative questionnaire. Based on the inputs received, and analysis of ov

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data collected, awareness levels in terms of e-Governance were compared and evaluated.

The results were amazing and lead to some patterns. The recommendations based on these results are later presented in this article. These recommendations may be a useful and crucial input for the Government of India and other Government agencies in evaluating the success of various e-Governance initiatives. The findings may be used by various stakeholders within the Government in designing and formulating the guideline and policies to promote eGovernance adaptability amongst Citizens.

It may be emphasized that this was a pilot study with a small sample size. The study can be enhanced and possibly done on a larger sample and or across different segments of the society.

CITIZEN AWARENESS FOR e-GOVERNANCE: A FIELD RESEARCH STUDY

This field research study was focused to study the awareness levels of citizens in our society, in terms of their e-Governance adaptability and understanding. The study possibly helps us answer the question on ‘Is the Indian Society ready to reap the benefits of e-Governance?’

This field research, involved discussions and observations with specific set of citizens from Indian society. The sample was chosen from Delhi state. Qualitative in-depth, unstructured interviews, for the following subjects or focus groups were conducted: senior citizens, college students, corporate employees, housewives and shop owners

ANALYSIS

Data collected from the various groups, was summarised.

Analysis was done on following key factors.

• Citizen awareness of computers • Citizen awareness of Internet • Citizen usage of computers • Citizen usage of Internet • Citizen awareness of online government services 51

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Citizen usage of online government services Apart from this data, the insights and inputs from each group were summarised. There were interesting facts which came out of the study and which have been highlighted in the following sections. These insights and observations can be useful inputs for the government and related agencies to make their e-Governance initiatives more effective and applicable.

Following sub-sections give the details of the findings of this study. •

SENIOR CITIZENS

Data was collected using the informal, participative, focus group discussions from a set of six senior citizens, in the age group of 60 years and above. This group was constituted of retired educated senior citizens. The data shows that most of the senior citizens were aware of computers, Internet and credit card availability. Very rarely, they used computers, Internet and credit cards. Some of them who use computers use it only for word processing. Most of their children use these facilities and that is how they have come to know about this. Some of the senior citizens were aware of railways and passport online facilities. Only one of them was aware of government online services (electricity , telephone bills) – this was through newspaper, and by observing related information on the hard copy of the bills. Those filing IT returns, from this group, do it manually. Most of them use pre-paid mobiles and none of them is aware of Delhi Government web site or online services. Inspite of some of them being aware of the online government services, none of them uses online government services.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 show the Awareness and usage pattern, for Computers, Internet and Online services, for this group of people.

Figure 1 : Senior Citizen - A wareness and usage

Figure 2 :Senior Citizens - Awareness and Usage eg Government online Services

Couple of insights which came out during the focus group discussions with the senior citizens group, are highlighted below: (i) Insights on the best way of promoting online services: This group thinks that the online services can be 52

promoted by making them aware of the same. They think they can learn if proper exposure is given to them.

They recommend trainings on the awareness and usage of these services at school and college level as the best ways of promoting these services. They also think that media, including TV, newspaper, actual paper bills can be a good way of promoting these services. Another way according to them is to promote and advertise usage of these services by advertising for the same, across the actual service counters, where people visit for manual usage of these services. (ii) Insights on the biggest hurdle in using online services: security, lack of awareness and inadequate capacity are the key concerns according to this group which prevent the usage of online services.

The group does not feel confident and safe to share their information online, they are afraid of security breach or frauds related to online transactions.

Lack of awareness of these services is another major factor.

The group is not aware of many of the online government services. Some of them feel that learning at this age is difficult.

Some feel that there is no need for them to use online services.

They think manual ways are better and they do have time to use the services manually and are used to doing it this way.

Lack of availability of infrastructure including computers, Internet was another reason pointed out by some of these people.

STUDENTS

Data was collected using the informal, and participative discussions method, from a set of five students, from Indian Institute of Technology and Delhi University. These students were doing their management, computer or engineering courses. The age group of this sample was from 22 to 30 years.

