Right to Services - February 2011 by eGov Magazine - Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd

LIVE LC Singh President, Nihilent Technologies on government process re-engineering p40 ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-GOVERNMENT

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right to services The proposed right to services legislation in some states of the country will make government officers pay for delay in service delivery. Will it really work? pg18

e-transformation of

scholorship The e-scholorship system will see continuous enhancements p8

the first choice of

customers

On niit’s key government verticals p32

stickiness

grows

Economic considerations drove some quick adoption p42

Contents february 2011

second grid grid name issue 02 nâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; volume 07

opinion Transformation, not tech is the essence Successful e-Gov rollouts are about government process re-engineering

right to services

Analysis Stickiness grows Economic considerations drove some quick adoption

interview amod kumar On monitoring mid-day meals scheme through cloud telephony

18 | cover story

Right to Services The proposed right to services legislation in some states of the country will make government officers pay for delay in service provision. Will it really work?

analysis A tool for smart governance Widespread adoption of DMS can cut down processing time

gov talk Dinesh Waghmare The e-Scholorship system will see continuous enhancements

interview Arvind Thakur On NIITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s key government verticals

interview Ajay Chowdhry On product-oriented approach to system integration

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

technology UID setting trend for transparent governance The UID will help unlock value dormant in existing databases

health watch Towards Efficient Healthcare Model Mobile phones are set to change the way healthcare is delivered

technology How multispectral imaging makes citizen ID management possible Identity management projects deliver reliable performance

further reading Editorial india News news world industry News mastek feature news

03 12 14 16 17 25

e can hardly miss the ads placed in national dailies by the Department of Consumer Affairs reminding and cautioning the consumers about their rights, while dealing with goods and services offered by the private, co-operative or the government sector, titled ‘jago grahak jago’. Ironically, we really confine our imagination by not applying these very rights while dealing with the services, particularly in the government. Many of the state government have been following the Citizen Charter’s model which talks about some degree of service level agreements in service delivery. But mostly, the review of the efficiency and accountability in case of government to citizen service delivery has been voluntary. The initiatives taken by some of the state departments towards institutionalising the citizen charter have brought a paradigm shift in state of governance in the country. Madhya Pradesh is the pioneer state to approve the legislation on Right to Services (RTS), thereby setting in accountability and efficiency in the public administration. Following suite, the states of Bihar and Punjab are working upon a more comprehensive framework, besides seeking public suggestions while drafting of the Bill. The provision of penalising the designated public servant in case of non-compliance with the law, would act as deterrence to the public administration. Madhya Pradesh Public Service Gurantee Act 2010 goes to the extent of giving back the penalisation fee charged from the salary of the designated public official to the service applicant as compensation. Reportedly, the ‘tatkal’ provision which is being worked under Bihar’s proposed legislation on RTS deserves appreciation. Under the tatkal provision, one can avail the notified government to citizen services – like obtaining a driving license or a caste certificate – in short duration of time, paying little more from the usual fee. The proposed enactment in Punjab notifies many of services related the police department – that would supposedly change the face of the department, mostly perceived as one most arbitrary wing of the government. Naturally, the question arises if we can have a similar legislation in place at the Centre, which can encompass all the union ministries and departments. Viewing the movement on right to services gathering momentum, it’s an imperative on the part of Government of India to conceptualise and enact a similar law, since it could be a big motivator for the states, which have so far been watching the RTS quietly.

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ICT for Growth

Divya Chawla, Sheena Joseph,

The January edition provided with a fascinating read. Reading what the policy makers and leaders have to say about the e-Governance initiatives and the scope as well as need of new software applications in terms of governance was quite enlightening. Inclusive growth through ICT in governance is the aim and objective it shall be achieved as rightly pointed by the editor and agreed upon by all the leaders covered in the issue. A great read, keep it up!

Pratap Vikram Singh Sales & Marketing Team Debabrata Ray (Mobile: +91-9899650692), Arpan Dasgupta, Bharat Kumar Jaiswal, Fahimul Haque, Rakesh Ranjan (sales@elets.in ) Subscription & Circulation Priya Saxena, Gunjan Singh (Mobile: 9718289123) (subscription@elets.in) Graphic Design Team Bishwajeet Kumar Singh, Om Prakash Thakur Shyam Kishore Web Development Team Zia Salahuddin, Amit Pal, Sandhya Giri, Anil Kumar IT Team Mukesh Sharma Events Vicky Kalra Editorial & Marketing Correspondence egov – G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA–201 301, India Phone: +91-120-2502181-85, Fax: +91-1202500060 Email: info@egovonline.net egov is published by Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd

Ruth Samson, Gurgaon

Brand India! This in reference to the article “Advocating Brand India”, we are going to be the next big name and for that the establishment of its global presence is very essential. I was amused to read that India has extended USD 10 billion line of credit to countries in Africa or the help offered for the development of countries like Afghanistan, Ghana, Mali, and Mauritius. These things should come into light. Popularlising one’s own work is not bad if you are doing something really good for the world. Our media most of the time brings on negative stories and name it “development journalism”. But why can’t we ever find positive stories like this? It has been rightly said in the article that credible narratives of our own work would not only provide global audiences with a perspective of the geographical spread but also bring from our own public and Parliament an appreciation of our activities. Archana Sharma, Noida

in technical collaboration with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS). Owner, Publisher, Printer: Ravi Gupta, Printed at H T Media Ltd, B-2, Sector-63, Noida 201307 , U.P. and published from 710 Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50 Noida, UP Editor: Ravi Gupta © All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic and mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage or retrieval system, without publisher’s permission.

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

We live in a communications environment and if the policies are not well understood by the beneficiaries half the purpose is defeated. For well understanding in this new communicative environment, we need to connect through all media simultaneously and effectively. Very rightly put that public diplomacy is also a process beneficial for the diplomats as much as it is for the public. The need to feel the popular pulse and the requirements of the innovation, using the latest in IT is the need of the hour. Hats off to Nirupama Rao,

Foreign Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs for understanding the pulse of the nation and putting it rightly so. Ankita Khare via e-mail

Innovating for Masses This is with reference to the interview of Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the PM on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations published in January 2011. As rightly put by Mr Sam Pitroda, it’s about the benefits that are to be delivered to the poor and ensuring it reaches the poor. Electronic systems of distribution, payments as well as monitoring are the way forward and India has just started on it. Here is to hope that we will pioneer these areas as well! Arjun Singh, New Delhi

Inclusive Community Technology The article “Inclusive Community Technology’ (January 2011) hits the nail right on the head. “Probably one of the biggest challenges faced today is that the citizens are not aware of the various programmes and schemes they can benefit from,” as rightly put by Ashank Desai, the author. How many people from the lower strata actually know of their entitlements? With such a large population where it sometimes can be difficult to reach personally to everyone, ICT and new technologies can definitely play a positive role. The need of the hour is to employ the new techniques to the unique Indian demographic as well as social situation and make inclusive policies efficient and effective. Vikram Pathak, Faridabad

Dinesh Waghmare

gov talk

Secretary, Dept of Social Justice & Special Assistance, Govt of Maharashtra

e-Transformation of Scholarship Programme The system will see continuous enhancements to cater to the needs of the state. Maharashtra is a trend-setter in various sectors. Through various other initiatives such as caste validity, we are moving forward steadily towards online systems

cholarship is a critical tool to facilitate further education for the eligible students, especially those who are from social and economical backward classes in the state, and bring them on to the mainstream development track. The department of social justice strives towards achieving this through various development schemes both for the individuals and the community. This article describes the journey to transform the scholarship programme in the state of Maharashtra, a paradigm shift from the manual mode to the electronic medium.

Digitisation - Need of the Hour ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ could not be more true for the students from the Scheduled Caste (SC), Other Backward Castes (OBC), and other economically and socially deprived classes who were eligible for the post-matric scholarships. Even though the department of Social Justice and Special Assistance had allocated the funds for these scholar-

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

ships, the manual system created lots of delays, not only in the disbursal but also the receipt of the same. There was dependency on the colleges for the data. To add to this, there were many cases of fraud which neither helped identify the ‘correct’ eligible candidate(s) nor helped the ‘right amount’ reaching the student on time. Monitoring and tracking was another challenge since the information required was not available in a timely manner. The department, committed to deliver the benefit to the citizen, conceptualised the ‘e-Scholarship’ initiative as the need of the hour to solve this situation.

Overcoming Challenges To realise this initiative, we needed to get a ‘buy-in’ from the stakeholders in this process which included the IT department, vice chancellors and heads of educational institutions, bank officers and the department officers. We also needed to understand the challenges and loopholes involved in such an initiative. The department also faced resistance from many sectors especially those who had a mala fide interest. However, we were able to have positive dialogue with all the

stakeholders. We also got a lot of encouragement from the Hon’ble Chief Minister and Hon’ble Social Welfare Minister for this initiative.

‘e-Scholarship’ – The solution To achieve the challenging task of transforming the delivery mode of the scholarships, we selected Mastek Ltd., a leading IT solutions player to design, develop and implement the ‘e-Scholarship’ solution for the state. The solution automates the scholarship application process, the sanction and disbursal procedures across the 35 districts under the seven divisional officers in the state. Under this new automated system, the students have a zero-balance account in a nationalised bank where their monthly allowance is credited directly. The student also receives an SMS alert from the system informing him of the same. The solution user-interface is available in English and Marathi. Apart from enabling granting procedures, the solution also caters to processes of scholarship suspension, renewal and cancellation. The system

-“The solution automates the scholarship application process, the sanction and disbursal procedures across the 35 districts under the seven divisional officers in the state”

gov talk

Signalling a new era in teaching the hearing impaired

SHWETA WALISHETTAR B. D. Tatti Deaf & Dumb School | Lakshmeshwar, Karnataka

LEARNING FOR A LIFETIME

The self-sustaining digital literacy model encompasses: Illustrating difficult concepts with videos and presentations using Microsoft Office PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker Developing analytical skills with calculations and spreadsheets on Microsoft Office Excel Nurturing a spirit of enquiry by learning more with online research and scanning materials

Now an inspiring teacher at the B. D. Tatti Deaf & Dumb School, Shweta was severely crippled at the age of 6 months. Growing up, she realised how lack of access and facilities hinder learning for the specially-abled and resolved to help address their needs. Even as she used sign language to teach, Shweta felt it was necessary to further simplify computer education. Microsoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Project Shiksha teacher training program presented this opportunity. The trainers at the Microsoft Shiksha IT Academy in Dharwad helped her develop a unique sign language to bring the world of computers alive. Using her background in computers and newly acquired skills, Shweta now teaches Computer Education to students from 8 to 15 years. Online browsing, doing research and creating their own learning materials help students develop practical skills. Recently, they developed a campaign to create awareness about the needs of deaf and mute children! The result - skills that go beyond textbooks to create a better life for all.

ENABLING INDIA This story is one of the many steps on the road to enabling India. Partnering with 12 state governments, Project Shiksha has helped train over 5,12,000 teachers in IT skills, who have impacted over 25 million students so far. To know more about Microsoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initiatives, visit www.microsoft.com/india/msindia

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

gov talk

also provides the department with MIS to monitor and analyse the scholarship distribution and disbursement. The department officials have been provided the necessary training on the system. Online help is available to colleges and students.

Delivering the Benefits The solution has manifold benefits to the department, educational institutions and the students. Over 32 Lakh students in the state will now receive their funding directly in their bank account via wire transfer from the department; they will not have to depend anymore on colleges for that. Approximately `11 crores was disbursed to 30,000 students within a month of the launch of the online system. We expect an estimated `1700 Cr. to be disbursed to 18 Lakh students across 11,500 colleges in the state in one year. The application process is now more transparent and quick. Both the colleges and the department will see increase in operational efficiency due to reduction in their paper-work. The department will be able to

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

The application process is now more transparent and quick. Both the colleges and the department will see increase in operational efficiency due to reduction in their paper-work

identify the eligible students faster and disburse the grants into their bank accounts directly in a timely and transparent manner. Chances of error and fraudulent scholarships claims will be lesser. Decision making will be faster due to availability of the accurate and timely information provided by the system.

