egov January 2014

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-governance ` 75 / US $10 / ISSN 0973-161X

Shri Naveen Patnaik Hon’ble Chief Minister of Odisha

January 2014 | VOLUME 10 ISSN 0973-161X, egov.eletsonline.com n ISSUE 01 n

National e-Governance Plan, CSC, UID, Aadhar, State Data Centre, Government services, Infrastructure, Policies,

Mission Mode

Projects, Delivery of services, Government services, Transparency, G2G, Accountability, e-Treasury, State Wide Area

Networks, State Data Centres,Common Services Centres, Electronic Service Delivery Gateways, Implementation of policies, citizencentric orientation, Smart Panchayat, PPP model, Decentralised Implementation, Centralised Initiative, e-District, ITeS Policy, Public

services,

Information access, Citizen Centric Service Delivery,

Government and Citizens (G2C), 2nd Government and Business (G2B), e-Transactions, eTaal, Punarbas, E-Municipality, edhaRani, Odisha Online, e-Services, Integrated Service Delivery, Cloud Policy,

eGov AppStore , e-RAAS (Reusable Application Towards Citizen Centric Service Delivery Availability Store),

Odisha State Wide

Software Technology Parks India, ICT Policy, 24of January 2014, Bhubaneswar

Area Network (OSWAN), e-Treasury, NOFN (National Optical Fibre Network), State Resident Data hub (SRDH), Unique Identification Authority

GPS, Computerisation, Public Distribution System, Employment generation, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), Financial Inclusion, SWAN, National Health Management Information System

of India (UIDAI),

(NHMIS),

e-Blood Bank, Drug Management Information system, G2C, Vaccine

Logistics Management System, e-Authentication,

Hardware and

Software networking, State Wide Area Networks,

Smart

Panchayat, PPP model, Decentralised Implementation, Centralised Initiative,

e-District

, ITeS Policy, Public services, Centralised Initiative, Skill

Development, e-Transport ,ICT4D, ICT in Education, Land Recrods,

Right to Information, G2B, NFON, Broadband, e-Transactions

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january 2014

Contents volumesecond 10 n issue grid01 grid name

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Minister for Forest and Environment, Labour & Employees’ State Insurance, Government of Odisha

Commissioner cum Secretary Employment & Technical Education & Training Department, Government of Odisha

Bijayshree Routray

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24

Minister for Health & Family Welfare and MSME, Government of Odisha

Commissioner-cumSecretary, School & Mass Education Department, Government of Odisha

Dr Damodar Rout

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Pratap Keshari Deb

Minister of State (Independent), Food Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Employment & Technical Education & Training, Information Technology, Government of Odhisa

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Jugal Kishore Mohapatra

Chief Secretary, Government of Odisha

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Madhusudan Padhi

Commissioner-Cum-Secretary, Department of IT, Government of Odisha

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Kiran Mazumdar Shaw Chairman & Managing Director, Biocon Limited

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Dr Chandra Shekhar Kumar

P K Jena

Regional Director, Reserve Bank of India

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Krishna Mohan Trivedi

Usha Padhee

Chief General Manager State Bank of India, Local Head Office, Bhubaneswar, Odisha

26

44

Roopa Mishra

Arindam Mukherjee

Mission Director, National Health Mission, Odisha

Manager for Regional Sales (BFSI) Cisco India and SAARC

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45

Animesh Nandan Sahay

Mahendra Pratap

Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Mahanadi Coalfields Limited

Head, Financial Inclsuion, HCL Infosystems

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46

K N Bhagat

Sanjeev Chadha

Managing Trustee, OTTET, Odisha

36

Deepak Shrivastava, IFS

Chief Vigilance Officer Mahanadi Coalfields Limited

Director, Directorate of Horticulture, Government of Odisha

30 Telemedicine

Odisha Telemedicine Program

32 nic initiatives

Management of Land Resources

20

Dr Ajit Kumar Tripathy

State Election Commissioner, Odisha

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / January 2014

38

S P Singh

Circle Head, Bhubaneswar & Convener SLBC

further reading Editorial 05 CM Message

07

euttar Pradesh Report

48

Odisha – On the forefront of e-Governance

I

n the middle of January 2014, the Director General of Police (DGP) in Odisha launched the new official website of the Odisha Police, www.odishapolice.gov.in. This website is designed to provide a wide range of information to the public and it will lead to better transparency and efficiency. This website by the police department in Odisha is an example of a project that will bring the people closer to the police department and thus contribute towards the creation of a better law and order system.

Surely, this is not the first step of the kind that has been taken by Odisha. The state government is committed to strengthening e-Governance by introducing a range of such initiatives, thus ensuring that latest ICT systems are in place for serving the needs of the people in a transparent and timely manner. Of course, there are challenges involved in ensuring that the advantages of e-Governance percolates till the people at the grassroots levels of the society. But, we expect to overcome these challenges over a period of time.

After all, e-Governance is a process of reform in the way governments work, share information, engage citizens and deliver services to external and internal clients for the benefit of both government and the clients that they serve. Certainly, it is not an easy task to reform or change government processes and that at times counts for the delays in the implementation of certain initiatives. However, e-Governance has now gained considerable traction in the country; there is public demand for e-enabled services.

On 24th January, 2014, we are organising the eOdisha event in Bhubaneswar. This is the second eOdisha event that we are organising and the focus this year is much broader. We hope to put the spotlight on e-Governance initiatives that have been launched in the domains governance, healthcare, education and financial inclusion. The current issue of the eGov magazine is a special issue on Odisha. We are covering the ICT initiatives of various departments in the state in this special issue.

We are happy to note that there is considerable enthusiasm about promotion of ICT in various government departments. That is why in the month of February 2014, we will be having three major conferences. We will organise e-Haryana on 7-8 February, 2014, in Chandigarh. Then will move to eBihar, which is being held in Patna on 19-20 February, 2014. We will then move to eJharkhand, which will be held in Ranchi on 22nd February, 2014.

We look forward to carry the torch of ICT all across India in every state in the year 2014. We look forward to your support in this noble endeavour.

ravi guptA Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

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November 2013

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january 2014 issue 01 n volume 10

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In Person

Bijayshree Routray

Minister for Forest and Environment, Labour & Employees’ State Insurance, Government of Odisha

Odisha’s GROWTH has been steady “The economy of Odisha has not been stagnant, we have been developing at a slow and steady pace,” says Bijayshree Routray. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / January 2014

In Person

A

professor turned politician, you have been involved in the state’s political landscape for many years. What is your view of the development work being done in Odisha?

Odhisa has been developing at a slow and steady pace. We have been able to attract investment, our industries and other allied organisations are moving in right direction.

It has been our aim since Biju Babu’s time to exploit our natural resources in efficient and environment friendly way to earn more revenues which can be used for the holistic development of the state. We are focused on industrialisation and exploration of natural resources but there have been some impediments due to the scams reported in mining and the formation of commissions

lations are followed at the plants. We have also noticed that in majority of the cases the companies have appointed paid director as the ‘occupier’ and not as the ‘owner’ of the company to avoid the punishment and penalty. To make the real owner responsible for the mishap, we are now forcing the companies to make their owner as occupier. I feel this should lead to better adherence to regulation and fewer accidents. I also feel that this would lead the owners to be more concerned about their companies.

Key ministries in the state are being held by you. In this light, what steps are being taken by the government departments to use ICT for improving efficiency and transparency?

I think it is the time for all the states in India to use Information Communication Technology (ICT) to enhance governance.

Intervention of information technology

We aim to exploit our natural resources in an efficient and environment friendly way to earn revenues which can be used for the holistic development of the state looking into the scams. In spite of these, we are moving forward and most of the people are satisfied with the government. Holistically, there has been an improvement in our economy and also in the attitude of the people for growth.

In Odisha, callousness of private companies has led to frequent accidents which have resulted in loss of life and mass protest by labourers. What is being done to address such issues?

I agree there have been frequent accidents and mass protests against private companies. We are taking some concrete steps to minimise such unfortunate accidents.

Safety audits are being done frequently by our officers to make sure that safety regu-

has helped the government in better interdepartmental administration and ultimately resulted in good governance to the people.

It has led to minimising of the bulk of record and paper keeping activities; it has streamlined the processes and improved the effectiveness of our employees. I am also the Minister for Forest and Environment.

If we do not have enough base level workers then the forest remains unguarded which gives scope to the forest mafia to operate without our intervention. We have limited manpower and this is a huge challenge for managing the forests. I think ICT has a bigger role to play in such areas.

Odisha has successfully utilised the central government welfare schemes. How do you look at

some of the flagship programmes such as Food Security, Direct Cash Transfer and MNREGA? Schemes such as Food Security, Direct Cash Transfer or Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are welfare schemes which are directed to benefit people at large. But we also have to make sure that it reaches to the real intended beneficiaries. People have gradually become more conscious and they want social security and more of social welfare. Being a welfare state, we must cater to the demands of the people. India is a large country with huge diversity and therefore, it is integral to our existence that our focus should be on holistic development and inclusive growth of the country. The welfare schemes mentioned have potential for all of these. However, proper implementation of the schemes is a big challenge.

The cases of illegal mining have rocked both the Parliament and the State Assembly. There are reports on illegal mining activities in forest areas which have adversely impacted Odisha.

In your opinion what is the best way forward?

Basically, there are two sides to illegal mining in the state, one is wilful disobedience of line of demarcation and another is unintentional disobedience. We have detected many instances of illegal mining and have penalised them. We have also stopped mining at places where there is doubt over line of demarcation. Earlier, it was manually demarcated, later we started using GPS and now DGPS system is available, all the systems are an improvement over the previous ones. The line of demarcation which was manually given 20 years back is not the line of demarcation today. As a result, some illegal mining have also happened unknowingly. But at the same time, I conceive that many of the ground level employees of the government were aware of illegal mining. In my opinion the best way forward is to punish the errant as prescribed by the Shah Commission. It says, to discourage illegal mining, fine should be imposed on the errant to the extent of the theft or illegal mining.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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In Person

Dr Damodar Rout

Minister for Health & Family Welfare and MSME Government of Odisha

MSME sector has huge potential in Odisha

G

overnment of Odisha is focusing on the development of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector in the state. How do you look at MSME sector in your state?

In eastern India, Odisha has got huge potential for development of MSME. We have created MSME development policy 2009 and now have started working accordingly. Recently, we organised an MSME exhibition, in which about nine foreign companies participated.

We are also focusing on developing an efficient programme for entrepreneur sensitisation to train our youth. There is an excitement among youth to become entrepreneur, we have covered 314 blocks under various entrepreneur sensitisation programme. I think MSME sector in Odisha can do much better compared to any other place in the country due to availability of mega-industries. The mega industries, which currently may be are getting their needs from outside, can resource their needs from local MSMEs. The government is also proposing to set-up an MSME university in the state. We have given enough importance to MSME in our state and I think within two years there will be significant progress.

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way to address some of the challenges. I have also taken up the issue with the Chief Minister and Finance Department; they have agreed to provide 2400 crores in coming three years at the rate of 800 crore per year to improve the healthcare infrastructure in the state. I think it will be really helpful for developing the infrastructure in the healthcare centres in the state.

Odisha has one of the largest tribal populations. What steps are you taking to improve healthcare service in tribal areas?

I cannot claim that healthcare has completely improved but we are doing our best. It’s a huge challenge because 22 percent newly born babies in tribal areas are seriously underweight and those who are dying within stipulated time are adding to the infant mortality rate. Those who are surviving are not healthy citizens. So we have taken some special steps in women healthcare. About 53 percent women are suffering from anaemia, unless we arrest that anaemic condition, the problem with newly born babies being sickly will remain. The first step that we need to take is care of mother, then the child.

On our request government of India has set-up a tribal disease research centre and we are proposing three more such centres.

In your interview to eHealth magazine earlier, you said that infrastructure deficiency is key challenge for Odisha. How things have improved over the years?

Very recently Kiran Mazumdar Shaw met the Chief Minister and proposed to set-up telemedicine centre in the state. How do you look at such initiatives?

It is true that infrastructure deficiency is key challenge for the state. We have been trying hard. We have received some funds under Urban Health Mission and we shall use it in the best possible

We are introducing telemedicine at some of our medical centres. Mrs. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw wants to spread the eHealth system and also install telemedicine centres to cover all the

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / January 2014

revenue villages, say about 51000 villages. She wants to ensure that telemedicine facility is available in all the villages. It may not be possible at this moment, but we are trying to develop infrastructure at the fastest possible pace. We are trying to have the facility at all our primary health centres, community health centres, sub-divisional medical health centres, and all the medical colleges. We have assured Mrs Shaw to make an exercise on this score. Recently, we have established Biju Patnaik Memorial Hospital with the help of private participant. We will also try to develop telemedicine facility for dangerous diseases like cancer, diabetes, hypertension, etc. The telemedicine centres can provide immediate diagnosis take and can also provide tele-consultation.

There are only two government medical college in the state. Is there any plan to open more medical college to bridge the gap between demand and availability of the doctors?

We have huge shortage of doctors; the last government medical college was opened four decades back. I agree, state needs more doctors and more medical colleges, now we are encouraging private medical colleges, so far eight medical have come up. And, also 100 students have been admitted at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar and at a private medical college and in one medical college we have enhance the seat to 100. Government of India has decided to set-up 65 new medical colleges in the country. We have approached them to establish four medical colleges in our state as well. Government of India has agreed it in principle. Based on the centre-state partnership, we have proposed one medical college each at Balasore, Baripada, Balangir and Kodapur.

In Person

We aim to exploit our natural resources in an efficient and environment friendly way to earn revenues which can be used for the holistic development of the state

“MSME in Odisha will do much better because of the presence of large industries,� says Dr Damodar Rout. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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In Person

Pratap Keshari Deb

Minister of State (Independent), Food Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Employment & Technical Education & Training, Information Technology, Government of Odhisa

Odisha is

the Emerging IT Destination

T

oday Odisha is regarded as one of India’s fastest growing states.

What is your vision for bringing development to Odisha?

Odisha is one of the fastest growing IT destinations in the country. We have divided the IT development in some stages. We are giving first and foremost importance to build a technical knowledge base at the grassroots level immediately after schools, ITI, Diploma engineering, engineering, as well as the management education. Secondly, we are introducing Information Technology (IT) in a major way into governance so that people get accustomed to it. Today almost all the departments are using IT in some or the other way. The whole process of this development started since 2006. We will be drawing curtains in 2014 and by 2015-16 we will take a giant leap in the course of IT development in the state.

“My fundamental principle is that one should ‘First Deserve then Desire’. Firstly, my government is building up a base of technically educated youth, proper infrastructure and then we will welcome everybody to invest so that by the time those investments come in we are prepared to receive them,” says Pratap Keshari Deb. In conversation with Kartik Sharma

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / January 2014

Please tell us about the new ICT Policy in the state. How will this policy help Government to develop a well planned, robust and futuristic IT architecture in the State?

