National e-Governance Plan- Vision to Mission: July 2005 Issue

Volume I issue 4, July 2005

National e-Governance Plan of India: Driving Good Governance using ICT PAGE 6 Egyptian e-Governance Programme PAGE 9 In focus: Italy PAGE 12 Leadership reflections for e-Government PAGE 19 The first Asian monthly on e-Government

National e-Governance Plan

Vision to Mission ?

A special preview on

knowledge for change

ISSN 0973-161X

www.egov.csdms.in

e

e

e

Conflux e

2005

The e-Government Conference

The Grand New Delhi 17 - 19 October, 2005

www.conflux.csdms.in

CONTENTS

The first Asian monthly on e-Government

Editorial Agenda National e-Governance Plan of India: Driving Good Governance using ICT ............. 6 Neel Ratan

Notebook Egyptian e-Government Programme .............................................................................. 9 Mohamed Sameh Bedair In focus: Italy ................................................................................................................... 12

12

Infocus: Italy

34

Q&A

14

Notebook

21

Conflux Preview

DACNET ............................................................................................................................ 14 M Moni, Alka Mishra e-Trikala: First Digital City in Greece ........................................................................... 16 Anthopoulos Leonidas

Commentary Leadership reflections for e-Government .................................................................... 19 Christine Leitner Knowledge-based e-Government ................................................................................. 25 Jeremy Millard Assessing citizen centricity of government website ............................................... 29 Neeta Verma, Sonal Kalra, Mohandas VS

Features Book review .................................................................................................................... 32

by Deepak Maheshwari

News Review ..................................................................................................... 33 Interview: N S Kalsi Secretary IT, Government of Punjab ............................................................................ 34

Event Preview Conflux 2005 ................................................................................................................ 21

Facts and Data .................................................................................................. 41 About town ....................................................................................................... 42

Read the magazine online at

www.egov.csdms.in | July 2005

3

Editorial Guidelines egov contains articles and features on e-Governance and related issues.

Authors are requested to follow these guidelines while sending their articles to egov.

Research Articles/Features: Manuscripts reporting significant original research should be between 2500-3000 words. It must contain an abstract of the article of maximum 500 words.

Book/website reviews: The word limit for reviews of book/ website is 1500. Mention the title, name of the author(s), name of the publisher, year of publication, price and number of pages and also send the cover photograph of the book

concerned in hard copy or in TIFF format with resolution at least 300 dpi.

Books on e-Governance related themes, published from year 2002 onwards, are preferable. In case of website, provide the URL. Reports or Notes on conference/ workshop/seminar(s): Reports or notes on conferences, workshops and seminars on e-Governance or related fields must be 1500-2000 words in length. Mention the theme, venue, date, and name of the organiser(s). Please supply relevant photographs. The conference held in the past two months of the forthcoming issue are preferred. Provide the URL of the organiser’s website or a link to the papers.

The Editor reserves the right to reject, edit and adjust articles in order to conform to the magazine's format. No remuneration is paid or charges levied for contributions.

All correspondence should be addressed to

The Editor

G-4, Sector 39 NOIDA (UP) 201 301, India Tel +91 120 2502180-87 Fax +91 120 2500060 Email egov@csdms.in

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EDITORIAL

Vol. I, Issue 4

July 2005

Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta Sr. Assistant Editor Vikas Kanungo Assistant Editors Anuradha Dhar (New Delhi) Isa Seow (Singapore) Sub-Editor Dipanjan Banerjee Designed by Deepak Kumar Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Web www.egov.csdms.in Editorial and marketing correspondence eGov G-4 Sector 39 NOIDA 201301, India Tel +91 120 2502181-87 Fax +91 120 2500060 Email egov@csdms.in In Singapore 25 International Business Park #4-103F, German Centre Singapore 609916 Printed by Yashi Media Works Pvt Ltd New Delhi, India egov does not neccesarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors. egov is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.

The .gov bubble?

We all vividly remember the dot com bubble. It all started around 1999 when the hype around the Internet started. We saw mushrooming of the web portals and their vigorous marketing campaigns, which took the media by storm. We reached a stage when one started feeling that if you are not dot com you are actually dot out. Most of these portals were running without any business model and without concrete revenue plans. Then we saw the bubble burst in 2001. The venture capitalists lost lot of money and many people lost the faith in the Internet economy.