Way Forward This is just the beginning. The system

will see continuous enhancements to cater to the needs of the state. Maharashtra is a trend-setter in various sectors. Through various other initiatives such as caste validity etc., we are moving forward steadily towards online systems. We will realise the vision laid out in National e-Governance (NeGP) plan to provide services to the citizens and businesses in a transparent, efficient and timely manner.

news

projects people policy events products

Govt announces high-tech measures for efficiency in MNREGA Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the creation of a biometric database of all workers covered under its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) scheme and to use it to authenticate work applications, work-site attendance and wage payments. He made the announcement

at a function held to mark five years of the launch of MNREGA. The step is being taken with an aim to decrease the malpractices in the scheme including bogus I-cards, delayed payments and fake payments as was rightly put by the PM, “We hope it will substantially reduce instances of discrimination in work allocation,

biometric cards

egov contract

Andhra Pradesh bags international contracts in e-Governance

Andhra becomes the first state to get biometric authentication cards Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy launched the Aadhar-based smart cards in Maheswaram Mandal, which is about 24 km from Hyderabad. Maheswaram became the first revenue division in the country to use the biometric authentication cards. The CM stated that around 11,000 households in the area are being aimed to be provided with ration on the basis of these cards and it will also be helpful in availing

a number of other welfare schemes and services of the government. According to the State Civil Supplies Minister, D Sridhar Babu, 11,000 households had been identified and brought under the Aadhar smart card scheme. “The biometrics of these families have been captured and these people will be given the cards which will be

Punjab kickstarts UID preparations

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

Punjab intends to kickstart its massive publicity campaign in the second week of February to join the league of first few states to feed biometrics of its citizens into the server of Nandan Nilekani-headed Unique Identification

useful not only for drawing ration but for arogya sri (health insurance scheme), scholarships (for backward class students) and various other schemes. The government hopes to distribute the cards in the entire state within six to eight months,” D Sridhar Babu said.

Authority of India (UIDAI) by September this year — ahead of the Assembly polls due early next year. Nearly 2,000 biometric machines will be simultaneously pressed into service in all its 20 districts from March-April to

delayed payments and bogus muster rolls.” The Prime Minister also expressed concern over problems in implementation of MNREGA in Naxal-affected areas. He announced that the government will establish a technical unit, comprising a panchayat development officer and a junior engineer, in each gram panchayat.

Andhra Pradesh has finalised agreements with governments of Mauritius, Poland and Israel for transfer of technology related to e-Governance. The state

capture fingerprints and Iris impressions of its estimated population of 2.75 crore for Aadhar, India’s ambitious project to grant a unique 12-digit identification number to its every citizen. Reforming its

government would soon enter into agreements with these countries in this regard, the Information Technology Minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah said.

ration and LPG supply system is the reason why Punjab has made information about the two mandatory in the form to be filled in by citizens. The department, which has already invited ‘request for qualifica-

tion’ bids from firms enlisted with the UIDAI for outsourcing the process of capturing the biometrics of its citizens, has worked out the figures backwards for ensuring that the September deadline is met.

news

Multi-purpose National Identity Cards for Orissa fishermen Altogether 36,500 fishermen in 228 coastal villages in Orissa will be provided Multi-purpose National Identity Cards as a preventive measure against infiltration. The exercise is being conducted jointly by

the National Population Registrar (NPR), Ministry of Home Affairs and the state government’s marine fisheries department. The I-cards would provide nationality, professional and legal proof and lead to easy detection of

infiltrators, masquerading as fishermen. “The enumeration and data entry work has ended. Photography and fingerprint biometric work for issue of the National Multipurpose Identity Cards is

on full swing in infiltrationprone coastal Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara districts,” Assistant Director of Fisheries (Marine) Rabi Narayan Pattnaik, said. The enumerators have gathered information such

tele-medicine

broadband

The SAARC Telemedicine Centre has been established in Kathmandu village. This initiative is a result of the promise made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the 13th SAARC Summit, way back in the year 2005. The centre aims to link all the top institutions in Lucknow and Chandigarh. Nepal’s caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal Friday inaugurated the telemedicine centre at Patan Hospital in Lalitpur, set up with an Indian assistance of nearly 4.8 crore Nepalese rupees, under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) project. India is fully funding the project to set up telemedicine network in

The National Broadband plan aims to connect 160 million Indian households with high-speed Internet connections by 2014, as stated by the Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal. The broadband plan would focus on framing a policy that balances consumer affordability and service provider’s economic sustainability. Therefore, additional optic fibre would have to be laid along with leveraging existing wireless infrastructure. Kapil Sibal consulted key stakeholders including telecom regulator TRAI, industry chambers, mobile, internet, cable and PCO service providers and their associations apart from Rail-Tel, Power Grid Corporation and

India-funded telemed centre to link Nepal, Lucknow and Chandigarh

the entire SAARC region as part of the assurance given by Manmohan Singh, a statement by the Indian embassy in Kathmandu said. The Lalitpur telemedicine centre, the memorandum of understanding (MoU) for which was signed in 2009, will enable the host institution to receive consultation and Continuing Medical Education (CME) services from select hospitals in SAARC countries. From India, such services

would be provided by the super-specialty Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow, and the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh. Nepal has special ties with the Chandigarh institute. Besides the telemedicine centre, a SAARC teleeducation centre is being established at the National Centre for Education Development in Nepal’s Bhaktapur district.

as genealogical order of the family, nativity status and fingerprints of those aged above 18. The Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) is now carrying out photography and related technical jobs.

National Broadband plan to connect 160m homes officials from information and broadcasting ministry on telecom related policy issues. Earlier this month, Sibal announced a 100-day agenda for taking concrete steps towards finalisation of the broadband plan. As per the plan, optical fibre network will be treated as a national resource and will be equally available to concerned stakeholders for providing broadband services. The government aims at inclusive growth through broadband as education, medical treatment and entertainment related applications would be extensively used, besides enabling e-Governance and citizen-centric services particularly in the rural areas.

Nearly 57,000 apply for online registration of shops in Haryana Nearly 57,000 applications have so far been received for online registration of shops and commercial establishments after introduction of e-governance in Haryana’s labour department. The online registration of shops and commercial

establishments under the Punjab Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1958, was launched February last year. “The registration through the net also provided for automatic permission to regulate their own hours of work and weekly off days,

which has been the persistent demand of the traders for some time,” Labour and Employment Minister Mahender Partap Singh

said. Online registration and licensing of factories under the Factories Act was also launched in October last year. He said that development

of self-certification under Factories Act and registration of establishments and workers under Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, were also in the pipeline and would be launched shortly.

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

news

world

2,000 Ohio doctors opt for e-Health record help The Ohio Health Information Partnership (OHIP) has recently announced that more than 2,000 physicians have signed contracts with OHIP and its seven regional partners between September and December.

Ohio’s goal is to reach 6,000 physicians and other health care professionals in 2011. That push will be funded by $28.3 million in federal stimulus money, made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Greater Dayton Area Health

Information Network, part of the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association, will help implement electronic health records in Montgomery, Preble, Miami, Darke, Shelby, Auglaize, Mercer and Allen counties. The number of doctors who signed up in those counties was not immediately available Thursday morning. Implementation in Butler, Warren, Greene, Clark and

e-infrastructure

Ukrain to create common information infrastructure by 2015 According to the State Agency of Ukraine for Science, Innovation and Information, a common information and telecommunications infrastructure of central and local government agencies will be established until 2015 as part of the third stage of electronic government development. The concept of

electronic government was approved at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Under the concept, the first stage (until 2012) foresees the development of legal and regulatory framework required for the provision of administrative services electronically, the creation of common standards for interaction between the

subjects of e-government and a common national system of electronic document circulation, as well as the provision by central and local government agencies of services to citizens electronically. The second stage (until 2014) foresees that services will be provided in electronic form in all spheres of public life.

e-services

Azerbaijan develops single integrated platform for services within e-Government The Caspian European ICT Club (one of the divisions of the CaspianEuropean Business Integration Club; CEIBC) has considered issues of information security in the process of introduction of e-Government services at a recent meeting. Addressing to meeting Elmir Velizadeh, Deputy Communications Minister of Azerbaijan, informed that up to date the country had already introduced more than 10 out of the 20 services envisaged

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

by the State e-Government Development Programme. “Within the e-Government Program 2010-12 and Action Plan 2010-11 it is considered a possibility to integrate all components of e-government services into a single platform,” Velizadeh said. Taxpayer Service Concept 2011-15 approved in 2011 also provides creation of a single platform to render all services to business in electronic form.

Champaign counties will be through HealthBridge, a health information nonprofit serving greater Cincinnati. According to a news release, a signed contract with OHIP means doctors will receive free assistance from regional partners to prepare for and select an electronic health record vendor; lower pricing for software from preferred vendors; lower pricing for software from preferred

vendors; and access to low-interest loans from four banks. Physicians and other eligible professionals may receive Medicare and Medicaid financial incentives over the next several years, with top amounts set at $44,000 per physician for Medicare and $63,750 for Medicaid. The earlier physicians sign up, the higher the incentive that they receive.

e-passport

Uzbek biometric passports to be updated every ten years

Uzbek citizens will now have to update their passports every ten years under Uzbekistan’s new biometric passport system, the Uzbek Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday. Uzbekistan is making the change to comply with standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which sets the requirements for international travel documents. Biometric passports have enhanced security features that can be read using electronic devices to verify holders’ nationalities. As part of its

new system, Uzbekistan will issue three types of biometric passports: those for members of the diplomatic corps, those for general Uzbek citizens and those without permanent citizenship who are permanent residents of the Uzbek state, the Uzbekistan Daily news web site reported on Tuesday. Previously, Uzbek citizens received a new passport at the ages of 16, 25 and 45. After holders turned 45, their passports were not updated. The new passports will be distributed in two stages between 2011 and 2015.

news

industry

converged applilcation

education

New converged appliances from HP and Microsoft

HCL Learning bags a 40 crore project from Department of Higher Education, Himachal Pradesh

HP and Microsoft have announced a portfolio of four new converged application appliances that fuse applications, infrastructure and productivity tools into a single system. These solutions help organisations optimise employee productivity and decision-making, while simplifying the delivery of applications for IT. The HP Business Decision Appliance is available now to run business intelligence services, and the HP E5000 Messaging System for Microsoft Exchange Server is planned to be available in 45 days to run messaging services. Two other appliances are expected to be available later this year. “Customers are looking to significantly reduce implementation and decision times,” said Santanu Ghose, Country Head, Converged Infrastructure Solutions, HP India. “With our converged application appliances, HP and Microsoft enable customers to shorten the time required to deliver information, which helps to reduce risk and cost.” energy

Delta introduces Hybrid Renewable Energy Solutions Delta Group has launched hybrid renewable energy solutions (RenE) under its SolutionE concept. Under the recently launched concept, RenE solutions feature a modular power supply concept that can use any combination of solar power, wind turbines, mains power, diesel generators and fuel cells, which may reduce payback time as well as electricity bills for over 50 percent.

NIIT Technologies acquires IP assets for foray into healthcare segment 16

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

HCL Learning announced the awarding of around Rs 40cr project from Department of Higher Education, Government of Himachal Pradesh. The project entails to set up fully integrated Information and Communication Technology labs and multimedia classrooms in 628 Government Senior Secondary Schools of Himachal Pradesh. The project involves supply, installation and maintenance of

NIIT Technologies Limited has acquired an electronic health records and referral management platform to initiate its foray into the lucrative healthcare segment in the US. The platform called Preferr (Patient Referral System) enables seamless col-

multimedia educational content, computer hardware, software and other allied accessories. In addition, the company will administer refresher courses, monitoring and subsequent reporting. The company will also provide training on usage of the Multimedia Educational Content to a minimum of 6500 teachers across the state. The project is a part of Himachal Pradesh Government’s initiative to provide avenues of Computer Aided Learning (CAL) for government school students. It is the first-of-its-

laboration between all providers namely physicians, hospitals, diagnostic facilities, and laboratories. The US Government through American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 (ARRA), has mandated physicians to focus on providing better

kind initiative by Himachal Pradesh Government, under the Comprehensive Computer Education Project (CCEP) of Government of India. Speaking on the occasion, J V Ramamurthy, President and COO, HCL Infosystems said, “It gives us immense pleasure to see HCL Infosystems led consortium given this opportunity to lead the way with the state’s first computer education initi ative under the CCEP project. We appreciate the Government’s vision to utilise technology as a driver for growth in education and look forward to a continued partnership in the state’s development.”