We had an ICT policy since 2002-03. This policy has given us immense dividends in last

In Person

10 years. Through this policy we have created an economy of more than Rs 2200 crores. In hardware sector about Rs 500 crores were generated in the last decade. Now with the new ICT policy, which we have created in 2013, we aim to take a big leap in coming 10 years.

The New ICT policy is basically meant for the development of upcoming entrepreneurs. This will help these entrepreneurs to setup IT & Electronic hub in Odisha. It will have threefold benefit to the state. Firstly we will get revenue coming in the state. Secondly, there will also be creation of lot of jobs. Thirdly, it will change the entire working system and the mindset and outlook of the state. This is our basic threefold strategy behind the new ICT policy.

What is the Government’s strategy for the development of IT investment in the state?

Please tell us about some steps being taken for facilitating growth in new areas of IT/ITES. For encouraging IT investment in the state we have tied up with STPI (Software Technology Parks of India). Initially we had one Infocity, which was the IT hub. Now we have expanded to two mare such Infocity projects in the vicinity of Bhubaneswar town. These two are going to be the nodal hub. We have selected four regional centers. Shortly we are inaugurating the STPI and Government of Odisha joint venture in Baleswar District.

So now these sub stations like Balswar will be joined with the main hub in Bhubaneswar.

This is how the growth process will pick up the pace and lead us to take big leap in 2015 as all these things are targeted to be completed by 2014 and 2015 start.

Government of Odisha has carried out many successful e-Governance initiatives, like Janasevakendra (CSC) and e-District Pilot. Please tell us about the e-Governance initiatives being taken and their importance in the development of the state.

We have introduced e-Governance in almost all the government departments. Services like transferring of benefits to students, issuing of birth and death certificates in municipalities, movement of food grains from one depot to another depot and many other services are

online. And for the first time we have started e-Procurement of paddy crop in three blocks.

In other general administration centers also we have moved ahead in terms of brining IT at forefront. As of today the entire government capital gets transferred online to all the district, block and Gram Panchayat headquarters.

Odisha is seeing good response as far as education is concerned.

A lot of new institutes are opening up. How do you perceive these initiatives and what are measures the government is taking to usher in more universities in the state?

Initially we had Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) as one major institute.

However, now we planning to diversify. From the government side we have taken initiatives to open educational institutes in all blocks, diploma education in every district. We are trying to cover the regional imbalance in the existence of engineering colleges as far as possible. We have increased seats in government institutes and planning to increase more seats in engineering as well in diploma and ITI level.

This year we have slated to spend about Rs 500 crores for this cause.

What are the steps being taken by the government for ensuring that there is adequate skill development of the youth of the state?

Initially we started the process of skill development on our own in 2006, through the State Skill Development Mission. The basic idea then was to have a base of technically educated people in the state because for development you have to have a skilled worked force mainly in the form of technically educated youth base. So the mission was first aimed to create awareness about education, impart technical education and bring out people capable of self employment. From 2010 onwards Government of India also started such mission in form of National Skill Development Mission. After that budgetary provisions started coming from Government of India and Odisha both. From 2011, onwards we have gone on the mission mode and now we are tying up with various companies and service providers and diploma centers imparting training linked with place-

ment opportunities. Around 35 thousand students have been placed directly by us. There are other placements done by private companies as well. By 2016-17, this mission will have a major role to play in the state.

Please share your vision with us regarding the development of education in the coming years.

Please share your thoughts on the future of ICT in education in the state of Odisha.

The idea of promoting more IT oriented education is also there on our cards. We are in talks with Microsoft and other key players to include modern IT curriculum in Higher, Technical and School education. If the whole system is integrated then definitely the end product will be excellent. However, this is still in the discussion stage. Nothing concrete has been moved as yet.

Odisha is rich in natural resources, it also has a large pool of trained youth. Do you think the State has the potential to develop into a larger business centre?

I see Odisha as a very bright destination for investment in future, because we have surplus power, water and land. The other states that have taken the initial leap into the IT sector, states like Haryana, Punjab, Bangalore, Chennai and others, are running short of power, water and land. So, I believe that the next hub is Odisha. My entire preparation is for that. My fundamental is to ‘First Deserve then Desire’. Firstly, my government is building up a base of technically educated youth, proper infrastructure and then we will welcome everybody to invest so that by the time those investments come in we are prepared to receive them. Once we strengthen our own base then we will invite more and more companies from private sector to join in the bandwagon of development of Odisha and that is how we will take the leap and there will be no looking back. Our primary responsibility is to have our own work force because there is no point in creating IT hubs and let people coming from outside taking the jobs and youth of Odisha sitting jobless. Now we have reached at the stage where for instance if 500 jobs are created in the state then at least 200 of them will be taken up by Odisha youth.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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In Person

Jugal Kishore Mohapatra

Chief Secretary, Government of Odisha

Odisha: ON PATH OF HIGH GROWTH

R

uchir Sharma in his famous book, ‘Breakout Nations’ has identified four states that are on the verge of economic breakout. Odisha is one of those four states. What is your view about the status of economic growth happening in the state?

Today it is widely acknowledged that Odisha has immense potential in natural resources as well as man-made endeavours. Till the end of the last century, Odisha had a very difficult situation in terms of finances and all its social indicators were pretty low. But from 2004-05 there has been a marked improvement in Odisha’s economic and social profile. Today Odisha has a strong fiscal situation. There has not been any revenue deficit during the last 5-6 years. Fiscal deficit has always been below 3 percent in the last 5-6 years. So the state today enjoys a fiscal space for growth of more than 8 percent. Though I think the potential rate of growth of Odisha should be higher than that. Odisha offers tremendous scope for growth in almost every area of economic activity or social indicator. We need to speed up the pace of development. We can expect tremendous amount of development in the state in next 5-6 years.

Please give us your view of the e-Governance services that have been implemented in Odisha.

“e-Governance is being seen as a tool for promoting efficiency and transparency in government departments”, says Jugal Kishore Mohapatra, Chief Secretary, Government of Odisha in conversation with Nayana Singh and Kartik Sharma

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / January 2014

e-Governance is today being seen as a tool for promoting efficiency and transparency in government departments. There are many areas where e-Governance has taken roots in Odisha. State’s treasury management system, is one of the state of the art kind of facility that we have created and perhaps Odisha is leading on that front.

It has also got national e-Governance award. This is a very efficient mechanism; it has real time budget management where all the payments and receipts are done online among many other facilities. e-Governance is being used creatively and effectively in tax payment. The commercial taxes organisation has adopted a robust computerisation in almost every process. Now people don’t have to visit the office to get their minor work done. From registration to payment to filing of returns are now done online. All the forms are available online. The process of automation is very strong. Computerisation has effectively helped in land records management as the registration process is now completely computerised. The process of keeping records of property transactions has been simplified. Now we are working towards putting the entire land records data online. People will be able to look at their land records through a seamless online process. At the same time, we are focusing on city college admission, Public Distribution System and automation of the secretariat. We are trying to make everything online in our state; even the Chief Minister accepts files through the electronic mode now. On the whole, I would say

In Person

that a remarkable amount of progress has been made during the last few years and in the times to come, e-Governance will become even more pronounced.

Information Technology (IT) is now widely seen as a significant job generator for the youth. How is the IT sector developing in Odisha?

During the last 10 years, Odisha has witnessed maximum amount of interest from reputed business houses. The state is endowed with rich key minerals like coal, iron ore and investment in metal and power generation sector is strong.

These are highly capital intensive projects. But now we are also trying to diversify our industrial base to other areas which can lead to further value addition and employment generation. We are preparing to take big strides in the areas of food processing, textiles and Information Technology.

These are the areas where capital investment commitment would not be very high as compared to core sectors but the value addition and employment generation will be very high. The new ICT policy has been already cleared. We are keen to turn the state’s capital city into an IT hub for software and hardware manufacturers.

Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) is a key initiative of Government of India for disbursement of financial benefits and to promote financial inclusion. How is this scheme working in Odisha?

Unfortunately DBT has not made as much progress as we expected. This is partially because Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is not doing the enrolment work in the state. There are problems in NPR enrolment and delivery of Aadhaar numbers.

We are now taking up this issue with UIDAI and NPR and trying to help them resolve the myriad issues. We are very keen to move ahead with DBT but unless NPR provides Aadhaar numbers to the citizens, there is very little that we can do. I would also like to point out that the state has its own schemes where benefits are being provided electronically to the citizens.

For instance, there is the scheme called Mamta, under which a pregnant mother is registered at the time of her pregnancy and she gets ` 5,000 electronically. I think more than one million mothers have already benefited under this scheme. This is also a form of DBT.

Tell us about the progress that is being made in the area of Financial Inclusion in the state?

I would say that Odisha has done better than most of the backward states when it comes to Financial Inclusion. Even with its Business Correspondent (BC) model, Financial Inclusion will need some brick and mortar presence at some level. We have more than 6,000 gram panchayats. Out of these, more than 3,000 do not have any bank presence.

This creates a problem in providing financial services. We have told all the banks that if they want to set up a small branch in any panchayat, we will provide up to 600 sq ft of space free of cost for five years. I have directed the Secretary of Department of Financial Services to tell banks to aggressively open branches, because even BC model will require some physical presence, otherwise you cannot deliver financial services.

How do you think the new IT policy will benefit the state?

The new ICT policy is focused on helping startups like Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) in the ICT sector, apart from helping the other established players to grow and bring

the new players will not set up their business here in a day but at least we need to pitch for having a slice of their business during the next five years.

However, I personally believe that it is better to do business silently. Holding business summits or making lot of noise through PR mechanisms does not lead to best results. When you bring the right kind of IT Policy then investments will automatically come in.

What steps are you taking to ensure that there is optimum utilisation of the natural resources?

The natural resources utilization usually follows the market trends. Industries which utilise natural resources, they follow a business cycle. When the business cycle is high, rate of utilisation is also high, and when it is down, the rate of utilization also plummets. We have to plan accordingly. But the important thing is that we have to develop an environmentally sustainable rate of utilisation.

If you over exploit, you will leave nothing for the future. So we must extract as much we need for today and leave as much as for the future generation. Sustainability is the key to optimal rate of utilisation of the natural resources.

During last ten years, Odisha has witnessed maximum amount of interest from reputed business houses more business to Odisha. We are now trying to pitch for developments in the semi-conductor hardware sector. For that, we are trying to get the assistance of the technical agencies. In my opinion if India has to complete globally in this field, this is the one area, where we have to offer a lot of assistance. In the eastern region, perhaps Odisha is the best place to promote this initiative and we are willing to make that kind of investment and provide that kind of support to promote this business. We are trying to get investors from Taiwan to come and look at Odisha as a production facility.

Odisha already has companies like Infosys and Wipro which have set up their offices in the state.

Which other companies are you trying to bring in the state?

I have already advised the IT secretary to identify ten other lead players who can set up their development centres in the state. I am aware that

Odisha has a substantial tribal population. What initiatives are being taken to bring about improvement in the quality of life of the tribal population?

The government is focussed on improving the lives of our tribal population. We are building 1,000 residential schools with residential facilities for the SC/ST students every year. The reason for low literacy rate among the girls in tribal community is that the high cost of sending a girl child to school. Hence, if the accommodation and living expenses are taken care of then the tribal people are willing to send their children to school. Therefore, this measure by the government is aimed at giving a massive boost to literacy amongst the tribal community. On the livelihood front, we are trying to promote commercial agriculture for the tribal community.

We are working for the development of system that will allow our tribal population to get better value for their labour.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

15

information technology

Madhusudan Padhi

Commissioner-Cum-Secretary, Department of IT Government of Odisha

e-Governance is taking root in Odisha

P

lease tell us with an overview of the vision of the Department of IT in the state for promoting IT industry?

“We are also aiming to encourage at least ten top companies in IT/ITES and five top companies in ESDM sectors to set up their development or production centres in the state so that they not only bring the investment but also create employment opportunities,” says Madhusudan Padhi. In conversation with Nayana Singh and Kartik Sharma

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The new ICT policy’2014 has just been approved by the cabinet and we are now notifying it. During the second e-Odisha summit it will be launched formally by the chief minister. The vision of ICT policy is to develop IT/ITES/ESDM industries for inclusive growth and employment in the state of Odisha and leverage IT & ITES in governance to transform the state to a knowledge driven welfare society for improving the daily life of citizens. One of the targets of the policy is to achieve a gross ICT Revenue (including exports of software and IT Services, ESDM, Domestic consumption and Training) of USD 4 Billion (Rs. 24, 000 Crores) by 2020.

We are also aiming to encourage at least ten top companies in IT/ITES and five top companies in ESDM sectors to set up their development or production centres in the state so that they not only bring the investment but also create employment opportunities. We are also aiming to support the local industries in the field of IT/ITES/ESDM, so that their capacities can grow to a much larger extent. Apart from that we also have

information technology

a special programme for skill development, R&D and entrepreneurship.

Please tell us about the role that the IT department is playing in promoting e-Governance across various departments?

Every department of Government of Odisha is now keen to develop e-Governance initiatives for bringing their services closer to the citizens. The biggest e-Governance project to roll out in the current year is the e-district project which has been rolled out from two pilot districts to 30 districts now.

I consider this to be a good achievement as it is enabling people to access six crucial certificates through the online systems.

Now we are planning to add more services

Please tell us about the work that you are doing for bringing efficiency in the education space?

would be able to generate their certificates online and they can also access their benefits through the online mode.

In the area of having IT in education, lot of new initiatives have been taken by education department in the state. We have set up smart classrooms in few colleges and high schools.

A big project costing over Rs. 600 crores for setting up smart classrooms is being implemented in the PPP mode where IL&FS is the private partner. TCIL is also involved in this initiative. Odisha Knowledge Corporation Limited (OKCL), which has been promoted by the Higher Education Department, is implementing the project.

Some other projects have been launched for furthering the scope and reach of education through the use of ICT. Through

Today the government departments are providing services to large number of people. There is a large data to manage. Please tell us about the technologies that are being used to manage the huge avalanche of data?

Every department is now keen to develop e-Governance initiatives for bringing their services closer to the citizens in the e-district project. Certified copy of documents, Pension sanction process under social security schemes would be added in few weeks.

How important is the role of Private sector in PPP model in the development of state in terms of IT? Some of the e-Governance projects (like e-Registration) in the State are being executed through PPP model. We have been working with some private partners for creation of better e-Governance systems and overall our experience so far has been good. Now that the State Government is moving fast for quick implementation of e-Governance projects, we need to develop standard protocols for collaborating with Private Partners. The SLAs have to be prepared carefully so that we can provide best possible services to citizens at minimum costs.

the Child Tracking System of Sarva Sikhya Abhiyan in the State, the Government is able to track the education of each and every child right from the age of 6-14. It has helped in tracking children who are not going to the school and hence bring them to the mainstream education through appropriate bridge courses.

What is your view on ICT in healthcare sector in Odisha?