Most of the students from this sample were aware of computers , Internet and credit cards. Almost all of them had access to computers and Internet, but a few of them used credit cards. Some of them used debit cards instead.

The students have been using Internet generally for chatting, e-mail exchange, download of study material and for social networking, like being a member of a yahoo group or orkut.

Students in general are aware of online railway reservation and online air bookings. Some of them have used their debit cards, which has been provided by their savings bank, to book online tickets, including railways and movie tickets.

Most of them use pre paid mobile phones and recharge them manually.

Most of this community is not aware of any online government services, specifically online electricity, water bill payment etc. In fact they are not involved in any such transaction. They are aware of online railway bookings. None of them is aware of Delhi Government’s web site.

Couple of insights which came out during these interviews and discussions are highlighted below: (i) Insights on the best way of promoting online services: Most of the students feel that the best way to promote www.egovonline.net

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Figure 3 and Figure 4 show the Awareness and usage pattern, for Computers, Internet and Online services, for this group of people.

online, but interestingly, not through government sites, but either through BSES, which is the local electricity company or through citibank, which is the bank linked to their salary account, and which has provisions of online payments. Most of them were aware on online tax filing procedure, but none of them have used it, they use manual method or engage agents instead. Interestingly, none of them is aware of Delhi Government Web site.

Figure 3 : Students - Awareness and usage

Figure 5 and Figure 6 show the Awareness and usage pattern, for Computers, Internet and Online services, for this group of people.

Figure 4 :Students - Awareness and Usage of Government online Services Figure 5 : Corporate Employees - Awareness

online services, is to make them aware of these services through media – newspaper, TV, by publishing the information on the manual bills, by advertising the information at the manual bill counters. They feel that it is possible to make people aware of online services by teaching about the use of these services at school and college levels. Some of them also expressed that this is possible by actually doing the same i.e. Learn by doing. (ii) Insights on the biggest hurdle in using online services: Awareness, lack of resources and security have been the top three hurdles in using online services, according to this group. They also think that the society in general, which includes their parents, are resistant to learn and are happy to use manual services.

Some of them also pointed out the lack of education and language as a barrier in using online services.

CORPORATE EMPLOYEES

The sample was taken from the employees of a Multi National Company. This included employees from sales and services organisation. The age group of this sample was from 30 - 40 years of Age. All of the respondents in this sample were aware of computers, Internet and credit cards and All of them were using Internet, computers and credit cards in their daily routines.

These respondents have been using Internet for various facilities including e-mail, browsing, trainings, using online services, bank account transactions, mobile payment bills and more.

These respondents, in general are aware of online railway and air bookings. Most of them have used debit cards / credit cards to book railway or air tickets or movie tickets. Most use online facilities for mobile bill payment, some also for land line telephone bill payment. Some of them are aware of online services - like electricity bill payment, and do pay it ov

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Figure 6 : Corporate Employees - Awareness and Usage of Government online Services

Insights from this group, which came out during these interviews and discussions are highlighted below: (i) Insights on the best way of promoting online services: This group of respondents feels that the best way to promote online services is by making people aware of these services, which can be done through media, by using newspapers, TV, promoting and advertising at the billing counters, on the print bills , and by putting promotional hoardings etc. Some of them suggested on the job training as a best option of promoting online services. Others pointed out to the availability of the infrastructure at an affordable rate to everybody. (ii) Biggest hurdle in using online services: According to this group, awareness ,security and resource availability are the three major concerns in using online services.

HOUSEWIVES

The sample constituted of women with varied educational background ranging from undergraduate to post graduate and with age groups of 38 to 55 years.

Most of the respondents from this sample, were aware of computers, Internet and credit card. Interestingly, they used credit card more than computers and Internet. Not to guess, this was mostly for the shopping purposes. The ones with higher educational background, having an engineering or diploma have been occasionally using computers and internet, as compared to the others, who do not see any need of using the same. Most of them use pre paid mobile phones.