patient care through Electronic Health Record (EHR) sharing amongst hospitals and other specialists. ‘Preferr’ improves continuity and quality of care for the patient and improves operational efficiencies for all practices. “The acquisition of ‘Preferr’ is our first step to

industry

news

hardware

Dell launches the Inspiron M101z ultrathin laptop with long battery life Dell announced launch of the ultra-portable and ultra-stylish Inspiron M101z laptop. It’s lightweight and compact size is its USPs and makes it an easy-to-use ideal mobile machine. Despite its diminutive size, the Inspiron M101z laptop packs performance punch, nimbly stepping through everyday tasks quickly and

delivering impressive playback of streaming movies and HD videos. The laptop is built around a hinge-forward design that moves the display closer and keeps the body rigid to help enhance strength and durabil-

ity. It features a full-width keyboard that simplifies typing and

navigation, while the attractive finishes and smooth curves make it stand out in a crowd. And with a choice of four

vibrant colors, people also have the ability to add personal style to their PC. The Inspiron M101z laptop is powered by AMD Athlon II Neo Mobile processors and integrated ATi graphics and achieves up to 6 hours and 36 minutes of operation with its standard 6-cell rechargeable battery.

expention

Four Soft strengthens market focus in Japan with Suzuyo partnership Four Soft announced its strategic marketing partnership with Suzuyo System Technology, a group company of the Suzuyo Group, one of Japan’s leading logistics groups. This partnership is key to Four Soft strengthening its focus on the Japanese market in its core businesses. Four Soft has had a local presence in Tokyo since 2007 with dedicated sales, presales provide solutions in healthcare IT”, said Arvind Thakur, CEO, NIIT Technologies Ltd. “The platform enables providers to meet federal guidelines for Electronics Health Record meaningful use criteria and will enable us to establish our presence in the Healthcare arena” he added.

and delivery teams. Suzuyo is a major global provider of a wide variety of logistics services to shippers. With 14 offices around the globe, and over 110 logistics centers in Japan, it provides its customers in over 200 countries a complete suite of logistics and transportation related services. Its partnership with Four Soft signals its commitment to leverage the power

of IT based solutions to significantly enhance the already high quality of the services it provides these customers. Rakesh Kumar Munigala, Vice President & Head, Asia, “Four Soft has long viewed Japan as critical to its long term success and position as a leading solutions provider to the vital logistics and transportation areas. The complexity of the supply chains Japanese

companies face – with their mix of overseas and domestic production and distribution requirements – makes our focus on Japan both compelling and challenging. We look forward to combining with Suzuyo, an eminently suitable partner, in addressing these challenges.” Akihisa Nakayama, CEO, Suzuyo System Technology said, “There is an enormous surge in IT

infrastructure investment across Japanese companies in their quest to maintain and enhance their competitiveness. This has been particularly strong in the areas of logistics and transportation. We are confident that the synergies that exist between Suzuyo and Four Soft can be deployed on behalf of both our existing and prospective customers to help them achieve this quest.”

IDC names Cyberoam as top UTM appliance vendor in India Cyberoam, a division of Elitecore Technologies, and a leading provider of identity-based Unified Threat Management (UTM) security appliances, announced that the market research firm, IDC had identified it as the No.1 UTM appliance vendor in India

based on factory revenue figures for Q3 2010 (JulySeptember 2010 quarter). According to data released in IDC’s India Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker, Q3 2010, December 2010, Cyberoam gained substantial marketshare over its competitors to become

the leader in the India UTM appliance market in terms of factory revenue. Cyberoam recorded factory revenues of $2.71 million out of a total India UTM appliance market size of $11.52 million during Q3 2010, representing a 23.5 percent marketshare. As a channel-oriented security

vendor, Cyberoam closely works with its partners through regular roadshows, distribution meets and promotions in key channel media. Moreover, it helps its partners achieve and demonstrate competence and gain industry recognition for technical skills.

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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Institutionalising efficiency The proposed right to services legislation in some states of the country will make government officers pay for delay in service delivery. Will it really work?

By Pratap Vikram Singh

he experience of a common man while availing services to a government office, be it bank, utility departments or a local hospital, has not always been positive. This is unlike the private sector companies, which understand and value their customers, and where the productivity and innovation are the key focus areas, One always wishes if the attitude of the person sitting on the other side of the desk will change ever. It hasn’t changed much in the last 63 years of independence. The White conceded freedom to India and left the country after 1947, but their very seats were occupied by natives, who still continue to follow the legacy left by the British.

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

The genesis

Proposed legislation

In United Kingdom, Prime Minister, John Major initiated a political resolution for improving the public services in July 1991, which is popularly called as Citizen’s Charter. The Charter aimed at making the administration accountable and citizen centric, ensuring transparency and easy access to information. It also puts forth measures to cleanse and motivate civil servants, besides adopting a stakeholder approach. Like many other countries across the globe, India too adopted the Citizen’s Charter approach to reform the legacy of the Raj era. However, the public administration in India didn’t go far in transforming itself, as UK and many other countries did.

In a move towards institutionalising citizens’ charter and cementing it under a legislative framework in the country, the Executive in some of the Indian states are trying to push through legislation on ‘Right to Services’, which would guarantee the delivery of government services within a stipulated time frame. It would be similar to some of flagship legislations, having a direct impact on governance [in terms of transparency and accountability], akin Right to Information and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme. It would seek to weed out the inefficiency and delay in decision making and establish accountability and efficiency in governance.

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February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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Anurag Jain Secretary to Chief Minister & Secretary, Dept of Information Technology, Govet of Madhya Pradesh

“ Almost 691277 applications were received in November 2010 out of which 680611 were disposed on time. In December, 508047 applications were received & 493270 were timely disposed” Let us consider the law proposed by the states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab, as the basic structure of the right to services, deliberately ignoring the variations in one or the other provision. In a typical case of non compliance, where the designated official is not able to deliver the services in time, there are provisions under which an applicant can go to a ‘first appellate’ authority, which would look into the matter and take a decision within a fixed timeframe [the duration varies from service to services and state to state. If the first appellate fails to do so, or if the applicant seeks to pursue his case further, he or she can make an appeal to the second appellate authority, who has to again dispose the case in a pre-scheduled duration. Failing to deliver the service on time, the designated official would be liable to punishment The failing officers would be penalised with deduction of Rs 250 or Rs 500 (varying from state to state), each day from his/her own salary. If the first appellate officer fails to ensure delivery of services, without valid reasons, he will be liable for a fine of minimum Rs 500 per

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

day, but the total fine would not to exceed the limit of Rs 5000. For the over all administration and management of work under the legislation, the law also proposes to set up a Public Service Delivery Commission. The legislation intends to sensitise the public officials towards pro-actively responding to the citizen’s demands. It aims to bring a cultural transformation in the state-citizen interface. The enactment would stimulate the disposal of cases in a faster manner thereby saving citizens’ time and resources. Pre-independence, the Indian Civil Servants (ICS) were not accountable to the elected representatives. Later, in the independent India, the civil servants were made accountable to the people’s representatives. However, over the years, the political masters and the civil servants have grown a quid pro quo like situation where both take good care of each other. The given legislative measure would provide the reigns into the hands of citizens, while dealing with the nexus between political executives and the bureaucracy. Speaking on the proposed RTS legislation, B Shadrach, Executive Director, Telecentre.org Foundation said, “This would make citizens aware of their rights. However, the institutions that practice right to services would need to re-engineer its processes to respond to active demand from citizens from that of a passive demand that exists today.”

Its adoption Unfortunately, at the Central Government level, even draft legislation on right to services is yet to see the light of the day. Nevertheless, taking one step ahead towards good governance, Madhya Pradesh has become the pioneer state to bring

such the legislation on right to services, called as the Madhya Pradesh Public Services Guarantee Act / Lok Seva Adhiniyam, 2010. It is followed by the state of Bihar, which claims to be working on a much more ‘comprehensive’ legislation that would cover as many as 15 departments and more than 60 services. Punjab, too, is planning to bring an ordinance on the same. On the other hand, Maharashtra, is working on some what different legislations, in comparison to above mentioned states. It is planning to come up with ‘Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Services Bill’ to deliver the services within a stipulated timeframe but strictly through the electronic channel. The most recent draft IT Policy of the state government envisions to e-Enable almost every government department under the state authority and mandate them for delivering their services in an online fashion, a step which would be a boon for many people who have to do the rounds and rounds to a government office at the block or at the district level for availing basic government to citizen services. Similarly, at the Centre, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and IT too, is working on similar draft legislation on electronic service delivery. MP Public Services Guarantee Act 2010 In Madhya Pradesh, the delay in delivery of services related with education [like approval, non approval of scholarship], land records and mutation and trade licenses and the subsequent harassment of citizens sought the attention of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Taking an early cognizance of the citizen harassment and friction in the state – citizen interface, the state dallied forth for MP Public Services Guarantee Act 2010. Previously, as per some state government

B. Shadrach Executive Director, Telecentre.org Foundation

“The institutions that practice RTS would need to re-engineer its processes to respond to active demand from citizens from that of a passive demand that exists today.”

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officials, the Chief Secretary of the state used to monitor the delivery of services offered by the various departments. Eight years back, a citizen’s charter was set up for reviewing the performance of the various departments. This stock taking and monitoring by the then Chief Secretary was not continued further by his successors. The introduction of legislation causing change in the status quo, was the result of the conviction at the top most level in this central Indian state. One of the most unique aspects of the MP Public Services Provider Guarantee Act is that the amount by which the designated non compliant official would be penalised, the same amount would be given to the concerned applicant in form of compensation. “The process to deduct the fine amount from the guilty officers has been fixed and at the same time the applicant will get the compensation within a period of 30 days,” Anurag Jain, Secretary, Department of Information Technology said. The Act covers nine departments and 26 services across the state. He added: “The legislation intends to create an ambience for speedy disposal of applications and faster delivery of services to the citizens.” He further informed that almost 6,91,277 applications were received in the month November 2010 out of which 6,80,611 were disposed of by providing services on time. In December, 5,08,047 applications were received out of which 4,93,270 were timely disposed. Bihar Right to Services Bill 2011 In Bihar, the state government is quite serious for a transformation in the socio-political and economic landscape of the state. Ashish Bose, the economic analyst, had coined the term BIMARU for the under performing state which included the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. However, having scored the highest GDP growth at 16.59 percent [in 2008-09] and taking a series of initiatives in reforming governance in the state, one might have to re-think the appropriateness of calling the state as BIMARU. Following a legislation to curb corruption among the public officials in the state - Bihar Special Courts Act 2009, which goes to the extent of confiscating the property of arrested held public servant even in trial stage, the state government is working on the draft bill on ‘Right to Services’ to establish accountability and efficiency in the public administration.

We need to establish accountability in government servant under its purview and it would go a long way in establishing the accountability of the public servants.

Can you tell us briefly about the state of proposed legislation on Right to Services? The draft of the right to services legislation will be approved by the cabinet and then would be tabled in the state assembly in the coming Budget session. The regulatory body and the nature of penalties are being prepared in the draft. Various thoughts are under consideration Bijendra Prasad Yadav, Minister for Energy,

varying from financial penalties ranging from

Parliamentary Affairs and Registration and

`500 to `5000 and could go up to re-consider-

Prohibition, Government of Bihar

ation of official’s promotion.

What does the proposed legislation on Right to Services aims to achieve in Bihar?

What would be the measurable impact of RTS? During the British Raj, the work load was quite less. The public interface of the government was

The Right to Services would accelerate the

too little as compared to these days situation.

decision making process in the government and

The rules, norms and regulations need a lot of

would increase the administrative efficiency,

improvement. This Act would be milestone in

since lot of malpractices and corruption prop

fixing accountability, since before you catch a

up in the system because of the late decision

corrupt official you need to put in place such

making in the government. The legislation will

systems through which the accountability is

cover every government department and public

clearly defined.

Government is planning to table the Bill in the budget session of the state assembly. The Bihar government plans to widen the scope and coverage of service delivery Act, encompassing more than 15 departments and at least 60 services. Quite interestingly, the state government is also planning to include ‘tatkal services’ under the proposed legislation. The Act will have provisions for delivery of services in a much lesser time, charging higher fee from the applicant. For example, it could apply on obtaining a new driving license or caste certificate, much before the stipulated timeframe. It has also been learned that for an impartial overseeing and monitoring of the Act, the state government is considering setting up

Public Service Delivery Commission, where in the Commissioner and other officials would be recruited from outside the government, on the lines of the various State Information Commissions. Deepak Kumar, Principal Secretary, Department of General Administration, said, “Our agenda is zero tolerance while dealing with inefficiency and corruption within the government.” He added: “Our ultimate objective is to motivate officials to be prompt and deliver information and services well within the deadlines.” The umbrella of services would include, inter alia, distribution of certificates, issuing of trade licenses, processing of police verification February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

www.smart-city.in

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Sidhi First to Implement Public

Services Guarantee Act-2010 The Madhya Pradesh Public

among tribal people as far

meet and defuse the complaints

Services Guarantee Act-2010

as using the rights of Law is

before time limit. All the officials

has started yielding its positive

concerned. 10 thousand 651

are connected online through

results with Sidhi District provid-

applications were disposed of

computer. They shared informa-

ing relief to 10,651 in the month

within the month of December

tion through internet. They have

of December. Sidhi has to its

only. No application is pending in

developed special programming

credit to become first district

the district.

with password that enable to make inter communication

for implementing the Act effectively. People who used to

Strategy

from office to office. Not only

move from pillar to post to get

To implement the Act effectively,

this, the functioning can also be

works done now heave a sigh of

all the officers have been trained

monitored at state level from

relief to get works on time.

in the district. The district

Bhopal.