In healthcare sector, several e-Governance projects are already operational. At present, the Health Department is planning to implement the Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) project on pilot basis in one Medical college & in one District Headquarter hospital.

This project will link several of the existing e-Gov initiatives to get an integrated view. The Department is also going to implement two new e-Gov projects on birth & death certificate and Disability certificates. These applications would be end to end so that the applicants

Big data is the technology of future, but many of the transactions today are not happening electronically. Many of the transactions are still happening manually, even though the Right to public services Act was implemented with effect from 1st of January 2013. Even though 63 services have been notified under the Act, only six services under e-district are actually online. There is a need to make all the notified services transaction based on the web so that they are available online so as to ensure service to citizens.

So our aim is to see that all the notified services are made available online over a period of time. We are working with the departments to ensure that all the essential services go online. Another area is the functioning of the State Resident Data Hub where we will store the Aadhaar based information on demography and photograph. Big data technology would be useful when a large number of transactions happen online.

To utilise and harness the benefits of Cloud, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeiTY) of Government of India has embarked upon an ambitious programme – ‘GI Cloud’, also coined as ‘MeghRaj’. In order to drive this initiative, a Task Force was constituted by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) with the objective to bring out the strategic direction and implementation roadmap of GI Cloud leveraging the existing or new infrastructure. The architectural vision of GI Cloud centres on a set of discrete cloud computing environments spread across multiple locations, built on existing or new (augmented) infrastructure, following a set of common protocols, guidelines and standards issued by the Government of India. The GI Cloud will be equipped to provide cloud services for various applications.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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health

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

Chairman & Managing Director, Biocon Limited

Technology for linking rural India “I think women are trapped by their own diffidence to take on challenges. They somehow believe that they are not capable of doing certain things. This is nothing but the challenge of their mind. They have to break free from that mind-set, the moment you break free, you realise - it is not that difficult,� says Kiran Mazumdar Shaw. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley

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health

R

ecently you met the chief minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik. What kind of potential you see in the state especially in the area of healthcare and poverty alleviation?

Odisha is a state that is challenged in many ways because it has very high level of poverty. The state also faces the problems of natural calamity on an annual basis. And, as we all know illness further adds to poverty, it has become the number one cause of rural indebtedness in our country; therefore it is a very serious challenge for the state like Odisha. If state government deliver universal healthcare to its people as one of the poverty alleviation programme, it can improve the life of the people. I believe to be successful in such endeavours; you will have to use technology. Since independence, we have focused on establishing a network of primary healthcare centres which feed into secondary and tertiary healthcare centres but we all know that it has not delivered the anticipated result because we lacked the required manpower to effectively deliver quality healthcare. In our meeting with Chief Minister, we discussed a way to create a public-private partnership (PPP) model where diagnostic units are created at every health location – it could be in a hospital or primary health centre to provide quality healthcare to the people of the state. And, also these diagnostic centres should be manned by local entrepreneurs, which we believe will be a huge job creation opportunity for the state.

We understand our young MBBS doctors are reluctant to serve in rural areas. In such a scenario where do you see the role of technology and telemedicine and how crucial it is for state like Odisha which has one of the largest populations of tribal people?

If a young doctor does not wish to go to rural India then you have to use technology to link rural India to advance centres.We must use technology to bridge this gap and that technology is eHealth. eHealth is about diagnosis, which is very important, as only through proper diagnosis you can deliver cost effective

treatment. An early diagnosis reduces the cost of treatment and will give better outcome. So in our discussion with Chief Minister we discuss the modalities of doing it and how it can also be a huge job creating opportunity to the state. A diagnostic unit manned by local entrepreneurs will create jobs and also the training given to them to use diagnostic will upgrade their skills, which ultimately benefits the healthcare centre.

In the case of tribal areas, diagnostic centres can be manned by a tribal person and a basic doctor who belongs to tribal village can work in the diagnostic centre and doctor can be connected to specialist in the advance centres to talk to the patient. If we do not use the technology, tribal people will never have quality healthcare.

What could be the way forward to fulfil the global objectives for India’s biotechnology industry?

Biotechnology in India has the huge potential to go global. We have shown it because biotechnologies operate in many fields. India

scepticism in country - both from the investor community and from the government when it comes to R&D. Has things improved over the years?

Actually, it is very challenging to do research in India. For example there has been freeze on clinical trials and genetically modified crops, so when you have regulatory freeze, R&D become very difficult.And, it starts impacting the speed of R&D and companies start looking outside the country to do them. However I believe slowly but surely these things will get resolved.

Isn’t unfair for the government to expect Industry to invest in early stage research rather than focusing on exciting projects and then commercialise them?

I think government is actually helping companies in early stage research. In fact, I must say in India, DBT and DST is helping nascent industry to invest in early stage R&D. But the

If doctors are reluctant to serve in rural India then we must use technology to link rural India to advanced centres has already become the vaccine capital of the world because of its strong biotechnology base. We have also got the product that we are developing and taking it global such as biologics, insulin, biosimilar and novel biologics. In the area of diagnostic, the devices are becoming very important, the maximum number of start-up companies in our space is in the biomedical devices. And it is very exciting because every biomedical device can deliver affordable diagnostics the worldover. Other aspects of the biomedical technology such as Genomics and Agro-Biotech, Green Technology based on Enzymes and Bio-Fuels are also becoming a big area. Agro-Biotech remained a challenged due to our regulation but it has huge potential for India. So, I think, biotech is already going global. Indian has the potential of playing leadership role in biotech provided that we have all the right policies and regulation that allow us to do that.

In one of your interviews, you said there seems to be a lot of

one who is not helping the sector are venture capitalist. They are finding it risk averse because of regulatory unpredictability. Unless we create a regulatory environment where these companies can take innovative ideas to the market, we are not going to see enough investments.

You are an icon to whole of India and especially to women. What challenges do you see when a women try to embark on the path of entrepreneurship?

I think women are trapped by their own diffidence to take on challenges. They somehow believe that they are not capable of doing certain things. This is nothing but the challenge of their mind. They have to break free from that mind-set, the moment you break free, you realise - it is not that difficult. Lot of women has succeeded, look at banking sector which is very tough to manage but in India, women are leading these banks, no other country in the world have so many banks headed by women than the India.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

19

Election Commission

Dr Ajit Kumar Tripathy

State Election Commissioner, Odisha

Facilitating Modernisation

Y

ou have been Chief Secretary of Odisha and now serving as the State Election Commissioner. In your opinion, how governance has changed over the years?

Governance has changed much in terms of technology and the equipments for communication and record keeping. Reports and returns are now e-generated, monitored and dispatched. Number of laws and organisations has multiplied. However, in terms of empathy for the poor and the down-trodden there has been deterioration.

Poll code violations keep getting reported in almost every election.

What can be the solution?

Political parties do bother about the violation of Code of Conduct by other parties and ignore their own violations which are not punishable under the laws. Separate cases under IPC have to be started. Warning and caution are the only weapons available with the Election Commission.

Many countries are experimenting with a rather high-tech election management system. What is your view of deploying ICT for monitoring elections?

All successful experiments should be replicated and there should be change of election laws and rules wherever necessary to facilitate modernisation. Also, there should be sufficient fund for the ICT component in this regard, so that people can accept the change.

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“All successful experiments of deployment of ICT in monitoring election should be replicated and there should be quick change of election laws and rules wherever necessary to facilitate modernisation,” says Dr Ajit Kumar Tripathy. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley

e-Governance is considered as good governance. Isn’t it time for e-Election keeping in mind that e-Readiness is still a big challenge?

are doing much better. The best way to overcome the challenge is hard work and courage to take decisions.

e-Election will indeed add to good governance but it should first be experimented in small countries and then on a pilot basis in India.

No one should hurry in such cases because in a highly populated country like India, any failure would be a massive one. And, definitely, e-readiness is also a huge challenge.

We don’t see many female officers in the Indian bureaucratic set up, why is that so?

Infrastructure deficiency seems to be one of the major challenges for the state. Please share your views about it.

There are many states in India with higher infrastructure challenges than Odisha, still they

It is quite unfortunate that a woman has not been Cabinet Secretary or Home Secretary till now.

But with the increase in women toppers in Indian Administrative Service (IAS), time is not far, when there will be more than 50 percent women secretaries in Government of India. Mrs. Nirupama (Menon) Rao who topped the UPSC Examination in 1973 could have surely taken posts like Cabinet Secretary or Home Secretary had she taken IAS. She became the Secretary, External Affairs and then Ambassador to U.S.A.

Technical Education

Dr Chandra Shekhar Kumar

Commissioner cum Secretary Employment & Technical Education & Training Department, Government of Odisha

the roadmap for developing technical education

P

lease tell us about the measures that are being undertaken in the State of Odisha to ensure that the citizens are adequately trained for being employed in the modern industry.

In order to streamline and pay more attention for improving employability of youths through systematic pattern of training, Government of Odisha has created the new department in the name of Employment and Technical Education & Training Department. The basic purpose of this department is to look after the skill upgradation of the youth and provide quality technical education at various levels. Odisha has a number of ITIs and Polytechnic Colleges to help our youth attain the right skills for having gainful employment in the industry of their choice. In fact, I would like to point out that our educated youth are finding good jobs not only in Odisha but outside the state also. The work for skill development of our youth is being done through the formal sector, as well as the informal sector. In the formal sector we are strengthening, upgrading and expanding new ITIs and Polytechnic Institutions. In 12th Five year plan, we are targeting more than 80 new ITIs, which will add up to 40,000 seats and will also strengthen the existing ITIs. Also in coming five years we are planning to set up 20 new Polytechnics, which will add 10000 more seats. In the informal sector we basically try to cater to the needs of the students who have dropped out of the education system during their schooling period and have not been able to pursue higher education. To these students we provide short duration courses that can enable them to gain skills for different sectors like manufacturing, construction, retail, banking, computers, etc.

What steps are being taken to ensure that there is adequate level of interface between the academic community, who are involved in providing skills related training, and the industrial sector?

A healthy level of interface between the academic community and the industry is of great importance. The academic community in the ITIs and Polytechnics of Odisha are interacting with the industry leaders. We do our best to upgrade and reform the courseware and teaching systems in our education institutions by taking into account the changes that are happening in the industrial area.

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“Odisha has a number of ITIs and Polytechnic Colleges to help our youth attain the right skills for having gainful employment in the industry of their choice,� says Dr Chandra Shekhar Kumar, in conversation with Nayana Singh and Kartik Sharma

Technical Education

The institutions often approach the important industry bodies for knowing their views on the kind of curriculum that is most suited for skills development. In today’s world the technology being used by the industry is constantly evolving, so it is necessary that the students be imparted training that takes into account the exact requirements of the industry.

Tell us about the steps that you are taking to ensure that the educational institutions follow better curriculum.

Government of Odisha has created State Employment Mission that seeks to create synergy in various development sectors in terms of skill development of youths and linkages of employment opportunities. The Mission’s principal task is to formulate sector and trade specific strategies for specialized skill trainings in order to maximize employment opportunities on a sustainable basis in the state supported and private sectors. To fulfil these objectives the Mission seeks to work in close coordination with National Skill Development Mission.

Access to education has to be improved, more and more students must be able to take advantage of higher education and technical education. We need to ensure that students from weaker sections of society are also in a position to pursue the education that they desire.

Tell us about the ways by which you are using Information Technology to bring efficiency

into the quality of education that is being imparted.

The Information & Communication Technology (ICT) as a tool in education is available to us at this juncture and we wish to fully utilize it to enhance the current enrolment rate in Higher and Technical Education. We are having a number of programs for delivering education through ICT. We are part of Government of India’s National Mission on Education through ICT. Under this Mission, a proper balance between content gener-

A healthy level of interface between the academic community and the industry is of great importance ation, research in critical areas relating to imparting of education and connectivity for integrating our knowledge with the advancements in other countries is to be attempted. We are also part of a programme under which we will be able to broadcast lectures online in polytechnic colleges.

Capacity building through knowledge empowerment of our youth is necessary to sustain a high growth rate of our economy.

What kind of initiatives from your department have on improving the employability of the youth in the state?

There is lot of improvement in employability of the youth in the state and that is also having a

Mission of Employment & Technical Education & Training Department Serve the public through the promotion and advancement of Technical Education and Vocational Training, establish and operationalize policies, regulations and procedures for setting and maintaining standards and quality of technical education and Government on the strategic development of the sector u Upgrade technical institutes into Centres of Excellence of world standard through user friendly course curriculam u Promote quality and innovation in technical education and training sector u Assist technical institutions to achieve and maintain high quality of education and training; u Consult and assist in the development and advancement of technical education and vocational training in the State in a financially self-sustaining manner u Anticipate and prepare for the changing environment and the future needs in the pursuits of technological advancements u Manage the operations and resources to be effective and fiscally responsible u Substantial growth of technical education and training sector with quality to match the national average u

positive impact in the overall economy of the state. Availability of skilled manpower is most important for achieving the targets of higher productivity, accuracy, consistency and thus competitiveness for domestic and other sectors micro, small and medium manufacturing enterprises as well as process sector industries.

Odisha is playing host to the biggest new names in the business world in the field of Steel, Power, Aluminium, and Power Cement etc.

The presence of such strong industrial players

distinctly provides required synergy for human capital investment through establishment of Technological Universities, IIT, IIIT, IIM level institution to boost Research & Development (R&D) activities and providing managerial/ Supervisory /skill workforce to the emerging labour market.

Please shed light on the main objectives of the State Employment Mission?

Government of Odisha has created State Employment Mission that seeks to create synergy in various development sectors in terms of skill development of youths and linkages of employment opportunities. The Mission’s principal task is to formulate sector and trade specific strategies for specialized skill trainings in order to maximize employment opportunities on a sustainable basis in the state supported and private sectors. To fulfil these objectives the Mission seeks to work in close coordination with National Skill Development Mission.

Tell us about the initiatives that you are taking for skill development of female students.

The State Government have reserved 30 percent of seats in all the Government ITI for women candidates. Nine new girls hostel have been sanctioned from ST & SC Development Department in the ITIs to accommodation of women trainees. Short term training programme have been taken up under State Employment Mission, W&CD Department, H&UD Department in ITIs and Polytechnics.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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School & Mass Education

Usha Padhee

Commissioner-cum-Secretary, School & Mass Education Department, Government of Odisha

Ensuring Quality in Education

“Enhancing GER at elementary level, ensuring quality and addressing the issues related with the retention - especially of ST children, is key to achieving the educational goals,� says Usha Padhee. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley

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School & Mass Education

T

he State Govt. has taken many initiatives for addressing the issues related with the retention of ST children and enhancing the GER. You have been the District Magistrate of Dhenkanal. What are the major challenges you see in the administration which is becoming more and more complex as people’s expectations from government keeps rising?