Some of them were aware of online railway bookings, but 53

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rarely, almost never have they used any of the online services.

None of them was aware of online government services. Most of their husband’s take care of bill payments. None of them was aware of Delhi Government website.

Insights from this group, which came out during these

Figure 9 and Figure 10 show the Awareness and usage pattern, for Computers, Internet and Online services, for this group of people.

Figure 7 and Figure 8 show the Awareness and usage pattern, for Computers, Internet and Online services, for this group of people.

Figure 9 : : Shopkeepers - Awareness and usage

Figure 7 : Housewive- Awareness and usage Figure 10 : Shopkeepers - Awareness and Usage of Government online Services

Figure 8 : Housewives - Awareness and Usage of Government online Services

interviews and discussions are highlighted below: (i) Insights on the best way of promoting online services: This group of respondents feels that awareness through TV, radio and newspapers is the best way to promote the usage of online services. Trainings at school level and voluntary efforts by private organisations to promote learning of online services was another suggestion given by this group. Another suggestion was to learn by doing,suggesting institutionalisation of these services and mandatory usage. (ii) Biggest hurdle in using online services: Awareness, inadequate capacity and lack of knowledge are the top hurdles according to this group, in using online services. Some of them feel that learning at this stage is difficult, everyone does not have facilities, infrastructure and access to these services. Language according to some is another barrier. Security of information was also brought out as a concern area by a respondent having a technical background and experience of using computers and Internet.

people working for them, who do the computer work, but personally they do not use computers or Internet. Some of them were aware of online railway bookings, but most of them have been using manual methods or agents to book tickets. A very few of them, specifically the independent established businessmen, take the help of their employees to do online railway, air booking and mobile payments. None of them was aware of Delhi Governments website.

Insights from this group, which came out during these interviews and discussions are highlighted below: (i) Insights on the best way of promoting online services: Awareness through TV, specifically other news channels, and through newspapers is a recommendation from this group. The subgroup also recommended learning by doing comparing it with the mobile phones, citing an example of usage and awareness of mobile phones what was and what it is today. (ii) Biggest hurdle in using online services: Awareness and

SHOPKEEPERS

The sample constituted of respondents having varied education – ranging from undergraduate to post-graduate.

The range included garment wholeseller ,a garment shop owner, a hair Saloon – barber, a STD booth / photocopier booth owner and a Business man (Architect ). The age group varied from 25 to 50 years.

Most of the respondents from this segment were aware of the computers, Internet and credit cards. Almost none of them personally uses computers and Internet for online services.

Some of them did use credit cards. Some of them have 54

Figure 11: Consolidated Summary on Awareness and Usage of Computers, Internet and Credit cards for 28 respondents

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non affordability are the biggest hurdles according to this sub group, in using online services. They also question on the advantages and gain of using online services, and want to understand about its advantages specific to them. Some of them also highlighted on information security issues of using online services.

The users and citizens need to be convinced on the security aspects of online transactions. There needs to be some sort of assurance on this aspect.

Availability of infrastructure at an affordable and attractive price is another recommendation, which government agencies need to seriously consider. The intention should be to make Internet and computers as easily available as telephones and TVs.

SUMMARY

Summarising the observations, most of the respondents were aware of computers, Internet and credit cards but only few, specifically the corporate employees and students were using these facilities. Very few of the respondents were aware of online government services. Out of the government services, online railway bookings was known to most of the respondents. None of them was aware of Delhi Government web site and corresponding services. Figure 11 shows the consolidated views on awareness and usage of computers, Internet and credit cards. Figure 12 shows the consolidated summary of awareness and usage of Government services.

Figure 12 : : Consolidated Summary on Awareness and Usage of Government Services for 28 respondents

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the results of analysis mentioned in previous section and the insights, following recommendations are suggested to various government agencies in order to make their eGovernance campaign more effective and successful.

Make People Aware: Awareness has been one of the major hurdles pointed out by every subgroup. To make people aware of the services available online, their usage and advantages need to addressed by the government agencies.

