Passport Seva Project: Expectations Go Up: December 2008 Issue

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-GOVERNMENT

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INTERVIEW

Phillipe Dongier, Sector Manager, Global Information and Communication Technology, World Bank

Passport Seva Project:

Expectations Go Up

I SSN 0 9 73-16 1X

VOLUME 4

| ISSUE 12 | DECEMBER 2008

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

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eINDIA 2009 REPORT

e-Asia 2008, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

4- 6 August India Expo Centre, Expo XXI, Greater Noida, India

INTERVIEW

Parvez Iftikhar CEO USF, Pakistan

Cel e

g n i at r b

4Years

Of journey on the path of e- Governance

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Anniversar y

Look forward to Anniversary Special issue - JANUARY 2009 Special features on : • Current status of e-governance in India • Central Government Projects • State Government Projects • Common Service Centres (CSCs) • e-Governance initiative in Banks • International Perspective

Exclusive Interviews with : • Policy Makers • CEO/CIO • Implementors • Solution Providers • Technology Experts • Project Heads • Domain Experts

Industry focus on : • Network and Security • Storage and Server • RFID • Broadband & Wireless (3G, WiMAX) • Document Management • Green initatives

For advertising enquiry contact: Gautam Navin (gautam@csdms.in), +91-981812525, Debabrata Ray (debabrata@csdms.in), +91-9899650692

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w w w . e g o v o n l i n e . n e t | volume 4 | issue 12 | december 2008

eASIA REPORT 2008

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eASIA 2008 Asia’s Premier ICT Event

COVER STORY

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Passport Seva Project: Expectations Go Up Sandeep Budki

COVER INTERVIEW

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Redefining Passport Seva Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice President, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

INTERVIEW

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Sectoral Coherence for Better Governance Phillipe Dongier, Sector Manager, Global Information and Communication

Technology, World Bank

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Serving the Unserved Parvez Iftikhar, CEO, Universal Service Fund Pvt. Ltd.

Audio Visual Systems for the Government G Sundar, CEO, MIRC Electronics Limited (Onida)

FEATURE

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Open Source and the Opportunity to Transform

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Sandeep Sehgal, Head - Government Vertical and ISV, Venkatesh Hariharan, Director - Government Affairs, Red India Pvt Ltd.

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Choosing to Interoperate, so you can Innovate

Vijay Kapur, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India

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egov National News

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SaaS for e-Governance Sudhir Aggarwal, Senior Vice President and Head - Government, Sify Technologies

Limited

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egov International News

REPORT

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Sustainable Development Index for India Sandeep Budki

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Executive Movements

mCONNECT

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Events Watch

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Wimax – Maximising Connectivity Sandeep Budki

mConnect News

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December 2008

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Sign Off

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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.

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

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

ARTICLES / CASE STUDIES should not exceed

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

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

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

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

year 2002 onwards, are preferable. In case of website, provide the URL. MANUSCRIPTS should be typed in a standard printable font (Times New Roman 12 font size, titles in bold) and submitted either through mail or post.

RELEVANT FIGURES of adequate quality (300 dpi) should be submitted in JPEG/ TIFF format.

A BRIEF BIO-DATA and passport size photograph(s) of the author(s) must be enclosed.

ALL CONTRIBUTIONS ARE SUBJECT TO APPROVAL BY THE PUBLISHER.

Please send in your papers/articles/comments to: The Editor, egov, G-4, Sector 39, NOIDA (UP) 201 301, India. tel: +91 120 2502180-85, fax: +91 120 2500060, email: info@egovonline.net

Your daily cup of hot tea with hot e-Government news!

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ov volume 4 | issue 12 | december 2008 PRESIDENT

EDITORIAL

Dr. M P Narayanan EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Ravi Gupta

Passport Seva Project: Expectations go up

GROUP DIRECTORS

Maneesh Prasad Sanjay Kumar ASSISTANT EDITOR

Prachi Shirur SR. CORRESPONDENT

Sandeep Budki SR. SUB EDITOR

Nilakshi Barooah RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Tannu Singh MARKETING

Gautam Navin mobile: +91 9818125257 email: gautam@egovonline.net Debabrata Ray mobile: +91 9899650692 email: debabrata@egovonline.net

India is gearing up for a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model in a big way now. The recent tie up of the Tata Consultancy Services with the Ministry of External Affairs for the Passport Seva Project in the country is a live example of such a model. Bringing forth this trend of partnerships, egov is carrying an exclusive cover story on the topic. PPP model is based on the virtue of shared risks and shared rewards. It is believed that it will foster development in every aspect and all other sectors are expected to follow suit. Speaking to egov magazine about cross sectoral governance, Phillipe Dongier from the World Bank also stressed upon the significant achievements of such partnerships across different countries in the world.

This issue also highlights the successful completion of Asia’s Premier ICT event - eASIA 2008 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The conference cum exhibition with its five seminal thematic tracks – egov, mServe, eHealth, Telecentre and Dgital Learning was a major hit with participation of stakeholders audience from across the globe. This issue carries a special report on eASIA 2008.

SALES

Santosh Kumar Gupta mobile: +91 9891192996 email: santosh@egovonline.net Anuj Agrawal mobile: +91-9911302086 anuj@csdms.in

The debate over Open Source Softwares (OSS) is been there for a while now.

The ones in favor of the OSS have been promoting such software technology for its benefits over paid sources. We have a special section on ‘Open Source’ in this month’s issue, bringing the views of the major players from the private sector about the pros and cons of open source technology.

SR. GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Bishwajeet Kumar Singh GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

Om Prakash Thakur Chandrakesh Bihari Lal (James) WEB MAINTAINANCE

Zia Salahuddin, Amit Pal SUBSCRIPTIONS & CIRCULATION

Lipika Dutta (+91 9871481708) Manoj Kumar (+91 9971404484)

With the completion of this issue of egov, we have successfully marked another calender year in our kitty. Moving ahead with the confidence gathered from the immense success of our 3rd Anniversary Special issue 2008, we are glad to inform you that we are coming up with the 4th Anniversary Special issue in the month of January 2009. This special issue will focus on views, ideas, opinions, and experiences of thought leaders and practitioners in the e-Governance arena across India and Asia. We are all set for our fourth anniversary issue with the dawn of the new year. Views, ideas and comments from our devoted readers for this special issue are welcome.

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE

eGov

We would be glad to have your feedback on this issue of egov magazine.

G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA 201301, India tel: +91 120 2502181-85, fax: +91 120 2500060 email: info@egovonline.net egov is published in technical collboration with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies egov does not neccesarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors. egov is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.

Owner, Publisher, Printer, Ravi Gupta Printed at R P Printers, G-68, Sector - 6 Noida, U.P. and published from 710 Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50 Noida, UP Editor: Ravi Gupta

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Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

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eASIA REPORT 2008

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here have been several Asian countries that have made enormous progress in the arena of ICT awareness, knowledge, and skill.

Some have completely outpaced others on particular areas and have become global leaders. ICT still has much more in stock to rule the roost. Many new market segments and many new domains will probably see a big growth in times to come. A leading position in these new growth areas is crucial, if Asia wants to play in the first league of productivity and progress, combined with a strong policy system. eASiA2008 is just another attempt and approach of exploring all those opportunities leading towards a Digital Asia.

THE ORGANISERS

eASIA 2008, the conference and exhibition was held in Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre from November 11-13, 2008 in Malaysia by the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), the leading nongovernmental organisation engaged in advocacy, research and community building in ICT for Development and knowledge management issues. Hosted by the Ministry of Water, Energy and 8}

Communications, Malaysia and in partnership with several other agencies, the conference and exhibition brought together over 700 delegates from 45 countries in three days of intensive discussions, consultations, deliberations, sharing and networking covering five developmental tracks- eGov, mServe, Digital LEARNING, Asian Telecentre Forum, and eHealth.

and establish partnerships for cooperation and collaboration.

While Dr M P Narayanan and Dr Ravi Gupta, the President and Director of CSDMS highlighted the vision and the key objectives behind the conference and exhibition. H.E. Dato’ Dr. Halim Man, Secretary General, Ministry of Energy, Water & Communications, Malaysia, Karl Brown, Associate Director - Applied Technology, Rockefeller Foundation, USA, Jyrki Pulkkinen, CEO, Global eSchools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI), Dublin, Ireland, Richard Fuchs, Regional Director, East and South East Asia, International Development Research Centre, Yasmin Mahmood, Managing Director, Microsoft Malaysia SDN. BHD, Abdul Rahman Abu Haniffa, Director - Government Affairs, Malaysia & ASEAN, Intel, Dr. Joseph Amuzu, Adviser, Social Transformation Programs Division - Health Section, Commonwealth Secretariat, UK also reiterated that the way forward for ICT4D in Asia was to collaborate and strengthen the initiatives through renewed partnerships and sharing of expertise.

THE GRAND INAUGURATION

THE EXHIBITION

Deputy Minister of Energy, Water and Telecommunications, Datuk Joseph Salang while inaugurating eASiA2008 said, the ministry was working to transform its rural Telecentres, known as Pusat Internet Desa to hubs of socio-economic development. The new initiative, known as the Malaysian Telecentre Social Entrepreneurs’ Club, will transform Telecentres to foster entrepreneurship and encourage learning in these communities, he said. Salang explained this was in line with the government’s national broadband plan. He added that local clinics and libraries would also be included as part of the government’s broadband agenda. Commenting on the e-Asia 2008, Joseph said the event was a platform for ICT players to network

The conference also served as a exhibition host of some of the latest esolutions, services, initiatives and case studies from across Asia and beyond.

Exhibitors from professional service providers, IT vendors, telecom venders, satellite providers, consulting firms, government agencies and national/ international development organizations participated in the exhibition. KTAK, Microsoft, MSC Malaysia, MAMPU Malaysia, SMART Technologies, University of Malaya, OUM, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), UUM, QAI Global Institute, Promethean, OneRoof Inc, Ministry of Communication & Technology, Thailand, Hitachi, EP-TEC Solutions, etc are a few to name in the list of exhibitors. www.egovonline.net

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eASIA REPORT 2008

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he progress of e-Government in Asian countries has been uneven across the region. Except for a few countries, most countries are in a very early stage of adopting e-Government.

Developing countries in the region have a weak infrastructure to support the development of e-Government. They also lack an enabling legal and policy environment, as well as human capacity to design and implement e-Government applications. In this scenario, it becomes imperative for the countries that are slow to adopt e-Government, to learn from the e-Government strategies and models adopted by countries. egov Asia 2008 provides a platform for all stakeholderspolicy makers, practitioners, industry leaders, academicians and architects of e-Government projects- across the Asian continent to share the achievements, challenges and lessons learned in implementing e-Governance. egov Asia 2008 was third in the series of the annual eASIA event. This track comprised of six sessions including workshop by Microsoft.

SESSION: 1 e-GOVERNANCE : A STRATEGIC VISION

The first session in e-Gov track was eGovernance: A strategic Vision.Speakers in this session were Dr. Nor Aliah BT. Mohd Zahri , Deputy Director General (ICT), Malaysian Administrative Modernisation & Management Planning Unit, Malaysia; Shankar Agrawal, Ministry of ICT, India; Hiroshi Mizuta, Virtual Enterprise(VE) Center, Japan; and Dr. A. Joseph, Director, Centre for Education and Rural Development, Madurai, Tamilnadu, India.

Dr. Nor Aliah Mohd Zahri, gave a presentation on “e-Government in Malaysia: Vision and Strategy.”

She explained the strategic plan for Government ICT and its project for The Multimedia Super Corridor.

Second speaker Shankar Agrawal, shared his experience about the Indian Perspective of ICT. He explained how India is moving towards the growth of ICT and shared his experience about National e-Governance Plan.

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Third speaker Hiroshi Mizuta, explained about the eParticipation through rating the Portal Sites. Finally Dr. A joseph, discussed about e-Governance in Local Administration.

SESSION 2: INNOVATIVE e-GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES

The secind session was chaired by Toru Nakaya, Director, International Cooperation Division, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan. The speakers in this session were C.N. Wickramasinghe, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka; Sarina Othman, Lecturer, UiTM, Malaysia; Jitendra Routray, AnaRDe Foundation, India; and Abhay Patodia, CEO, Mobineers Consultancy Services, India.

Jitendra Routray in his presentation discussed about e-Governance is not really about technology. It is about people, processes, and results – using information and communications technologies (ICT) to improve the transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness of public institutions.

C.N. Wickramasinghe and Nobaya Ahamad in their joint presentation discussed about ICT for Inventions (ICT4I), Innovations for Development (I4D) and Grassroots inventions and inventors.

Abhay Patodia discussed about issues and challenges in implementing e-Governance in urban local bodies (ULBS) IN INDIA. He said that There are More than 5000 urban Local Bodies in India but their has been Not Much progress in last 4 months.

Sarina Otman in her said Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) facilitate the corporations in Malaysia to use of e-Lodgement services for the electronic filing or lodging of documents to the Registrar.

SESSION: 3 e-PROCUREMENT : THE MANTRA FOR TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY?

Speakers in this session were Nor’aini Bt Abdul Razak, ePerolehan Unit, Ministry of Finance, Malaysia; Bruno von Niman,Vice Chairman,ETSI TC Human Factors, Sweden; Maniam Kaliannan, UiTM, Malaysia;and Ridzuan Kushairi Mohd Ramli, Hazman Shah Abdullah, Rozalli Hashim, UiTM, Malaysia.

Nor’aini Bt Abdul Razak gave a presentation on e-Perolehan in Malaysia. She said that it is an Effective and efficient procurement process as everything is done online.