As a civil servant we get exposure to various types of challenges. But there is also a certain amount of diversity that this job brings and that leads to an enriching experience. We have to agree that the administration is becoming more complex. One has to have effective strategies to deliver services to the needy. Visualising the challenges, planning and implementation, needs specific skills, which have to be acquired by the Civil Servant to be relevant and useful in the system. At the same time to ensure ethical governance, the officer should adopt ethical behavior and demonstrate it by being the role model. Changing scenario and short tenures are an impediment in bringing the tangible reforms. One tries to overcome all the challenges through high ethical behavior, skills, and effective strategies for efficiency.

You are looking after the School and Mass Education department.

What steps are you taking for promoting value education in your schools?

Many of us talk about deterioration in quality of education more so in value education.

The national curriculum framework envisages the creation of a system for integral education emphasis is put on ensuring that the child is able to develop a holistic personality. The

Teacher training •

•

•

20 Days teachers training is provided to all in-service teachers of elementary schools of the State 30 days teacher training is provided as induction training to all the newly recruited teachers 60 days training on distance mode through SCERT is provided to all untrained teachers of the State

Gross Enrolment Ratio Bridging the gap between quality and quantity is very important. In Odisha, the Gross Enrolment Ratio is 100.56 as per District Information System for Education (DISE) 2012-13. It was 101.32 at Elementary level as per DISE 2011-12. To enhance the GER at elementary level government has taken various steps such as – • Textbooks provided to all students from Class-I to VIII. • Uniforms are provided to all Girls and Boys belonging to SC/ST/BPL categories studying in Govt. Elementary Schools.

• Facilitating mother tongue based education for children belonging to tribal community from class I to V. This is an innovative policy initiative, unique to Odisha.

• School Student Helpline established with a toll free number 1800-34567-22 as a part of redressal of grievance mechanism.

• Learning materials in tribal languages for pre-primary(New Arunima) prepared and provided to Anganwadi centers of the State in collaboration with Women & Child Development Deptt.

• Child friendly school environment creating scope for encouraging child participation in classroom process.

• Library and library-books are provided to all schools.

• Summer camp for addressing problems of children belonging to disadvantaged group.

• Residential hostelsfor urban deprived children established.

• Seasonal hostels have been set up to address the children of migrant families.

School & Mass Education Department has taken up many training programmes including leadership and motivational modules to encourage the teachers to take up desirable learning systems in the classrooms.

Odisha has one of the largest tribal populations. There are credible reports available which suggests that their Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) is comparatively low across India. How is your department addressing this challenge?

The largest tribal population district of the State is in Malkangiri and Mayurbhanj. Malkangiri district has 57.4 percent of tribal population to the total population. GER for both the places is above 100. The GER at elementary education of Malkangiri district is 102.23 and in Mayurbhanj district it is 107.59. Similarly, the GER of ST at elementary level is 104.26 in comparison to the overall GER of 100.56.

Do you think that retention is a big challenge?

Of course, retention is a big challenge. The State Government has taken many initiatives for addressing the issues related with the retention of ST children and enhancing the GER. We have developed State Policy for Multilingual Education

(MLE). Mother tongue based education is operational in 544 schools covering 61 blocks of Odisha in 10 tribal languages like Saura, Kui, Kuvi, Munda, Koya, Bonda, Santhali, Juang, Kisan, Oram in 8 districts namely Raygada, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Mayurbhanj, Malkangiri, Keonjhar, Sambalpur and Sundergarh. And, we are also up scaling of nine more languages (Gadaba, Bhumij, Ho, Gondi, Desia, Kharia, Didayi, Binjhal, Mahali) covering 4 more districts proposed and will be implemented during 2013-14.

Often it is found that female children are unable to have as many opportunities for education and growth as the male students.

How do you address this problem?

Honestly speaking gender bias is seen at many levels in India. Through, the degree varies. It also depends on the attitude of the decision makers at the higher levels. Due to patriarchal system the numbers of women in public services are limited. This is also reflected in the number of lady officers available in the civil services. True, sometimes it becomes stereo type to keep the lady officers in identified Departments like W &C.D, Education, Health or some social sectors.

However, times are changing and minds are opening up. I hope in near future you will see women officer in the top echelons.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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National Health Mission

Roopa Mishra

Mission Director, National Health Mission, Odisha

Working for a Healthier Odisha

N

ow that NHRM (National Health Rural Mission) is being modified to NHM (National Health Mission), what will be the mandate of the new entity?

From the financial year, 2013-14, NRHM has got a new identity in the form of NHM, wherein new dimensions that had not been addressed earlier have been integrated under one broad ambit. The National Health Mission will have two sub health missions, the rural mission and urban mission. Ever since the mission was initiated, we have been predominantly working in rural areas and in the area of reproductive child health. Today, it is being felt that even the urban areas need that similar kind of (or even more) focused intervention, for which Urban Health Mission has been brought in the frame. Newer aspects of health in the form of Non Communicable Diseases like cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes etc. would be addressed apart from traditional diseases like malaria, T.B etc. Disease Control Programmes were earlier operating as vertical programmes with funding being given by Government of India (GoI) directly for the same. Now all funding from GoI will be received under the NHM under five heads: National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), National Urban Health Mission (NUHM), National Disease Control Programme (NDCP), Non Communicable Diseases Control Programme (NCDCP) and NHM Additionalities (for infrastructure

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“We are aspiring to develop a truly integrated and more efficient strategy for providing healthcare services to people in the state,� says Roopa Mishra. In conversation with Nayana Singh

National Health Mission

development etc). We are aspiring to develop a truly integrated and more efficient strategy for providing healthcare services in the state.

Please tell us about the ICT initiatives that you are taking to bring further improvement in the state of healthcare?

All the activities of Health Department, be it Drug Management, Food Safety, Vaccine Management, Infrastructure Creation etc., require ICT intervention for stronger implementation and monitoring. NHM, in Odisha, has attempted to develop simple applications that are user friendly and outcome based, helping us to monitor our programmes well.

As a result, modules have been created that are a source of immense data and information, which can be used in many ways. The most important platform which is the core of our maternal and child health administration is Mother Child Tracking System (MCTS) and Health Management Information System (HMIS). E-Swasthya Nirman, e-Blood Bank, Drug Management Information system, Vaccine Logistics Management System etc. are few of the modules developed by NHM Odisha. We are planning to have an integrated platform of convergence wherein the activities of the health department would also be shared with the state flagship programme of ‘Mamata’ under W &CD Department. Online Civil (Birth and Death) registrations as of now are being done at some of the urban areas, but very soon it would be available, in all rural areas of the state as an NHM initiative towards system transparency. Simultaneously, the issue of online Disability Certificates would commence soon, which would be helpful to the citizens and at the same time providing a one stop data platform for all certificates issued.

What is the mandate of e-Swasthya Nirman Initiatives?

Today, institution development is not a standalone activity, it is very much linked to provisioning of quality health care services.

Health Department is prioritizing building up of its core infrastructure. In this regard, we have taken a step in which every health facility of the state is being mapped in the “as is” and “to be” basis. E-Swasthya Nirman,

a consolidated ICT Application, is of great help as a planning and monitoring module.

A range of tasks from issue of work order to physical and financial progress of work can be tracked on this. We want to reach a level where our engineering team is completely dependent on this platform.

What is your view of using the PPP model for developing healthcare infrastructure in the State?

This is one dimension that we are eager to explore, now with urban mission being included in health mission. We will be explor-

strategy, looking at reproductive, maternal, neo-natal, child and addressing adolescent health as completely a continuum of care would be the answer. We are also simultaneously focusing on health systems strengthening like human resource strengthening, drug provisioning, strengthening nursing, provisioning of referral transport, quality enhancement at facilities, medical education strengthening etc as instrumental interventions for reducing IMR and MMR and overall improved health outcomes. We are getting prepared to give shape to a 3 year perspective plan from 2014-2017 under the National Health Mission which will set the

The activities of Health Department have become so diverse that it touches the lives of all ing the PPP model in a big way in the form of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation Hospital Network Project. There will be 6 hospitals in the network comprising of primary, secondary and a Greenfield tertiary care hospital. While land would be given by H&UD department, the private partner will build and run the bedded network facilities. The Urban Health Mission will be integrating its urban PHC facilities at the same locations, taking the responsibility of community, preventive and outreach activity as well as drug provisioning for select OPD patients. In fact, there are many untapped areas in the health sector like pharma development, R & D facilities, quality testing labs etc. that could be tapped in the state for PPP ventures.

IMR and MMR have been brought under control to a large extent. Are there some new initiatives that have been directed further to uplift the condition of children or the expectant mothers?

Reproductive Child Health remains the mission’s primary focus. The state of Odisha has taken many steps in this regard, for which there has been steady decline in mortality numbers. There is a need for intensification of activities. A more focused RMNCH+A

base for the State’s Health Vision. We would also be focusing on high priority districts.

Ten districts (primarily KBK districts) have been identified as high priority districts, in view of mortality and other kind of parameters. They would be having intensified focus of the mission activities in all areas.

A state like Odisha faces diverse issues when it comes to healthcare. What is your vision for making the state healthier?

Mothers and children should not die due to want of health care. We aim at better maternal and child health to begin with. Secondly, out of pocket expenditure on health needs to be addressed. Provisioning of drugs and diagnostic services at all public health facilities is our immediate aim. Thirdly, we need to create a model for urban public health. Fourth area would be to provide a system addressing the need of non-communicable disease burden among public. Last, but not the least, we need to have a control over communicable diseases in terms of prevalence, incidence rate, morbidity and mortality. Ultimately, the vision is to move towards universal health coverage providing enhanced access, more services and reducing health out of pocket expenditure for our people.

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coal

Animesh Nandan Sahay Chairman-cum-Managing Director Mahanadi Coalfields Limited

emphasis on power generation and transmission

P

lease tell us about Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL). How did the company come into being?

Mahanadi Coalfields Limited was carved out of South Eastern Coalfields Limited in 1992 with it’s headquarter at Sambalpur. It has its coal mines spread across Odisha including seven open cast mines and three underground mines under its fold. In 1992 we started our operations, so now the company is about 21 years old. When we started, our coal production was 23 million tonnes and last year we produced 108 million tonnes. So there has been consistent growth in last 21 years. In fact, we have been producing more than 100 million tonnes, since 2009-10 periods. This year we hope to do better. We have basically two coal fields- Talcher and IB valley coal fields.

Future programme is very ambitious and we are likely to produce around 350 million tonnes of coal in coming 15-20 years. So we will be tripling our production. I don’t see any technical problem as such, except for the clearance problems. If the clearances are available in time, land issues are sorted out amicably, than I don’t see any problem in achieving 350 million tonnes of coal production. Infrastructure, that is to say evacuation part is also very important. We are opening new coal fields in different areas of the State.

“We believe in providing the best possible care to all our employees. Once they become part of MCL, there life is taken care of totally,” says Animesh Nandan Sahay. In conversation with Nayana Singh and Kartik Sharma

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In your opinion what are the key initiatives that have allowed MCL to grow consistently over the years?

In case of MCL the major operations are open cast, so mechanisation is possible. For

coal

that reason growth is faster. Off course, the quality of the coal may not be that good, but we are making it up with quantity. We are in fact constrained by infrastructure; getting land is a big problem, especially forest land.

Most of the land that we have is either coal bearing, which means that we can’t have infrastructure on that land, or it is the forest land. Another problem is that there are more than 400 villages around the coal mines.

Shifting of this village population is a major problem. Where do we shift them? We can easily triple our production in next 10 years, if all these infrastructure and land related issues get resolved, but that is quite difficult, so we will take around 15-20 years for achieving this goal. I would also like to tell you that in Odhisa we are the only company to have opened new mines consistently and to have expanded effectively. When I came here in 2011, there was a mine called Bhubuneswari, which used to produce only 3 million tonnes of coal. But this year, if we get environmental clearance, this mine will produce 25 million tonnes of coal.

The coal sector is generally considered to be a very hard area for employees. What kinds of facilities are available to MCL employees?

We believe in providing the best possible care to our employees. Once they become part of MCL, there life is totally taken care of. Even the lowest employee gets more than ` 20,000 per month. We also provide total medical services to all the family members, including parents, if they are dependent on them.

We don’t even blink to give `10 lakh for hip replacement for a father of our employee.

We have access to good hospitals, dispensaries and trained doctors. We also provide our employees living quarters. Currently we are building new living quarters as well. We have a very liberal policy for giving jobs to land giver. Odisha government’s R&R policy says that as there are many fragmented lands and various land owners for any particular patch of land, the jobs have to be given to all.

So, people in the state know that if MCL has taken their land, their interests will always be safeguarded. We give around 70-80 crores for a village. This is very liberal and lucrative.

Like once I got a letter, written by 2 villagers, demanding that if we don’t start measurement

Vision To be the leading energy supplier in the Country, through best practices from mine to market

Mission To produce and market the planned quantity of coal and coal products efficiently and economically with due regard to safety, conservation and quality

of their houses and pay them compensation, they will sit in hunger strike. Problem is that there are certain people, who do not have any land in a village. We could not give them job, as the policy says, job for land.

How does MCL find the funding for providing all these benefits to the employees?

We generate funds through our own means.

We are the highest tax payer in Odisha.

Last year we paid around 2000 crore as tax out of our 6400 crores profit. Around 1200 crores we paid as royalty, apart from entry tax and other taxes. It all goes to the state.

We are also spending around 100 crores on CSR related activities. We spend on sports activities also, we often organise hockey tournaments. Last year, we supported one little girl, who plays chess. We gave one lakh to her and now she is the world champion in under-10 category.

Odisha still has lot of scope in the area of human development, citizen-centric service delivery.

What kind of work can MCL do in this area?

It is all about change. All over Odisha and in India, you have the dengue scare. But you will not find it in our areas. To improve the quality of education, we have nine DAV schools.

We totally fund them. We give aid to other schools. Last year one of our DAV schools was

adjudged to the second position in India in CBSE. We are doing wonderful job in education. It is already making a change. Since coal is located here, many industries are setting up their facilities here. This leads to more employment generation and more prosperity.

How important is IT integration for MCL to be working in transparent and effective manner?

It is extremely important. Actually we have been rather slow in using the best IT systems.

About 15 years back, we did not recruit in this field. Then we picked it up. IT brings transparency. You cannot change figures. Earlier, younger generation was not there. In last 3-4 years, this trend is changing. Now you know, exactly what is happening. We are trying to curb thefts with the help of IT. Geo fencing, GPS based trucks, etc., are there. E-procurement is also important. In the beginning, we had glitches, but those are all sorted now. Things are getting faster. Now we do all through website, instead of spending crores in advertisements.

Where you expect to see the company in future? Tell us about your vision for MCL and the entire coal industry of India.