Sidhi, a tribal dominated district, showed more awareness

administration applied tools of information technology to

for passport and caste certificates. The state is also deputing IT managers at the district level and IT assistants at the block level to look after the delivery of services and its subsequent monitoring. Punjab Right to Services Bill 2011 In queue, Punjab too is planning to bring an ordinance on right to services in not more than a month. The state Administrative Reforms Commission, which was entrusted to come up with recommendations on the same, has given some “useful suggestions” to the state government. Articulating the objective of the enactment, Dr Pramod Kumar, Chairman, Punjab Administrative Reforms Commission said, “I think it is more than a tool to fight corruption, it the tool to ensure some basic rights of the citizens- which includes Right to Identity, Right to Dignity and Right to Efficiency.” He said it is quite significant to put faith in citizenry. The state has already taken away the criteria of asking to citizens for affidavits to prove their identity and authenticity of the documents. There are specific sections under the Indian penal Code – IPC Section 199 & 200 – which deals with claims under the self declaration. The state also aims to set up more than 600 community police stations – which would have different teams for counseling on

Source: Government of Madhya Pradesh

domestic affairs; economic offences [manned by chartered accountants and people from finance and banking sector], non residential Indians, and women cell. Besides, a citizen can file a complain online to a police station and the concerned cop will be required to respond to it within seven days period, taking a clear decision, whether the complain is being considered for First Information Report (FIR) or it has been just updated in the daily dairy report. Since the decision taken by the cops would be recorded online, they will be under constant scanner and can be held responsible for a particular decision, non suiting in the best interest of the applicant. Moreover, ensuring the right to efficiency, the government is working upon

reducing the response time and timely delivery of information and services to the citizens. In case of non compliance, there is provision in the proposed state law of penalising the official for Rs 250 per day. Additionally, the performance under the case disposal would also be linked to performance audit of the civil servants. Maharashtra Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Services Bill Maharashtra’s Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Services Bill would take the state ahead from the current model of providing ‘single window’ service delivery to ‘no window’ service delivery, which means a citizen may not really required to go to a particular government office or an outlet to avail G-2-C services. Reportedly, although the focus of the Act would be more on providing services to citizens in an electronic mode, there would also be some provisions for setting up the accountability into the state government functionary, as is the case with RTS in the respective states. The state would thus eliminate the human interface in the G-2-C interactions. Now, a person living in rural area may no more be needed to come to a district head quarter or a block office to avail basic government services. He can drop in to any of the telecentres [the common services centre or to the Panchayati Raj kiosk- powered by broadband internet] in his vicinity and avail the services while paying a small amount of money. “The legislation would change the way public delivery of services function,” Vijayalakshmi Bidari Prasanna, Director, Department of IT, Government of Maharashtra said. She explained that there are three stages of e-Government advancement, which

Deepak Kumar Principal Secretary, Department of General Administration, Government of Bihar

“Our agenda is zero tolerance while dealing with inefficiency and corruption within the government”

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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Vijayalakshmi Bidari Prasanna Director, Dept of IT, Govt of Maharashtra

“We are targeting to offer at least 100 services online in five years down the line”

includes: informative, transactional and integrated. Currently, various departments under the state government are at different level of e-Government. Through this Act, the state aims to attain the third and topmost level of e-Government – that is integrated level of e-Government, where in the state departments can share and interact through a complete back end integration. She pointed that the state is also planning to constitute an Electronic Service Delivery Commission for the effective service facilitation and monitoring. Moreover, the IT Department is also working on to include provisions which would enable the authorities to be receptive on taking suggestions and requests from citizens in terms of its online presence. Besides, every government office [department] will have Electronic Service Delivery Officer to look after the processing and disposal of the online application requests. In terms of outcomes, Prasanna is quite confident that the Act would be much more impactful than the Right to Information. The Department of IT aspires to make available as many number of services online as many other countries of globe like Singapore and South Korea do, where 300 to 400 online services are being availed by the citizens. “We are

targeting to offer at least 100 services online in five years down the line,” she averred. EDS Bill of Government of India Kapil Sibbal, Union Minister for Telecom and Information Technology has recently announced a hundred day action plan for its Ministry, which includes drafting of the Electronic Service Delivery Bill by the Department of IT. The Bill, when passed, would put an obligation on the various central government ministries and departments to digitise and provide most of the services online, in a timely phased manner.

ICT for right to services The monitoring of the disposal of cases within stipulated timeframe by the designated official, disposal of cases on the level of the first and second appellate authorities and generation of real time management information system (MIS) reports, would be much more easier through leveraging the information technology (IT). In MP, the state government is using IT for generation of MIS reports, however in an off line mode. As per the state IT department, it will very soon start work on the real time data entry and MIS report generation. In Bihar, the draft legislation on right to services also envis-

impact of Right to Services

l TMotivate and sensitise the public

l Act as deterrence for corrupt public

administration towards growing citizen’s

servants

demands

l Citizen empowerment

l Ensure timely delivery of services

l Institutionalise efficiency and accountability

l Reduce delay in decision making

l Ensure right to dignity

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

ages use of IT, for the electronic delivery, so as to provide the services to citizens on a 24x7 basis. Elaborating the application of ICT in facilitating RTS, Shadrach said, “Firstly, the ICT tools are handy for digitizing and simplifying government services from that of bureaucratic set-up to more of easy access; and that of process oriented to outcomes-oriented. Secondly, ICTs have the opportunity to reach out to citizens and citizenry organisations with delivery platforms that are accessible; and lastly, ICTs can help to monitor the progress made by ICTenabled services and evaluate their impact visa-vis manual delivery.”

Challenges While there have been rounds of applause from many corners of the country on having such a legislation, there is another school of thought which abstains from advocating addition of one more legislation to the library of laws and enactments in the country. Amita Singh, Professor & Chair, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University put forth: “What citizens need right now is simplification of regulations. More regulations in the area of provisions for basic services is a symptom of a failing leadership even though it appears on the surface as another right for empowering ordinary people.” This school of thought cautions that the law might delay further, the already constrained access to justice as the bureaucracy would now legitimately delay as per the provisions of 30 and 60 days to appeal. A re-appeal would devastate an ordinary citizen seeking, medical, livelihood, financial support, educational assistance, inter alia. “The tendency to make laws should stop now and the ability to lead within the enormous library of laws should now be enhanced to save this Republic from the white elephant of governance,” she opined. According to Shadrach, “The ‘actors’ themselves pose greater challenges.” He points out to the nexus between the legislature, executive and public service authorities that prevail across the country and which continue to pose a greater challenge. The moral deficit in the private sector too will be a huge challenge when it comes to services, for a good majority of services are dealt with by the private sector today. He added: To add to all these, if the media and the civil society fail to respond to the needs, these efforts would only be futile exercises conducted in a vacuum.

News

gaid

Forum gets in action frame

regard through its network of stakeholders. Cheick Sidi Diarra, Under-Secretary-General, Special Advisor for Africa, and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, in a message delivered by Patrick Hayford, Director of the Office of the Special Advisor for Africa, expressed confidence that GAID will play a strategic role in developing ICT in Africa specifically. He also stated that the United Nations stood ready to partner in this process. In her keynote address, Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, Minister of Foreign Trade, UAE, urged participants to find ways to align ICT activities with economic and social development and take concrete and sustainable actions to move towards the world’s shared aspiration, echoing the Forum’s title.

II. Plenary discussion: Reality check—ICT for Development

Participants agreed that discussions were broadly completed and there was enough clarity to start executing plans now By eGov Bureau

n 5-6 December 2010, the Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID) held its fifth annual Global Forum on ‘Information and Communication Technologies for achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Moving from Advocacy to Action’ at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu-Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Forum convened relevant stakeholders for an action-oriented dialogue on emerging issues and challenges in the field of ICT for development. The Alliance also presented, for discussion and feedback, its recently launched major initiative—the MDG eNabler, a free Web-based set of ICT tools and resources designed to assist governments and all development practitioners in their work towards achieving the MDGs. The Forum, chaired by Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman of GAID, was attended by over 250 participants including high-level government officials and representatives of United Nations

agencies, private sector, civil society, academia and experts in the field of ICT for development. The forum was also broadcast live to the world using ‘livestream’ technology.

I. Opening session In his welcoming remarks, Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, UAE, said that empowering people using ICT was just as important as providing them with basic human needs and that ICT must be deployed and used at the local level. In his message to the participants, delivered by Haiyan Qian, Director of the Division for Public Administration and Development Management, UNDESA, Sha Zukang, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, on behalf of the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, commended GAID for focusing on the strategic role of ICT to achieve the MDGs and urged the Alliance to support the United Nations in this

Moderator: Sarbuland Khan, Senior Advisor to GAID Chairman. Panelists: Stephen Dukker, Chairman and CEO, NComputing (USA), Drupad Mathur, Director, SP Jain Center of Management (UAE), Ali AlMashat, Chairman, SRCSAT (France), Evelyn Oputu, Managing Director, Bank of Industry (Nigeria), Graciela Chichilnisky, Professor, Columbia University (USA), Allam Ahmed, Department of Municipal Affairs (UAE) During a lively plenary session, it was agreed that an action-oriented roadmap towards MDG advancement through ICT, taking into consideration the complex development ecosystem and value chain, must be established and that the Alliance could play a major role in this. Accessibility to the technologies by people living in rural areas and others living without the necessary connectivity to benefit from ICT, was also identified as a major barrier.

III. Plenary discussion: MDG eNabler – A call for action Moderator: Ivo Ivanovski, Minister of Information Society (Macedonia) Panelists: Dr. Elham Ibrahim, Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, African Union, Mohamed Al-Qaed, CEO, eGovernment Authority (Bahrain), Dr. Jim Poisant, Secretary-General, World Information Technology and Services Alliance (USA), Linamara Battistella, Secretary, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil (represented by Danilo Piagessi), George King, CEO, Global Capacity (USA), Sarah McCue, Founder and President, Blumail (USA). February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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The discussion focused on the development of the MDG eNabler. Building on the outcomes of discussion at the previous meetings and seminars with similar focus, the panelists and participants reviewed the current status of the project and identified what needed to be done to further and strengthen its progress. Panelists agreed that it was now time to move towards building a working, usable product.

port appropriate data collection methodologies and the sharing and dissemination of best practices in ICT for Education content.

IV. Solution Salons

Key recommendation: • The Alliance could establish a taskforce that would report possible suggestions for GAID in terms of policies such as trade access to market for infrastructure development and the creation of a multilateral global spectrum market.

Solution Salons allowed participants to break into thematic groups of their choice for focused sessions.

Salon 1: ICT for poverty alleviation and hunger and ICT for health Lead: Najeeb Al-Shorbaji, World Health Organization and Anton Mangstl, Food and Agriculture Organization Key recommendations: • The Alliance can play an important role in facilitating the collection and dissemination of local knowledge, and should get involved in collaborative ways to support local institutions. • GAID could support or host seminars focused on ICT at the ministerial level to increase awareness in the public sector at the policy level.

Salon 2: ICT for Entrepreneurship Lead: Armen Orujyan, ATHGO International Key recommendations: • GAID could promote or create a virtual environment to support entrepreneurship amongst its members and the global development community. • The Alliance should continue to promote policies which accelerate entrepreneurship activities.

Salon 3: ICT for Education Lead: Jānis Kārkliņš, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and John Davies and Richard Hall, Intel Corporation Key recommendations: • Teacher professional development and ICT training are essential for progress to be made in the field of ICT for education and GAID should focus on this through. • Content and accurate data are also critical to advance progress and thus GAID should sup-

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

Salon 4: ICT for sustainable development Lead: Graciela Chichilnisky, Columbia University and Dag Nielsen, ICT4Peace Foundation

Salon 5: ICT for gender equality and ICT for development and youth

help connect the public and private sectors.