It was around the same time that many multilateral and bilateral agencies started thinking about using the Internet for development. One saw the formation of the DOT alliance and the UN ICT Task force. Soon arrived the World Summit of Information Society (WSIS) in 2003, where Internet for governance emerged as a key agenda.

Now, we are at a stage when we are seeing the money in IT in the government.

There is a lot excitement around the USD 500 million National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) which is in the process of rolled out. The government has also shown commitment towards the ‘Mission 2007’ which aims towards deploying a knowledge centre in each village of the country, 650,000 in all. And, we are also hearing about the e-Panchayat, in which around 240,000 village government organisations (Gram Sabhas) in the country will be computerised. And there are many more initiatives being planned by several different federal and state governments…

The question is: will the money invested here is going to give the returns we are vouching for? How? When? Where?

Lets hope we are not going to remember 2006 as a year of .gov burst!

This time the money going is yours!

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

egov is published in technical colloboration with GIS Development (www.GISdevelopment.net)

egov is a monthly now!!

We have received overwhelming response for the egov magazine from our readers.

Keeping in mind this demand, we are making our magazine a MONTHLY from this issue onwards. © Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2005 www.csdms.in

| July 2005

We look forward to the continued support and encouragement both from the e-government enthusiasts and critics to our effort.

- Editor-in-Chief 5

AGENDA

National e-Governance Plan of India: Driving Good Governance using ICT NeGP is a comprehensive “programme” of the Government of India that is “designed” to leverage capabilities and opportunities presented by ICT to promote good governance across the country. “e-Governance will be promoted on a massive scale”, is one of the key priority areas under the UPA Government’s – National Common Minimum Programme. Taking a cue from this policy directive, the machinery has embarked upon an extremely ambitious initiative – the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), aimed at improving the quality, accessibility and effectiveness of government services to citizens aided

by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). NeGP is a comprehensive “programme” of the Government of India that is “designed” to leverage capabilities and opportunities presented

by ICT to promote good governance across the country.

The reason to use the terms “designed” and “programme” for this national plan is deliberate. There still are gaps between the design and the institutional mechanism that is required to ensure that the objectives of NeGP are translated into reality.

Having said this, it is worth mention-

ing that the design of the programme is sound and well thought through. Some of the key features distinguishing it from typical short term focused projects in the Government are detailed below.

First, the programme clearly addresses one of the biggest bottlenecks to e-Government - infrastructure. It is a well known fact that lack of adequate infrastructure has been one of the key reasons for deployment of ICT for the benefit of the masses in our villages. The UNDP e-Readiness Index 2004 has also recently highlighted extremely poor infrastructure index resulting in an overall low e-Readiness Index for India. This focus on infrastructure would help address the “access-divide” which is going to be the key to provide effective government services where it is needed the most – our Villages.

The programme proposes three “core pillars” for improving infrastructure i.e. State Wide Area Network, State Data Centre and Common Citizen Centres. It is understood all of the above three are extremely impor-

Central Government Projects

State Government Projects (Sub Programme)

Integrted Projects

• • • • •

• • • • • • • • • •

• EDI • e-BIZ • Common Service Centres • India Portal • EG Gateway • e-Procurement • e-Courts

National ID Central Excise Income Tax DCA 21 Passports/Visa & Immigration • Pensions

Land Records Property Registration Transport Agriculture Municipalities Gram Panchayats Commercial Taxes Treasuries Police Employment Exchange

Programme Components • Core Policies • Integrated Services • Core Infrastructure • Technical Assistance • Support Infrastructure • HRD & Training 6

• Awareness & Assessment, • Organisation Structures • R&D

tant components of the programme and success of these three components would to a very large extent eventually decide the fate of the overall programme.

Second, important implication of the programme is its coverage. It is important that e-Governance is all pervasive to ensure success. The fact that NeGP incorporates ICT planning across a large number of citizen impacting departments is a strong positive. However, the programme would need to find effective and innovative ways of integrating with the Government Public Health and Education initiatives to ensure synergies in delivery channels.

Third, probably for the first time in the use of ICT for governance, NeGP has laid considerable emphasis on dismantling silos and building integrated delivery capabilities. This would make enable provisioning of Government services at the grass root level in an economically feasible way. This would also ensure that citizens do not have to run from pillar to post and numerous Government Citizen Services would be provided from a single service centre.