The awareness initiatives can be built around media including TVs, radio, newspaper or advertising across the counters, on the paper bills etc.

Institutionalisation of complete framework to ensure learning at all levels, on the job learning and embedded learning is recommended to be an integral part of the society. ov

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CONCLUSION

Government of India is rightly spending time and resources to enable e-Governance services across the country. These services are important both in terms of Governments immediate priorities and its long term vision for the development. These services are meant for the Citizens of the country. This pilot study, reveals some amazing facts on the awareness and usage pattern of these services, amongst the citizens. The citizens are not fully aware of the availability, advantages and applicability of these services. Most of the citizens are not using any online Government services due to lack of awareness, security issues, lack of knowledge and lack of infrastructure.

This study, did bring out the awareness and usage levels for these online services for the pilot group of people considered under this study and showed the lack of awareness and usage of these online services amongst various sections of the society.

Based on the inputs received from various subjects, a set of recommendations have been presented , which may be considered by the Government agencies to make their e-Governance services more effective and efficient.

This study can be further expanded to a larger audience and or to different states across the country to have a complete picture of the actual status of the society in terms of its readiness for e-Governance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Author thanks Prof. Amrit Srinivasan and Dr Vigneswara Ilavarasan of HSS, IIT Delhi, for their guidance in conducting this qualitative field study. Thanks to Prof Vinayshil Gautam of DMS, IIT Delhi for his continued guidance, support and innovative ideas. A special thanks also to all the respondents for taking time off their schedule and providing valuable insights and inputs.

Ajay Ahuja works as an IT Architect for Sun Microsystems India Pvt. Ltd. Ajay has Post Graduate qualifications in Engineering and Management and has about two decades of IT industry experience in various capacities. He has been involved in various Technology enablement initiatives along with designing and architecting solutions for various enterprises across the Government, Education and Defence segments.

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Asia's Largest ICT Event 25-27 November 2008 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

eASIA 2008 Thematic Track

Organisers

ASIA

ASIA

ASIA

ASIA

knowledge for change

ASIA

2008

Participating Government Organisations

Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications (MEWC) Government of Malaysia

INTAN

MOSTI

Ministry of Health Government of Malaysia

MAMPU Government of Malaysia

University of Malya

Participating International Development Agencies

速

The World Bank

www.e-asia.org

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COUNTRY PERSPECTIVE: JORDAN

Reviewing Jordan’s e-Government Development: Seven Years of Promise This article reviews the history of e-Government in Jordan by examining the drivers behind its deployment, what it promised to achieve, and the key strategic problems hindering its transformation.

Samer Mofteh and Mohammed Wanous INTRODUCTION

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan took aggressive steps to transform Jordan to an e-Country by launching a number of e-Initiatives from the start of the year 1999, so that e-Government lay at the heart of the government’s efforts.

Jordan believed that one solution that could be used to develop the country and overcome its limited recourses was to join the global economy and promote sustainable human development by transforming Jordan into an e-Country. This article reviews and summarises the development of Jordan’s e-Government programme that have been developed throughout the seven years of its implementation, highlighting key strategy practices that have affected the country’s transformation. In this study three main approaches have been used to collect and analyse data; more than 80 government publications related to Jordanian e-Government have been reviewed and analysed in order to study the progress of the project. 30 government websites have been analysed using stage analysis so that the level of maturity of e-Government could be assessed, as well as website content analysis being analysed to ascertain their usability. This ov

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was done using an instrument which contains 34 variables examining six dimensions of government websites.

The dimensions are websites online service delivery, helpfulness to the user, ease of navigation, legitimacy, information architecture and accessibility accommodations. Finally qualitative, semi-structured interviews were held with a number of Jordanian public sector officials responsible for

the implementation of e-Government.