• The public sector must be held account-

able and provide leadership and investment to ensure that the costs of the technology continues to drop.

Salon 8: Reliance on ICT in governance: how much is too much? Lead: Sebastian Muah, Deputy Minister of Planning and Economic Affairs, Liberia Key recommendations: • The Alliance should begin to build on the Bahrain project by extending its scope from just the MDG eNabler towards an ICT in Governance policy dialogue; GAID could play a role in regionalising policy dialogues, especially in the southern hemisphere.

Lead: Gloria Bonder, FLASCO (Argentina) Mohammed Fathy, ICT eLeaders

Salon 9: ICT for financing development and the MDGs

Key recommendations: • The Alliance could activate the existing networks and task forces working on gender and ICT4D in order to enrich the framework of the eNabler, collate its contents, indicators, and methodologies. • A GAID university relations section should be established in order for students and youth to promote GAID and MDG activities around the world and create student volunteer initiatives.

Key recommendations: • GAID partners can donate their experts and cover related expenses as needed in order to create global team of experts that can respond to needs from the private sector and governments; GAID needs to incubate new partnerships as well as champions in governments and the private sector.

Salon 6: ICT for people with disabilities Lead: Axel Leblois, G3ICT Key recommendations: • The Alliance could look for funds to help people with disabilities.; Since there is a very successful network in GAID today, there should be a way to channel what GAID does into the MDG eNabler.

Salon 7: A start-up strategy for developing countries to harness cloud computing Lead: Stephen Dukker and Alan Yates, NComputing Key recommendations: • The Alliance can use its networks and convening power to create awareness of this growing field to ensure its sustainability and to

Lead: Barbara Samuels, Global Clearinghouse for Development Finance

Salon 10: Demonstration of the computer-aided strategic planner Lead: Professor Amjad Umar, University of Pennsylvania and Harrisburg University Key recommendations: • The GAID community should establish other capacity building centres similar to the one already created in Bahrain; The MDG eNabler and the different capacity building centres should provide a common set of vocabularies, methodologies and tools in order to ensure a consistent implementation around the world.

V Closing Rashed Al Mansouri, Director-General of the Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre (ADSIC), addressed the Forum expressing his thanks and appreciation to GAID and all participants.

trend

technology

UID setting trend for transparent governance The UID will help unlock value dormant in existing databases and gives reason for new electronic databases to be created where none existed – converting from legacy paper and fiche By Vinaya Chandran

ithin the circles of e-Governance or business-technology initiative of significance, the year 2010 in India will undoubtedly be remembered for the start of the UID rollout. While there is scepticism, some well-meaning ones seeing potential for adverse profiling and targeting of dissenters, the truth is that it has been a humongous effort to identify the objectives, develop social context, and evolve the architecture along with the world’s best minds not to mention building political consensus. Achieving the planned rollout of the UID in the next 3 years will probably have the same seismic impact socially as the development of railways and highways had decades ago. And no aspect across education, health, infrastructure, agriculture and security will remain untouched. 2011 and beyond may well be the year of information based services. e-Governance to begin, with rightly focussed on enhancing computing capacity and process automation. Now, it is time to take a hard look at the data being generated and how to benefit from it. Governance (like business operation) has created over time, mountains of data, a lot of which has not found its way into electronic databases. Electronic records creation is a start. This data is key to unearth historical linkage, discern important patterns and generate alerts and strategic options for next steps. This is where an accelerator like the UID comes in.

e-Governance has made significant strides in helping the citizen access existing government services transparently. The next step may well be to make those government services more responsive and targeted. And that can happen only when the data usage of those services are better understood The advent of the UID immediately holds promise for hitherto unconnected, isolated and essentially passive governance databases. Consider an example – there are three databases storing static personal data (PDS detail, birth and death), dynamic transaction data (tax, credit history, traffic violations) and eligibility data (quota, entitlements). At present it is tough to analyse them together and develop a better targeting of government subsidy. Now append the respective UIDs to the personnel records of each database. Bingo! It becomes the glue that connects the databases and helps integrated viewing and analysis. The UID will help unlock value dormant in existing databases and gives reason for new electronic databases to be created where none existed – converting from legacy paper and fiche. This should give rise to third party opportunities in building and running information services based on those databases. Especially in underserved areas which call for co-operative data pooling. In industries heavy with transactions - banking, insurance, telecom and retail the data related opportunities

are already moving up from post transaction analysis to dynamic surveillance using the last observed patterns. e-Governance has made significant strides in helping the citizen to access existing government services transparently. The next step may well be to make those government services more responsive and targeted. And that can happen only when the data usage of those services are better understood. If we are indeed living in the information age then data is the fuel. Just like fuel efficient cars we need to interconnect and leverage databases wherever they are and build new ones where electronic ones don’t exist. Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are personal

the author is Vice President – Strategic Markets, CoreLogic

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

in person

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our vision is whichever area we focus on, ultimately in the minds of our clients we should be the first choiceâ&#x20AC;?

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

in person

Arvind Thakur

CEO, NIIT Technologies

“Our basic

direction is to become

the first choice for our customers”

Arvind Thakur is the Chief Executive Officer of NIIT

IIT started as a training company, a youth education company, and slowly shifted to software and service areas. How did this transition happen and what were the ideas behind it?

NIIT was founded in 1982 and we have come a long way since then. Now NIIT is a well known name in the market for its education, training and software services as well. We started primarily as an education and training company but gradually expanded into consulting and software system integration. It was a kind of natural evolution from training to software and consulting. The 80s was the time of bundled software solutions. The hardware vendors then gave software solutions packaged with the hardware and thus people were not aware as well as did not put any value to software alone. We were the first to offer software products in the country in late 80s. We came with products like Focus, Cybiz and the whole range of other products that we were distributing across the country. But, it was difficult to do so in a market dominated by packaged solutions and software. Through the 90s as the software exports activity started picking up in the country and NIIT made several other key contributions to the software industry and its development. One thing that was absolutely important for us to do when we started doing software, was to have strong processes because we were going to be building software with relatively inexperienced people, straight from school. So, we adopted the engineering principles that were there in the software factories. We were one of the first to embrace the frameworks that the industry uses. Our facility was one of the two in 1993 that was certified ISO 9000. By 1995, we were assessed at level 3 at CMM and in 1997 at level 5. At that time we were the 12th organisation globally to be assessed at level 5. Predominantly, NIIT has been viewed as an education and training company. The reason why NIIT has been viewed as an education and training company is

Technologies Ltd, a global IT Services Organization, headquartered in New Delhi, India, and serves as the Joint Managing Director on its board. He has lead the business to the category of top software providers in select industry segments with global operations spanning across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. . Since the segregation of NIIT in 2004 into NIIT Technologies and NIIT Limited, the former has made its place in a market dominated by the big players. Talking about the key government verticals and the scope of IT in governance over the next decade, Arvind Thakur reveals the NIIT story and shares the future plans in a conversation with Ravi Gupta, Chief Editor, eGov.

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

IN PERSON

What are the new verticals that NIIT has debuted in through the past years and how did the transitions come along? NIIT decided to move into training areas that were other than IT like sales training, insurance training, and banking training- all kinds of other training activities after the year 2000. We started looking at divisionalising and segregating our business. In 2004, we demerged the company into two companies- NIIT Technologies Limited which focused on IT services and NIIT Limited which continued education and training. Post the segregation in 2004, we were just another mid-sized IT services organisation. A good part of our software work that we were doing when we were a part of IT, was in the area of education technology- computer-based training. That was left behind in NIIT Ltd because they are the education sector. NIIT Technologies was a midsized, somewhat undifferentiated IT

verticals and secondly each one of these verticals had enough headroom for growth. So during 2004-08 we focused our energies in building specialisation in these 3 areas and exited from other areas. We had a clear strategy to focus and differentiate. In 2008 the slowdown came and some of the industries segments that we were focusing on for example, financial sector were responsible for the slowdown. So that is when we had to again relook at our business and embark on a next phase of transformation. Segments that we had focused on were fairly challenged. We had to look to newer segments which were less challenged. One of the segments that we had embraced on was the government verticle. Our government business, unlike the other industry segments is not a global business. Financial services, travel, distribution are global practices. We do business in USA, Europe, Asia and Australia. But our government business is only in Asia because in every country federal busi-

“The current government has a great appreciation for technology as an enabler for

inclusive growth. So, using technology to reach out is

beginning to happen”

because that’s a consumer business and lot of communication in mass media is on education whereas software system relation is across the table. So we actually built a software business by virtues of the fact that our model was on teaching hospital model. The focus of the organisation was on current and emerging technologies. We don’t teach old things especially in IT. So we grew a software business on the back of e-Commerce boom because it was current, new and our entire technical workforce was oriented towards new technologies. So, in our software business we did not create any legacy capability.

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

services company of about 100 million dollars. The landscape was dominated by scale players. It became clear that if we want to scale, survive, and make a mark for ourselves we needed to build strong specialisation in our business. So we moved into a next level of transformation. When we demerged, we brought in a very sharp vertical focus into our business. We decided to focus on three industry segments- financial services, travel and transport, and retail distribution. We chose only three because of two simple reasons firstly, almost 50 percent of clients that we had were in these three

ness is very different. By virtue of our position and brand equity we found lot of traction in government business in this part of the world. So in India, Singapore, Australia we got lot of government business, as our brand is well known in these segments. This was one new focus that we had in our business which actually is now moving exponentially, mainly because the government is using technology very seriously in its programmes where it is looking at inclusive economic growth. In government vertical also, we had to choose since we want to be established as a specialist organisation. Our basic

in person

direction is to become the first choice for our customers wherever we foray and thus specialisation is indispensable. For example, in government business the one area where we are focusing currently is Geographic Information System (GIS) and whenever people think of GIS they think of NIIT.

How is GIS as a vertical fairing for NIIT? How did you foray into it? We have been in this business now for almost over 10 years. During the early days when we were looking at current and emerging technologies, one of the emerging technologies was GIS. Today it is mainstay. We built a relationship with Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) which is run by Jack Dangermond. He found lot of synergy in our education activities to promote the concept of GIS. We were able to leverage that capability to evangelise GIS. Because it was such a specialised activity we created a separate entity called NIIT-GIS and the dynamics, marketplace, skill sets, kind of people and almost everything was different. It was about 12-13 years ago. So all those investments in that capability is now becoming very relevant. Our vision is whichever area we focus on, ultimately in the minds of our clients we should be the first choice. In GIS per se, we work with everybody, but for big turnkey engagements we have identified four key focus areas: Internal Security, Defence, GIS and Railways. NIIT has recently announced entering the health sector. Is it one of the newly identified potential markets? Shed some light on it. Healthcare sector was identified as a lucrative space not only because there was no strong player in that sector, but also because this is the place where there are a lot of discontinuities which in turn create opportunities. In USA, Obama’s healthcare reforms have spurned some issues because he is bringing a very fundamental change. He has changed the whole concept of healthcare and the entity at the centre now is the patients, not the insurance companies or the insurance payers.

“Through the 90s as the

software exports activity started picking up in the country and NIIT

made several other key contributions to the software industry and its development. One thing that was absolutely important for us to do when we started doing software,

was to have strong processes”

getting personal Date of Birth 17 FEB 1955 Education B TECH (Hons) - IIT Kharagpur, PGDIE –NITIE Mumbai Recognition Ranked 1st in the Dept of Mining Engineering at IIT Kharagpur Passion Golf Key Strengths Calm and composed Favorite Pastime Relaxing with his dogs Favorite Gadget Apple iPad #1 Management Tip Create a superior vision Fitness Mantra Workout in a gym at least 3 times a week

Obama stated that if a patient requires care he must get it whether he has the insurance policy or not. That is a huge discontinuity where systems, processes, regulations everything is going to change. It is a huge opportunity for us. Most of the providers are focused on the payers because traditionally insurance companies have had the control. So, all the big players have big customers whereas with the action shifting to the patients, focus is now on the providers- hospitals, doctors and all. We are beginning our activity on the provider sector. Soon, we will be announcing few innovative solutions in that space.

You have built your strength in Singapore, are you also looking at foraying into the government verticals in other countries? We are going to be in Asia because we don’t have a presence and mindshare in USA or Europe in government sphere. Federal government market is not what we are focusing on. We have enough to do in Asia and India. We are quite happy focusing on this part of the world. Singapore, on the other hand, is a different story. Singapore is more mature market. If you look at Singapore government, it operates like corporate organisations. That level of maturity if we compare to other environments is very different. But we do much more business in India than in Singapore in the government. India is the action spot.