In their joint presentation Ridzuan Kushairi Mohd Ramli, Hazman Shah Abdullah and Rozalli Hashim presented a paper on Suppliers’ Perception of Government Procurement and eProcurement. Bruno von Niman gave a presentation on the European Telecommunication Standards.

SESSION 4: MALAYSIAN EXPERIENCES IN e-GOVERNMENT

In the final session the speakers were Ahmad Naqiyuddin Bakar, Lecturer, UiTM, Malaysia; Jasmine Binti Ahmad, Lecturer, UiTM, Malaysia; Asiyah Kassim, Lecturer, UiTM, Malaysia; and Mohamad Nazri Bin Aman, UiTM, Malaysia.

Ahmad Naqiyuddin Bakar in his presentation talked about unlocking the potentials to refine e-Government in Malaysia. Jasmine Ahmad in his presentation talked about Main attraction to use e-filing,the motivation to use e-Filing among tax payers and the tax payers perception on eFiling.Mohamad Nazri Aman in his presentation discussed about positive attitudes towards ICT use can exist among non-adopters. www.egovonline.net

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eASIA REPORT 2008

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he lack of adequate connectively has been one of the biggest causes of the limited impact of ICT to bridge the digital divide. Mobile phones have spread throughout much of the developing world more quickly and deeply than any previous technologybased as rolling out a mobile phone network is far cheaper than building a fixed-line systems and Internet networks for computers.

Mobiles offer a variety of services other than communication and entertainment.

These include: News, Stock Prices; Location tracking; Telephone directory; Mobile banking; Ticket reservation; Trading, health services , education, m governance and so forth. mServe Asia 2008 discussed and showcased the different aspects of mobile services, technologies, implementation and implications, developments on the public administration and tie them to the existing and future mGovernment, education, agriculture and other applications across different countries . The conference provided a platform to share local and international developments, experiences and lessons learned for knowledge sharing, and promoted networking and business opportunity development.

SESSION 1: BROADBAND & WIMAX .. WHAT S NEXT?

First session in mServe Asia 2008 was on Broadband and Wimax... what’s next?

Speakers is this session were Zamani Zakariah, GM, MyICMS Technology and Standards Division, MCMC, Malaysia; Abu Saeed Khan, HeadStrategy Analyst, Ericsson. Malaysia; Werner Sutanto, Managing Director, Wimax Program Office, Southeast Asia, Intel Corporation; Zainab Hussain, Senior Manager PMO, Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Ltd., Pakistan; and Vinodan Nair, Assistant General Manager, PMO, HSBB Project, Telekom Malaysia.

Abu Saeed Khan spoke on Simplifying Universal Access He stressed on Addressing the special needs of the least developed countries. That includes tariff and quota free access for their exports, enhanced programs of debt relief, and 12

more generous official development assistance. He further said, “We cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.” on the Wimax front he said that despite the increasing availability of LTE and WiMAX, HSPA (and HSPA+) will still account for 54% of wireless broadband customers (1.1billion) by the end of 2015.WiMAX will be a niche technology in the wireless broadband market, with less than 100 million users by the end of 2015.

Werner Sutanto pondered over the challenges in growth of broadband in Southeast Asia. He further said that Falling WiMAX Chipset Prices Spell Good News for Adoption of Smaller Mobile Devices. He also, stressed the need for Low cost hi-speed connectivity in educational institutions.

SESSION 2. CONTENT & SERVICES : AN INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

This session was chaired by Ir. Wan Murdani Mohamad, Multimedia Development Corporation, Malaysia and Speakers in this session were Michael Bjärhov, Director, Government and Industry Relations, Asia Pacific, Ericsson, Malaysia; Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon, Lecturer, University Utara Malaysia (UUM), Malaysia; Zainab Hussain, Senior Manager PMO, Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Ltd., Pakistan; and Asish Sanyal, Sr. Director, DIT, Govt. of India Asish Sanyal focused on Rural Connectivity in India its Challenges &

Opportunities. He said that About 72% population lives in rural India and there is a Huge urban-rural divide in terms of deployment of lines. He futher said that Rural teledensity is approx 2.4% (target 4% by 2010) against overall teledensity of 14% (Urban around 28%). He also, said that Rural connectivity in India is becoming a reality and Broadband penetration is also picking up.

Zainab Hussain Siddiqui talked about Mobile Banking in Pakistan. He said that A very large ‘under-class’ that is totally reliant on cash for all their day-to-day expenses. This under-class makes no use of the banking sector and so is ‘invisible’ in terms of its cash value.Proliferation of mobile communications offers a unique opportunity for improving access to financial services thus, bringing the forgotten millions into the banking net. He further laid emphasis on Many barriers to successful roll- out exist, but an ‘acceptable’ arrangement must be made for all stakeholders in terms of regulations.

Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon spoke on MOBILE GAME-BASED LEARNING. He talked about Best Practice for Mobile Game Development, Scrum Methodology, Game Development Methodology, Game Life Cycle and Comparison of the Development Methods. He also said In order to make the mGBL successful in learning environment, it should embrace both entertainment and education purposes. students preferred learning through mobile phone rather than other devices. www.egovonline.net

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eHealth Asia 2008 inspiring opening keynote speech of Dato’ Sri Dr. Hj. Mohd Nasir b. Mohd Ashraf, Secretary General, Ministry of Health, Malaysia (represented by Dr. Maimunah Abdul Hamid, Ministry of Health, Malaysia) set the right tone for the two days of conferencing. In context of the challenges in public healthcare delivery, Dato’ Mohd. Nasir’s speech underlined the need for eHealth adoption in countries like Malaysia and the commitment shown by the national government in making such initiatives to succeed.

The first session of the conference titled ‘Understanding eHealth – Policy, Technology, Strategy’ had Dato’ Dr. Jai Mohan, Professor of Health Informatics & Pediatrics, IMU Malaysia & VP, Malaysian Health Informatics Association; Dr. Molly Cheah, President, Open Source HealthCare Alliance, Malaysia; and Datin’ Dr. S. Selvaraju, Consultant, Planning & Development Division, Ministry of Health Malaysia as speakers. While Dato’ Dr. Jai Mohan presented on the potential of eHealth applications in maximising healthcare access, Dr. Molly Cheah talked about the application of open standards based healthcare solutions and Datin’ Dr. Selvaraju contributed on the best practices and challenges in developing national health information network.

The second technical session titled – ‘Technology Solutions & Best Practices for ICT driven Healthcare’ started off with a captivating presentation by Prof.

Dr. Stephen Chu, Vice Chair, Health Level 7 (HL7) New Zealand & HeadHealth Informatics, Metamorphous Consulting. Dr. Chu effectively brought out the critical aspects and differences in technical and semantic interoperability issues. The second presentation by Dr. Amiruddin Hisan, Dy. Director (TeleHealth Division), Ministry of Health, Malaysia was another interesting deliberation focusing on telehealth initiatives undertaken by Malaysian government. The final presentation of the session by Ashok Chandavarkar, APAC Healthcare Programs Manager, Intel provided an insight into the cutting-edge technology solutions for mobility in healthcare.

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The Commonwealth Medical Association’s panel discussion on ‘Global Experiences in eHealth Implementation & Practices’ put up some interesting presentations in the afternoon session. Chaired by Dr. S. Arulrhaj, President, Commonwealth Medical Association and co-Chaired by Dr. M. Abbas, President, Indian Medical Association, the panel comprised of Dr. Oheneba, Secretary-CMA, Ghana; Dr. N. Arumugam, VP, Malaysian Medical Association and Dr. JP Tabone, VP, Medical Association of Malta.

The day concluded over a special workshop by Microsoft, titled – ‘Knowledge Driven Health’. Beginning with the speech by Azizah Ali, General ManagerPublic Sector, Microsoft Malaysia, the technical presentations were delivered

by Werner Van Huffel, Technology Strategist - Health and Social Services, Microsoft Asia Pacific Region. The presentation by Huffel focused on two significant aspect of health IT - ‘patient relationship using CRM solutions’ and ‘business intelligence and healthcare analytics’. The final presentation by Alex Chang, Managing Director, Gloco Holdings, Malaysia, showcased how CRM and BI solutions are brining higher efficiency and business benefits for healthcare organisations.

An exciting panel discussion kickedoff the second and final day of the conference. Moderated by Dr. Rosnah Hardis, Director – Health Services, Ministry of Health, Malaysia the panel comprised of Dr. Abdullah Salleh, Sr. Consultant Surgeon & ClinicalIT Coordinator, Hospital Selayang, Malaysia; Tan Hai-Shi, IT Manager, Gleneagles Intan Medical Centre, Malaysia; Jack Tan, IT Head, Pantai

Medical Centre, Malaysia; Dr. K Tilak, Chief Medical Officer – Asia, iSoft; and Werner Van Huffel, Technology Strategist - Health and Social Services, Microsoft Asia Pacific Region. Focusing on the theme - ‘simplifying technology challenges of healthcare enterprises,’ the panel brought forth some the daunting challenges faced by modern healthcare enterprises.

A set of interesting presentations came up in the technical session titled – ‘Technology Applications for Efficient Healthcare Management’. Chaired by Dr. Azrin, Ministry of Health, Malaysia, the session had Dr. Hammad Durrani, Department of Community Health Sciences, Aga Khan University, Pakistan; Rajendra Pratap Gupta, President & Director, Disease Management Association of India; and Dr.Ramin Moghaddam, President, Iranian Medical Informatics Association (IrMIA). Dr. Durrani presented on the Panacea project of IDRC. Rajendra P Gupta deliberated on the role of telehealth in disease management & chronic care and Dr. Moghaddam brought out the concept of patients roaming profile.

The concluding session of the conference held late afternoon on the final day was a special round-table, titled ‘Way Forward for eHealth – follow up from Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Conference’. Chaired by Karl Brown, Associate Director (Applied Technology), Rockefeller Foundation, USA, the panel included Dr. Molly Cheah, President, Open Source HealthCare Alliance, Malaysia; Dr. Hammad Durrani, Dept of Community, Health Sciences, Aga Khan University, Pakistan; and Dr. Ravi Gupta, Editorin-Chief, eHEALTH magazine. www.egovonline.net

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etween 11th and 13th November 2008, Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications, Malaysia played host to guests from all over the world. More than 600 participants followed the invitation to attend the international conference eASiA2008.

The conference organised by Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies and elect Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. The event has seen deliberations on five thematic domains, namely governance, education, health, mobiles and telecentres. One of the most dynamic sessions of the conference was the Asian Telecentre Forum. The Asian Telecentre Forum 2008, third in the series of telecentre forums organised by CSDMS in collaboration with telecentre. org, focused on the knowledge sharing between the flagships and emerging telecentre networks in the region and beyond.

For an unprecedented few days, a team of telecentre practitioners – a

small, but growing cadre – enjoyed the rare opportunity of meeting and learning from each other; discussing, clarifying, and codifying their common goals and disparate experiences; acknowledging the challenges to success – even as they began to shape realistic strategies for overcoming them.

The participants and their organisational titles ranged widely. They ranged from Heads, Vice-Presidents from corporate sector; Representatives from telecentre networks, to grassroots level telecentre managers; academicians.

Indeed, the discussions were varied with in-depth deliberations.

The forum was constructed around seven topical sessions scheduled over two days. Some of the discussion topics were: Mapping the Asian Telecentre Movement, Telecentre Networks 2.0, Role of Telecentre Networks in National Scale-up Programme, Sustainability of Telecentres: A Systemic Approach, telecentre.org Academy, Content, Services and Innovations at the Last Mile and Mapping Different Telecentre Business Models. Each session began with a brief presentation, followed by vigorous discussion and debate.

From the beginning of the forum, it was clear that all the of the participants – those from the largest, most sophisticated national organisations to those from smaller local and regional groups shared few challenges: national level scale-up, sustainability of telecentres, capacity building of telecentre practitioners, lack of locally relevant content and business plan for sustaining them.

KEY OUTCOMES OF THE FORUM

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Asia is big and late-comer to the global telecentre movement Evolution of telecentres in Asia: Concept acknowledgement(1990s), Pilots (late 1990s), Scale-up (mid2000s) Emergence of Asia-Pacific Knowledge Network of Telecentres Microsoft remains committed to empower and foster local innovation Huge opportunity for different stakeholders and the future is bright OneROOF, Inc. and D.Net demonstrated systemic approaches to ensure the sustainability of telecentres • Emerging telecentre networks from East and South East Asian region joined telecentre.org community • The forum has also paved the way for mutual knowledge exchange among the participants In short, the forum was a gathering of peers. There were no experts dominating the proceedings, more interactive and participative. Rather, the participants took full advantage of an unusual opportunity for exhilarating collegial exchange and knowledgesharing.

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igital Learning Asia 2008, one of the five seminal tracks, committed to bring some of the key drivers from the leading countries of technology-enabled education to deliberate on the pressing challenges of technology-enabled education from capacity building to reengineering pedagogy; change management to providing digital access.

The experience of introducing different ICTs in the classroom and other educational settings all over the world over the past several decades suggests that the full realization of the potential educational benefits of ICTs is not automatic. The effective integration of ICTs into the educational system is a complex, multifaceted process that involves not just technology, but also curriculum and pedagogy, institutional readiness, teacher competencies, and long-term financing, among others.

The digital LEARNING ASiA2008 was ‘powered by technology, fueled by information and driven by knowledge.’

The conference aimed to provide the delegates with an understanding of the various trends and issues associated with the information age in the domain of development in education. The conference also aimed at bringing on board case studies, lessons learned, and best practices that could help the stakeholders including decision makers in addressing pertinent issues and drawing policy recommendations and strategies apt for the information economy striving hard to spread the word of education.

The Digital Learning track conference was inaugurated alongside the eASiA2008 on the second day with the start of this keynote session eEducation: The Asian Experience.