Our core business will be coal mining. But we also want to be energy provider. We want to go for power generation. We also aim to enter into a joint venture with the Odisha government in power transmission. We already have some assets earmarked for us. So, we will be in power generation and transmission. Apart from these, we are in talks with Paradip Port authority about taking over some of their berths. They have already agreed to give us these facilities on a nominal basis. In railways, we own the 52 km line in Jhasuguda route. We are funding 1000 crore for this project. Once it comes up, it will be completely our own rail line and it will enhance coal production in Vasundhara. Also we are planning for another line again from Basundhara to Nagpur route. Meanwhile, we are also looking to change the internal transportation of coal. Emphasis will be more on transportation through silos. In a nutshell, I would like to tell you that our priority is power generation and transmission and also having our own berth in port.

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Telemedicine

Odisha Telemedicine Program

T

elemedicine as a tool to promote health care delivery and health education in the state of Odisha was accepted by Government of Odisha in the year 2001.

The initial push was provided by Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS), Lucknow and Department of Electronics & IT, Ministry of Communications & IT, Govt. of India both in terms of funding and technical support. Subsequent support was offered by ISRO/Department of Space, Govt. of India, Bangalore. However Odisha Government took it up as a major health department initiative in the year 2005.

Methods The goal was three-fold (i) To make the Government and the medical professionals accept the new medical technology (ii) To enhance the quality of medical care in the state (iii) To offer post-graduate medical students a new direction of knowledge acquisition To meet the desired need, Government of Odisha established three medical college telemedicine nodes and 31 district-level telemedicine nodes to cover the entire state in a phased manner. Full time telemedicine technical personnel were engaged in all the telemedicine stations to man the telemedicine centers.

Adequate fund was provided for maintenance of the state-wide network. CDAC, Pune was involved for installation of hardware, software and manpower training. A senior professor of a Govt. Medical College was identified as the state-level telemedicine nodal officer to look in to effective utilization of the network and to coordinate with funding & administrative agencies. Necessary provision was made on a PPP mode to make benefits of telemedicine available to rural people.

Telemedicine sessions were held on every

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working day with reference to a monthly telemedicine program schedule. Assistant District Medical Officers (ADMO-Medical) of all District Hqrs. hospitals were made accountable and target of at least 5 telemedicine sessions/case discussions per week for each center was fixed by the state Govt. In medical colleges one faculty member of each department was identified as the resource person to coordinate the program.

Monthly Telemedicine utilization data was generated from all telemedicine nodes, com-

thyroid cancer are on regular tele-follow up in the telemedicine center at Cuttack.

A state-level telemedicine resource center is being established by Government of Odisha within the premises of the premier medical college of the state at Cuttack at a cost of 5 crore (50 million) rupees for capacity building & optimal maintenance of the whole network. 37 posts of telemedicine technicians and a post of deputy system manager are being created by the Govt. to ensure effective utilization of the telemedicine technology.

Government of Odisha established three medical college telemedicine nodes and 31 district-level telemedicine nodes to cover the entire state in a phased manner piled and submitted to Government. Every month a project review meeting was held under the chairmanship of principal secretary, health & family welfare department to find out the difficulties, assess the progress and offer solution to existing & upcoming problems.

Discussion Analyzing 12 years of data, it was noticed that 4511 patients with critical health problems have been benefited and 2478 topics have been discussed through Tele-CME programs for knowledge boosting of the health professionals.

Acceptance of the new medical technology by medical professionals is showing an upward trend. Tele-follow up sessions for patients of thyroid cancer have been quite useful. A total of 277 patients of operated

Conclusion The acceptance of telemedicine technology both by the users and Government is on the rise. Still then challenges remain in setting up a successful & workable telemedicine program.

There is a need in all institutions using telemedicine for critical evaluation of the ongoing programs. This should include periodic evaluation of benefits & cost of telemedicine, pros & cons to tele-health and other telemedicine issues.

Biswa N Mohanty Prof. of Surgery & Chief Nodal Officer, Orissa Telemedicine Network, Department of Health & Family Welfare, Government of Odisha

NIC Initiatives

Management of Land Resources

O

ne key area of e-Governance is Land Resources management through ICT. Recognizing this fact, the Government of Odisha decided to implement a project for controlling the Land Acquisition System in the state. The Odisha Land Acquisition Act was formulated to provide a fair and judicious award to the land loosers during the Land Acquisition. When any land is required

by Government or Company or Corporation, the Requisition Officer (RO) submits the proposal. If they require the said land urgently, the R.O. should furnish a certificate of urgency for application of Sec.17 (4).

After receipt of proposal from the R.O., the L.A. Collector makes field enquiry regarding correctness of the land plan, land schedule, prepare a rough estimate and request the R.O. to deposit 20 percent of the estimated cost (called establishment charges) for meeting the charges of establishment, contingencies, publication, legal charges etc. The L.A. Collector will send proposal to Govt. in Revenue Department with copies to Administrative Department, Revenue Divisional Commissioner (RDC) and Requisitioning Officer for notification u/s 4(1) of L.A.Act. After notification by Government and publication in Gazette, general notice and individual notices u/s 4(1) are served.

After service of notices, estimate is prepared basing on the sale particulars of the village preceding one year from the date of publication of notification. If the sale data relating to the kisam (land type) of land proposed for acquisition is not available in the concerned village, the same of other villages are obtained. If sale particulars relating to the kisam of land are not available in any nearby

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villages, the rate is fixed on the basis of the yielding of the crops and value thereof of that area.

The proposal u/s 6(1) along with estimate is sent to the RDC with copies to Administrative Department., Revenue Department. and R.O. for publication of Declaration.

The publication of Declaration should be made within one year from the date of publication of notification u/s 4(1), failing which the project is invalidated warranting fresh proposal again to start from the root.

After publication of Declaration u/s 6(1), like notification u/s 4(1), general notices are served. Then, after placing the estimated cost by the R.O., Govt. in Revenue Department is moved for issue of order u/s 7 of L.A.Act. After that, notices u/s 9 and 10 are served to the landowners inviting objection regarding interest on the land giving a stipulated time period. The objections received, are heard and award is passed in favor of the landowners and L.A. compensation is paid to them.

After payment of at least 80% or more, possession of land is handed over to the R.O. and Abatement Proposal is sent to the District Touzi Section and concerned Tahasildar for diminishing the demand of land revenue and correction of R.O.R. in the name of the R.O.If on the date of Award payment, the awardee receives the amount with protest then within 42 days of the date of award pass, he/she can apply for objection u/s 18.He/she will give an application to the Land Acquisition Officer (LAO). The LAO will scrutinize it and send to court. The Government Pleader (GP) will monitor the case. After decision, GP will send the certified copy to LAO. The LAO will write to GP for his views. His views will be sent to Govt. in Law Department for placing the case to Advocate General. If Law Department decides at any stage, not to file the case (if the

Land owner wins the case) or if Supreme Court makes the decision to pay the higher amount, the RO is informed by the LAO and the amount is paid to the land owner In case someone has received the amount under protest but not applied for u/s 18 within 42 days, then, after the court decision of Ist appeal (for others), he/she can object u/s 28 within 90 days. But, if applied for u/s 18 in time and rejected by LAO, then one cannot go for u/s 28.

During the land acquisition, the major issues arise for better planning and monitoring and maintaining transparency in the system. For this purpose, National Informatics Centre, Odisha has developed a web based application to help the administration in monitoring the status of Land Acquisition Process in Odisha, project wise, category wise as well as jurisdiction wise.

The software developed by Government of Odisha through National Informatics Centre, is a tool for G2G monitoring by making the information flow from state level to project level in the village. It further helps the government to make the system flexible and transparent. The status of a project at any stage is clearly visible to the top level authority as a result controlling becomes easy. Though there are limitations, still this software project is very useful. This would help in improvising the e-Governance applications in other sectors also.

S K Panda Deputy Director General & State Informatics Officer NIC, Odisha

With best compliments from NABARD

Committed to Rural Prosperity

1. NABARD extends supports to Govt. under Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) for construction of rural roads, bridges, irrigation projects, etc.

2. NABARD provides financial supports to banks for flow of Short Term Credit and Investment Credit in Farm and Non Farm Sectors 3. NABARD has helped in enhancing empowerment of millions of rural women and providing them access to financial services from the banking system.

4. With the support from NABARD, Farmers Clubs have been formed. The Farmers Clubs as ground level institutions work for transfer of technology, promotion of financial literacy and for social welfare.

5. Kishan Credit Card (KCC) has been promoted by NABARD as a tool of hassle free short term agricultural credit, which has played a catalytic role in enhancing productivity and sustainability of agriculture.

6. For optimal development of agriculture and rural sectors through adequate credit flow NABARD prepares Potential Linked Credit Plans every year for all the districts. District Development Managers of NABARD, posted in districts, coordinate the promotional activities of NABARD in the districts.

7. NABARD extends supports to strengthen the Cooperative Credit Structure.

8. NABARD is implementing model Tribal Development projects in various tribal regions. Multiple horticultural crops are grown very successfully in Wadis (the small orchards) of tribal farmers in commercial scale.

9. Under Rural Non Farm Sector, various promotional programmes are conducted by NABARD for creation of employment opportunities in rural areas.

10. NABARD supports watershed based livelihood projects & integrated farming under UPNRM. 11. NABARD promotes Rural Innovation.

12.

NABARD also provides comprehensive consultancy services relating to agriculture & rural development through its consultancy wing “NABCONS”. www.nabcons.com

NABARD, Head Office ‐ Plot No. C‐24, G‐Block, Bandra Kurla Complex, Post Box No ‐ 8121, Bandra (E), Mumbai – 400051 Odisha Regional Office, Ankur, Nayapalli, Bhubaneswar – 751015

Visit us at: www.nabard.org

health

K N Bhagat

Managing Trustee, OTTET, Odisha

OTTET aims at National Development

P

lease brief us about the initiatives that OTTET is taking in Odisha for promoting social development?

OTTET’s initiatives for social progress are undertaken through association of service oriented people in the society. OTTET aims to bring about a blossoming in the lives of the citizens through efficient Educare, Medicare and Sociocare. Thus development involves awakening of the dormant spark in humans leading to the blossoming of their personality to unearth the hidden strength and abilities for the purpose of overall progress of society. This process also takes care of spiritual evolution of the people automatically in which individual transformation occupies a very important role. The design of our Ideals and Philosophy seeks to evolve Education, Healthcare Entrepreneurial Development scalable to a large mass and to larger number. While India needs to pay most attention to economic areas and employment generation, India is to emerge as a global leader in the service sectors with its vast and skilled human resource. The services will range from the simple to the most sophisticated ones using the emerging digital and communication revolution. The service sector is not only to be a money-spinner but should also employ a good proportion of its people, often in self-employments, with abilities ranging from simple skills to super skills.

What are the major challenges you usually face while working on various project which has potential to improve the livelihood of the people?

“ICT based modern technology can be used for interconnectivity and networking to integrate all other fields for all round development of society at large,� says K N Bhagat

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The major challenge was a balanced approach to basic needs on the one hand, and depletion of scarce resources required meeting them on the other hand, which is essential. The recent crisis which has caused not only economic but also

health

social and organizational disasters was the absence of wisdom, trustworthiness, self-restraint, and sensitivity to the well being of others. Another important factor that camps up repeatedly was that none of these merits of individual behavior can adequately and effectively be imposed externally.

Hence, the need to inculcate human values that nurture a strong discretionary energy through a properly designed system of education and skill upgradation with human values. It has a very powerful demonstrative effect on public awareness. It is thus necessary that the government follows exemplary behavior so as to serve as an effective role model for all citizens. It is equally important that government as an institution sets right examples in terms of its laws, social and economic policies as well as its normal administrative practices and procedures. Clearly, the government has a heavy responsibility in creating a culture of adherence to high moral standards and values so as to foster an appropriate environment for rectitude. Such adherence should begin with the individual and permeate widely through the civil society.

Very recently, a OTTET-Biocon delegate met the Chief Minister of Odisha. Tell us what you have discussed and what are you planning to do in the state?

The delegation meeting with the Hon’ble Chief Minister, Odisha, was very unique in all respect.

The Biocon Chief, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the richest self-made business woman of the country, has displayed confidence in the leadership of Shri

It is envisioned with the ideals and philosophy To create Enlightened Citizens u To provide all amenities at the doorstep of villages for Education and Healthcare u

the scheme of Universal Health Care (UHC) are now planning to achieve healthcare for all in 10 years time, even countries like USA having best resources of technology and financial power is yet to achieve the same , the Government of Odisha has already started its implementation in the state which is considered first of its kind in the country.

She indicated that Biocon in collaboration with OTTET will take forward the initiative of Government of Odisha and make it more comprehensive with the introduction of ICT network based Mobile Hospitals, Cancer and Diabetic Clinics and Health Card for All for the benefit of people of Odisha and society at large.

awards including e-INDIA Award 2013 and FIPS Award 2013. In a boost to the PPP Initiative of OTTET, Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw has joined and collaborated with OTTET to carry forward the initiative not only in the state of Odisha but also rollout the scheme of Universal Healthcare Pan-India. The collaboration will strive to emerge India as a global leader in the service sector with its vast and skilled human resources and to provide valuable contribution in strengthening and augmenting and existing public health system. The UHC program will be shortly initiated in the state of Karnataka and few other states where the pilot studies have already been made.

Your Tele-medicine initiatives have been appreciated, what are your plans to replicate it in another state of India?

Tele-medicine is one part of ICT, What are the areas wherein ICT can be used for enhancing the access and quality?

The Objective for installation of e-health and telemedicine infrastructure in PPP mode is to achieve the UHC program of Planning Commission of Government of India. It aims at bridging the gap of demand–supply mismatch, Doctor-wise and Facility-wise. ICT based Telemedicine activities

OTTET has vision for Healthcare for All, Education for All, Services for All; for moral and spiritual re-generation of Mankind. In order to achieve the objectives OTTET has developed Village Integrated Program to translate the concept of Golden age into the Reality. OTTET has designed for facility centers at District, Subdivisional, Block, Grama Panchayat and Village level, for the development of Individual Care, Employment Care, Health Care, InfrastructureCare, Social Care, Educational Care, Cultural Care and Agricultural Care through which the following services can be provided at the village level: Financial Services, Marketing Communication Services (Advertising, Media, Consultancy and Infotainment), Marketing Logistics, Trading and Distribution, Trade, Promoters Services, Human Resources, Technical & Management Consultancy, Testing, Certification and Calibration Services, Govt. administration Security Services, Repair & Maintenance, Tourism & Hotels, Leisure, Sports resorts, Cultural Activities, Preventive Health care Services, Many others as per the local needs.ICT based Modern Technology can be used for interconnectivity and networking to integrate all other fields for the all round development of people and society at large.

OTTET aims to bring about a blossoming in the lives of the citizens through efficient Educare, Medicare and Sociocare Naveen Patnaik ji, Hon’ble Chief Minister, Odisha.