These included employees from the eGovernment Programme Office and a number of IT managers who held varying positions in the ministries involved with the e-Government project.

e-GOVERNMENT PROJECT IN JORDAN: A BACKGROUND

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Project History and Goals: The ICT initiatives in Jordan started with the REACH (REACH as a concept is the sum of abbreviations Regulatory Framework, Enabling Environment (Infrastructure), Advancement Programs, Capital and Finance, Human Resource Development.) initiative lunched in 1999 which was the core ICT programme intended to transform the country to eJordan. It promised to play a central role in economical and social improvement of the country. REACH laid out a goal to bolster Jordan’s nascent IT sector and maximise its ability to compete in local, regional, and global markets. REACH Initiative set the following targets to be accomplished in Jordan by the year 2004: US $550 million in annual IT exports.

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Creatings 30,000 IT-related jobs US $150 million cumulative Foreign Direct Investment.

To comply with REACH targets, Jordan undertook major ICT programmes, one of them has been eGovernment. e-Government is a national programme initiated by King Abdullah II in September of 2000. The Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies (MoICT), previously known as the Ministry of Post and Communication (the Ministry was renamed in the year 2003) started the e-Government programme towards achieving the e-Government vision in the year 2005. The vision was that eGovernment would be a contributor to Jordan’s economic and social development by providing access to eGovernment services and information to everyone in the Kingdom irrespective of location, economic status, IT ability and education. e-Government represents a major shift in the role of government towards the ‘client-focused’ delivery of services, rather than government as a collector of information solely for its own purposes.

Project Responsibility: When the Jordanian government started the project deployment, it identified seventeen domains as the major domains for the e-Government initiative.

These domains included economics, education and training, health industry etc. These domains were to be used as the foundation for the e-Services that the government would provide for the citizens. All ministries of Jordan were to attempt to automate their services and provide citizens with online services.

Each ministry had to deliver services online using their own approach for this transformation which would, in theory, be guided, supervised, and monitored by the MoICT. Along with the e-Government project, other initiatives are also taking place within individual ministries, cooperating in a variety of cross-ministerial initiatives under the guidance of the MoICT, using information technologies to drive intra-governmental information flow, as well as to develop services. To a lesser extent the MoICT is involved and responsible for the deployment of ‘Fast Track Projects’ and other main infrastructure and e-Service projects • •

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across Jordan. Fast Track Projects are eight projects initiated in the year 2000 intended to serve online all stakeholders of e-Government. The projects that were chosen were high value low risk projects that would deliver services to large segments of the society setting a positive example of e-Government.

Along with the e-Government project, various ministries are also involved in supervising and monitoring the major e-Government projects in Jordan; the Ministry of Planning oversees the early selection phase, the Ministry of Administrative Reforms is responsible for the policy formulation and coordination of all reform processes, the Prime Minister’s Office develops plans for initiatives whose time scales range within and beyond three years.

However, the MoICT is considered the main ministry responsible for the implementation and development of the e-Government project in Jordan; it has been designated as the focal point for co-ordinating the implementation of the e-Government programme.

Project Outputs: e-Government failure can be defined as the inability to achieve the intended goals. Data analysis indicates that Jordan had failed to achieve any major social and economic development from its e-Government project by the year 2007; these findings are in sync with results found by the UN ‘Global e-Government Readiness Reports’ UNPAN (United Nations Public Administration Network). It classified Jordan within a category of the lowest scoring countries for its website presence indicating a weak e-Government presence.

The MoICT publications and government announcement regarding e-Government indicated that the Jordanian government had not managed to meet most of its e-Government targets. Instead the Government is struggling to achieve transformational outputs from the project. Fast Track Projects have been far from competent in the delivery of services but, in spite of this, advanced levels of service delivery are being scheduled to be achieved in the future. Success stories have been limited in infrastructure building, telecommunication market reform, and conducted training programs for thousands of public sector

employees. Stage analysis indicates that Jordan’s e-Government is still in the informative level of service delivery, and website usability analysis applied using the Backer instrument revealed that websites have not been designed to meet with people’s expectations and needs; instead websites had a very poor usability design reflecting a lack of understanding of people needs to apply online services.