The first key note presentation was presented by Prof. Rashid Navi Bax, Deputy Director General, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia on e-Education in Malaysia: Policies and Initiatives.

Sofian Azmi, Senior Assistant Director, Curriculum Development Division represented the Ministry of Education Malaysia and made his presentation

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on ‘MOE Malaysia: Towards Digital Learning’ which was focused on Vision 2020 leading to a Knowledgebased economy. The third speaker of the session was Toru Nakaya who is Director, International Cooperation Division, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan. Siek Kah Hee who is Education Programme Manager, Intel Malaysia, deliberated on various educational programme offerings of Intel Malaysia.

The Asia Knowledge Forum had its first planning meeting alongside the eASiA2008. It is a Forum designed to assist some of the poorest Asian countries in mobilizing best practices and knowledge around issues of integrating educational technology into learning environments. The Forum will endeavor to establish national and international partnerships to ensure the success of such structures. It will also provide a mechanism for exchange and networking between member countries and to promote cross country collaboration and communication. It would also explore opportunities for synergizing knowledge through the convergence of regional experiences and knowledge sharing from across the globe.

The planning meeting on “Asia Knowledge Forum” was convened by Global e Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI). The aim was to bring together ministries of education, opinion leaders, scholars and educators from Asian countries to exchange, collaborate and become engaged in an ongoing

dialogue that will ultimately lead to the development of appropriate, innovative and possibly ground-breaking policy solutions to the impediments on ICT and Education that confront policy makers.

As yet another successful session, Microsoft coordinated a workshop titled ‘21st Century Teaching and Learning’, which provided the audience with an opportunity to know about various technical solutions that the teachers and learners can avail while effectively integrating ICTs in education.

The session on Building Capacity for a Learning Community had some enriching deliberations and paper presentations under the able leadership of Devadason Robert Peter, Sr SpecialistICT, South East Asian Ministries Educational Organisation (SEAMEO) RECSAM, Malaysia.

The third day of the conference saw some interesting discussions happening on themes like ‘Open and Distance Learning Practices’, ‘Towards a new agenda in higher education’, and ‘e-Learning Delivery Models: Reengineering Pedagogy’.

The track came out with some major recommendations, like- implementing holistic policies to foster access to ICT, give all schools access to Internet, Key Access Policies−Universal Service policy−Spectrum policy−VoIP & Wireless Broadband, etc. The participants called for strengthening of cooperation and linkages between educational institutions and organisations across the globe. www.egovonline.net

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ESIC CONTRACT LIKELY TO GO TO TCS In the contract to computerise Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has emerged the lowest bidder.

And as per the normal practice, tendered contracts are generally awarded to the L-1 (lowest) bidder. An announcement regarding this would be made soon. ESIC, country’s largest e-Governance project aims at providing smart cards to around 1.5 crore industrial workers across the country. The project is slated to be operational in the next 12-18 months.

The bids were invited for implementation of ‘Project Panchdeep’ on Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) basis, towards IT-enablement of ESIC from global IT service providers. The financial bids were opened on Tuesday which revealed that TCS with its bid of INR 1,677 crore, beat its closest IT rivals Infosys and Wipro who bid about INR 2,100 crore and INR 1,890 crore respectively, in order to emerge the lowest bidder.

The five levels of the ESIC project are respectively termed as Pehchan, Milap, Pashan, Dhanvantri and Pragati. This ESIC project will beat the INR 1,000 crore Passport Seva Project, again bagged by TCS, as the largest e-governance contract in the country. Under the five-level Panchdeep Project of ESIC, all services related to identification, authentication and verification of members will be enabled by the IT service provider.

COMPANIES BILL 2008 INTRODUCED FOR BETTER e-GOVERNANCE Companies Bill, 2008 has been introduced in the Lok Sabha recently. The Bill mainly aims at the consolidation and amendment of the laws relating to companies. The Bill will focus towards modernization of the structure for corporate regulation in India and thus represents a major reform statement by the Government to promote the development of the Indian corporate sector.

On the 21.10.2008 Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2003 was withdrawn, which had been introduced in the Rajya Sabha way back on 7.5.2003. And the reason forwarded for the withdrawal was that the Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2003 was no more in tune with the present day requirements of corporates in India.

The comprehensive revision of the Companies Act, 1956 was necessitated because the number of companies in India have expanded from about 30,000 in 1956 to above 7 lakhs today. The Bill reinforces shareholders democracy, facilitates e-Governance in company processes; recognizes the liability of Boards, directors and senior management personnel of companies; provides for a new scheme for penalties and punishment for non compliance or violation of the law; harmonizes corporate regulation with action by sectoral regulators; incorporates a new framework for mergers and amalgamations of companies and provides an extensive Insolvency Code based on the latest principles recommended by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).

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INR 250 CRORE FOR E-GOVERNANCE PROJECT OF CDSCO The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare will invest close to INR 250 crore ($50 million) in the e-Governance initiative of Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation’s (CDSCO’s). The initiative aims to enable transparency and efficiency in the working of the CDSCO. The application developed by a New York based technology solutions provider MGRM, will make available details of licensing, regulation, monitoring and even inspection audits. Thus, this system will work not only for companies, who will be able to submit all applications and data online, but will also smoothen the interface between various officials of the drug controller’s office. So much so that companies will even be able to file, track and review their patent applications online. The first phase of the project is expected to be completed in a year, following which CDSCO, along with MGRM, will float a national tender inviting developers to bid for the project. The project itself is expected to be up and running by 2013.

The Drug Controller General of India’s (DCGI’s) e-Governance initiative has received interest from the World Health Organisation and Health Canada—the Canadian health regulator. The best part of this initiative is that now volunteers who enroll for multiple clinical trials in quick succession at the prospect of high remuneration will not be able to do so. The finger printing software, which is a part of the project, will interlink clinical trial softwares, allowing companies to enroll only first time volunteers.

SATYAM FRONT RUNNER FOR RAILWAYS IT CONTRACT Hyderbad-based company, Satyam Computer Services, seems to be positioned favorably to win a significant Information Technology (IT) outsourcing contract from Indian Railways. This project which entails providing an asset management solution based on SAP business software for four locomotive sheds. Besides Satyam, TCS and Wipro were amongst the other bidders towards this project.

The contract will be the first in a series of outsourcing deals worth almost INR 2,000 crore to be awarded by Railways over the next few months.

According to the industry sources, Satyam has bid lower than its rivals for the first of Railways’ planned contracts, bidding will only get more competitive for the rest of the deals. Sources further said, Railways plans to outsource three more contracts over the next few months, each estimated to be worth INR 450-500 crore. The projects will be for automating and integrating its finance and payroll functions, materials management and software-aided train scheduling.

Government departments and state-owned companies are expected to spend nearly INR 10,000 crore on IT by the financial year end - March 2009.

Next year, this sector is expected to buy IT hardware and software worth around INR 9,000 crore. The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) is also under review, so its estimates for the next year could change.

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INR 1,237 CRORES TO BE RELEASED FOR STATE DATA CENTERS For a total outlay of INR 1,237 crores, the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India has approved the establishment of State Data Centres (SDC) in 27 States/UTs (Union Territories). The States whose proposals have been approved are: Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram.

The DIT Share in this outlay is INR 412 crores, while the remaining 825 crores will be met through Additional Central Assistance (ACA). These centres will be supported by State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Service Centres (CSC) established at the village level, as part of the e-Governance project.

It is expected that the Data Centers in about 12-15 States, shall be set up and operationalised by end June 2009. Data Centre in the remaining States and UTs shall be progressively implemented from August 2009 onwards and the entire exercise is expected to be completed by December 2009/March 2010. Typical time for implementation for State Data Centre is about 10 to 12 months.

As the Data Centers shall be hosting critical and sensitive government data, the ownership, strategic control and management/preservation of the data is being kept with the government. The Data Centre shall have all the physical and logic security components necessary from information security perspective, and will need to be ISO27001 certificated.

Further, the security audit of the Data Centre has been mandated to be carried out once in six months by the states. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) would advise the states on security related framework to be put in place for SDC.

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100 MILLION TO IMPROVE GOVERNANCE IN BIHAR 18 million will be provided by the British government’s Department For International Development (DFID), towards a programme to reform governance in Bihar. This programme named as the ‘Governance Mission’ was recently launched jointly by Britain’s Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander and Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar.

In June this year, DFID signed an MoU with the Bihar government to invest up to 100 million on improving urban and health services in the state over the next five years.

The DFID will work in partnership with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to begin its engagement with the governance reform programme in Bihar.

This programme aimed towards improving governance and administration in the state, will be supported by DFID which will provide technical expertise and finance to ensure implementation of the administrative reforms.

Initially five departments including Personnel and Administrative Reforms, Land and Revenue, Human Resource, Registration and Commercial Taxes, have been selected for the programme which will foster transparency, e-Governance and better delivery of government services and accounting.

BMC FLOATS ITS FIRST ONLINE TENDER

NAGALAND LAUNCHES 220 COMMON SERVICE CENTRES

As a part of pilot project Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation(BMC) floated its first online tender recently.

The first of the e-Tenders will be floated for the purchase of monsoon kits for students at civic schools. The vendors bidding for it will get a password, following which they will be able to open a web page and fill in the forms. The process will be so guarded that a vendor will not know who the other competitors are. This practise will hopefully put an end to all all rigging and red-tapism indulged in by a handful of contractors. The project is being launched as part of its e-Governance plan.

Nagaland launched 220 Common Service Centres (CSCs) in the state recently. The launch was held in the Conference Hall of Chief Secretary which marked the signing of the Master Service Agreement (MSA) between the Government, State Designated Agency (SDA) which is the Nagaland State E Governance Society (NSeGS) and the Service Centre Agency (SCA) for Nagaland which is Terrasoft.

The CSCs will be utilised as efficient distribution channels through which the government can offer its services, information and schemes to citizens in a cost effective, sustainable and efficient manner.

The SCA shall develop, design, build, roll-out, establish, manage, operate, maintain and finance the CSCs for delivery of services to the customers in accordance with the provisions of this MSA on a Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) basis.

On this basis the SCA shall be allowed to collect transaction charges for providing government services as determined by Govt/ SDA and receive revenue support. This is agreed between the SCA and Government of Nagaland, vide the MSA by enabling the private and social sector to use this network for offering a host of IT and non-IT related services to customers and users.

The SCA further plans to introduce other services for the benefit of the citizens. The existing Community Information Centres (CIC) at the 52 blocks will be integrated with the CSCs with a specific condition that all existing CIC personnel will be absorbed by the SCA as per the existing terms and condition.

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INTERVIEW

Sectoral Coherence for Better Governance

http://www.worldbank.org

system in Ghana, where the government and the private sector entered into a partnership and the private company made both the investment in the systems, software as well as the hardware. The private sector is running the custom system along with the government. This led to an increase in the custom revenue earnings of the country up to more than 50 percent. This incremental revenue accrues to the government, but a share of that revenue goes to the company who had invested in the project enabling the company to receive a satisfactory rate of return for motivating further investments. This is a situation where government receives a significant growth of revenue without taking risks itself. With the success of this PPP model, Ghana is extending the system to others sectors such as taxation and to several other sectors.

In short, what we understand from the word ‘PPP’ model is that where risks and rewards are shared jointly by both the parties involved.

“The effectiveness of the investments will be much higher and the expenditure by the government will be more efficient if there are key horizontals to enable coherence of investments and approaches across different sectors, ministries and levels of government” says Philippe Dongier, Sector Manager, Global Information and Communication Technology, World Bank to egov magazine.

Can you elaborate upon the various programmes for Public Private Partnerships being carried out under the World Bank’s Global Information and Communications Technologies (GICT) Programme?

The World Bank is involved in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in about 80 countries.

Historically, the bank was particularly involved with telecommunications infrastructure, policies and regulatory framework. In the last five years, we have broadened our role and now in addition to telecommunications, we also work on e-Government and Information Technology (IT) applications.

We also work on accelerating the growth of IT industry. There is a very developed global ICT industry in India as well as in other countries. This is the right sphere where the leverage of private sector can be promoted both in the terms of sectoral investments as well as operational capabilities.

World Bank works in the area of e-Government and IT. We have a number of cases where the Public Private Partnerships are very effective. For instance, if one looks at the custom ov

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Some of the well conducted research carried out in the sphere of e-Governance reveals that 70 per cent of such projects across the globe have failed. What in your opinion are the lessons to be learnt from such failures?

First and foremost, we should make it clear that investment in IT involves high risks and high rewards. A survey revealed

by Gartner says that the success rate is even lower in private sector investments. It is acceptable that the amount of risks are high and the number of failures are also high. One such example is the e-Procurement in Korea, where the government invested approximately $ 80 million in a comprehensive national e-Procurement system. This has resulted in annual savings of more than $ 1 billion per year. There are two very important lessons to be learned. We keep talking about IT investments, but what is more important than IT investments is the organisational change that needs to go along with the technology. We have observed that in cases where IT has been useful in achieving significant gains, IT was one input which brought a broader reform, where the processes were transformed and the businesses were done, very differently.

In that context services were improved for the citizens, transparency was improved and technology was one part of the broader change. Therefore, the focus should be more on management processes than on the technology alone.

World Bank has integrated the verticals of e-Governance and ICT. How will this strategy help in bringing ICT enabled services to the common man?

When we talk about the use of ICT for development, we consider specific sector applications that leads to better 21

INTERVIEW

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services for the common people. For instance, how ICT can be useful for teachers so that they can provide better education or how health workers can deliver better diagnosis by using information on a mobile device. This is where the development impact will indeed take place. The effectiveness of the investments will be much higher and the expenditure by the government will be more efficient if there are also key horizontals to enable coherence of investments and approaches across different sectors, ministries and levels of government. By this, I mean standards, interoperability farmeworks, shared infrastructure, policies that cut across sectors, so that different vertical systems work in a coherent fashion. Therefore, there is a need to integrate the verticals of sectoral applications in each sector such as health and education with those horizontal cross cutting elements.