Fourth, in line with emphasis in the last budget, the programme focuses on outcomes in the form of services to be provided with a clear articulation of the proposed levels of service. It is understood that the Apex Committee responsible for the monitoring of the programme is driving all the Central departments responsible for the various Mission Mode Projects to formulate clear service levels that would be achieved under NeGP. This would form the basis for a suitable monitoring and evaluation framework. Further, an E-Governance Assessment Framework has been created by the Department of Information Technology, GoI for assessing e-Governance www.egov.csdms.in |

projects. These two initiatives should ensure that the projects remain focused on their objectives and any slippages from the predetermined metrics can be identified on a timely basis.

Finally, there seems to be a visible public proclamation of support for e-Government and ICT. However, similar signs from the top echelons of the government could help demonstrate leadership support for this programme.

Overview Some of the key elements of NeGP are as follows: • Rapid deployment and scale-up of select “Mission Mode Projects” (MMPs) with significant citizen interface • Creation of a national IT backbone for fast, reliable and efficient connectivity, data storage and access • Integrated citizen service centres for delivery of citizen services • Creation of web portals for 24x7 access to government information and services.

Besides the above, the NeGP also provides for significant investments in areas such as Government Process Reengineering, Capacity Building, Training, Assessment and Awareness.

In its current form, NeGP consists of 10 functional components and identified Mission Mode Projects (MMP’s) to be executed over a period of four years. An Apex committee under the Cabinet Secretary is already in place for providing the strategic direction and management oversight. The identified MMP’s include projects that are to be implemented by: • Line ministries / departments at the Central Level, • State Departments, and • Integrated projects, which may span multiple ministries/departments/ agencies NeGP as an integrated programme with several identified MMPs and various components is a relatively new concept. A number of MMPs proposed under NeGP were under implementation even before this programme was conceptualised. It was seen by the policy planners that there is a varying degree of understanding of the objectives for these projects and they have met with mixed | July 2005

success. Further, the individual projects are at varying degree of preparation – while some are still in concept stage, some have already started pilots, and others are even being rolled out. Additionally, there were significant differing perceptions on what constitutes e-Governance. A large number of stakeholders assume this means computerisation viz. buying software and installing black boxes are the nucleus of e-Governance. The centrality of citizen service was absent or not very well appreciated during structuring of a project. Also in the past, most government IT initiatives have been expenditure driven, where the focus has been on utilisation of departmental funds within the sanctioned timeframe.

With this backdrop it would be fair to say that NeGP is a radical new approach aimed at substantially accelerating the spread of e-Governance, giving it a citizen service orientation and ensuring fast, convenient, and accessible services.

The MMPs which form part of NeGP have been selected largely through voluntarism of the concerned line ministries / departments and inherent ability to benefit the society, and therefore the programme contours are flexible enough to include more projects as and when an interest is shown by a department.

Another important aspect of NeGP is that it is envisaged as a centralised initiative with decentralised implementation i.e. the overall monitoring, administration & standard setting would be performed at the centre, whereas the responsibility for implementation would rest with the coordinating line ministry / department at the centre or the state.

NeGP is a radical new approach aimed at substantially accelerating the spread of e-Governance •

•

•

•

•

The ‘Programmatic’ Plan To overcome the current bottlenecks that plague the existing system (Computerisation vs. service delivery; limited focus on process re-engineering, delay in project approval, limited leverage of private capital, limited internal capacity/ expertise for project management in departments etc.), a programmatic approach to the implementation of NeGP has been proposed, with the objective of ensuring: • Outcome/ Service orientation - help bring an outcome driven approach and assist in independent assessment of achievements.

•

Standardisation – It would assist in bringing standardisation of approach with respect to technology and processes across MMPs. This could help State and Local Governments to strengthen and standardise their own e-Governance initiatives as also reduce the overall cost in the long term.

Faster implementation – Through improved project structuring, quick resolution to interdependencies and availability of additional budgetary resources.

Cost economy – Taking a holistic view on projects including its interdependencies can bring significant cost savings. This can be achieved by reducing time taken for project execution, duplication of investments in core infrastructure, costs incurred in making projects interoperable, bringing in overall efficiencies in the work process, etc.

Integrated approval – NeGP would allow funding of projects that include and integrate investments in capital expenditure, operations and maintenance expenses and human resources for successful project implementation.

Capacity building – providing a mechanism under NeGP of supplementing internal capacity of departments by providing long and short-term assistance through experts from government, industry and academia, the programme can build internal capacities of department.

This would also bring high visibility and advocacy to the programme at the national level.