She congratulated him on the pro-poor, propeople initiatives of the state government. We will be launching an initiative in PPP mode through which OTTET will provide access to quality healthcare at the door steps of 51,000+ villages of Odisha. It has got two parts; the first deals with the capacity to frame plans (programmes, projects, etc) that have a high probability of success, while the second part deals with its implementation. During discussion Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw emphasized that while the Planning Commission and the Public Health Foundation of India, under

are not only dedicated for patient healthcare, but also in physician education and training. OTTET Telemedicine network is a network for Tele-consultation, Tele-Diagnostics and Tele-Education.

The clinical component includes Tele-consulting for Preliminary Diagnosis, Pre-surgical Investigation and Post-surgical Follow up, scheduling appointments for hospital visits, expert opinion and patient counseling. All medical Colleges, DHHs, CHCs, PHCs and Sub-centers are considered as part of the network. The PPP initiative of OTTET has been widely appreciated and OTTET has bagged several national and international

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35

coal

Deepak Shrivastava, IFS Chief Vigilance Officer Mahanadi Coalfields Limited

Positive

Contributions of Vigilance

T

oday we face the threat of unfairness and corruption everywhere; there is an imminent need for the management and vigilance teams to work in tandem and in a transparent and fair manner for the sake of growth and productivity of an Organisation. The Vigilance Department of the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL), a Miniratna Coal Company of Coal India Limited, has been re-strategizing the day to day official transactions & business operations through number of e-initiatives which could not have been possible without the continued guidance and constant follow up being done by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), New Delhi, and Ministry of Coal, Government of India.

The public procurement which is considered a powerful driver in any organisation requires open and transparent procurement process.

In order to address this, e-Procurement was started way back in the year 2009 on the e-portal (https://mcltenders.gov.in) designed by the National Informatics Centre, Chennai. The numbers of tenders awarded through e-Procurement Portal have risen from 225 in the year 2009-10 to 1529 in 2012-13 wherein uploading of tender documents till the finalization of lowest bidder is system driven and free from all human interventions. So far tenders of `5975.25 crores has been awarded through the e-procurement portal of MCL in a fair

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“There have always been apprehensions in the mind of public at large about the coal theft/pilferage in the coal industry,� says Deepak Shrivastava

coal

& transparent manner. Due to the effective e-procurement policy of the company, the original validity period of tenders floated have been considerably brought down from 120 to 75 days in domestic tenders and 180 to 90 days in global tenders. Also the costs of publication of tenders have gone down from ` 4.7 crores to ` 49.0 lakh per annum.

Curbing Delays Recognizing the fact that the delay in refund of Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) which is a part and parcel of any procurement process, was adversely affecting the morale of the supplier/tenderer, auto-refund of EMDs was thought as an everlasting solution to ensure “system driven EMD refund” to the clients. The system driven refund mechanism got formally launched recently during the observance of Vigilance Awareness Week -2013 shall enable the refund amount to be redirected to the supplier/tenderer account in an auto-mode once the e-tender portal declares the unsuccessful/ rejected bids.

The recent impetus given to the “Coalnet” (WAN - intranet of the Company) by making it as an important data repository w.r.t. online bill status, coal production, PIS, Financial accountability, Material Management etc. could be possible through constant follow up through the regular field visits by the vigilance department. The data repository in Coalnet is being effectively utilized for “real time monitoring of contractual bills” which was one of the vulnerable area prone to corrupt practices. This particular step has resulted into greater transparency in timely payment of `2080.94 crore of contractual bills in a span of one year on first come first serve basis.

The coal weighment in a mining industry is another vulnerable area where the use of leveraging technology plays a pivotal role in nipping in the bud any malpractice. The matter was taken up with the Management with the existing shortcomings & the possible solutions.

Due to the sustained efforts of the Vigilance department coupled with active & vibrant support of Shri A N Sahay, CMD the installation of 39 In-motion road weighbridges with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) could be completed in an expeditious manner. The In-motion road weigh bridges which have been installed recently are being provided with the Coalnet connectivity in order to have “on-line production data” in the Central server.

New Systems for More Efficiency Operator Independent Truck Dispatch System (OITDS), a pilot project was rolled out in 2009 in three mining areas of MCL for bringing in transparency in Over Burden (OB) removal by departmental Heavy Earth Moving Machineries (HEMMs). OITDS was in t he stage of trial run for around two years. With the continuous monitoring & constant follow up by the Vigilance department, OITDS could become truly automated since April 2013. The system driven OITDS has not only brought transparency in the Over Burden (OB) removal but also there has been tangible benefit in terms of 5-10% reduction in overtime hours, 5% increase in capacity utilization/availability of HEMMs,

the supply of adequate drinking water to the peripheral villages thus fulfilling a major Corporate Social Responsibility. Also it could result savings of `78.67 lakh in contractual payments in the first year of its implementation itself.

Another possible outcome of this IT intervention was absolutely nil hindrances faced by the Contractual Coal Carrying Tippers by the peripheral villages for want of drinking water during peak summer.

Curbing Coal Theft There have always been apprehensions in the mind of public at large about the coal theft/ pilferage in the coal industry. Such instances of illegal diversion of coal do happen because of several factors some of which are man-made.

Coal weighment in mining industry is another area where the use of technology plays a pivotal role in nipping in the bud any malpractice

transmission of real time data for analysis, 5-10 percent reduction in High Speed Diesel (HSD) consumption. This has also helped in close monitoring of HEMMs position and status which is vital for any mining industry.

The obstructions in the coal transportation during the peak summer season by the peripheral villages was yet another area where some IT intervention was required. These obstructions were due to lack of supply of adequate drinking water by the contractual mode, the cost of which was being borne out by the MCL. As a viable transparency measure “GPS based vehicle tracking system” were used on contractual water tankers to track down and monitor their trips till destinations. This particular IT intervention was instrumental in ensuring

Taking a cue from the “success of i-track” in the supply of drinking water to the peripheral villages, an idea of “Geo-fencing” emerged due to out of box thinking. “Geo-fencing” of one of the project areas particularly those with private washeries/sidings in their vicinity was done on trial basis successfully. Recognising that this could be an effective & potent tool for preventing coal theft/diversion, possibilities are being explored to use this particular IT intervention in vulnerable Project areas shortly. Other leveraging technology measures are also being thought which inter-alia includes use of GPRS in Coal Tippers, effective On-line Material Management System (OMMS), Fuel Management System for prevention of theft of High Speed Diesel (HSD), Installation of CCTVs in railway sidings, road weigh bridges, Regional Stores, Central Workshops, Areas and HQ Offices etc.

It is not straightforward to measure transparency since it is an elusive and shifting concept that resists an easy definition. Further, Improving fairness & transparency in any organization do require additional investment and organizational changes in terms of administrative and IT systems.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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banking

S P Singh

Circle Head, Bhubaneswar & Convener SLBC

Taking Banking

Services to the Last Mile

P

lease tell us about the work that UCO bank is doing in Odisha?

UCO bank is the state lead bank in Odisha. We have been expanding in the state and we have presence in all the 30 districts of Odisha. Only one district is unrepresented as on date. We want to have our reach in the entire state to serve the people of the state. We have appointed 299 Business Correspondents (BC) in the deprived districts. Bank cannot open brick and mortar branches in each and every area, as we have to keep in mind lot of factors like cost and other things. What I mean to say is that bricks and mortar branches are not always economically viable.

So what can be the alternative to brick and mortar branches?

RBI mandate is clear that we have to provide banking facility to the rural population. Now there are two kinds of areas where we have to work – the first is areas where population is more than 2000 and other is where population is less than 2000.

The first categories of the villages have been covered by the various banks. They have been covered either by setting up brick and mortar branches or by the Business Correspondents or by Ultra Small Branches (USBs). Ultra Small Branches are those branches, which do not function in the whole week. Depending upon the population and the number of transactions in that particular area, branch functioning is decided. Suppose, there are villages where population is higher, like 40005000 population, there the Ultra Small Branch is kept open for six days in a week and it is open for fixed period of the time in a day. During that period, officials of the bank visit the branch and villagers can contact the officials for any kind of

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‘We are extremely focused on promoting financial inclusion and at present none of the blocks in the state remains unbanked,’ says S P Singh. In conversation with Kartik Sharma

such villages are to be covered through Banking Correspondent. These Banking Correspondents are attached to a nearby branch and they visit the branch on pre decided date and at least, twice in a day. So in a week, they are able to cover an entire gram panchayat and generate revenue also. Thus their profession becomes economically viable. But most of the banks are not paying good remuneration to the Banking Correspondents. So they do not remain in the business for longer period of time and remain only until they get better alternative remunerative employment. So job of the banker is to make this BC profile a remunerative one to ensure they remain in the business. Ancillary jobs like recovery of loans, etc responsibilities should be offered to BCs and we are trying to do that. RBI has also asked us to see that none of the blocks in the state remains unbanked and we are pleased to inform that none of the block in the

As far as the expansion of the banking services in the state is concerned, it is going on at brisk pace banking operations. All villages having population of 2000 and more have been provided banking facility in Odisha.

state is unbanked. These are some of the steps UCO Bank as convener of the State Level Bankers Committee has been doing in Odisha.

What about the bank’s penetration in villages having population less than 2000? Is it a challenge to reach out to them?

How do you see the banking services developing in Odisha during the times to come?

It is a big challenge as numbers of such kind villages is more than 47000 in Odisha. Some of the villages are having population of as low as 500 and in such villages setting up Ultra Small Branches or full fledged branches is not at all feasible. Reserve Bank of India has formulated a guideline that all

As far as the expansion of the banking services in the state is concerned, it is going on at brisk pace.

In this year, RBI has taken an ambitious target of creating 1000 more branches in Odisha. As of now there are more than 3000 branches in the state. It is a difficult task. But all the banks are cooperating for RBI to achieve this milestone.

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banking

P K Jena

Regional Director, Reserve Bank of India

IT is Crucial for Financial Inclusion

P

lease give us an overview of the operations of RBI with emphasis in Odisha and RBI’s initiatives in the area of Financial Inclusion?

‘’Commitment is important for me. Whatever policy announcement is done, if you believe it in spirit, you can deliver’’ P K Jena, Regional Director, Reserve Bank of India. In Conversation with Kartik Sharma & Nayana Singh

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At present, Financial Inclusion is the priority area as far as the Government of India is concern, simultaneously for the entire banking industry.

Unless there is Financial Inclusion, neither banking industry can grow, nor will economy instead there will have difficulties. Almost at every point, there is difficulty. Be it is last mile connectivity, infrastructure, and human resource or be it a business issue, there are constraints and we have to overcome these. For the last couple of years, we are following Banking Correspondent (BC) agent model. As of now, we have 2900 banks in Odisha (including RBs, Commercial Banks, etc).

Now, in terms of number it is not lagging behind the national parameter but we have difficulties with the hilly terrains, geographical conditions and areas with thin population, where banking penetration is not that high. What we are trying, through this Banking Correspondent model is to find those areas where we can have the agents for our module and we name them as Banking Correspondent. He will then help us in identifying the places where we can have the banks in those particular areas. He will be assigned certain villages with handheld device. That device has a chip, which is connected with bank’s main server.

With this, basic transaction like, deposits and withdrawal, can be done in the doorstep of a villager. Unless any village has got high population and good business, there is no point of having a fully fledged bank. It is also not viable for them.

At the end of the day, these are commercial banks.

banking

While addressing the public in Odisha, Dr Deepali Pant Joshi, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India said,’’Through bank accounts one can remit money and also get the MGNREGA/ Pension directly credited to their account.” Further, she advised to avail loans from banks and; to repay promptly, to be cautious about fictitious SMS/letter informing winning of lotteries and unauthorized deposit accepting entities.

Everywhere it cannot be a social objective altogether. It’s ok for once to have a social objective, but you cannot cover entire 48000 thousand villages in the state of Odisha like that and to cover 48000 villages, you cannot have branches in every village. Government of Odisha has also announced few months back, ‘Rajiv Sahayata Kendra’. This is a good initiative on the part of government and government is also very committed. In this way things are picking up. Initially there were problems with BCs, their salary, etc, but slowly things are moving. Gradually issues are getting addressed. Not one, but many banks has got BCs. State Bank, Bank of India, Andhra Bank, UCO bank, Yes bank, etc have got their BCs aiming various districts.

So there is a concept of state level bank committee?

Yes, it is there, it is nothing new. It is being there from ages. Since I have joined bank industry, it was there. It is basically a forum, where all the stakeholders, associated with banking industry come together and address issues which are of common interest. It is a high level forum.

Various departments of the government, like agriculture, fisheries, animal husbandry, etc and their representatives with the entire bank’s heads come together in this forum. This is the highest platform.

What measures you have taken to grow financial literacy?

Financial literacy is very much critical area.

Deposit, access to credit, insurance and basic ser-

vice is provided- we are focusing on these basic four aspects. We have told banks to set up financial interest centre in districts. They are engaging ex-bankers on a contractual basis. His job is not only confined to providing information about banking problems, but he is also responsible for advising people on how to open up a business and how to go about it.

What are the efforts taken by RBI to spread financial literacy among masses?

Every eligible individual should have a bank account and Reserve Bank is working towards this. Through these programmes, RBI makes an effort to reach out to people and spread financial literacy and create awareness regarding banking services among people.

Do you think there is lack of payment mechanism system, like lack of ATMs in rural areas?

Just imagine a scenario, where there is no ATM even in a city! At the same place, people are saying that, to deposit `500, they have to go 6 kms. So if one starts at 7 a.m from home, he can come back to house only by 11 after banking transactions, because he has to collect money from different areas. So the aim is to decongest branches. Mobile banking can also be an option.

But, ultimately it’s a question of physical cash coming in. You order a pizza over a phone, but pizza has to be delivered. Ultimately physical cash is required and India, till today, by and large has got cash culture. Physical cash will remain.

What are the initiatives for agriculture sector are being taken in terms of Financial Inclusion?

For this you have to talk to bankers. Our role is to provide finance to the sector. Our role is confined to how best we can provide adequate and timely finance to the person who needs it in the agriculture sector. We are committed to support any kind of agricultural move.

According to you, what is the role of IT in this?

Whatever I am telling you, is possible only because of IT. When we talk about ATM, basically we are talking about connectivity and network and that is IT. It is the main thing.

In rural sector, do you think private banks are reluctant to go?

It’s not like that. Axis bank has got more than 100 branches in Odisha. This year itself, they have opened up 30 branches. I hail from this state.

Personally I feel that in this position I should try to ensure that there is infrastructure. So, you have to start in cities and then move. Wherever there is business opportunity, bank will go there. Let’s be clear about that.

What is your vision for Financial Inclusion in Odisha ?

By 31st March, 2016, we will be able to cover all the villages through BC model in the state of Odisha.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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banking

Krishna Mohan Trivedi

Chief General Manager State Bank of India, Local Head Office, Bhubaneswar, Odisha

Banking for Rural Areas

P

transactions were taking place. We have now migrated to internet based kiosk banking application where real-time transactions take place at the Customer Service Points which has benefitted the customers.

lease tell us about the origins of SBI in Odisha?