We have experts from both the vertical as well as the horizontal sectors in the same department and this joint team works in support of the integrated sector programmes for using ICT strategically. We also work on a lot of policy advisory activities for various national e-Governance plans as well as state level policies; strategies and investment plans.

They will determine their own business needs and make their own investments plans. Similarly, every local government and every village government may need to drive its own IT needs and can take its own initiatives so that the tools of their leadership are locally owned. Therefore, it is very important to leave a lot of these initiatives with the individual / local agencies / local government leaders. But there has to be some standard. There has to be some norm and some adherence to some policy and some shared infrastructure to capture the efficiencies of the same in a more coherent inter-governmental system. When it comes to enabling ICT for local communities, what we see is also the use of ICT for citizen score cards that gives a feedback on the government performance. This is a means to bring citizen’s voice to the forefront as a way of improving accountability of the government at all levels – local and central. One can undertake online budgeting and other financial management and public resources and thereby also making them available to the citizens. This can go a long way in increasing transparency; and there are many countries moving in this direction for increasing accountability; and ICT can play a big role here.

The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of India has been implemented for a couple of years now. What are your suggestions for improving the system?

The key to success is shown by countries which have achieved some progress in the domain of leadership. The leadership shown by the head of the government and head of each sector departments is very critical. Therefore, forming a shared vision and a shared sense of importance of e-Development opportunity with leaders in the top of the government and in each ministry is really essential. If we simply look at the experience of India and those states where significant changes have been made, one can easily see that a lot of that is a result of the function of leadership. This is an observation that is seen globally. For instance, in Estonia, the President places high importance on ICT. The country has leapfrogged the stages of development by adopting technology. This has been embraced across various government sectors and levels of government. And this is a result of the importance that the top leadership gave to e-Government.

In any country one needs to balance the need for cross sectoral and inter-governmental coherence with the need for ownership and initiatives by the specific agencies. In other words, you want a lot of ownership and initiatives by the provinces, the state government and the ministries of different sectors, who need to drive their own ICT programmes. At the same time, you need to balance it with the need for coherence across sectors and levels of government which then calls for more centrally driven programmes. This is an inherent tension that we see in every country and it is unavoidable, yet it is a desirable tension and the art is to find the right way of managing this tension.

What in your opinion are the challenges for implementing e-Governance solutions in the developing countries?

The challenges of change in the government leadership is faced by most of the countries in the world. There are changes in the government on a cyclical basis and it is unique to the developing countries. It creates problems in most government policies which needs consistency as the programmes are on a long term basis.

Some of the other challenges would be skills and awareness of the government leaders, workers and the population at large. India is blessed with a very dynamic private IT industry with high global performance, which is a tremendous asset that the Government of India can use to use and adopt IT for increasing and transforming government performance. I think we have only seen the beginning of that transformation in India.

The trend that we observe is that the government wants to invest more in systems rather than procuring IT as a service. They want to enter a PPP model where the public and the private sector will agree upon some functionalities and services. The private sector is responsible for delivering those services and may also introduce some new technologies for better delivery of services. We need to create those partnerships which do not get stuck with any one technology.

Therefore, looking at software is definitely the way to go.

There is a lot of talk about the bottom up approach for taking governance and ICT to the grassroots. Do you think it is more of an idealistic approach?

If you look at the way IT is being adopted in the private sector, every business entity - small or big will have their own IT plans.

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Political will can make or mar the successful implementation of e-Governance in a country. Your comments.

Leadership is the most crucial factor for successful eGovernance. As I said earlier, if one looks at the various successful states of India where key technology have been adopted, it is pretty clear that a strong leadership support for ICT is of utmost importance. This trend is visible across countries as well. As mentioned earlier, countries such as Australia and Estonia are examples where political will has made significant usage of ICT possible. www.egovonline.net

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ACRC, SOUTH KOREA WINS BEST e-GOV AWARD The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC), South Korea, has won the top award conferred by the e-Challenges Conference and Exhibition to a helpful e-Government systems held in Stockholm, Sweden, recently. This annual conference supported by the European Commission has sought for 18 years to bring together over 650 delegates from leading commercial, government and research organisations around the world to bridge the digital divide by sharing knowledge, experience, lessons learnt and good practice.

Among 26 systems presented by 10 countries including Germany, Britain and Austria, the Commission’s “People’s Online Petition and Discussion Portal” won the Best Demonstration Stand Award.

ACRC, South Korea launched the system in June 2006 by merging scattered online channels which had collected civil complaints and petitions. Then the commission began to extend the online service to local governments, which allows citizens in provincial areas to suggest policies and join policy-making.

GROWING e-GOVERNANCE IN DUBAI e-Services and especially e-Government services are being preferred more and more by the residents of Dubai. A growing trend is being seen towards the fact that most of Dubai web users prefer to interact with government through the Internet. And the procedure for it all is very simple, one simply has to logon to dubai. ae, and there they can search for all kinds of services like government information, filling up of special forms, and even make transactions and payments.

Dubai eGoverment was launched in 2001 in order to provide convenient public service to nationals and residents as well as business. Dubai eGovernment has grown from 14 online services in 2001 to more than 2,000 across 27 government entities today.

Not only in terms of customers’ preference, but even in terms of government’s initiative e-Governance is really picking up pace in Dubai. Infact e-Governance has turned to be mandatory for most of the Dubai government departments, where at least 90 per cent of their physical services need to be converted e-Services. Only some visa and police service are considered an exception because they require personal presence.

However, Dubai eGovernment aims to develop further with its planned adoption of web 2.0 tools for user customization, synergistic services for mobile (mGovernment) and others.

SABAH REPORTS LOWEST BROADBAND PENETRATION IN MALAYSIA Yee Moh Chai, State Minister of Resource Development and Information Technology Datuk, Malaysia, said that the broadband penetration rate in Sabah is one of the country’s lowest, at 11.9 per 100 household.

State and federal governments have initiated several projects to enhance usage of information and communications technology (ICT), particularly among villagers in rural areas which includes project like : “e-Desa Kundasang” targeted at rural farmers in Kampung Bundu Tuhan. Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) have also implemented ICT-related community projects such as e-Community Centre in Kampung Sungai Damit, Tuaran; community broadband library in

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Kanibongan, Pitas; and community broadband centre in Kampung Sukau, Sandakan. These Community Broadband Centre was equipped with training facilities and a manager is engaged among the locals to run the centre.

These ICT initiatives in the rural area show a positive development with regard to broadband use.

LANKA GOVERNMENT NETWORK REACHES ITS FIRST STAGE OF COMPLETION Lanka Government Network (LGN), a government intended project has completed its first phase of completion under the supervision of Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), covering five provinces in the country. This ambitious LGN project implementation was carried out as a strategic project of the Re-Engineering Government programme of Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), functioning under the Presidential Secretariat.

This programme aims towards connecting public serving government offices, like ministries, departments as well as district and divisional secretariats via a single unified network. SLT will be providing a multiple range of products, which include voice, video, broadband Internet, networking and hosting services. It further facilitates communities on the network by giving prompt online access to software driven user interface, which enhances the effectiveness of service delivery in the office environment.

In the first stage, this programme was working towards providing connectivity to 325 government offices including offices in the Western, Central, Southern, Uva and Sabaragamuwa provinces, through SLT’s intelligent communication solution using advanced Internet Protocol (IP).

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COVER STORY

Passport Seva Project: Expectations Go Up The Passport Seva project began as one of the 27 Mission Mode Projects listed in the NeGP. The e-governance project aims, to issue a new passport within three days and shorten queue time.

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oftware major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) recently, signed a deal with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Government of India, for the Passport Seva Project (PSP), the largest missioncritical E-governance project valued at over INR 1,000 crore. After implementation of the Project which will be managed end-to-end by TCS, the Ministry expects that the process of issuing a new passport will be completed in 3 working days while passports issued under the Tatkal scheme will be dispatched on the same day, subject to address and police verification of applicants.

The formal contract was signed between Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and TCS Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, S L- R: Shivshankar Menon, Foreign Secretary, MEA; S Ramadorai, CEO and MD, TCS and Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Ramadorai. The contract VP, Global Government Business Group, TCS was signed almost three months after the ministry of external passport within three days and shorten 77 Passport Filing Centers across the affairs had issued the letter of intent queue time. country in a phased manner. TCS to TCS July 23, adjudging it the “best The project will be implemented will have end-to-end responsibility of value bidder” for the project. The within a Buy-Own-Operate-Transfer or implementing this project.

Passport Seva project began as one of BOOT framework with pilot projects Speaking on the occasion of signing the 27 Mission Mode Projects listed in operation within 19 months. The of the contract, Shivshankar Menon, the national e-Governance plan. The countrywide roll-out of the Passport Foreign Secretary, Ministry of External ambitious e-governance project aims, Seva Project will take place within six Affairs said, “The Passport Seva Project, among other objectives, to issue a new years and the Government will open based on a public-private partnership

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model, aims to provide passport-related services to Indian citizens in a speedy, convenient and transparent manner.

The sovereign and fiduciary function of granting and issuing passport remains with MEA and TCS will be our technology and operations partner in this project” Mr. S Ramadorai, CEO and Managing Director, TCS said, “We believe that this mission mode project of national importance will make delivery of passport services truly world class in nature. This project reiterates TCS’ commitment to help government deliver citizen services more efficiently through technology and process improvements and will transform passport service delivery to the citizens of India. ”Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice President, Global Government Business Group said: “After the successful implementation of the MCA-21 program, the Passport Seva Project will enable citizens to enjoy the benefits of a technology-led, service oriented approach to passports while ensuring that the proper security, safety and safeguards are maintained.

BACKGROUND

The cabinet had September last year approved the seven-point plan, which includes turning the current 36 regional passport offices into back-end offices and a private service provider setting up 77 facilitation offices. The tender for the project was floated last October on the basis of a report by the Hyderabadbased National Institute for Smart Government- a non-profit organisation dedicated to spreading e-Governance

The sovereign and fiduciary function of granting and issuing passport remains with MEA and TCS will be our technology and operations partner in this project”

Service Levels S. No.

Service

Service levels

a (1)

Issue of fresh passport (Post-Police Verification)

3 working days

a (2)

Issue of fresh passport (Pre-Police Verification)

3 working days + time taken for police verification

b

Re-issue of passport

3 working days

c

Issue / Re-issue of passport under tatkaal scheme

Same day

d

Change of name/ other personal particulars

3 working days

e

Miscellaneous Services

Same day

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in India. Eight companies submitted bids, which were opened this April.

The techno-commercial evaluation of the bids then zeroed in on TCS as the “best value bidder”. In return for better services, the private service provider will charge a fee of about Rs 200 for each transaction. Within eight years, the number of passports issued has nearly tripled from 2.2 million in 2000 to six million in 2008.

The Passport Seva Project would digitize the entire passport services lifestyle and allow online filing of applications. Applicants also have the alternative option of filling the Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)-enabled form which along with all relevant documents will be scanned and submitted at Passport Facilitation Centres (PFCs). The PFC will be the primary hubs that will support all activities like biometric capture, photograph, payment and verification and grant of passports in the presence of applicants for most cases. The Passports will be dispatched in three days in case no police verification or post-issue police verification is required based on passport issuance regulations. Complete tracking of process would be possible in the system. Police nodal offices will be facilitated by TCS personnel and the PP Forms will be downloaded there directly eliminating the logistic delay.

A call centre would be established to 25

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COVER INTERVIEW

Redefining Passport Seva “The countrywide rollout of the Passport Seva Project will take place within 19 months” says Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice President, Global Government Business Group, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in an exclusive interview to Sandeep Budki of egov magazine Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) would be playing a role of technology provider in Passport Seva Project. What would that role encompass?

The Passport Seva Project, based on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, aims to provide passport-related services to Indian citizens in a speedy, convenient and transparent manner. While the sovereign and fiduciary function of granting and issuing passport remains with Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Government of India, TCS will be the technology and operations enabling partner in this project.

The project conservatively estimated at over INR 1,000 crore will be implemented using a Build-Own-OperateTransfer or BOOT framework with pilot projects operation commencing within 7 months. The countrywide roll-out of the Passport Seva Project will take place within 19 months.

During implementation and roll out phases 77 Passport Facilitation Centres would be established across the country in a phased manner. The programme will operate for six years thereafter with end-to-end responsibility of implementing and operating this project resting with TCS. The project implementation phase of 19 months includes conceptualisation, design, and implementation of Passport Application; roll out of Passport Facilitation Centres (PFCs) and National Call Centre along with testing and certification as well as operations based on a Service Oriented Approach.

During the period of contract TCS will be primarily paid on the basis of passport services rendered to citizens, although a small amount would be paid upfront for establishing the basic infrastructure. Once the project is implemented, citizens would be able to apply for passport related services online or visit nearest PFC where their passport application will be accepted and processed. The new duration of processing of passports at MEA’s end would be three working days. This excludes the time taken for verifying address and citizenship of applicants which is required for a normal passport and same is applicable for Tatkal cases as well.

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The Passport Seva Project would digitize the entire passport services lifestyle and allow on-line filing of applications, thus would be a boon for e-Governance.

Still a sizable chunk of Indian population is illiterate How would this segment of people leverage from this project?

A proposal to provide assisted access for illiterate passport applicants is currently under consideration. For a nominal charge, these people can have their form filled by people available for this purpose at PFCs. However, under the current scenario, the increase in the number of places where citizens can apply for a passport physically, itself is set to mitigate the problems of illiterate citizens. Further, compared to the current four working hours of most of the passport offices, the PFCs will operate for eight hours on each working day offering extended access.