MAIN PROBLEMS HINDERING JORDAN’S e-GOVERNMENT TRANSFORMATION

Data gathered and analysed by different methodological approaches revealed different problems at different levels affecting Jordan’s transformation at a national level. There have been many significant problems delaying Jordan’s transformation such as the lack of infrastructure, the scarcity of funding, absence of a well established e-Society.

On an institutional level within government agencies data analysis showed a number of problems which can be categorised in different domains starting from the expected cultural problems such as resistance to change, as well as the lack of coordination, and accountability problems, technical problems related to knowledge management issues, behavioural problems such as the employees’ adaptability to the introduction of new working methods. Here the following problems are discussed that are delaying Jordan’s e-Transformation.

Lack of an Adaptable Strategy: The Jordanian government did not have a well defined strategy for implementing e-Government; one that responds to the country’s and the people’s needs and matches their profiles. Even when the government set up ‘Fast Track Projects’ they were imported from countries who are leading the field in e-Government and then applied to similar Jordanian institutions without understanding what the characteristics are of a Fast Track Project.

Lack of Focus: Jordan has launched several e-Initiatives at the same time; these include REACH, e-Government, e-Learning, and e-Health. This has led to a loss of concentration and focus by the government on any specific www.egovonline.net

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initiative in spite of the fact that all the initiatives that have been introduced are completely new both to the Jordanian government and to Jordanian society. Another factor that increases the confusion is the involvement of a number of international donors with little co-ordination, if any, between them.

Sector Existing Structure and Culture of the Public Sctor: The security procedures and the involvement of military based departments makes the re-engineering process by integrating civic and military departments harder due to legal, security and cultural considerations. In addition, the country’s hostile geographical location as well as the fact that more than one third of its population is of Palestinian refugees makes integrating civic and military departments difficult to achieve. Within civic public sector agencies especially key ones, there is a sense of resistance to information and databases sharing that would lead to any reduction of institutions power or authority.

Lack of Consistency: One of the major obstacles found was the lack of consistency in ICT plans and policies within Jordanian public sector institutions, which has been caused by the rapid change in the positions of IT managers and employees. It was noted that a number of IT experts did not know where e-Government is heading because there were no short term goals to achieve and rapid change in their objectives.

Ineffectiveness in Promoting e-Society: Statistics show that during the past six years, the government has failed to connect the vast majority of the Jordanian population online, with official figures indicating that Internet users accounted for only 8% of the total population in the year 2005. The numbers of PC’s in Jordan are 4.5 per 100 users. These numbers reflect the reality of the limited existence of a true e-Society within Jordan. Figures for e-Government spending between the years 2004 and 2006 reflect a huge gap between the spending of tens of millions of dollars allocated to e-Services projects in contrast to only tens of thousands of dollars being allocated to projects aimed to promote Internet access and computer ownership between citizens. ov

August 2008

Technical Problems and the Lack of IT Expertise: Due to the scarcity of financial and technical recourses, in addition to government agencies resisting change to their systems and working methods, many government agencies are building on existing systems to integrate them.

This situation where different existing systems need to be integrated with newly implemented ones make the automation of services a complex process. There is a lack of expertise especially in areas related to IT project management and risk management. Also there are shortages in many technical areas such as system developers, website developers, network experts. This has led to the Jordanian government in most cases consulting private sector firms for the implementation of e-Government projects.

This process makes implementation more expensive.

Central Government Facing Problems in Achieving Requirements: Although MoICT has identified building blocks to successfully implement e-Government, the government is not fully executing most of the recommended enablers.

For example, the legal and regulatory framework is identified in Jordan’s e-Government strategy, as an important enabler for e-Government transactions and integration. However, the framework has not achieved any significant progress and is not expected to develop over the coming few years because of the lack of funding.

Lack of Monitoring and Testing: Poor government websites in Jordan reflect a lack of monitoring procedure. Many government websites are found in a dire condition, for example a few ministries websites were only in English language, although the main language of Jordan is Arabic. Also the websites have a very poor design and interface, most of their internal links were broken, and information was out of date.