How would you foresee the next decade for the partnership of government and IT? The current government has a great appreciation for technology as an enabler for inclusive growth. The country is facing big challenges, one of them is financial inclusion. Fundamental requirement for economic growth is to be able to have access to capital. So, using technology to reach out is beginning to happen. The whole area of micro-finance, rural financing, rural banking is phenomenal and is going to explode in the next decade. Backbone to some of these programmes is UIDAI which is being put into place. The other area which is huge is healthcare. Basic healthcare is not available in rural parts. The technology is a great enabler. You can do consultations in remote locations with experienced doctors and all that requires infrastructure, investment, technology etc. We are already beginning to see some states/organisations moving in that direction of healthcare. The other is education. The single retardant to economic prosperity in this country lies in the employability of people. You may have the largest population but if that population is not employable, it only means they are not educated. So instead of becoming an asset, they will become a liability. To my mind this is a priority. Again, technology has a great role to play. All this requires infrastructure which is what the government is investing in. February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

technology

Biometrics

How multispectral imaging makes citizen ID management possible When designed properly with a reliable technology, identity management projects deliver reliable performance with enhanced security and convenience and a meaningful ROI By Sujan TV Parthasaradhi

hen reviewing biometrics based citizen ID projects, great attention must be given to the importance of standards, interoperability, security and/or regulatory compliance goals. However, to be successful, it is also important that the biometric system performs reliably and successfully â&#x20AC;&#x201D; under conditions that are representative of the target applications. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not easy when one remembers that large-scale, biometrics-based citizen ID projects must manage the availability of services across various sectors, including education, healthcare, pension providers, rural banking and others where people come from different backgrounds, types of jobs and diverse environments. Hope and vision are not enough. Several prestigious biometric pilots and projects, both national and international, failed to start or were later abandoned because they were not appropriately evaluated before deployment. Decision makers, giving priority to laboratory findings, forgot that there can be dynamic biometric reading differences between a doctor, a construction worker, a young person and a pensioner. The impacts of critical processes such as image acquisition, real world

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

performance, ease of duplication and interoperability on the total system performance were never properly explored. For instance, one requirement of citizen ID technology is that it be reliable and successful when used by the general citizenry. Thus, it is extremely important to understand the environmental and user challenges faced in the target deployment. Since the strongest predictor of biometric system performance is image quality measurement, has this been studied in the target environment with a representative population? Bottom line: Can the solution read their fingers?

Biometrics

Several prestigious biometric pilots and projects, both national and international, failed to start or were later abandoned because they were not appropriately evaluated before deployment Here’s why that is so important. The most commonly known fingerprint performance metrics are false reject rate (FRR) and false accept rate (FAR). Often, that’s all that studied. For those who are enrolled, can they get in or not? And, can others get in without being enrolled? As importantly, though, are two other important criteria — FTE (failure to enroll) and FTA (failure to acquire) — which come to the forefront throughout rural India. FTE refers to those people who could not be enrolled and hence cannot use the system at all (and, by the way, do not show up in FRR and FAR statistics). FTA refers occasions when a sensor cannot acquire an adequate image from an enrolled user. In non-ideal, real world conditions such as Indian rural environments, the FTE can easily exceed 10 or 20 percent with traditional fingerprint optical sensors. The FTA is often in the 5 to 10 percent point range. This means that there are large portions of the intended users who simply cannot use the system at all plus many who cannot use it reliably. What’s the problem? Conventional optical fingerprint technologies depend on the condition of the fingerprint skin surface and its contact with the fingerprint sensor platen. And this creates a big problem for citizen ID projects in India. According to UN statistics, approximately 70 percent of the Indian population resides in rural areas. Real world conditions like dirt, dryness and humidity are prevalent with a rural user population. In addition, dry folds, wrinkles and problematic skin conditions are very common for senior citizens. Any one of these conditions leads to poor-quality data capture with conventional optical sensors, resulting in the failure-to-acquire and failureto-enroll problems.

Multispectral technology to get over image capturing obstacles Multispectral imaging is a sophisticated technology developed to overcome the fingerprint capture problems that conventional imaging systems have in less-than-ideal conditions. This more effective technology uses multiple spectrums of light and advanced polarization

techniques to extract unique fingerprint characteristics from both the surface and subsurface of the skin. The nature of human skin physiology is such that this subsurface information is both relevant to fingerprint capture and unaffected by surface wear and other environmental factors. The fingerprint ridges that we see on the surface of the finger have their foundation beneath the surface of the skin, in the capillary beds and other sub-dermal structures. The fingerprint ridges we see on our fingertips are merely an echo of the foundational “inner fingerprint.” Unlike the surface fingerprint characteristics that can be obscured by moisture, dirt or wear, the “inner fingerprint” lies undisturbed and unaltered beneath the surface. When surface fingerprint information is combined with subsurface fingerprint information and reassembled in an intelligent and integrated manner, the results are more consistent, more inclusive and more tamper-resistant.

Conventional optical fingerprint technologies depend on the condition of the fingerprint skin surface and its contact with the fingerprint sensor platen. And this creates a big problem for citizen ID projects in India Multispectral imaging technology can also detect living flesh from non-living flesh or other organic or synthetic materials used to duplicate fingerprints. ‘Liveness’ detection is built from cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. Using these algorithms and the wealth of information available from multispectral fingerprint images, ‘liveness’ detection capabilities can be updated if new “spoofs” are identified.

Success stories in India and around the World Multispectral imaging has already demon-

technology

strated usability and scalability in successful civil and commercial applications involving millions of users across the world. For example, more than 400 thousand people pass through multispectral imaging sensors every day at the Hong Kong/Macau border crossings. The US government uses the technology in its Transportation Worker Identity Credential (TWIC). After an extensive industry-wide evaluation of biometrics technology and devices, CareFusion selected multispectral imaging fingerprint sensors and software for integration into their latest generation of drug dispensing cabinets. Multispectral imaging based sensors are also used by the US military. Here in India, Analogics Tech India provides reliable fingerprint biometric solutions and leverages multispectral imaging for prestigious customers including TCS, Bartronics, ESSL, WIPRO, AGS and others. Analogics’ multispectral imaging sensor- based handheld readers are used in financial inclusion or rural banking applications where banking services, such as new savings accounts, funds transfers, deposits, cash withdrawals, and loan applications, are taken to the poor and needy in remote rural areas where citizens have no access to traditional banks. The Bank of India, Karnataka Bank, State Bank of Hyderabad and State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur are all leveraging the technology. Multispectral imaging sensors are also used in biometric ATMs and handhelds that act like micro ATMs. These sensors are also used in rural employment guarantee programs where fingerprint-based biometric cards are used by beneficiaries to withdraw their weekly wages. Multispectral imaging based handhelds are being used in the pilot of public distribution system projects, where the biometric is used to collect rations. For a country such as India, in which the government is looking to provide services to the citizens of an entire sub-continent and commercial entities want to reach out to those who have been excluded because of limited technology, multispectral imaging-based biometrics is turning visions into realities.

the author is the Director of Biometric Applications in Lumidigm (India), a biometric company dedicated to enabling convenient, secure, and reliable identification and verification

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

Centre for Ext

INDIRA GANDHI NATIO Maidan Garhi, New Delhi –

CERTIFICATE IN TELECENTRE/VILLAGE KNOWLEDGE CENTRE MANAGEMENT (CTVM)

ension Education

NAL OPEN UNIVERSITY

110068, India, www.ignou.ac.in

You will have the job to make a difference in your village! The Government of India is planning to set-up 250,000 telecentres (CSCs) at every village Panchayat in India by 2012. Apart from this, many NGOs, Social Enterprises are setting-up telecentres to bring change in rural villages. There is a need for 500,000 trained rural youths to manage these telecentres across India. The Telecentre.org Foundation and IGNOU have entered into a unique collaboration to design and deliver this Certificate Programme in Telecentre/ Village Knowledge Centre Management, a first of its kind certificate course in India and internationally. This Programme aims to build the capacity of rural youths to manage their telecentres effectively both in India and abroad.

duration 6 Months to 2 Years

FEE `4,000 (Four Thousand only)

ELIGIBILITY Those who have completed 10 + 2 class or Operators/ Managers of telecentres run by NGOs across the nation and the potential village level entrepreneurs

JOB PROSPECTS Common Services Centres of Government of India, Village Knowledge Centres, Village Resource Centres, e-Choupals, KVKs, Drishtee, TARAhaat, etc.

OBJECTIVES To train Telecentre Operators/ Managers to manage the their telecentres effectively To improve the skills and knowledge base of existing Telecentre Managers To create opportunities for the village community through the trained Telecentre Managers To help bring public and private sector services to villages To help generate self-employed opportunities as Village Knowledge Centre Managers

Application forms along with the prospectus can be obtained in person by paying `200 in cash or pay Rs. 250 through Demand Draft drwan in favour of IGNOU, payable at New Delhi, from: The Director, Centre For Extension Education (CEE), Maidan Garhi, New Delhi â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 110068, Tel: 011-29534104 The form can also be downloaded from the IGNOU website: www.ignou.ac.in Last date for submission of filled in forms is February 15, 2011.

opinion

e-governance

LC Singh President and CEO, Nihilent Technologies

Transformation, not tech is the essence Successful e-Governance rollouts are all about discipline, attitudinal changes and massive government process re-engineering

he essence of good governance is based on the premise that the laws and procedures are transparent, and clearly defined and understood by those governed and the implementation is both quick and smooth. To this effect, the governance in a developing country is a challenge, because a majority of the governed (citizens) are educationally and socio-economically challenged. To compound the issue, those in the government are also at times not very clear on various rules and procedures. Further, even the rules and procedures sometimes become hindrances in the path of governance due to a lack of transparency and procedural clarity.

Old ways wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work Public administration, governed by bureaucratic structures built on rational principles, that dominated the twentieth century, has failed to respond to changing requirements of the present times. E-governance, which is a paradigm shift from the traditional approaches in public administration, is about rendering of government services and infor-

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

mation to the public using electronic means. This new paradigm has brought about a revolution in the quality of service delivered to the citizens. It has ushered in transparency in the governing process; saving of time due to provision of services through single window; simplification of procedures; better office and record management; reduction in corruption; and improvements in the attitude, behaviour and job handling capacities of dealing personnel. E-Governance, however, is not really about the use of IT in governance but is a tool to ensure equitable and easyto-avail good governance. It does not mean proliferation of computers and technology; it is basically a political decision that calls for discipline, attitudinal change in officers and employees, and massive government process reengineering. Implementers and drivers of e-governance initiatives agree that the biggest challenge of deploying e-governance is not technology but change management encompassing cultural, organisational, process, people and technological challenges.