When can citizens expect the role out of the services and will it be in a phased manner?

The countrywide roll-out of the Passport Seva Project will take place within 19 months and the government will open 77 Passport Facilitation Centres across the country in a phased manner. The Pilot Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) at Bangalore and Chandigarh are scheduled to be operational by the beginning of March 2009. After ensuring success of the operation of the pilot locations, the full project i.e. the setting up of all the 77 PSKs and up-gradation of the present 37 Passport Offices are scheduled to be completed by the first week of January 2010.

Will the new passports be biometric enabled?

No, the new passports will not be biometric enabled.

However, the passport system will be biometric enabled.

It should be noted that the Ministry of External Affairs has also started issuing e-Passports (biometric passports), in the diplomatic and official categories since June 2008. Further, the extension of the same for the general categories will be much faster in view of the systematic roll-out.

What are other project in the pipeline related to e-Governance? e-Biz project for which the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) under the Commerce Ministry. It is a project aimed at facilitating interaction between the government and corporates through a single portal. TCS is also in the process of submitting bids for a new project to be launched by the Defence Ministry. There is an immense opportunity in the e-Governance sector in India. Some of the states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and others have undertaken huge e-Governance programmes while others are in the process of doing so. In addition to this, Mission Mode Projects under the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) also provides a window of opportunity.

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help the applicants with information regarding passport procedures and the status of submitted requests. Grievances would be tracked and closed.

Rapid growth in passport demand propelled the need for this project. This rapid growth is expected to accelerate further with India’s fast growing global engagement. Also, future growth is expected to be around 18% per annum with passport demand reaching over one crore by 2011. Rapidly growing demand has put considerable strain on manpower and infrastructure leading to delays in issuance of passports and crowded conditions in Passport Offices.

Passport Offices are fully computerized.

However, considerable scope exists to introduce latest Information Technology to improve issuance system. There is a need to provide improved services to citizens such as Internet application, on-line real time tracking of status of applications, an effective enquiry and grievance redressal system, biometric passports, and digital photo capture, etc. Despite constraints, the Central Passport Organistion under the Ministry of External Affairs has managed to increase output and issued about 50 lakh passports in 2007 as against around 35 lakh in 2005. Demand is growing fast. To cater to this phenomenal increase the need for public private partnership, which is increasingly being implemented by various government departments in India and has been

This project reiterates TCS’ commitment to help government deliver citizen services more efficiently through technology and process improvements and will transform passport service delivery to the citizens of India. ov

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Existing and proposed systems at a glance S. Item of Passport No. Issuance Process

Existing System 7 to 14 days

Proposed System Same day

1.

Time taken for Tatkal Passport

2.

Time taken for nonTatkal Passport

30 to 45 days

3 days

3.

No. of Passport outlets

52

92

4.

No. of public dealing counters at passport outlets

345

1250

5.

Public dealing hours per working day

4

7

6.

Waiting period to submit 2 to 3 hours in passport application crowded conditions

45 minutes in decent and comfortable conditions.

7.

Training of employees

Unsatisfactory

Effective training including in public dealing.

8.

Information for applicants

Unsatisfactory

Effective through a national call centre and internet.

9.

Grievance handling through phone, on-line & mail.

Unsatisfactory

Immediate

10. Paperwork

80% manual involving paperwork

100% on computers

11. Exchange of information with police

By post - time consuming

On-line

12. Management Information System

Unsatisfactory

Wide range of information available to the management for effective control

adopted by the governments the world over, was felt.

SECURITY

The proposed Passport Seva Project fully addresses all the possible security concerns not only relating to data security but also individual security.

The entire system of Passport Seva will comply with the international standards of security namely ISO 27001, which takes care of all the security concerns and vulnerabilities on an end-to-end basis. This will eliminate leakage or modification of the data base. The selected service provider will have to comply with security provisions

at all the three key levels i.e. User level, Application/Data Centre level, and Network/Transport level. MEA has already appointed the Standard Testing and Quality Control Directorate (STQC) of the Department of Information & Technology to conduct a comprehensive third party security audit. The audit will be conducted before the operationalization of the system and thereafter every year.

The ownership and strategic control of the core and critical assets of the project i.e. Passport application software, system software and Data Centre would be with the Ministry of External Affairs.

The entire data of Passport Seva System 27

COVER STORY

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containing personal information including the biometric information of the applicants would be residing in the Data Centre and the Disaster Recovery Centre which will be located in the premises belonging to the Ministry with complete security controls and such data cannot be compromised.

The operations of Data Centre and the Disaster Recovery Centre will be under the supervision of MEA through a Project Management Unit (PMU)/ Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). The access to data, data storage media and Passport system will be regulated and monitored very strictly by the PMU/SPV. The Passport Seva Kendras (PSK) will be extended arms of the Central Passport Organisation of the Ministry of External Affairs and would be headed by a senior officer of the Central Passport Organisation at each center. The service provider would only handle the responsibilities at the PSK relating to handling of the visitors and capturing of the data relating to passport applications. There will be counters staffed by the officials of the Central Passport Organisation who will take care of critical steps for document verification, indexing and granting and only they (the Government Employees at PSKs) will be able to access the above mentioned categories of data i.e the same officers who are conducting the checks 28

Passport Seva Project will enable citizens to enjoy the benefits of a technologyled, service oriented approach to passports while ensuring that the proper security, safety and safeguards are maintained. presently will continue to do so in the Passport Seva Project with advanced IT tools. There would be a partitioning of the LAN (Local Area Network) at each of the PSKs between the officials of the Central Passport Organisation and the operators of the private agency. Also, government counters in PSKs will be in an area marked distinctly for them from the private counters of the service provider. Any access to the Passport Seva Systems at the PSKs or the passport offices would be exclusively based on authentication through biometrics of the concerned individuals. All the Service Provider staff will be required to

go through a biometric access control mechanism before logging into the Passport system. The system will also capture details of all the access.

In addition to defining access controls, the proposed system mandates that every passport related transaction which involves any addition/ modification/ deletion will have to be digitally signed by the official doing it. The sensitive function of handling blank passport booklets will also remain with government employees. Since the entire process will remain under government control, the government will remain accountable for correct issuance of passports under the Passports Act. To the extent, the service provider is involved in the process, the government will in turn enforce his accountability through a contract with strict obligations on the part of the service provider. The data coming in the possession of the service provider at the time of submission of application will be used by him only to feed the same into the data base under the government control for issuance of passport. Thereafter, the data is no longer available to the staff of the service provider.

LOOKING FORWARD

The Pilot PSKs at Bangalore and Chandigarh are scheduled to be operational by the beginning of March 2009. Following three month stabilization of the pilot locations and after the requisite certification by STQC, the Go-Live of the pilot locations is scheduled by the beginning of June 2009. After ensuring success of the operation of the pilot locations, the full project i.e. the setting up of all the 77 PSKs and up gradation of the present 37 Passport Offices are scheduled to be completed by the first week of January 2010. Citizens can look forward to service provisioning within defined service levels, closer and larger number of access points for services, availability of a portfolio of on-line services with real-time status tracking and enquiry including payment of fee online, an effective system of grievance redressal and strict adherence to the ‘First InFirst Out’ principle in rendering of services.

Sandeep Budki sandeep@egovonline.net

www.egovonline.net

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INTERVIEW

Serving the Unserved http://www.usf.org.pk What is the background of Universal Service Fund in Pakistan and what have been its major achievements till now?

The Pakistan Telecom Act created a “Universal Service Fund” to spread telecom services to unserved/under-served areas of all the country – universally. And in order to disburse this fund for providing these services, Pakistan opted to follow the innovative Public-Private-Partnership (also called “Corporate”) Model. This led to establishment of the USF ‘Company’ under a Section of Companies Law, called Companies Ordinance, 1984.

The Company has an independent Board of Directors, consisting of eight members (plus the CEO), evenly balanced between private and public sectors.

All decisions regarding projects are discussed and debated in the Board where collective wisdom of government as well as private industry is applied before giving go-ahead to the management. The management is only responsible to the Board, which makes decision-making simpler and faster.

The Company was established in early 2007 and the first employee (myself as CEO) was hired in May 2007. In about a year-and-half, USF Co. is not only up and running as a company, it has already started basic telecom services projects in 7 different unserved areas (“Lots”), for which contracts have been signed with major telecom operators of the country following an open auction process.

How is the USO Fund utilised in Pakistan in terms of providing last mile connectivity?

The Fund is utilised by open and transparent competitive bidding, encouraging competition among telecom licensees.

Utilising the Fund, USF Co finances spread of telecom services to previously un-served or under-served areas and makes it possible for the licensed operators to provide lastmile connectivity in those areas, on normal commercial terms.

Telecom services include not just basic last-mile connectivity, these also include Broadband Internet, and Telecentres (for those who cannot afford the necessary instruments/devices) and so on.

The job involves firstly identifying the unserved areas, which is done with the help of data collected from various organisations like “Survey of Pakistan” (topographic maps), “Census Organisation of Pakistan” (population data of villages), “Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Organisation” (digital imagery) and the Telecom Operators (existing telecom infrastructure). After identifying the unserved areas, “Lots” are created for auctioning of subsidy. Finally, the open auctions (based on sealed bidding) result in contracts with the successful telecom operators.

Up to now contracts with Telenor (Malakand and Bahawalpur Lots), Mobilink (Sukkar Lot), Warid (DG Khan ov

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“USOF India and USF Pakistan can certainly learn some things from each other by looking at each others’ models and the progress made so far” says, Parvez Iftikhar, CEO, USF, Pakistan in an interview to Sandeep Budki of egov magazine.

Lot) and PTCL (Pishin, Mansehra and Dadu Lots) have been signed covering more than 5,000 villages.

Bids for the 8th Lot (Kalat-Mastung) are under evaluation.

Bids for another 3 Lots (Mirpurkhas, D I Khan and Sibbi) are under preparation by the operators. Similar processes are adopted in case of Broadband and “Special Projects” – like the Optic Fiber Project.

What are the major challenges that you face in providing last mile connectivity?

The first challenge for the Company is to achieve its targets through a fair, transparent and efficient process. Therefore all fund disbursements are done by open and transparent 29

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competitive bidding, encouraging competition among telecom licensees.

The second challenge is to protect consumers’ interests so these are not compromised by the operators winning subsidies. This is done in several ways, like: • The subsidy winner is obligated to follow all the tariff (and other) guidelines of the regulator, PTA, just as in the rest of the country.

• Subsidy winner is obligated to share the new infrastructure with at least one other licensed operator so that USF funding is not used to create local monopolies that lead to exploitation of consumers • It is also ensured that no Operator collects more than 50 percent of subsidy that is disbursed. This keeps the interest of all operators in the process and no one operator gets away with major piece of the subsidy cake.

On the technical side, the challenge is of reaching the remote areas. Before any last mile solution is implemented, just connecting a far flung area with the served area is a challenge in itself. It is abnormally expensive because either the Operators have to connect by installing long strings of Microwave towers or via Satellite. Both are expensive and unaffordable especially considering that these areas are low revenue areas. This can be termed as a major challenge.

To address this challenge, USF Pakistan has launched a separate special project aimed to extend the reach of Optic Fiber Cable to all ‘Tehsils’ of the country (a “Tehsil” is a small revenue unit and its size can be gauged from the fact that presently there are around 400 Tehsils in Pakistan).

More than 30 percent Tehsils in the country are deprived of any fiber connectivity. Laying of fiber to each one of these Tehsils will help telecom operators in reaching and deploying last-mile connectivity solutions to all corners of the country.

Other than that the challenges are more of how to get focus/ strategy of telecom operators in line with USF objectives, but up to now USF Pakistan has been successful in getting competitive bids from the Operators by facilitating and making it easier for them as much as possible.

What is the strategy that you have adopted to take the telecom revolution to the rural segment and bridge the digital divide?

The strategy is to provide “coverage” to all the villages in the country so that anyone wishing to get a telephone connection should be able to get it. We have specific laid down targets and we have to meet those targets. And with today’s technologies, it is no problem to measure if those numbers have been reached or not. The measurements are taken by professional technical auditors, who mostly do not belong to USF. To elaborate with an example: In the so-called ‘Mansehra Lot’ (consisting of the districts of Kohistan, Batagram, Abotabad, Haripur and Mansehra), there are one million people, living in 1,479 villages (spread over 11,366 Sq.Kms) who have no access to a phone connection. Therefore in that area USF targets are: • to give each and everyone in these 1,479 villages, the possibility to get a phone connection 30

•

to have PCOs in villages/towns of the area that have a population above a certain number • to have telecentres in towns with a population of above another certain level • to reach at least 5 percent teledensity overall, as a first step After the bidding, award of contract and then network roll-out by the successful operator, the technical auditors will go to these villages and take measurements to verify that these targets (except the last one) have been met. Only then the payments will be made. The measurement work will be done in 4 phases in the Lot (after every 25 percent) so that subsidies can be disbursed progressively against achievement of these 4 milestones.

USF will be holding Bank Guarantees from the Operators worth 40 percent of the subsidy value and in case of any breach of contract USF will have the option of imposing penalties.

Other than that, a project “Broadband for unserved urban areas” has been launched aimed at improving Broadband penetration in smaller cities and towns that are yet unserved.

The first phase of this has been advertised, pre-proposal meeting with the bidders held and bids will be received in late-November.

In the very near future USFCo will also be launching telecentre projects aimed at introducing and promoting e-Services in the rural areas of the country.

Recently, you had visited India. What is your opinion about the progress at which rural connectivity programmes are going in India?