CONCLUSION

Most governments around the world are deploying e-Government projects in the hope of achieving many promised benefits.

Jordan initiated its e-Government project hoping to achieve social and economic development in what seemed a straight - forward implementable project.

However e-Government proved to be a complicated process that requires significant resources. e-Government in Jordan faces challenges that do not arise from hardware and software issues, but from the nature of existing social and administrative regimes which cannot be easily re-engineered to accommodate the evolving networked digital environment of the state model wished for by e-Government optimists.

The development of the systems, networks and infrastructure necessary to make e-Government work, requires the re-alignment not only of the government, but also of the social and cultural frameworks of the country. In order to achieve better e-Government transformation, governments should adopt a realistic transformation strategy reflecting acceptable levels of change attuned to the country’s resourses, and executed in stages within an acceptable level of time frames that would respond to both social and cultural changes brought by e-Government.

Developing countries implementing e-Government should consider methods and invest in projects that would boost e-Commerce, and e-Business activities and develop their e-Society before trying to achieve advanced levels of e-Government.

This will give them the chance to empower their citizens towards being ready for e-Government when it is achieved.

Samer Mofteh is a doctoral candidate at the Engineering Management Group, University of Bristol UK. His research interests include managerial and social requirements for the implementation of e-Government in the developing world.

He may be reached at Samer 425@hotmail.com Mohammed Wanous is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering Management at the University of Bristol, UK. His research interests include applications of artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic and nurofuzzy logic. He may be reached at m.wanous@bristol.ac.uk

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AUGUST 7-8, 2008

SEPTEMBER 17-19, 2008

OCTOBER 22, 2008

Information Architecture and Collaborative Design Sydney, Australia

Marketing 2.0 and Beyond Sydney, Australia

4th International Conference on e-Government Melbourne, Australia

http://www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au/eventsc031Marketing2.0.htm

http://www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au/eventsc046IAandCollaborativeDesign.htm

WHATS ON

AUGUST 25-27, 2008 Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment Brisbane, Australia

http://www.academic-conferences.org/iceg/iceg2008/ iceg08-home.html

SEPTEMBER 25, 2008

22-24 OCTOBER 2008

2nd International Conference on Methodologies, Technologies and Tools enabling e-Government Corfu, Greece

e-Challenges e-2008 Conference Stockholm, Sweden http://www.echallenges.org/e2008/

http://conferences.cs.unicam.it/metteg08/

http://www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au/events-c025_ eGovernment.htm

23 - 24 OCTOBER 2008 SEPTEMBER 29-30, 2008

AUGUST 26, 2008

4th International Conference on e-Government 2008 RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Digital Preservation: Protecting the Future of Electronic Documents Sydney, Australia

Security 2008 Conference and Exhibition Sydney, Australia http://www.securityexpo.com.au/

http://www.econference.com.au/4th-InternationalConference-on-e-Government-2008.html

http://www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au/events-c063_ DigitalPreservation.htm

AUGUST 27, 2008 International Symposium on Telecommunication Tehran, Iran http://ist2008.itrc.ac.ir

Look Out For !

OCTOBER 8-10, 2008 3rd Annual Advancing Intranet Management in the Public Sector Sydney, Australia

SEPTEMBER 3, 2008

http://www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au/eventsc032AdvancingIMinPublicSector.htm

3rd International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues in IT Prague, Czech Republic http://www.lspi.net

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OCTOBER 15, 2008 Secure Infrastructure Workshop Paris, France

SEPTEMBER 9-11, 2008

http://www.epractice.eu/workshop/FASTeTEN

Aligning Intellectual Property and Digital Cultures Sydney, Australia

OCTOBER 18, 2008

http://www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au/events-c029_ AligningIPandDigitalCultures.htm

GCC eBanking Forum Dubai, United Arab Emirates

25-27 November, 2008 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

http://www.datamatixgroup.com

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