An e-Gov country in making E-Governance

implementation

has

Traditional approaches of public administration are a thing of the twentieth century; the new paradigm is about transparency and procedural clarity

resulted into major benefits for some countries in the world. Countries like United States, France, and Switzerland have effectively implemented e-Governance modules. However, countries like India are still under the development process and efforts are being made to convert the IT-aware governments into IT-enabled governments. India today has perhaps the most ambitious e-Governance plan. At the highest level in the government, there are dedicated secretary-level officials, there is an approved budget of more than billion dollars at the central government level, and there are secretarylevel officials in the state governments with additional budget. Yet, many e-Governance projects sometimes suffer due to political instability. Having said that, a substantial amount of work is being done which will ultimately help in shaping up a modern and developed India. As an example, you can take one of the real estate projects going on in Uttar Pradesh. This is one of the attempts to provide computerised allotment of properties in the state. In some other places like NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata as well, such concepts have

e-governance

been implemented. In the areas of agriculture, education and power too, major steps are being taken. One can now look forward to better education, better power supply and better agriculture. Almost all the agricultural colleges have started campaigns to move from one area to another through online conversations and note down the problems of farmers.

opinion

What e-Gov projects should strive to do is to utilise ‘peoples’ will’ to ‘immunise’ projects from the changing mood of leaders

Bigger benefits are out there The intent of undertaking most of the e-Governance engagements was initially to provide citizen services in a better way, but it has slowly changed over the last few years into increasing public sector efficiency, improving transparency and accountability in government functions and allowing for cost savings in government administration. ICT can help reinvent governance in such a way that existing institutional arrangements can be restructured and new innovative arrangements can flourish, paving the way for a transformed government. What e-Governance can ultimately aim to do is to utilise the ‘people will’ to ‘immunise’ projects from the changing mood of leaders. For example, there was resistance from the political class to the widening of the scope of railway reservation system originally developed by CMC. But the citizens at large felt the benefits directly, and as a whole they could articulate their desire that no political class could resist. Today, Indian

Railways is the largest e-commerce service provider in India surpassing even ICICI Bank and has been a great example of enabling change. What other e-Governance projects like Bhoomi, e-Seva and Bangalore-One should do is quietly build ‘loyalty’ and ‘people support’ that would ultimately make them into a sustainable service available to everyone. It is a well established fact that retaining a customer is more profitable and cost effective than acquiring a new one, therefore customer retention and loyalty is a major focus area for organisations worldwide. E-Governance can transform citizen service, provide access to information to empower citizens, enable their participation in government and improve economic and social opportunities, so that citizens can make their lives better. Only then will e-Governance make a difference to the average citizen; after all, e-Governance is merely a means to achieve efficient, effective and ulti-

mately every citizen’s government. When governments embrace connectivity with their citizens, it will eventually help build loyalty among the citizens. It is imperative for governments to ensure that they lay strong emphasis on conceptualising a project, keeping all its constituents and inter-dependencies in view, and follow a holistic implementation strategy that strives to deliver the right benefits to all stakeholders. This strategy should focus on exploring what is possible, and then drive the change while fighting with the existing sets of challenges. Technology, at the end of the day, should function as just an enabler and as a tool to drive this change. The real benefit of e-Governance is not measured by the level of use of technology to simplify the operations, but by the application of technology in bringing transformation and innovation in the government functioning, to enable better governance.

Your daily cup of hot tea with hot e-Governance news! Log on to w ww.egovonl i ne.net

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

Analysis

video conferencing

Stickiness grows Economic considerations drove some quick adoption but a range of benefits and richer experiences are making users stay By Prachi Shirur

rganisations today are looking at cost-effective and time saving means to enhance productivity and reduce cycle times. Governments are no exception to that. Video conferencing is one such tool that helps them achieve these objectives, offering â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;face-to-faceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; communication between two or even more locations. In fact, the economic slump last year helped the video conferencing market, with more and more organisations opening up to the technology that they had earlier turned down as difficult-to-use and insufficient. With budgetary constraints and reduced or restricted travel budgets, video conferencing has picked up as an alternative to face-to-face meetings. Video has transitioned from its historic limitations to become a mission-critical component of unified communications (UC) too. It has reached the 3G mobile applications arena including streaming, instant messaging and scheduling. It is offered over both Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and Internet Protocol (IP) networks. As per market research firm BizAcumen, improved flexibility, seamless integration with other applications, enhanced reliability and lower cost of networks are propelling the

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

video conferencing industry to adopt video conferencing based on IP networks. Primarily, three types of video conferencing solutions are being used: room-based, telepresence and desktop-based. A combination of these is also often used. Meanwhile, some major telcos as well as system and service providers have emerged as significant players in the video conferencing market, globally.

Standards and interoperability There are certain umbrella standards for

videoconferencing, as recommended by International Telecommunications Union (ITU). H.320 is the ITU recommendation for videoconferencing over ISDN, while H.324 is for transmissions over analogue phone lines. The H.323 standard is suitable for a mix of IP, PSTN and ISDN networks. H.264 SVC (scalable video coding) is a compression standard that enables video conferencing systems to achieve highly error resilient IP video transmission over the public Internet without quality-of-service enhanced lines. This standard has enabled wide scale

Analysis

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

Analysis

deployment of high-definition desktop video conferencing and made possible new architectures that reduce latency between transmitting source and receiver, resulting in fluid communication without pauses. Also, it is easier to set up for live videoconferencing call along with web conferencing for use in data collaboration. These combined technologies enable users to have a much richer multimedia environment for live meetings, collaboration and presentations. Also, the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF), a non-profit alliance between communication vendors, was launched on May 19, 2010. The organisation’s vision is to maximise the interoperability of UC, based on existing standards. Founding members of UCIF include HP, Microsoft, Polycom, Logitech and Juniper Networks.

Recent developments A vast majority of video conferencing deployments today are taking place on IP networks. The infrastructure market segment is also dynamic. Recently added capabilities include support for high-definition video, the ability to host and manage multi-codec sessions, configurable video attendants, and automated streaming and archiving appliances. The enterprise telepresence and video conferencing industry includes both appliancebased and software-based endpoints and infrastructure for telepresence, group systems, executive desktop systems, and software-based personal systems, as per the Wainhouse Research report. Put together, these market segments make up for over $2 billion in annual revenue. The report predicts that the overall enterprise telepresence and video conferencing market will grow 15 percent annually over the next five years to reach $4.3B in 2014. Currently, there are around one million installed telepresence and video conferencing endpoints in businesses of all types and sizes, as well as governments, universities, financial institutions, and hospitals across the world. Over three-fourth of the appliance-based video endpoints today consist of single-codec group systems, while multi-codec immersive

Asia-Pacific video conferencing endpoints market to touch

US $367.5

by end of 2010

telepresence systems and executive desktop systems make up for the rest.

Growth everywhere According to a Frost & Sullivan analysis of the European videoconferencing endpoints market, it clocked revenue of US $383.6 million in 2009 and is estimated to reach $1.03 billion in 2015 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 percent. The visual collaboration endpoints covered in this research are group systems and executive desktop systems videophones, including highdefinition and standard-definition. Another Frost & Sullivan study says the Asia-Pacific video conferencing endpoints market, comprising 14 countries including Japan, will be an estimated US $367.5 million by the end of 2010, with a 9.5 percent growth year-on-year. The shipment in 2010 will be 108,434 units, a growth of 14 percent, according to the report. Further, the region’s market outlook is a CAGR of 13.6 percent for 2011-2016, with a revenue forecast of US $820 million in 2016. Video conferencing market for India, as per industry sources, was an estimated `190 crore for FY 2009-10, which was a growth of 25 percent over the previous year. Endpoints constituted 80 percent of the market, while infrastructure made up for the rest. According to Frost & Sullivan, India leads the Saarc region’s UC market in terms of total spending and overall awareness, with a good potential for the growth of UC applications. India has introduced e-trials, using video conferencing, to increase the efficiency of the criminal justice system. This is aimed at helping the police, judiciary and prisons departments to save manpower, and bring speedy justice and

Telepresence is emerging as a preferred mode of conferencing for top brasses because of the immersive experience it provides 44

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

increased security, while realising considerable time and cost efficiencies.

Drivers and inhibitors There are two key business drivers that are encouraging video adoption. These include the need to meet the online collaboration needs of an increasingly virtual workforce and the desire to use video to reduce travel budgets. These two drivers work together: If video doesn’t enable online collaboration and provide a good meeting experience, it won’t be an effective alternative to travel. For senior executives who value high-touch interaction with fellow business leaders, customers and partners, telepresence is emerging as a preferred solution because of the ‘immersive’ experience provided by the technology. It also reduces the consciousness to video systems, thus enabling participants to focus on the interaction. In Europe, the stringent environmental policies have also given reason for organisations to embrace video conferencing. This is besides their need to decrease travel expenses and explore alternative ways to collaborate and meet clients. Videoconferencing also speeds up the decision-making process. However, despite tremendous growth potential, there are two outstanding issues that come in the way of videoconferencing becoming a standard form of communication. These are: lack of eye contact and appearance consciousness due to the camera’s presence. Eye contact plays a crucial role in conversational turn-taking, perceived attention and intent, among other aspects of group communication. However, this issue is being addressed through research that generates a synthetic image with eye contact using stereo reconstruction. Thus, the issue of eye-contact may be solved with advancement in technology. On the other hand, the issue of appearance consciousness will also lose ground as people become accustomed to video conferencing.

national conference on ict in Public safety & security April, 2011 The Claridges, New Delhi

securing citizens through technology 1 01 t2

• Access Control & Identity Management • Critical Infrastructure Security & Control • Cyber Security & Internet Governance

• Disaster Management & Recovery

01 t2

• Emergency Response System • Fraud Detection & Mitigation

1 01 t2

e ur ec

r cu e s

1 s

01 t2

t ei

r cu se

01 t2

• Homeland Safety & Border Security

r cu e s

Presented By

Partner Publications

re cu e s

Target Audience

Focus Areas

r cu e s

Supporting Partner

• Senior Officers from Key Government Defence Establishments • Heads of Police Departments & Intelligence Agencies • Security Experts & Defence Analysts • Technology Providers & Suppliers

Organised By

For Sponsorship enquiries: Debabrata Ray, Email: sales@elets.in, Mob: +91-9899650692 For Programme enquiries: events@elets.in

www.secure-IT.in

in person

“People don’t have time to plan for new software and get it developed. That’s why we ready products and then customise them as per the requirements of an organisation”

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

grid name in person

Ajai Chowdhry

Chairman, HCL Infosystems

“We are taking a product-oriented

approach to services”

One of the six founder

ervices have become the larger component in your business, at 26 percent. What has been driving this transformation from a product company to a services company?

members of the HCL group, Ajai Chowdhry took over the reins of HCL Infosystems, the flagship company of the group,

When we move from the hardware business, one major area we want to focus upon is system integration. Currently we are sitting at an order backlog of $1 billion and that’s a good position to be in. What we set out to do in system integration we have gone and done but there is still more needs to be done. Today we are focusing on 12 areas of system integration. We have added literally one area every two years. We have decided we will add certain new areas like Oil and Gas, and travel and transportation. We have been a product company since the day we started in the year 1976. A decade ago I got to know that we are probably the first company to produce a computer. I met somebody in Apple and then I realised that the date when they launched their first computer was two months after the date we launched ours. That first computer was all designed and manufactured in India—the hardware, the components, the operating system; everything. Now while doing a system integration project, if we find that 10 other similar projects are going to happen then why not take a product-oriented approach. The boulevard of our strategy is to provide customised solutions. For example, we created a solution for the municipal corporations. We will come, install, modify but you can get started very fast. You don’t have to start from scratch.

as President and CEO in 1994

So you are taking a product-oriented approach to system integration...

Parth, Managing Editor, eGov,

In e-Governance, we have an Nrega product, we have an e-Municipality product file management system and all these are functional. These have been installed at a number of places. There is another product in the power segment. We have the CRM billing system. Then in banking and financial sector, we have the largest number of products. We have a number of products for education segment like digi-school product. The main idea has been to provide complete solutions through our products.

and has been its Chairman since November 1999. A great believer in the manufacturing potential of India, Ajai has relentlessly advocated the cause of manufacturing in India to industry bodies and the government. In recognition of his visionary ability, Chowdhry was invited to be part of the IT Hardware Task Force set up by the Prime Minister of India, to give shape to the country’s IT strategy. In a chat with Shubhendu Chowdhry explained why HCL Infosystems’ product-oriented approach to services would be a winning formula.

February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

IN PERSON

took products, because that’s what we have been doing for decades. Products and services have very different ways of working. The kind of software you write for a product is very different from the kind you write for a project. You cannot have a product coming out of your facility that has errors. You have to make a very thorough testing not only for its quality but also for scalability. We have observed that people (organisations) don’t have time to plan

Detractors have cited security and privacy issues to call of the UID project. How serious is the concern? I believe the concerns are valid. Every country must worry about securing its IT infrastructure and hence there has to be a way to secure it.

You are with the PC penetration hardware committee task force. Are

“Products and services

have very different ways of working. The software you write is

very different. You cannot have a product coming out of your

facility that has errors”

As we go to Middle East or an African country, we can say we provide different solutions for e-Governance. We can directly demonstrate the product out there and take their consent to move forward. Earlier, we had a lot of our own components but the service component was being outsourced a lot of time, but now we have added services capability and so do it on our own. The product-oriented thing is about thinking ahead. A lot of applications we have developed will tomorrow go into the cloud. If a customer is not ready to buy hardware or software they can buy the services. We have a BOOT model and a cloud model. Boot model mostly works in a government or a semi-government set up. We have four cooperative banks running on our cloud model.

What has been the trigger for taking this route? Why are other Indian IT services companies not taking the same approach? They are mainly going in the IT services direction and we are going in the system integration product direction. We wanted to differentiate; we wanted to do something that is close to us. So we

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

getting personal born 29th August 1950; Mount Abu Recognition Electronics Man of the year by ELCINAEFY for the year 2010 Passion Passion for excellence Favourite Pastime Reading / Listening to music Favourite Gadget Nokia phone #1 Management Tip Gadget Lead by example Fitness Mantra Regular exercise & treadmill Key Strengths People

for new software and then wait for it to get developed. That’s why we prepare readymade solutions and make customised changes here and there as per the requirements of the organisation.