India has made significant progress in rural connectivity, as I heard the very competent Administrator, Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) India, Ajay Bhattacharya, in eIndia 2008. However, the approach is very different than Pakistan’s mainly because Pakistan chose to tread the uncharted path of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model which seems to be working well. But one must not forget that the issues are very different. India is a vast country with a billion people and around 30 percent teledensity, as against Pakistan’s 160 million people with over 50 percent teledensity. In my opinion, India’s greatest achievement has been the tremendous progress in the field of telecentres. I am not too sure how far the USOF is involved in it. But it was quite impressive to see that a lot of organisations and state governments are involved in creation and operation of telecentres in rural areas bringing fruits of ICT to the doorsteps of majority of population.

How can USO fund departments of India and Pakistan benefit from each others experience?

It is normally not easy to “transplant” individual solutions – or parts of solutions – from one place to the other. However USOF India and USF Pakistan can certainly learn some things from each other by looking at each others’ models and the progress made so far. Once some understanding of the other’s programme has been reached then each one of them could apply whatever seems relevant and useful. It has to be an on-going process and has to be steered by the respective governments/ministries. www.egovonline.net

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New Satellite for Rural Net Connectivity Internet connectivity for the rural masses for rendering timely advice on various aspects of agriculture, is soon to become a reality through an ‘unconventional’ satellite being developed in India.

The spacecraft would be launched

by European space consortium, Arianespace, within two years.

Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation, G Madhavan Nair elaborating on the nature of this satellite saying that this satellite primarily aimed at rural areas, is an INSAT-class (three tonne) satellite. Its specialty would be that instead of having an allIndia beam, it would have spot beams covering different parts of the country, and there would be a control hub by which it would be connected to national network.

INR 2 Crore Study to Overhaul Emigration System

Audio-Visual Systems for the Government G Sundar, CEO, MIRC Electronics Limited (Onida) in an interview with egov magazine Onida has been a known brand in the appliances and consumerables sector. What is your plan for Audio Visual (AV) space?

Today we have three Research and Development centres in product development in various parts of the country with focus on Audio Visual (AV), appliances. We have an innovation centre that looks at technology for the future with product development using latest technology to improve our current range of products. We will play a more aggressive role in AV space in the coming years.

You have witnessed the market over the years. What will be the role of presentation and display systems in the future?

Education and training is becoming a need in every sector.

The training solutions as part of AV and presentation and display systems sector is growing at a very fast rate. Digital classrooms provides the option of sitting at home while talking to hundreds of students. We have implemented such technology in Amity University in New Delhi and are in discussions with various other Universities. We are also in conversation with National Defence Academy (NDA), Pune for providing them with solutions for interactive classrooms.

However, lack of power supply is going to be the major roadblock in brining IT in rural areas.

An INR 2 crore study on the “emigration in e-Governance” was commissioned to the Hyderabad-based National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, to study the internal processes and welfare schemes. This study will be used to facilitate the planning to overhaul the emigration system over the next two years.

The procedures which will be re-engineered under this project include the process of application for emigration clearance from the Protector of Emigrants, monitoring of recruiting agents and contract verification by Indian missions abroad and even foreign employees.

Recently, the ministry also initiated a number of services such as insurance cover, database management, counseling, pre-departure orientation and skill upgrading.

NISG, to provide e-Governance solutions, has already roped in global consultants Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG) to prepare the business process re-engineering report.

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December 2008

What are the initiatives and projects to reflect the company’s statewide presence and collaborations?

We are the second most trusted brand with a pan-India presence. We are undertaking a joint collaboration with National Internet Exchange of India (front end of IT division of central government), for an Integrated Disease Surveillance project and our technology partner is National Informatics Centre (NIC). We are involved with the supply, installation, monitoring and training facilities at all district hospitals that includes audio-video solutions, video-conferencing solutions at 400 locations in 14 states of India.

Under Gujarat Information Limited (GIL), we are providing training modules to 525 locations of Gujarat government.

Further, we are partners with Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D) for projection systems. Our projectors are registered with two partners - Sanyo (Japanese company) and Infogen (UK-based company). We are reaching out to various government organisations for their training institutes, office requirements, meeting room and conference requirements.

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FEATURE

Sustainable Development Index for India Indian companies currently perform most strongly for long-term economic growth and most poorly in their management of water resources.

British Telecom (BT) recently announced the launch of its “Sustainable Development Index – an assessment of business performance in India”. The SD index has been developed in partnership with GlobeScan, an independent public opinion and stakeholder research company. Through a survey of senior opinion leaders across India, the index is a means to measure the performance of business in India in the progression towards sustainable development over time. The initiative was launched by Dr. R. K. Pachauri, Director General, TERI and Allen Ma, President, BT Asia Pacific at a news conference in New Delhi, India.

The SD index report reveals that although Indian companies are taking positive steps towards sustainable development, the overall performance of the corporate sector is disappointing.

46 per cent of India’s opinion leaders surveyed blame a lack of awareness around sustainable development issues as the main cause of inaction. Some 40 per cent of opinion leaders also cited a lack of political will as a major obstacle in making significant progress in this

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area. According to the report, this lack of action means India lags behind China, Japan and the European Union when it comes to addressing key issues, such as tackling climate change, corporate governance practices and water resource management.

Interestingly, the country’s largest cities were seen as making the strongest moves to improve sustainable development practices. Whilst there are negative views around India’s progress, a majority of opinion leaders (57 per cent) feel that companies in India are now more active with regard to sustainable development compared to one year ago.

In fact, the corporate sector is considered to have made significantly stronger progress than either government or the general public.

Allen Ma, President, BT Asia Pacific said, “India is rapidly becoming a global centre for information and communications technology development, and boasts a high economic growth rate. It is vital that this commercial success is matched by a commitment to, and leadership in, corporate responsibility. Through the launch of the BT Sustainable Development Index we hope that other organisations in India will do the same.”

The most frequently mentioned corporate leaders in sustainable development in India are TATA Group (named by 31 per cent of respondents), Reliance (13 per cent) and Infosys (10 per cent).

Nitin Desai, Former United Nations Under-SecretaryGeneral for Economic and Social Affairs and Advisor

The bar chart presents the “net ratings” – positive ratings minus negative performance ratings – on each of the 12 areas of sustainability tested in the survey.

to BT’s SD Index, said, “There are significant social, environmental and economic challenges facing the world’s second most populous country and India’s transition to sustainable development is in the world’s interest.

We need to be able to carefully monitor where corporate successes are occurring and to learn from them. We also need to reliably know which aspects of sustainable development most urgently require corporate action.”

The BT Sustainable Development Index is annual survey of senior opinion leaders and IT employees on the economic, environmental and social performance of Indian business.

A total of 215 senior influential individuals from the academic, corporate, government, media and NGO sectors were interviewed in India.

In parallel, IT employees in India completed 1,168 online surveys.

Sandeep Budki, sandeep@egovonline.net

www.egovonline.net

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FEATURE

Open Source and the Opportunity to Transform The open source model and its three tenets of community, collaborations and shared ownership of intellectual resources can have tremendous benefits for countries, especially in the area of education and e-Governance. http://www.redhat.com

Sandeep Sehgal and Venkatesh Hariharan

D

espite India’s halo as a software services superpower, and trade analysts screaming from the top about India’s dominance as an outsourcing destination – it is also a fact that Information Technology (IT) in India has so far touched only a fraction of our population. It is easy to see why?

At the individual level, India’s per capita income is INR 26,430 ($600), while Personal Computers (PC) hardware costs INR 10,000 ($227) and proprietary operating systems & office productivity applications costs approximately INR 11,000 ($250). This means that the cost of hardware and software is more than the annual income of most Indians! Is it a surprise that access to the latest technology is a privilege of a few? If India has to progress ahead on the path of modernisation, and if PC’s have to be made affordable, the cost of basic software has to come down. Our challenge is that most of the proprietary software we use are built in developed countries, whose purchasing power is far more than countries like India.

Clearly, India needs a different approach because it is a different country, and needs a far more affordable model that suits our purchasing power.

Just like we embraced the latest technologies in telecom to leapfrog other countries simply because we are not saddled with legacy infrastructure, we can do the same with software too.

Open Source Software (OSS) offers us this opportunity today, and can be used as a powerful tool to build the foundation upon which we can build an inclusive 34 }

society that is critical for India’s future.

The model of OSS is perfectly suited for India, as users have the choice of software programs, whose code they can freely modify, change, deploy and redistribute it. The ability to modify the source code leads to greater innovation.

This is why Linux runs on a vast variety of hardware platforms – from the Mars

Rover to giant supercomputers to tiny embedded computers. Open source gives power back to the users and enables them to modify the source code to suit their needs.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

The open source model and its three tenets of community, collaborations www.egovonline.net

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and shared ownership of intellectual resources can have tremendous benefits for countries, especially in the area of education and e-Governance.

In education, for instance, the Government of India has embarked upon an aggressive plan of spending approximately six percent of its GDP on modernising its education system. The IT Policy of the Government of India incorporates provisions to develop human resources for IT in the country, including literacy programmes and Internet access at school level. The cost of computerising an education system that consists of 12,30,200 educational institutions and 231 million children in the age group of 6-19 can only be imagined. If each of India’s 12,30,200 educational institutions were to be computerised using the bare essential proprietary operating systems and application software, the cost at current market rates would touch an astronomical sum of over INR 1000 crores. Even assuming that monopoly software vendors give their software free of cost for educational purposes, the benefits of this flow back to the vendor because students who grow up using this software will ultimately have to purchase the software at prices dictated by the vendor. As these students grow up and become part of the next 100 million IT users in India, the foreign exchange outflow involved will be huge if they are dependent on proprietary software. And we haven’t yet begun talking about the cost of educational software programs that need to run on top of the operating systems.

The Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India, has recognised the relevance of open source in its efforts to increase PC penetration and bridge the digital divide. DIT’s 11th five year plan (20072012) says that we must seriously pursue open source software and encourage localisation of open source software to make IT accessible to Indians.

WHY OPEN SOURCE MAKES PERFECT SENSE FOR INDIA?

India represents the aspirations of a billion people. And open source is the ideal vehicle for quickly bringing the benefits of mass computerisation at a reduced cost. Even when you view it from ov

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the point of localisation, open source represents tremendous opportunities.

For a nation that has close to 22 official languages, Linux is an ideal platform for making technology accessible to the majority of the population of India that does not speak English.

Many localisation groups in India that are working on brining Indian language computing to the masses have embraced open source software and Linux as their de-facto standard.

Since proprietary software vendors did not take the initiative to localise their operating systems and applications to Indian languages, localisation groups turned to open source software like Linux, OpenOffice.org and other programs. The Indian open source community has localised OSS programs to Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali and many other languages. Localisation plays a huge role in adoption, as governments can use technology to communicate to citizens in their own language. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop for instance, is available in 11 Indian languages including - Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.

POWERING e-GOVERNANCE

In the area of e-Governance, the government spending on software development can be made more efficient if it adopts the open source model that promotes the sharing of software code.

Government departments across different states have the same requirements and instead of each government department developing separate programmes for the same task, they could share the same code base and make minor changes to suit the needs of each state.

One huge benefit of such sharing is that state governments can cut down their risk by implementing software that has been tried and tested in other state governments. Since a significant percentage of new software implementations end up as failures, such sharing eliminates a lot of the risk involved in IT implementations. The biggest beneficiaries of such sharing are the newly formed states of India where the IT departments have limited manpower. Given the population and

geographical spread of India, the open source model based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of intellectual resources can save the country thousands of crores of rupees and eliminate much wasted time and effort. In India, open source adoption has moved from hype to reality, and a huge number of state governments have evinced deep interest in using open source.

Red Hat, for instance, has executed more than 70 e-Gov projects across India. The e-Courts project launched

by Honorable APJ Abdul Kalam, when he was President of India, selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the operating system for the 15,000 notebook computers delivered to judges across India. It is important to note that judges, due to the nature of their job, need high security for the information of the judgments they make. This is where Linux is far more secure than any other OS, as the collaborative nature of open source development ensures better security. As the source code can be evaluated, vetted and fixed by the open source community, the security of open source is constantly improving.

In open source, security vulnerabilities are often discovered by the community itself whereas in the proprietary world vulnerabilities are often exposed by malicious hackers.

CONCLUSION

As a country, India faces enormous challenges of development, and we need to encourage such efforts that make the best use of taxpayers’ money. OSS offers such a model, and can enable India to be a knowledge superpower based on the foundation of affordability, innovation and sensitivity to local needs. The Internet was such a huge success as it was founded on open standards. Now, it is time for India to take such a step in Open Source, and reap the benefits of a nation whose time has surely come – be it cricket, space or technology!

Sandeep Sehgal is Head - Government Vertical and ISV Red Hat India Pvt Ltd Venkatesh Hariharan is Director – Government Affairs, Red Hat India Pvt Ltd

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FEATURE

Choosing to Interoperate, so you can Innovate The most important step, the industry can take now is to appreciate the need for greater interoperability which is the very future of relevant and reliable Information Technology (IT) that can be of value to the users.

Vijay Kapur

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n the nineties, India was witness to an exciting debate – some would in fact say battle. The question was which technology – Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) or Global System for Mobile (GSM) – should the country choose and use in its mobile telephony. Today, the question seems irrelevant. In fact, how many of us today either know or care which technology runs our mobile phone? Today, what would concern each one of us, is how we could connect and talk to only half the people we wanted to.

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http://www.microsoft.com TOWARDS HETEROGENEITY AND INTEROPERABILITY

In the always-on, always connected new world, technology is becoming more heterogeneous and complex.

With innovation and a spurt of new technologies, this heterogeneity will only increase. So in an increasingly heterogeneous computing environment and with the emergence of web services and service-oriented architectures, what is critically required is interoperability.