Leveraging of private capital / partnerships - bringing about synergies in collaborative efforts and long term sustainability of programs, partnerships and alliances need to be built at several levels. Special attention is thus required to build partnerships 7

•

with the state governments, district administrations, panchayati raj institutions and the private sector, which will ultimately carry forward the project. A well-designed NeGP can help achieve the same.

Improved project management skills - While the IT “components” of any e-Governance initiative may account for significant portion of the cost, their role in determining the success or failure of a project is disproportionately lower. It is because in typical e-governance projects, technology implementation are far less crucial to the success or failure of the project than issues like project management, change management, IT management and government process reengineering. Managing all these elements in a coordinated, sustained and planned manner requires professional project and IT management skills and capacity building, which can be addressed through a programme approach.

Over the past few months, NeGP has generated a great deal of excitement – both within government circles as well as internationally with multilateral institutions with the World Bank expressing their interest in supporting the government’s programme. The World Bank has conducted 2 missions, an identification mission in October-November 2004, which was to understand the broad scope and approach of the plan as well as identify potential areas of support. In March- April 2005 after the preparatory mission, the World Bank gave an in-principle approval to $500 million funding to support the Government of India’s visionary programme, which they have coined as “e-Bharat”.

Long way to go…

While, the prevailing issues within the government processes and procedures have already been highlighted, may potentially constitute some of the major hurdles towards smooth implementation of the NeGP. Some of the core issues in greater detail: • The biggest issue that is likely to come in way of the effective implementation of NeGP is the federal and 8

•

•

departmental nature of our country.

While, the cross cutting nature of the programme is appreciate, it is also a source of concern. It is a well known fact that Departments (ministries) in Centre and various States prefer to work independently. How the programme would ensure that its objectives are implemented in letter and spirit by “independent” departments is probably one of the biggest challenges. In most countries that have a similar programme (and there are many) this has been made possible by creating separate mechanisms to promote e-Governance that works directly under the office of the President or Prime Minister.

One of the most critical elements of the programme that have been appreciated by many has been its stress on achieving pre-determined Service Levels through extensive Government Process Reform (GPR). GPR in most cases would require extensive changes to law, rules and regulations.

It is a moot point to discuss whether a sufficient momentum exists in the country to undertake such wide-ranging government process reform. Let us take the case of Urban Local Bodies, a MMP. In the past, Ministry of Urban Development has taken a number of initiatives to bring about municipal reforms such as Model Municipal Law, Accounting Reforms, Challenge funds etc. However, its actual adoption has been extremely slow. The reason for this once again is our “federal structure” discussed above. How far does the political and bureaucratic mechanisms put their weight behind GPR would determine the real success of NeGP. It has been already argued that the programme is well designed, but it is clear that the challenges lie more in the implementation. It has indicated that a Programme Management Unit (PMU) is being created for NeGP to help ensure translate these plans into reality. The question is what is the degree of power and authority (stated or assumed) does this PMU have to “instruct” or “persuade” departments and state governments to follow NeGP in its entirety.

•

•

•

Most States in India (exception being a few southern Indian States) have limited access to any institutionalised mechanisms for building capacities to implement such a comprehensive program, whether it is project development and design, bid process management, professional project management, development of Contractual Frameworks, Service Level Agreements, etc. The Planning Commission has already allocated funds for capacity building (17 crores in the last fiscal year) under NeGP. States would need to ensure that these funds are used effectively to develop capacities for embarking upon such an ambitious plan in a time bound manner.

There is a need for prioritisation. Irrespective of the debate on what is likely to be the final cost of the NeGP programme, one point that all agree is that the sum of funds that NeGP proposes to spend over the next 4-5 years is huge. This brings us to the next challenge for the programme. Has the programme evaluated the absorptive capacity of the States? The programme will have to ensure that projects at the state level are executed at a pace that their current or enhanced capacity is able to absorb.

Most components of the centralised initiatives i.e. monitoring framework, participation guidelines, policies on standards, architecture, etc. are still to be finalised. This needs to be done at a fast pace to ensure that NeGP does not create problems of non – standardisation and interoperability – this would defeat the real purpose of following a programmatic approach.

Neel Ratan is an Executive Director PriceWaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. The opinions expressed in this article are personal. neel.ratan@in.pwc.com

www.egov.csdms.in |

NOTEBOOK

Egyptian e-Government Program The Egyptian Information Society Initiative for Government Services Delivery The Government of Egypt realises that development of a strong Communication and Information Technology (CIT) sector is its key to foster local competitiveness in global arena.