SBI, in its previous incarnation as Imperial Bank of India, had opened the first branch on 16th May 1921 at Berhampore (Ganjam). We also opened the second branch in the historic city of Cuttack on 8th August 1921 and went on adding many more in subsequent years. To give focused attention on the integrated growth of the State, we created a separate Circle with its Local Head Office at Bhubaneswar on 16th June 1979.

What kind of growth has SBI been achieving since inception?

Since then we have grown in size enormously and as on 31st March 2013, we had 718 branches in Odisha. By end of December 2013, we have opened 12 more branches. We have further plans to open 36 branches on the 26th January 2014 and 23 more by 31st March 2014. Thus, the share of SBI comes to about 21.80 % in total bank branches of all commercial banks in the State.

Please tell us about your branch network through which SBI is serving its customers in Odisha?

Tell us about your branches in rural areas also?

Our branch network includes specialized outfits such as NRI Branch, Commercial Branches for medium and large corporates, Personal Banking Branches for HNI, SME and Agricultural Development branches, each with state of the art technology. Apart from this, we have centralized processing units for fast and efficient pension payment to the senior citizens, expeditious disposal of loan proposals, etc. Apart from branch network, in order to increase banking infra-

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In how many villages is SBI operating?

“State Bank of India’s association with the people of Odisha goes way back to the year 1921, this is well before even formation of the State on 1st April 1936,” says Krishna Mohan Trivedi. In conversation with Kartik Sharma

structure, we have so far set up 1435 ATMs and 815 Customer Service Points (CSPs) through our Business Correspondent (BC) channel. To further increase the reach of people to the banking services, we have introduced cash payment through micro ATMs named as “Cash at POS”.

Keeping in view the priority of Government of Odisha, 82 percent of our branches are in rural and semi-urban centres, so that the hinterland of the State is fully serviced.

Tell us about your initiatives for Financial Inclusion?

Nearly 60 percent of the population in Odisha is deprived of basic financial services. To meet the demands of this section of the society, we are working through our Brick & Mortar branches, 588 of which are in Rural/Semi-Urban areas, 815 Customer Service Points, 1435 ATMs, Internet Banking and Mobile Banking. The technology initially used was “POS” machines where offline

Out of about 45700 unbanked villages with population below 2000, we have been assigned responsibility to cover 12240 villages by March 2015. We are working towards this and till till the end of March 2014, 5825 villages will be covered and the remaining 6415 will be covered

by March 2015.The Bank has set up 19 Financial Literacy Centres (FLCs) imparting to the rural mass the knowledge of efficiently managing one’s own money. In FY2013-14, we have conducted 281 programmes benefitting 10373 participants.

We have 17 Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETI) that are actively working for skill development of the rural youth. 17323 rural youth have been benefitted so far.

Tell us about work that SBI is doing specifically for the Government of Odisha?

As the sole banking partner, we have successfully implemented the flagship scheme, MAMATA, for the pregnant women mostly from the weaker section of the society benefitting more than 10 lac beneficiaries. Bank has introduced a pioneer payment solution “Aadhaar Payment Bridge System” (APBS) - a hassle-free DBT payment solution for transferring the cash benefit through bank accounts of beneficiaries maintained in various banks. We also handle payment of MGNREGA wages through the banking channel in the State.

We have already handled payment of Rs.561.87 crore to 71.51 lac beneficiaries since inception of the scheme in 2012. Now this is being processed in the RBI’s RECS system.

financial inclusion

Arindam Mukherjee

Manager for Regional Sales (BFSI) Cisco India and SAARC

Improved banking through technology

W

Cisco has been the preferred technology vendor for most public and private sector banks in India. Cisco works with multiple banks in the country and has deployed core banking solutions for them.

Cisco powered mission critical data center networks are the base for nine out of ten financial transactions. Apart from the banking segment, Cisco also works with almost all the major insurance companies and the top three stock exchanges in India. Cisco’s solutions are designed to help customers across financial services including banks, insurance companies, brokerage and buy and sell side firms.

Please tell us about some of the technology solutions that you are providing in the BFSI segment?

Cisco has a high-performance trading solution portfolio which is crucial for financial exchanges.

It enables low-latency, high-speed automated trading, as well as the next-generation human trader platform. As the number of digitally inclined consumers and employees increases, retail banks are now relooking their approach towards adoption of social media. There are discussions and deployments within the firewall to proactively collaborate and increase efficiency of processes within the organization. We envisage growing demand for contact center. For instance, a private sector bank normally employs 5000 contact center agents for 2000 branches whereas if the largest of public sector banks with almost 12000 branches would employ only 500 agents.

It is imperative to understand that customers are increasingly demanding the use of various channels like video, mobile, internet and other

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the cash. One critical hurdle for this model is most of these unbanked customers are illiterate and don’t know how to sign, so they would need to be identified biometrically.

hat has been CISCO’s role in the BFSI sector?

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / January 2014

Who all are your prime customers in the BFSI segment?

“Banks must invest in advanced contact centers that employ video, SMS and other mobile based solutions to offer services,” says Arindam Mukherjee. In conversation with Ankush Kumar

alternative ways to access financial services.

Therefore, banks must invest in advanced contact centers that employ video, SMS, mobile based solutions.

Which critical business areas in the financial services sector are undergoing transformation because of technological advancements?

Cisco believes that financial inclusion will become the top priority for most banking institutions. The primary aim of the government commitments to financial inclusion is to get the unbanked into banking domain and this bodes well for the segment. The first phase of financial inclusion has happened in an unorganized manner. The traditional manner in which certain banks have invested resources to deploy the business correspondent model has not worked very efficiently. Most of the banking correspondents are locals who are well aware of the environment. So they visit the branch location at certain time and collect

Cisco works with most major private and public sector banks, stock exchanges and Insurance companies. Some of our most notable customers have been State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, National Stock exchange, Bombay stock exchange, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank etc. As the preferred technology solutions vendor for the segment, we are able to make a meaningful contribution to the bottom lines of these large organizations and impacts their decision making process by connecting at a very senior level.

What are the key benefits of Interactive Kiosk?

Self-serve kiosk changes the way the BFSI segment interfaces with the customers. Things that once were carried out via face-to-face at the physical branch can now be conducted via faceto-interface interactions. The primary function for this human-machine interface is to enable a self-service interaction model so that users can avail financial services with unmanned operation. Benefits for users include round-theclock service, convenience of use and privacy of transaction. For retailers or merchants, the interactive kiosk is considered to be the most cost effective way for creating a branded storefront or automated store. Typically 80 percent of most people visiting the physical branch are there to just update their passbooks or to get a statement, so if banks can take care of this 80 percent non-priority requests by shifting it to an automated system, they can substantially reduce the average wait time for a queue, therefore enhancing customers experience.

financial inclusion

Mahendra Pratap

Head, Financial Inclsuion, HCL Infosystems

Financial Inclusion through Banking Correspondent

H

account / transaction upload into main server BC/POS operation management.

ow has HCL started working in the area of Financial Inclusion?

Our experience in Financial Inclusion goes back to 2008 where the problem came from one of the CMD’s of the bank, where the Government has invested Crores of Rupees into the rural sector but it has not shown the results that it was supposed to show. The reason was that the money that was given was used for the purpose of either paying the old tax or some other social activity. Even the banking penetration into the rural areas was very poor as one has to travel few kilometers to find a bank. So there was no encouragement for a rural person to keep a bank account. Therefore the RBI came out with the concept of branchless banking based on the technology.

And that’s the time when we thought that what is it required in terms of the security to match the banking services available to the rural masses which is in at par with the urban areas, which means banking anytime anywhere.

The rural people need to be the part of the financial system to be able to plan their savings and have access to the formal credit. But today when I look at it so what we did is that we developed a solution which could meet the requirement of banking even at the remotest place. This is based on the wireless technology in the form of GPRS so a remote terminal has the functionality like that of the ATM.

Please tell us about HCL’s financial inclusion model?

HCL engaged and managed business cor-

What kind of Hardware and software maintenance support was given by HCL?

“The rural people need to be the part of the financial system to be able to plan their savings and have access to the formal credit,” says Mahendra Pratap. In conversation with Ankush Kumar

respondents (BC) deployed in the villages.

HCL set up a complete ecosystem for the BCs to ensure that they were properly trained and equipped to facilitate banking and financial services to the local people without the need for them to travel to a distant branch. These BCs who acted on behalf of the Bank also offered services like loans, insurance, pension and other third-party products to the smartcard holders at their doorstep and as per the card holders’ convenience. HCL provided each BC with supporting technology that provided “financial services in a box” – a highly parameterized POS based transaction support for

Some of the services offered by HCL to ensure interoperability among the different systems were customization, installation, operation & maintenance of servers DC and DR services Network. Moreover the administration services included proving network connectivity and interface Web-based online and offline upload facility with multiple connectivity options like Modem / GPRS / CDMA Provided SMS/GPRS Interface Highly scalable database & platform independent synchronisation support between intermediate server with DC server support for POS transactions in online/off-line mode.

Will connectivity still be the major problem in rural areas?

When you talk about the network connectivity there are different approaches to solve this problem. One approach is that we are able to connect this device over multiplicity of networks. What the Government has done is that they have formed Bharat Broadband Limited (BBNL), the objective is to take the fiber connectivity to Panchayat level. Some of the banks are providing VSAT connectivity in addition to what we are doing in this country. The other problem that you will find in the rural area is that you will find connectivity at certain spots.

What happens is that the cell density is slow so there are spots where the coverage is not good.

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Horticulture

Sanjeev Chadha

Director, Directorate of Horticulture Government of Odisha

ensuring

transparency through IT

P

Please tell us about your initiatives called ‘School of Horticulture Training.’

lease provide us with an overview of the work that Directorate of Horticulture is doing in Odisha?

Odisha has got ten agro-climatic zones. So it gives us opportunity to grow various crops all around the year. This is a huge advantage if we properly exploit the climatic conditions.

In Odisha, we have focused on food crops like mango, cashew and to diversify the fruit basket we have tried other crops like guava, pineapple, etc and today Odisha is among the major mango and cashew growing states of the country. But still we have the less coverage under the processing variety. So far vegetable production is concerned we are in the top list in the country. The challenge is to link the farmers to the markets and to ensure that get good price by having access to the markets. So we have taken number of initiatives by organizing farmers into groups and farmer producer companies. Around 20 farmer producer companies have been registered under the Company’s Act and their business plan has been made, so that they can independently function as business entities. We are trying to empower them by providing basic infrastructure. This will act as game changer. Recently we have started our own retail chain in Bhubaneswar called “Udayan Fresh.” This is one of its kind experiences in the country. More than 10000 farmers of the neighboring districts have been registered with this.

Farmers are trained and grouped and 7 companies have been constituted and more to come.

It has helped farmer’s income more 40 per cent.

With the help of this Consumers are also get-

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“Bhubaneswar is the first city in the country to have online delivery of vegetables. You book it online and you get it by evening,” says Sanjeev Chandha. In conversation with Nayana Singh & Kartik Sharma

ting quality vegetable and farmers are getting paid on the same day and there is no role of middleman. We are going to try this in three big cities of the state like Baharampur, Sundergarh and Sambalpur.

Brief us on the online delivery of vegetables in Bhubneswar.

Bhubaneswar is the first city in the country to have online delivery of vegetables. You book it online and you get it by evening. It is called “Veggie Cart” program ( www.veggiecart.com). Here we have hand driven 30 carts, run by unemployed youth from the slums and they are properly trained.

Carts are designed in such a way so that vegetables are kept fresh. This is another experience we have started and it is running successfully.

In the agriculture sector is that we don’t have sufficient trained manpower and with the trend of urbanisation people moving out away from agriculture to urban areas, we decided to train youth from urban areas. We have got three institutes where we are trying to skill the unemployed youth in basic skills like orchard management, nursery management, and micro irrigation. In these three institutes unemployed boys and girls are trained and diploma course is also there. These people are getting employment in many industries, schools, private sector and many of them are starting of their own agri- enterprise. You cannot drive growth in economy without sufficient skilled manpower and that is why government has started skilling people and that too free of cost.

Please throw some light on the usage of IT by your department for development of horticulture in the state?

We are maintaining a portal for the farmers, through which all the subsidies are paid to the farmers. Similarly we are setting up a portal for the monitoring and implementation of schemes like oil pump and micro irrigation. Best thing is that we have used IT in agriculture centers where farmers sell his vegetables. So the data immediately comes to our server and by the evening various data are compiled and send to the bank and by evening farmer gets into his account and get money. We have ensured a transparent platform for farmers. This is the biggest advantage for the farmers and that has happened because of the use of technology.

e-UttarPradesh e-UttarPradesh event was jointly organised by Government of Uttar Pradesh and Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd on 29-30 November 2013 in the historic city of Lucknow. The one day forum brought together key representatives from all areas of governance, ICT industry and civil society. Here are some glimpses of the e-UttarPradesh event‌

29th - 30th November 2013 1

1. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh inaugurating the exhibition at eUttarPradesh 2013 held on 29-30 November 2013 in Lucknow 2. Alok Ranjan, Infrastructure & Industrial Development Commissioner, Government of Uttar Pradesh giving the special address at the inaugural of eUttarPradesh 2013 3. Rajendra Kumar, Joint Secretary, DeitY, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India giving the special address at the inaugural of eUttarPradesh 2013 4. Special issue of eGov is being launched by the dignitaries at the inaugural session of eUttarPradesh 2013 5. Jiwesh Nandan, Principal Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh felicitating Shri Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh

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e-UttarPradesh

eUttarPradesh 2013 was held on 29-30 November 2013 at Taj Vivanta, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh

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6. Delegates attending the sessions at eUttarPradesh 2013 event 7. Dr Ravi Gupta, Editor – in - Chief & CEO, eGov briefing about the eGov Journey so far 8. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh distributing the award to the VLE 9. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh visiting the Expo 10. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh having a look on the displayed at the expo

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11. Launch of intel magazine by the dignitaries 12. Jiwesh Nandan, Principal Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh addressing the session at eUttarPradesh 2013

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e-UttarPradesh

1. Exhibition booth of Government of Uttar Pradesh displaying the egov initiatives taken by the government 2. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh addressing the session of eUttarPradesh

9. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh delivering the key note address at the inaugural session of eUttarPradesh 10. Delegates at the session of eUttarPradesh 2013

3. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh distributing the award to the VLE

11. Officials of Department of IT, Government of Uttar Pradesh standing in front of their exhibition booth

4. Alok Kumar, Secretary, Stamp & Registration, Government of Uttar Pradesh NSN Murthy, General Manager & Sales Leader, Government Industry, India/ South Asia, IBM India

12. L to R: G S Naveen Kumar, Special Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh ; Dara Singh, Additional CEO, Department of Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Jammu & Kashmir; Jiwesh Nandan, Principal Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh; S B Singh, State Informatics Officer & Senior Technical Director, National Informatics Centre, Uttar Pradesh