The most important step, the industry can take now is to appreciate the need

for greater interoperability which is the very future of relevant and reliable Information Technology (IT) that can be of value to the users.

Microsoft, for instance, outlined its vision for interoperability way back in February 2005, when Bill Gates wrote to customers about the company’s intent to develop software that was interoperable “by design.” Since then, the company has attempted to solve real-world interoperability challenges of customers, developers, partners, and independent software providers, through innovative products, community e n g a g e m e n t , technology access, and support for technology standards.

The company has announced scores of interoperability deliverables that include the movement of dozens of specifications to the Open Specification Promise (OSP), landmark technology interoperability projects such as the Linux and Windows virtualization, and management projects with Novell.

The aim has been to address interoperability holistically and at numerous levels in order to better connect people, data and diverse systems. www.egovonline.net

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Therefore, on one hand, the company has been building interoperability into its products and technologies, at the other, it has been working closely with customers, partners and IT organisations for bridging different technologies.

COLLABORATING WITH OPEN SOURCE

The heterogeneous environment is also what determines Microsoft’s open source strategy. We are focused on helping customers and partners be successful in today’s complex technology world.

This includes increasing opportunities for business partners regardless of the underlying development model.

In addition, it includes increasing opportunities for developers to learn and create by combining communityoriented open source with traditional commercial approaches to software development.

Microsoft is a platform company committed to building technologies that empower communities of developers and partners to deliver compelling software solutions to customers.

In a heterogeneous technology world, developers, users, and entrepreneurs choose technologies that help them to be successful. Today, numerous open source developers and business partners have chosen Microsoft technologies.

Developers have created more than 79,000 open source applications using Microsoft platform technologies.

WHAT ABOUT TCO?

More and more customers today are looking not just at an initial procurement cost criteria, but towards a more mature Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI), which includes cost of procurement, end user acceptance, and of course the business impact. In challenging economic times and today’s “Do More with Less” IT environment, TCO is an acid metric that enables customers to make informed IT investment decisions.

AN INDIA SPECIFIC FROST & SULLIVAN REPORT FINDINGS WERE THAT:

Hardware is the largest component of TCO of Indian enterprises; software cost is just about 15 percent of the capital expense and 6.8 percent of overall TCO. ov

December 2008

Overall, Window 2003 environment across enterprises has close to 15.9 percent lower TCO as compared with Linux environment over a period of 5 years TCO of Linux is greater than that of Windows across 3 workloads that account for nearly 80 percent of x86 servers - Applications – 22.4 percent Networking – 11 percent and email – 8.24 percent.

So, TCO evaluation should go beyond the initial purchase cost of a hardware or software to include pre implementation soft costs and post-implementation operation, support, maintenance, downtime and training costs. Also, the initial costs (CAPEX) for the Linux operating system might be low but the operating expenses (OPEX) could be significantly higher as compared to the Windows 2003 operating system.

One of the reasons for Open Source Software (OSS) being considered suitable is because the perception that it is free. However, this is an erroneous perception. Various studies have shown that it is actually more expensive in a three to five year time span considering support/training costs related to OSS. ISN’T IT ALL MIXED SOURCE ANYWAY?

It is harder and harder to continue to define the world of software as a world divided between open source companies and commercial companies.

The truth is that today we are all mixedsource companies. Every company that traditionally comes from an open-source background has over time moved to the middle path after realising that in addition to the open-source foundation, they also need proprietary offerings that will differentiate their services from others and therefore will enable them to build a viable business.

LET THERE BE CHOICE

At the end of the day, every enterprise, government body and individual user wants to have the liberty of choosing what technology suits them best. No one solution, no one technology will suit every scenario or user. The issue right now is not what platform should be used, what is imperative is to get these tools to reach critical mass. The choice of tools is subjective and should be left to users. Open standards should

The Microsoft Interoperability Principles Ensuring open connections: Microsoft is ensuring open connections to its high-volume products so that software developers, business partners and competitors can better interact with those products and extend existing products or invent new solutions for customers.

Promoting data portability: Microsoft will design its high-volume products and provide documentation to enable customers to access their stored data and use their data easily in other software products.

Enhancing support for industry standards: Microsoft will support relevant standards in its high-volume products and do so in new ways which promotes even greater levels of interoperability than before. This will allow other developers (who implement standards) to understand how a standard is used in a Microsoft product, resulting in more interoperable products for the customers.

Fostering more open engagement: Microsoft will increase its communications with the customer, IT and open source communities to drive a collaborative approach for addressing interoperability challenges.

be the focus of core of IT adoption.

Technology is going to become increasingly more heterogeneous, and various players will have to seamlessly interoperate with each other to bring true value to users.

Vijay Kapur is National Technology Officer, Microsoft India

37

>>

FEATURE

SaaS for e-Governance SaaS is about commercial aspect in terms of licensing and charging model and deployment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure.

Sudhir Aggarwal

e-Governance in India and Software as a Service (SaaS / XaaS) seems to be made for each other. e-Governance is all about Government 2 Citizen (G2C), Government 2 Employee (G2E), Government 2 Government (G2G), Government to Business (G2B), Government 2 Stakeholder (G2S). e-Governance in India happens at Federal / Central and State level. e-Governance applications can primarily be categorised under two categories – vertical and horizontal. In India, e-Governance has no dearth and there is a need to consolidate to take next leap step forward.

SaaS is about commercial aspect in terms of licensing and charging model and deployment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure. Conceptually, ‘SaaS / XaaS’ has certain characteristics like hosted model, managed services model. It is hosted model, where the software (resource – ‘X’) is installed and configured at a central place such as a data centre. The software shall be configurable and customisable to user specific business functional requirements. It is a subscription model, where users subscribe to the services as required and desired. User avails the services based on Service Level Agreement (SLA). User enjoys the flexibility and option to subscribe different set of services for different profile of users. User enjoys the privilege to change the service package as and when required. Users need to neither buy nor own the software.

The investment pattern for users changes from Capital Expenditure (Capex) to Operational Expenditure (Opex) pay as use’ basis. One of the critical requirements of this model is SLA based billing, the relevance of this in government may be low; however it would be absolutely relevant and 38 }

handset and subscribe to service pack in line with the requirement of the profile of respective user.

‘Service Provider’ is an important player in this model. There are certain natural benefits of this model. Service provider manages the setup with central pool of resources, where the manpower requirement does not grow in proportion to the growth in setup. The investments in overall infrastructure (hardware, system software, middleware software, application/ utility software, management tools) also does not happen in proportion to the growth in user base from end-user perspective.

Lately, major Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) has been in support of ‘Hosted application/ managed services’ in terms of license support for products and solutions. Availability of reliable and affordable connectivity is yet another critical requirement for this model. System Integrators (SIs) are gearing up to build and offer services on this model.

SaaS Applications, Tools, and Utilities There is an interesting managed and maintained by service development happening in the provider, the end-user gets rid of the government under National ebiggest challenge of ‘manageability and Governance Plan (NeGP) i.e. Mission maintainability’. Otherwise it is always Mode Projects, State Wide Area Network (SWAN), State Data Centre a huge challenge and costly affairs.

User organisation focuses on its core (SDC) and Common Service Centre business and avail the benefits of such (CSC). These projects are either under services with low entry and exit barriers. implementation or in the advance stage User always has great freedom from of decision making. Truly, these are the being locked in with a technology or core requirements for ‘SaaS / XaaS’. product/ solution; especially in today’s times when tools and technology Sudhir Aggarwal is Senior Vice changes at unbelievable pace. It could President and Head – Government initiatives for Enterprise Division be a great tool in business strategy at Sify Technologies Limited. He is for the organisations, who are highly responsible for strategic business competitive and dynamic in nature. development in government and It is like subscribing to telephone defence segment. or mobile phone services. User buys required for Public Private Partnerships (PPP)/ Build Own Operate (BOO)/ Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) based projects.

This model offers lot of natural benefits of ICT like high availability, scalability, performance, security - all in respect of techno-functional requirements. Service provider continues to maintain updated version of products and solutions, hence end-users are not stuck with a particular version for long. As the entire setup is

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WiMAX – Maximising Connectivity WiMAX is the most cost-effective solution supporting a complete end-to-end solution for a fast deployment cycle; thus enabling service providers to provide substantially higher bandwidth / capacity, and broadband, voice, and video services.

Ashish Sharma

I

magine having the ability to access high-speed Internet services, watch mobile TV, read live sports headlines, get financial updates or make video calls whenever you want and wherever you are. This anytime, anywhere broadband vision is the promise of Mobile WiMAX.

to be the most cost-effective solution supporting a complete end-to-end solution for a fast deployment cycle; thus, enabling service providers to provide substantially higher bandwidth/ capacity, and broadband, voice, and video services.

MARKET FOR WIMAX

BROADBAND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS FOR VERTICAL SEGMENTS

With the increasing use of handheld devices and notebook computers, the need for data oriented mobile broadband services is continuing to grow.

Until now, the early adopters of WiMAX and other broadband wireless access systems have been operators serving areas not covered by traditional wireline broadband connections. However, the two fundamental advantages of WiMAX – commercial availability today and a thriving ecosystem – are making it the technology of choice for mass market broadband applications.

Trends indicate that WiMAX is targeting two distinct markets: primary broadband services and personal broadband.

These solutions provide owners and operators of public networks, private networks, utility companies, municipalities and government institutions with broadband connectivity and applications for their requirements. Examples for such applications include connectivity for government and municipal offices; security and surveillance services; campus-to-campus broadband connectivity; oil, gas and mining applications; and many other machine-tomachine automated applications which require high-speed wireless access. In this market segment, a standard-based solution offers a unique advantage over the typical proprietary solutions available today.

THE WIMAX ADVANTAGE IN EMERGING MARKETS

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WIMAX AND 3G

Providing basic communication services in emerging markets and empowering the local population, offers the potential for revolutionising social, economic, educational, and health trends. Providing equal communications opportunities to the mass population will enable the proliferation of additional programs and services for the benefit of the people and form a significant bridge over the digital divide.

Affordability, availability, and ease of use favour the adoption of WiMAX as a means for achieving broadband wireless connectivity. Here, WiMAX seems ov

December 2008

There is a strong relationship between WiMAX and 3G. Actually, WiMAX can be viewed as a complementary technology to 3G technology and therefore service providers can deploy 3G networks to handle voice services and narrower-band data communications.

WiMAX is deployed in order to give service providers the opportunity to offer their subscribers true mobile broadband connectivity. This model is considered so successful that WiMAX is regarded as a data overlay network to existing 3G networks. Moreover, since WiMAX supports voice services with great success due to its inherent

Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms, service providers may wish to utilise WiMAX networks to offer both types of services and even further optimise their expenditures in the future.

AN EYE TO THE FUTURE

In the portable/fixed broadband market, WiMAX is an attractive, low-risk opportunity to retain or gain competitive advantage. As nomadic and fixed services evolve to mobile, WiMAX-based mobile broadband services enables a shift towards a full mobile solution (similar to solutions now deployed in the United States, Japan, and Taiwan), supporting multiple devices and multiple services per subscriber and enabling service providers to move to the next stage of service provisioning. Ultimately, technology is as good as the benefits it enables for its target customers.

Ashish Sharma is VP Corporate Market Development, Alvarion Ltd. His past experience covers a broad spectrum of roles in business development, marketing, strategy and engineering.

39

NEWS WORLDWIDE MOBILE SUBSCRIBERS TO REACH 4 BILLION BY LATE 2008

3G SPECTRUM ALLOTMENT TO BE COMPLETED BY JAN.’09

International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré speaking recently at the high-level events on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) announced in New York that worldwide mobile cellular subscribers are likely to reach the 4 billion mark before the end of this year.

Since the turn of the century, the growth of mobile cellular subscribers has been impressive, with year-on-year growth averaging 24 per cent between 2000 and 2008. While in 2000, mobile penetration stood at only 12 per cent, it surpassed the 50 per cent mark by early 2008. It is estimated to reach about 61 per cent by the end of 2008.

ITU further highlights that despite high growth rates in the mobile sector, major differences in mobile penetration rates remain between regions and within countries.

The impressive growth in the number of mobile cellular subscribers is mainly due to developments in some of the world’s largest markets. The BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are expected to have an increasingly important impact in terms of population, resources and global GDP share. These economies alone are expected to account for over 1.3 billion mobile subscribers by the end of 2008.

China surpassed the 600 million mark by mid-2008, representing by far the world’s largest mobile market. India had some 296 million mobile subscribers by end July 2008 but with a relatively low penetration rate of about 20 per cent, India offers great potential for growth. Market liberalization has played a key role in spreading mobile telephony by driving competition and bringing down prices. India’s mobile operators increasingly compete for low-income customers and Average-Revenue-Per-User in India has reached around USD 7, one of the lowest in the world.

At a curtain raiser ceremony for the forthcoming India telecom 2008 event in New Delhi recently, the Minister of Communications and IT, Thiru A. Raja has reiterated that the process of allotment of spectrum for 3G will be completed by January 2009. The Minister further added that although the global economy is currently passing through the recession phase, its impact has been comparatively less on telecom sector. Infact he re-assured that India is well poised to surpass the target of 500 million connections well before the timeline of 2010.

He also regretted the fact that the telecom growth in rural areas has not kept pace with that in urban areas.

Raja said, the government is working hard to correct this imbalance by shifting focus to small towns and rural areas, but it has still to go a long way in bridging the rural urban divide. He said, the government’s decision to allot licences to more operators was directed at raising competition, lowering tariffs and enhancing rural tele-density.

He further disclosed that the government has set a target to provide broadband connectivity in all Gram Panchayats, Government Higher Secondary Schools and Public Health Centers by the end of year 2012. He hoped that the current provision of over 7000 mobile towers and future projects of over 11000 towers with Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) support will drastically change the mobile telephony scenario in rural India.