And will it be across all verticals? Going ahead security, health, education, rural development and power are big focus areas for us. We have designed a handheld device for registration. It can read your thumbprint, smart cards and it has a monitor and a printer. It has GPRS connectivity and now you can connect it through 3G.

you happy with what has happened to that report? The good news is that the report we submitted last year is being adopted. So they are coming up with the recommendations. It is in the last stage. An important part is the creation of an electronic development fund of Rs 5,000 crore for designing products that are required in India.

Do you think government should adopt the cloud model? Government must adopt it. The cost will be reduced and the work that has to be done will be reduced.

How would you describe the Unique Identity or UID project in India?

What are the technology trends in the next one or two years?

UID is the centrepiece of all the e-Governance projects. It will impact everything that is happening in this country. One important thing to understand here is that UID is identity and not the identification. Identification means weather you are an Indian or a Pakistani, whereas identity means your identity as part of a society, a group or in this context as a citizen of the country.

A lot of people are still scared or apprehensive using a computer. We should develop a human interface. All interactions with the computer are language based so far. There should be an icon-based solution. You may come up with a voice-based solution. However, the combination with gesture is very much possible and we are working to develop that technology. It will be ready soon.

education watch

Amod Kumar

Project Director - MNH, IntraHealth

Mid-day Monitoring Meal Scheme

through Cloud Telephony

an you throw light on the ICT systems deployed for monitoring of midday meal scheme in UP, while your association with the State Mid-Day Meal Authority?

Amod Kumar, an Indian Administrative Services officer of the 1995 batch, belongs to UP Cadre. He has held several positions at UP government, including Special Secretary, Basic Education & Director Midday-Meal, Special Secretary, Revenue, Special Secretary, I.T. (Information Technology). On a few years leave, currently, he is working on the capacity

During my association with the mid-day meal authority, we developed a system to monitor the mid day meal scheme with the help of cloud telephony. For its monitoring in all the 1.5 lakh schools in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the department gives IVRS calls to all the teachers through which the teachers are asked for the number of students who took meals on that particular day. Almost1800 calls are made parallely. By evening the department gets data for all the schools. Initially, the teachers are informed that the call is being made on behalf of the mid-day meal authority. It asks the teacher to punch in the number of students who were served the meal that day. If the teacher punches in zero, he is given four reasons and told to punch in the appropriate number. The reasons are: 1.Cook was absent; 2. Non availability of raw material for cooking; 3. Transportation problems; and 4. Other reason. The responses are simultaneously recorded on the website of the midday meal authority. The BSAs can go to website, choose respective blocks/district and check the daily meal reports. All this is done in Hindi language. Now, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development is deliberating on scaling up the monitoring project across all states and UTs.

of Project Director, Maternal and Newborn Health Project -Manthan Project-IntraHealth. Pratap Vikram Singh finds out details of the project.

Could you please elaborate on the work being done in the health sector in the state of Uttar Pradesh by IntraHealth? Manthan Project is a $4 million initiative funded

by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It aims to improve the health of mothers and newborns in northern India. Among other Indian states, Uttar Pradesh has the highest percentage of maternal and neonatal deaths in India. With a duration of fouryears, this project will work with the Uttar Pradesh state government to identify proven, effective mother and neonatal health (MNH) interventions, advocate at district, state, and national levels to promote the adoption and scale-up of these interventions, and expand health care services to more mothers and newborns. We see ICT as a vital tool for efficient delivery of health care services. Although leveraging ICT is still at a conceptual stage, we would be using ICT in three – four ways. • To reach to the ultimate client – through SMS, education on remedies and behavioural change. • Direct IVRS calls giving reminders about the precautions and timely intake of medicines • To educate and remind the Asha workers (the health care workers in the state) through the use of multimedia-smart phones, which is now available at a much cheaper price. We can store a video on educating the workers and aiding them in better counseling. • Better monitoring through generation of management information systems (MIS) reports. Through ICT, we can gather, de-duplicate and analyse the data in a better fashion, with an ultimate objective of use of data in planning. Fortunately, because of RSBY, one of the government’s flagship programmes, we have the base line data. Since the work involves research, advocacy and aiding government in planning and decision making, we have not sketched figures for assessing project outcomes. The outcome could be gauged in the degree of receptiveness in the government and the subsequent efficiency and equity created at the grassroots level. February 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

Analysis

A tool for smart governance DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

With capturing and storage costs so low, widespread adoption of DMS can cut down processing times and boost efficiencies By egov Team

he volume of unstructured content has significantly risen over the years and continues to do so. This has prompted the need to look beyond traditional content management systems (CMS), which focussed largely on structured content. Inception of Document Management System (DMS) in 1980s provided a great hope for efficient, effective and transparent document management for organisations and institutions. Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DMS solutions are capable of handling both structured and unstructured content and are being widely used to track and store paper documents in government organisations as well. DMS is also viewed as a component of enterprise content management (ECM) systems and is related to digital asset management, document imaging, workflow and records management systems. The proliferation of smart phones among business users and citizens has further raised the potential of DMS proliferation in the e-Governance space. Over the coming years, cloud-based DMS applications are expected to evolve to fulfil diverse needs of citizens over the mobile devices.

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

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Analysis

Initially, DMS was developed to manage proprietary file formats or some specific formats. However, in the past decade, the general transition to electronic management of documents has been very rapid, which has driven the growth of DMS solutions for various file formats.

Growing appetite for DMS The need for DMS can be gauged by a study finding, which showed that unstructured data is growing at a rate of 65 percent and will continue to grow at similar rates in the years ahead. The content management software market in the Asia-Pacific region, according to IDC estimates, will be worth $362 million by 2012. Another estimate, on DMS market prospects in India, puts it at $75 million for 2012. The adoption of DMS by many of the government departments has had a positive response, though it is just a beginning. According to IDC, executives spend 45 percent of their time working with documents. About 610 billion e-mails are sent each year, out of which about half are printed. More than 7.5 billion new documents are created in an office, resulting in more than one trillion pages each year. Managing such large volumes of data is one of the top priorities of organisations today. Also, high volumes of physical records lead to a large number of problems including irregularities, loss of data and duplication. DMS and managed printing are two solutions that are being adopted by many organisations. India presents a huge growth opportunity for document management services as large businesses continue to use paper and traditional means of storage and there is an increased need for automation. IDC predicts that enterprises will spend 10 percent of their revenues on document products, management and distribution. According to the research agency, while the printing, copying and scanning industry is close to around `1,500 crore, DMS with 10 percent of the pie stands at `150 crore.

Adoption in govt sector All government departments are digitising their documents. Due to compliance requirements telecom, insurance, banking, pharma-

ceuticals and other verticals will slowly move towards complete digitisation of their backlog documents and ongoing activities. Digitisation will also be a must for many industries, especially in areas like health insurance claims and loan processing, to bring in efficiencies and cost benefits. Hospitals are also looking to digitise patient records for compliance, legal and service requirements. Other aspects driving the DMS market are automation, virtualisation and integration. The need to share information and documents with globally dispersed teams, and to improve collaboration and enhance the effectiveness of various organisational functions is fuelling DMS growth globally. e-Governance projects in India have also contributed to the growth of DMS. Advanced file approval, management, tracking and intelligent search system is expected to help the government function in an efficient manner. No wonder, governments and various departments are looking at DMS to manage and store documents for facilitating transparent, efficient and seamless governance. In times to come, DMS will become the basic infrastructure on which all efficient and transparent G2C services will be running. DMS will act as a trusted system of records with controlled access to content to support regulatory compliance and business continuity. In Haryana, e-Disha implementation is aimed at providing citizen-centric services to the common man to ensure less paper based work by using document management solutions. As more and more government services become online, e-records will be used to maintain huge data volumes for various services like confirmation of pensions and other entitlements, registration of births and deaths, verification of citizenship, certification of voting rights, and collection of taxes and censuses. Other application areas include financial management and audits to help resolve land claims and litigations, documenting of intergovernmental agreements, economic planning, document development and countless other information-intensive activities. In 2005, the Department of Science & Technology, Government of Gujarat, initiated Integrated Workflow and Document Manage-

Advanced file approval, management, tracking and intelligent search capabilities are expected to help the government functioning 52

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

IDC estimates Asia-Pacific content management software market to touch

$362

by 2012

ment System (IWDMS) in order to provide better services to citizens. With the help of IWDMS, a central numbering system for all correspondence and files is provided to make them traceable. IWDMS and ICT have helped governments across various states to ensure an accountable, transparent and effective administration and at the same time increase efficiency by moving towards a more paperless office. It has also helped in enabling a robust decision support system. The vast expanse and differential stages of democratisation in India makes application of electronic document management system ideal tool for allowing people in remote and infrastructure-wise challenged places to access services and information.

Looking ahead Government bodies would want to bring more types of content, which are being generated today, under the purview of DMS. As the cost of storage keeps reducing, while the need for regulatory compliance increases, the barrier to store this content will keep shrinking. However, the real challenge is going to be in automatic capture and structuring of content. Indian economy has grown steadily for the past five or six years, despite the slowdown. The growth in the banking industry has been strong, healthcare industry is gaining momentum, retail is booming and from the current 170 million consumer base, the telecom industry is expected to touch a whopping 700-million base by 2012. This will also drive growth in application-driven document generation and outsourcing. Gartner notes that factors like increasing real estate prices and decreasing costs for capturing and storage technologies are driving adoption of DMS. Awareness for DMS is also increasing. The first entrants were large companies in BFSI and telecom and now smaller organisations are also adopting DMS in a significant way. It is being recognised as a tool for increasing productivity and improving collaboration for faster decision making.

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health watch

Towards Efficient Healthcare Model After taking the telecom sector by storm, mobile phones are set to change the way healthcare is delivered By Dhirendra Pratap Singh

ireless connections have outpaced wired implementations in most parts of the world. The penetration of mobile devices in hard to reach geographies, has given the stakeholders in healthcare a reason to adopt this technology for delivery of healthcare. mHealth is quickly emerging as a channel that drives accessible, real time and efficient healthcare delivery. Mobile Healthcare or mHealth is a term for medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, PDAs, and other wireless devices. mHealth applications include the use of mobile devices in collecting community and clinical health data, delivery of healthcare information to practitioners, researchers, and patients, real-time monitoring of patient vital signs, and direct provision of care (via mobile telemedicine). For the first time in India, a mobile phone doctor-to-patient service called ‘Doctor on Call’ was launched. The 9 to 9 service that provides live interaction was pioneered by BPL Mobile, Mumbai’s leading mobile service. Last year, Bihar State Government announced to give free mobile phone services to its doctors in an attempt to reduce truancy. Many government doctors neglect their official duties by practising privately on the side. The main purpose of the move is to be able to get in touch with the doctors at any time. Their movements will also be tracked by a system. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have created a cell phone that

egov / www.egovonline.net / February 2011

can monitor the condition of HIV and malaria patients and test water quality at disaster sites and undeveloped areas. UCLA electrical engineering professor Aydogan Ozcan has constructed the new innovative imaging technology, which has been miniaturised by researchers in his lab to the point that it can fit in standard cell phones. The imaging platform, known as LUCAS (Lensless Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging), has now been successfully installed in both a cell phone and a webcam. However, healthcare providers and operators/carriers are embracing mHealth to target and treat consumers suffering from chronic care/lifestyle disorders. For the providers, a chronic care patient is a “Big Ticket” patient who often needs follow-up consultations, frequent diagnostics, nurse and ancillary help. These patients also sign up for disease management programs and occasionally need surgical

interventions which are money spinners. For the operators/carriers, providing mHealth services result in a revenue stream from value added services - long term subscription to tips, reminders, self care apps, IVR based self help contact centre solutions. The way forward is to shift the focus to driving medical value – mHealth solutions should build efficiency and must cut costs in healthcare delivery. Stakeholders need to collaborate to bring down technology costs and make it easier for the consumer to adopt mHealth solutions. A successful mhealth model should have a cross-carrier approach for the infrastructure; solutions should be handset independent and should work with a variety of connectivity standards (Bluetooth and GPRS) with minimal switching costs. Over the next few years, stakeholders will take advantage of the ubiquity of the mobile phone to develop and deliver mHealth solutions to everyone regardless of their financial or social position.