5. Alok Kumar, Secretary, Stamp & Registration, Government of Uttar Pradesh giving memento to Naval Khosla, General Manager, Industry Solutions – IBM 6. Alok Kumar, Secretary, Stamp & Registration, Government of Uttar Pradesh giving memento to C Velan, CEO – Info, Tata Reality Infrastructure Limited 7. Jiwesh Nandan, Principal Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh felicitating Alok Ranjan, Infrastructure & Industrial Development Commissioner, Government of Uttar Pradesh 8. L to R: Rajiv Vaishnav, Vice President, NASSCOM; Rajiv Agarwal, Chairman, Metro Cell, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Alok Kumar, Secretary, Stamp & Registration, Government of Uttar Pradesh; C Velan, CEO – Info, Tata Reality Infrastructure Limited; Naval Khosla, General Manager, Industry Solutions – IBM; Col KPM Das, Vertical Expert, National Security and Defence, Cisco India; NSN Murthy, General Manager & Sales Leader, Government Industry, India/ South

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13. L to R: Uma Shukla, Associate Vice President, Vayam Technologies; Aman Roy Choudhary, Managing Director, RADWIN; Raj Shekhar, District Magistrate, Allahabad, Government of Uttar Pradesh; G S Naveen Kumar, Special Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Dr Roshan Jacob, District Magistrate, Gonda, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Jayanta Kar, Head North And East Regions, Richo India Ltd; Prachi Sharma, President & CEO, Samin Tekminds India Pvt. Ltd

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14. Delegates attending the session on Innovations in ICT at eUttarPradesh 2013 15. G S Naveen Kumar, Special Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh expressing his views at the session on Innovations in ICT

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e-UttarPradesh

1. Amod Kumar, Technical Advisor to Hon’ble CM, Government of Uttar Pradesh expressing his views at eUttarPradesh 2013 2. Jiwesh Nandan, Principal Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh giving the memento to S B Singh, State Informatics Officer & Senior Technical Director, National Informatics Centre, Uttar Pradesh 3. L to R: Jayanta Kar, Head North And East Regions, Richo India Ltd ; Hemanshu Srivastav, Director, Samsung Research India ; Prachi Sharma, President & CEO, Samin Tekminds India Pvt. Ltd; Dr Roshan Jacob, District Magistrate, Gonda, Uttar Pradesh ; G.S. Naveen Kumar, Special Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Raj Shekhar, District Magistrate, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh; Aman Roy Choudhary, Managing Director, RADWIN; Uma Shukla, Associate Vice President, Vayam Technologies 4. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh visiting the exhibiton at eUttarPradesh 5. Amod Kumar, Technical Advisor to Hon’ble CM, Government of Uttar Pradesh giving the certificates to the VLEs 6. Dr Omkar Rai, Director General, STPI giving memento to Rekha Roy, Director, LTech Software Solutions 7. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh on the way to visit the exhibition area 8. Dr B Chandrasekar, Vice President, ILFS Education delivering his views on ICT in education 9. Mayur Maheshwari, Special Secretary, Irrigation Department, Government of Uttar Pradesh expressing his views on IT in effective healthcare at eUttarPradesh 10. Alok Kumar, Principal Secretary, Vocational Education, Government of Uttar Pradesh expressing his views on ICT in Education at eUttarPradesh 2013

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1. Alok Kumar, Secretary, Stamp & Registration, Government of Uttar Pradesh delivering his views on growth of IT infrastructure at eUttarPradesh 2013 2. Jawed Usmani, Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh having a look on the displayed at the exhibition of eUttarPradesh 2013 3. Amod Kumar, Technical Advisor to Hon’ble CM, Government of Uttar Pradesh felicitating Jiwesh Nandan, Principal Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh 4. L to R: Mayur Maheshwari, Special Secretary, Irrigation Department, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Dr Harsharan Das, Principal Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Pravir Kumar, Principal Secretary, Medical Health & Family Welfare, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Anil Swarup, Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India; G.S. Naveen Kumar, Special Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Sanjoy Mukherjee, Director- Public Services, SAP 5. Virendra Singh, Director, IT Department, Government of Maharashtra sharing his views on best practices in e-governance at eUttarPradesh 2013

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“Effortless & Quick” Exactly what

Tax Payment should be.

Income Tax Excise Tax Service Tax TDS Corporate Tax State Tax

Tax Payments For more information on tax payment, please visit your nearest branch.

industry perspective

Manoj Kumar

Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer Ricoh India

india still has heavy printing demand “Today major customers in India are not looking for standalone printer to be put in one corner; instead they are looking for complete solution,” says Manoj Kumar

H

ow has the overall printing and documentation industry in India evolved during the last couple of years?

I would like to say that the print demand is actually increasing contrary to the popular belief that the customers are not relying heavily on print. The print volumes are increasing and customers are now becoming very demanding, so they are looking for complete print solution. They are not looking for standalone printer to be put in one corner; instead they are looking for complete solution. They wish to have very high resolution of printers for managing the work of a modern office.

This is an area where Ricoh has a definite edge; we offer a variety of products to take care of the print solutions of the customers need. We are present in space of laser printer and production printer at the extreme range, the laser printer at the entry level, production printer at the highest level and we also have multifunctional products.

What are the business areas which you are focusing at present?

We are present across a wide spectrum of the industry. We have customers everywhere, in SMEs, in larger corporations, in government and we are also catering to individual customers. We are giving lots of focus on the Banking Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) segment, and we are also looking at the education,

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been little higher and so far as government is concerned, we are very strong name over there and we are fulfilling all the needs of the government departments - whether it is products, whether it is IT services, whether it is document management.

Manoj Kumar

Today many organisations are moving towards paperless office model, so they banking on the soft copies rather than the hard

No matter how much we say that customer is going paperless but there is still very heavy demand for printing healthcare, manufacturing and other sectors in the government.

Tell us about the work that you are doing in the government sector?

The government has been already strong customer for RICOH since inception; in fact there was a time when we are doing 50 percent of total business in government. Our government business has grown and it continues to grow even though the list may have come down but that doesn’t mean that government business has come down. It is just that the growth in the non government segment has

copies. How has this impacted the business?

We have the solutions for both sets of customers – those who prefer the paperless system and those who prefer the paper system. For those who want paper less organization we have document management solutions, and scanning solutions. In fact, one of our flagship products in Ricoh is the document management solution. No matter how much we say that customer is going paperless but there is still very heavy demand for printing and the printing volume have been growing steadily in the Indian market over the years.

viewpoint

Bill to Escalate UIDAI as a

Statutory Authority….. a Correct Move in the Right Direction

I

n May 2012 this columnist insisted that UID initiative had been underestimated for its potential to bring a sea change in the way citizen-centric government service delivery usually get designed in our country. It was further opined that this may be the first and most necessary step towards a connected government. Since that last 18 months we increasingly observed that one by one important flagship government welfare schemes and financial agencies have started adopting UID as an important enabling instrument to fulfill the respective objective of the projects or the schemes.

UIDAI, created in 2009 as an Executive Authority for 5 years, had its shares of criticism like many other large government initiatives, be it for sluggish implementation, sub-optimal funding, unreliable output, confusion over redundancy with NPR activity or doubted usability. The situation was bit stabilized after the then FM’s 2011 budget speech with the declaration that UIDAI would go for 600 million enumeration in next 2-3 years and from October 2011, at least 1 million Aadhaar number would be generated per day.

After 24 months of that declaration, it may be prudent to review the current status of the UID programme output. It is obvious that 600 million target has not been achieved by this time. UIDAI may have its explanations for this slow progress on the assurance given in the Parliament but there are some important points scored by them in this intervening period. The most impacting of these is the decision of the Union Cabinet to escalate the legal status of the UIDAI to a Statutory Authority against its existing Executive Authority.

It is important to appreciate the long-standing consequence of this all important government decision. The UID project has been censured by many as a very costly proposition for a developing country of 1200 million population while some other experts doubted for any positive outcome from its benefit-cost analysis, especially in the back-drop of the constitutionally mandated National Population Register (NPR) related parallel activities wherein every Indian citizen has

to be identified and some details to be recorded.

In my opinion, in the excitement of branding the UID initiative as a poor duplication of NPR, most of the UIDAI critics missed the perceived primary objective of the UID project, to be used as an effective instrument to control resource leakage. For many wide-ranging government welfare schemes correct identification of millions of beneficiaries of those schemes across the country may simply save, over a few years, the leakage in scarce government resources to the extent of the amount government would be spending over a span of 6-7 years to map those beneficiaries through the UID initiative.

However the steel-frame mindset of the executives in the concerned government departments did struggle in the beginning to appreciate this overwhelming potential of the UIDAI in supplementing the stated objectives of their own welfare schemes. Presumably, the mandate and possible outcome of the UIDAI did not appear with clarity before them and moreover it was felt that UIDAI did not have adequate legal backing to modify or adapt in to the implementation framework of any individual scheme initiated by the concerned government departments.

Perhaps added to this uncanny worry is the fact that the entire programme is being steered by a person, with formidable authority bestowed on him, who had no exposure to government functioning for initial decades of his distinguished career!

There are other issues with the UID programme, like serious doubt raised by activists indicating possible misuse of data as well breach in privacy while political opposition started spreading around when government indicated that schemes related to Direct Benefit Transfer would necessarily use Aadhaar-linked bank accounts of the identified beneficiaries. Journey of the Aadhaar programme, since the day of the Executive Order in January 2009, has thus been a chequered ride, firstly in the form of the Bill entitled ‘National Identification Authority of India’ placed in Lok Sabha in December 2010, thereafter scrutiny by Parliament

Standing Committee on Finance and then tabling of the PSC report in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in December 2011, besides juxtaposing its utility against NPR. However, presumably, the recent decision of the Union Cabinet for introduction of the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2013 in the forthcoming winter session of Parliament by the Planning Ministry, after incorporating some recommendations of the PSC, appeared to have been taken after the Supreme Court’s recent observation that Aadhaar number cannot be mandatory for government schemes, in response to a PIL against transfer of the cooking LPG subsidy through Aadhaar number-linked bank accounts.

Now the proposed Bill, through the Act of Parliament, would seek to convert the existing UIDAI into a statutory authority to provide astute legal backing and also would outline the powers and functions of the Authority including other important matters like offences and penalties.

It is said that it is better late than never. And all is getting increasingly well for the UIDAI after few administrative and financial hiccups, usual for a large programme of this nature and scale. Large projects like PDS, MNREGS, IAY, JSY, ASHA, ICDS etc. have already started using Aadhaar as one of their enablers. For financial inclusion initiatives Aadhaar is fast becoming the only KYC parameter. More than 480 millions of Aadhaar numbers have been generated to date. It is learnt that benefit-cost analysis by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy revealed substantial benefits out of UID initiative with an IRR of 52.85%. Now comes the constitutional backing what is badly needed. As I wrote in May 2012, UIDAI is destined to be the most impacting transformational initiative in the governance paradigm.

Let us wait and observe…time is the essence for the UID initiative.

Ashis Sanyal Consulting Editor, egov

January 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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final word

Enhancing Security with Actionable, Predictive Intelligence

C

itizen safety is of prime importance for any nation.

Threats to public security are constantly changing – as are the tactics and technology used to combat them. At the same time, many countries are also facing intense pressure to reduce expenditure, and are banking on security agencies and departments to achieve more with less.In an attempt to save costs, citizen safety and national security cannot be compromised. This creates a dual barrier for defense, police forces and other security agencies. Analytics can help government agencies in overcoming these challenges. Public security depends on an up-to-the minute understanding of the constantly changing threats, and on anticipating future risks so that agencies can act to prevent them. This can only be achieved through analysis of all available information. In order to harness this vast and growing resource, agencies need powerful solutions, capable of turning big data into usable intelligence.

A fundamental challenge which most government agencies face in their analytics journey, is with the quality of the data. As we know data comes from multiple disparate sources such as social media, elections database, regional data centers, etc. It is important to create a single-view of citizens and a unified version of truth. This helps government organisations in reducing duplicate entries, eliminating bogus entries and leveraging all relevant attributes of a citizen’s activity in a holistic manner. High quality database lays a strong foundation to an analytical framework.

Other important set of aspects to be considered are the accuracy, speed and accessibility of insights. Most analytical solutions work upon subsets of data, which introduces error in insights. Cyberspace and social media channels hold vast quantities of relevant data which cannot be looked over. It is therefore important to analyse data in its entirety and not

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just subsets. For instance, in-memory analytics technologies provide fast and accurate analysis of billions of rows of data, providing users with reliable insights and foresights. Today, government agencies have to react to situations in near real-time to minimise threat. It is therefore important to represent insights in a form that’s easy to understand and accessible on the go.

This empowers decision makers and users with the power to explore data on their own and take fact-based decisions in real-time. SAS Visual Analytics provides government agencies with an opportunity to do just that. Data is presented in an interactive graphical format, which makes it easier for the users to explore data, derive insights, share reports and access dashboards from their mobile devices.

Defense, police and other security agencies face several challenges in ensuring national security and public safety. Information overload through multiple channels, is only adding to the problem. Sharing and exchanging information and intelligence between security partners – at central, state and local government level – and providing a common operating picture of the challenges and threats is at the heart of strengthening threat mitigation and response capabilities. With the help of techniques such as text analytics, government agencies can identify keywords and put context to content. They can extract intelligence from logs of documents, emails, claims, social content and much more.

Analytics can also be used by officers at a station or sub-station level, where they can identify criminal links, record crime/events, case preparation, reporting, investigation management, etc.

Officers across different departments and locations can access appropriate versions of the derived intelligence and past cases, which helps in identifying patterns and replicating success. This not only frees-up investigation officer’s time, but also increases the overall investigation efficiency and accuracy. SAS’

public security solutions form part of a holistic framework that supports all of the key stages required to take informed and effective action.

SAS offers deep domain knowledge, intelligence management capabilities and analytics expertise with a highly skilled workforce of subject-matter experts. For instance; one of the UK’s largest police forces required an inteligence platform to deploy across the entire enterprise. SAS intelligence management solution houses several million documents and structured records. The system is used on a daily basis by both officers and civilians, providing real-time intelligence 24/7 to protect the public.

The fight against terrorism, crime, cyberattacks and other activities that threatens the life, property and systems depends on the quality of intelligence available. In particular, intelligence has played a vital role in detecting and thwarting malicious activities. For such situations, speed, accuracy and relevance are essential. Successful intelligence operations need to leverage data from multiple sources such as social universe, citizen data, historic data, and signal information and so on. Big data analytics empowers government organisations to leverage mission-critical data in its totality, derive insights, forecast patterns and predict potential threats. Insights and foresights extracted from data are a strategic asset. Forward-looking analytics can help government organisations to take better decisions, make accurate predictions, prevent cyber-attacks, reduce uncertainty and select the best alternatives.

Sastry Tumuluri, Information Technology Advisor & Chief Information Security Officer, Government of Haryana Rochak Chauhan, System Architect of the IVISS Project for Haryana