Seconding Raja’s opinion, the Minister of State for Communications and IT, Jyotiraditya Scindia remarked that connecting rural India is the next biggest opportunity before the Telecom sector. He called upon the industry to play a catalytic role in taking the telecom revolution to rural and remote areas. The Minister asked for special emphasis on manufacturing and Research and Development and innovative business models to achieve the main objective of higher rural tele-density.

TRAI’S NEW RECOMMENDATIONS On “Issues relating to entry of certain entities into Broadcasting and Distribution activities” the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recently issued recommendations.

With regards to the question of entry of State Governments, urban and rural local bodies, etc. into broadcasting activities, the Authority has taken note of the fact that at present these entities have not been permitted to enter into broadcasting activities.TRAI has recommended that the aspirations of the State Governments, as regards broadcasting, should be adequately met by Prasar Bharati and by imposing certain public service broadcasting obligations on private broadcasters as indicated below.

TRAI has recommended that certain public service broadcasting obligations be imposed on the broadcasters in the country. The preparation of content for public service broadcasting may be done by individuals including private broadcasters, NGOs, social action groups, etc., in addition to Prasar Bharati, DAVP, State Governments and their organs. The Government of India (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) may set up a regular body to approve and certify programmes as being fit for broadcast as part of the public service broadcasting (PSB) obligation.

In order to provide funds for such public service broadcasting programmes, TRAI has further recommended to establish a Fund, to 40

be known as the Public Service Broadcasting Obligation Fund, on lines similar to the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund in the telecom sector, and imposing an annual Public Service Broadcasting Obligation levy on the private broadcasters in the country and a predetermined share from the percentage of gross revenue being paid by the identified stakeholders in the broadcasting sector.

In regards to the entry of State Governments into the distribution platform such as cable TV, DTH, etc., the Authority has noted that there are already 6 DTH operators, about 6000 multisystem operators and nearly 60,000 cable operators. Such being the case, and in the interest of fair competition, level playing field, and also considering the need to ensure proper enforcement mechanism equally applicable to all the players in the field, TRAI has recommended that the State Governments and their organs should stay away from distribution activities. Suitable provisions for exit route within three to four years have been provided wherever state governments and their organs have entered such distribution activity.

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XII National Conference on e-Governance Venue: Hotel Holiday Inn, Goa, India Focus Areas: Government Process Re-engineering Horizontal Transfer of ICT-based Best Practice Citizen-Centric Service Delivery Usage of Technology in e-Governance Usage of ICT by PSUs Government Websites Media Partner

For information, please contact : Director (e-Governance), Department of AR&PG Sardar Patel Bhawan, Parliament Street New Delhi-110001, Tele +91-11-23743030

Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions Government of India

NEWS TATA TELESERVICES INVESTS INR 100 CRORE IN ASSAM

10.29 MILLION MORE TELEPHONE CONNECTIONS ADDED

Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL), has launched its telecom operation in the Assam circle, under its brand Tata Indicom. The company has introduced a range of products which include prepaid and postpaid mobile services, Photon-High Speed Internet Access, Fixed Wireless Telephony under the brand name Walky Talky and a host of Value Added Services.

To increase its national footprint TTSL has invested over INR 100 crore, in Assam circle establishing a pan India network with 20 circles. During the current stage of launch, TTSL will provide seamless coverage in 31 towns of Assam and will shortly be launching services in the North East region.

On the occasion of launching services in Assam, Tata Indicom introduced North East Corridor Starter Pack just for INR 199.

Subscribers in the region can now make STD calls across Assam for just 50 paisa per minute.

Tata Indicom has also announced the launch of Photon - HighSpeed Internet Access service with speeds 10 times faster than any existing mobile wireless technology. The Photon service can be accessed using two devices - Router for Small & Medium Enterprises and Business Enterprises and the USB Modem, for individual users and the Small Office Home Office (SOHO) segment. The Photon Internet access service allows customers to be connected—not only for mails, but also for downloads, large files uploads, photo sharing, send & receive SMS and is compatible to both laptops and desktop PCs. Tata Indicom product sand services will be available at exclusive Tata Indicom Showrooms and several retail selling points (RSP’s) across the state. Tata Teleservices has already installed over 134 cell sites in the first phase of its network roll out itself.

Tata Indicom has deployed a state-of-the-art CDMA network in the Assam Circle which allows superior voice quality and data connectivity. The CDMA advantage ensures improved call quality with better and consistent sound, minimum call drops, enhanced privacy, improved coverage and network efficiency amongst others.

As per the data disclosed by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) another 10.29 million telephone connections (Wireline and Wireless) have been added during October 2008 as compared to 9.79 million connections added in September 2008. The total number of telephone connections reaches 363.95 million at the end of October 2008 as compared to 353.66 million in September 2008. With this growth, the overall tele-density has reached 31.50% at the end of October 2008 as against 30.64% in September 2008.

In the wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA & WLL(F)) total base stood at 325.73 million at the end of October 2008. A total of 10.42 million wireless subscribers have been added during the month of October 2008 as against 10.07 million wireless subscribers added during the month of September 2008.

Whereas in the wireline segment, the subscriber base has decreased to 38.22 million in the month of October 2008 as against 38.35 million subscribers in September 2008 registering a drop of 0.13 million.

JATAAYU’S MOBILE BROWSING Jataayu, a Bharti Telesoft enterprise, announced the launch of Zing, its mobile browsing solution at AfricaCOM in Cape Town, South Africa. By bringing a full web experience to a wide range of mobile users, Zing will drive mobile Internet usage and significantly enhance data revenues for operators and content providers globally.

The new Zing mobile browsing solution provides a full web experience across the entire range of java-enabled handsets - from entry-level to smart phones. It improves page-rendering speeds by up to 100%, providing fast Internet access, which to date has not been experienced by mobile web users. With Zing, users get more content for the same amount of data usage. Thanks to Zing’s impressive navigation features, mobile users enjoy a simplified browsing experience, helping operators create customer stickiness and generating increased mobile Internet usage.

THIRU A RAJA HAPPY WITH TELECOM GROWTH At the Economic Editors’ Conference 2008 recently, Union Ministry of Communications & Information Technology reiterated that the proactive policies of the Department of Telecommunications have resulted in an unprecedented growth of the telecom sector. The Department of Telecommunications has been able to provide state of the art world class infrastructure at globally competitive tariffs and reduce the digital divide by extending connectivity to the unconnected areas. The last four years have seen renowned telecom companies setting up their manufacturing bases in India.

The Indian telecom sector is currently witnessing a resurgent growth and has emerged as the fastest growing telecom market in the world with the addition of over 8 million subscribers per month.

42

Handsets are being sold at a price, which are within the reach of the common man which in turn has made India one of the most sought after telecom manufacturing destinations.

Regarding the performance of the telecom sector the figures disclosed are as follows: the total number of telephone connections have gone up from 76.5 million in March 2004 to 353.61 million in September, 2008; wreless connections have gone up form 35.6 million in March 2004 to 315.13 million in September, 2008; rural telephone have gone up from 12.2 million in March 2004 to 104.83 million in September 2008, while urban telephone have gone up from 64.3 million in March 2004 to 248.83 million in September 2008.

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MOVEMENT

Executive Movements Aditya Prasad Padhi has been appointed as the new Home Secretary by the Orissa government on November 21, 2008. He belongs to the 1983 batch IAS officer from Orissa cadre Ajeya Kallam has been appointed as the Chairman and Managing Director of the Visakhapatnam Port Trust. He is a 1983 batch IAS officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre.

Alok Bhatnagar has joined as the Additional Secretary in the Central Vigilance Commission. He belongs to the 1973 batch.

AS Sarangi is the new Chief Secretary of Orissa. He is a 1975 batch IAS officer.

Bala Shetty will be new Ambassador to Sweden.

B. Anand is appointed as the new Joint Secretary AYUSH, Department of Health, Government of India. He is 1987 batch IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre.

Chandrasekhar Bal Krishnan is appointed as new Coal Secretary, GoI. Chandrasekhar Bal Krishnan is an IAS officer of 1974 batch from HP cadre. He will take charge on 1, December 2008.

Gopal Chandra Nanda is the next Chairman of Orissa Staff Selection Commission. He is a retired IPS officer of 1974 batch. He retired as Chief Secretary in December 1988.

D.K. Jain is all set move as the Ambassador to Mexico. He was the Additional Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs.

Dr. Anup K Pujari is posted as Secretary in the Economic Advisory Council of the Indian Prime Minister. Prior to this, he was the Joint Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA). Dr. Pujari belongs to the 1980 batch IAS officer from Karnataka cadre.

J. Swaminathan is likely to move as the Ambassador to Egypt. He is currently the Chief Passport Officer in the Ministry of External Affairs.

K.V. Unnikrishnan is posted as Deputy Secretary in Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs. He is a CSS officer from 1986 batch.

Manbir Singh is appointed as the new Ambassador to Holland.

Manoj Bharti is the new Joint Secretary (EG&IT) in Ministry of External Affairs. He is an IFS officer of 1988 batch He would be replacing B B Tyagi IFS officer of 1979 batch.

Pradeeep Singh has been appointed as Ambassador to Croatia.

Niraj Ranjan Das is appointed as DG of CRPF. He is a 1973 batch IPS officer from West Bengal cadre.

Raman Shrivastava has been appointed as the Special Home Secretary in the Government of India.

He belongs to the 1973 batch IPS officer from Kerala cadre.

R.K. Ojha has joined as Deputy Secretary Commerce, GoI. He is a 1983 batch CSS officer.

S. Jalaja is the new Secretary of AYUSH in the Government of India. He belongs to the 1974 IAS officer of Bihar cadre.

Sanat Kumar becomes the Additional Secretary and FA in Ministry of Human Resource Development. He belongs to the 1973 batch CSS officer.

Santanu Mitra has joined as Director, North Eastern Region Council (NERC). He is 1993 batch Indian Economic Service officer.

This section keeps you abreast with people on the move in the government and the private sector. If you come across any executive movements write to us at info@egovonline.net

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December 2008

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EVENTS WATCH

3 - 6 DECEMBER, 2008 Internet Governance Forum Hyderabad, India http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/ upcoming

5 DECEMBER 2008 VAS India 2008 - International Conference Mumbai, India http://www.bharatexhibitions.com/english/ VASI2008.shtml

18 - 20 DECEMBER 2008 The 6th International Conference on e-Governance (ICEG 2008) New Delhi, India http://www.iceg.net/2008/

2 - 4, FEBRUARY, 2009 5 - 10 JANUARY, 2009 FIRST International Conference on COMmunication Systems and NETworkS (COMSNETS) Bangalore, India http://www.comsnets.org/HYPERLINK “ http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/ upcoming”

The World’s Communications Conference Miami, Florida http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/

4 FEBRUARY, 2009

27 - 28, APRIL 2009

Government IT 09 London

Government Technologies Conference & Expo Toronto, Canada

http://www.govnet.co.uk/govit/index.php

http://gov.wowgao.com/

19 - 21 JANUARY, 2009

12 - 13 MARCH 2009

Indonesian Telecoms International Summit Jakarta, Indonesia

1st International Conference on eGovernment & eGovernance, Ankara, Turkey

http://www.indonesian-telecoms.com/en/ delegates_info/confday1.html

http://www.wbc-inco.net/object/calendar/18227. html

24-28, MAY 2009 The Fourth International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (ICIW) Venice, Italy http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/ICIW09. html

26 - 29, JANUARY 2009

17-19 APRIL 2009

GTC Southwest Austin

3rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2009) Doha, Qatar

http://www.govtech.com/events/ southwest2009HYPERLINK “ http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/ upcoming

44 }

http://www.ictd2009.org

31 MAY - 4 JUNE 2009 6th Annual European Semantic Web Conference Heraklion, Greece http://www.eswc2009.org/

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Terrorists use mobile payment systems to transfer money Advanced mobile technology, cooperation between international mobile communications providers and international financial institutions, and the lack of regulations make for a swift, cheap, mostly untraceable money transfer - known as “m-payments” - anywhere, anytime, by anyone with a mobile telephone.

However, the spread of m-payments in less developed countries, which often lack functioning anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulatory frameworks, and where corruption is rife, will likely increase money laundering and terrorist financing.

The abuse of the m-payments is easy when the stored value card is used. It does not require a bank account, credit card, or two forms of government-approved identification to activate and use.

It just requires cash. Most cards set limits on the amount held on the card, but most can be reloaded, allowing

the transfer of thousands of dollars.

Indeed, this anonymous and mobile mpayment service is the best vehicle for criminals and terrorists for transferring or receiving money.

Here’s how m-payments can work: You buy a stored value card for a certain amount of dollars and a prepaid, disposable mobile phone. Next, you register with the mpayment service provider using a free anonymous e-mail account, your prepaid

mobile-phone number, and the money on the stored value card. Using your mobile phone, you log on to the mpayment service provider and give the number of the mobile phone to which you wish to transfer the funds from your stored value card. The m-payment service provider sends a message to the receiver’s phone number asking where to transfer the money. The recipient can request the transfer to his stored value card and withdraw the funds from any ATM. Both sender and recipient can then throw away their mobile phones and use new phones and new stored value cards for another transfer, without any fear of detection.

Since both terrorism and mpayments are global, the m-payment service provider, as all those monitoring terror financing, should have immediate real-time access to an integrated, closely monitored list of all individuals, organizations, businesses, and countries suspected of links to terrorists.

FLIP SIDE by Santulan Chaubey

Sir, He is not an unemployed youth. He is a State Information Officer. He turned penny less after paying RTI penalties.

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