To back up the sector, the government established the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) in October 1999. The Ministry has two mandates to achieve. The first is to convert Egypt into an Information Society and the second is to create a marketable CIT industry. Upon establishment, the Ministry laid down the National plan for CIT, which focused mainly on defining a clear road map for Egypt to get integrated smoothly in the global economy.

The Egyptian e-Government program (EISI –government) is a major milestone for Egypt to bridge the digital divide and to convert to an Information Society. The e-Government program officially started in July 2001 but was planned since October 2000.

Vision and objectives The program envisions enabling the Egyptian government to be able to deliver high quality government services to the public at a place they are and in the format that suits them by the year 2007. The vision is guided by three main principles: • Citizen centric service delivery: The slogan of the program “government now delivers” reflects government’s intention to develop a one-stop shop e-Services approach focused at citizen’s needs.

• Community participation: Citizens’ demands are constantly being analysed and reflected, and private/public sector companies are active participants in project’s implementation and management.

• Efficient allocation of government resources: Productivity, cost reduction, and efficient allocation of resources are among the major expected outcomes from project implementation.

Main objectives of the program are: • Delivering services to the public where they are, in the format that suits them, at the right time and allowing them to share in the decision making process.

• Creating conducive environment to investors by streamlining procedures, easing | July 2005

•

•

• •

access to government services and providing one-stop shopping for essential business services, thus encouraging foreign and local investment.

Providing accurate and updated information to support the decision making process, and to help in planning and following up on the different long-term development initiatives.

Deploying new philosophies and practices of modern management in the government in a mode that will make government operations more efficient and cost effective.

Reducing government expenditure by introducing new models for procurement, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

Fostering local competitiveness and increasing globalisation readiness to ensure the smooth integration of the Egyptian government in the global community both regionally, and internationally.

Implementation framework In the new model for service delivery, citizens, businessmen, and suppliers can access government networks directly or through service providers. After authentication, users can access the government gateway (Bawaba) and get the privileges associated with their log in credentials. The government gateway afterwards integrates multiple back ends (Ministries, government bodies and government databases) and provides them with a friendly citizen centric interface. The whole process is supported by a strong infrastructure, and this includes specific standards for networking, information security, document management, and interoperability.

Challenges and proposed solutions The challenges in the implementation of e-Government and set of proposed solutions are as follows: 1. Authentication over networks: The absence of a legal framework that allows for remote authentication, makes it difficult to conduct transactions over networks. The proposed solutions are drafting the e-Signature law and creating a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) framework.

2. e-Payment: The duplication of the developed countries e-Payment framework, which is highly dependant on credit cards is not suitable for the developing countries, where the penetration of credit cards is pretty low.

Therefore a simple e-Payment framework has been devised that allows for several payment options and meets the majority of citizens’ demands.

In the new model for service delivery, citizens, businessmen, and suppliers can access government networks directly or through service providers.

9

3.

4.

5.

Automation: Lack of standards and specifications for the process of government automation is leading to difficulties in communication and integration between different government bodies. Moreover due to many cultural and security reasons, there is reluctance in people to use automated systems.

To meet the challenges of automating workflows, several documents of standards have been drafted and published. Awareness programs have been launched to make the government employees know about the e-Government culture and techniques.

Process workflow: Several problems are faced while ensuring efficient process workflow. Like, reluctance to modify the workflow either as a result of inflexibility or fear of change or wrongfully thinking it needs legislation.

Multiple auditing bodies and overlapping authority among government bodies are slowing down the workflows. To defend the re-engineering, there is a need to study business cycles, governing laws and regulation and come up with answers.

Networking: There is inexistence of a government communication network whereby different government bodies can interact and exchange information

6.

7.

and documents. In solution, a network is being created to improve government communication.

Services: Improvement in quality of service delivery has been a major challenge. A single government portal has been introduced that integrates multiple back ends and gives a citizen-centric friendly interface, which provides all government services through a one stop shop technique that assures citizens satisfaction, and convenience.

Access: Low penetration of PC, Internet and computer illiteracy is a major hindrance for the majority population to benefit from the new model of e-Government. To meet these challenges, free

Summary of the Egyptian EISI Government Program Objectives

Challenges

Projects

Components

Enhancing Egyptian government readiness to accept a strong local program and to smoothly integrate in the global community.

Legal and regulatory challenges: - Remote authentication mechanism.

- Security and perivacy issues.

Technological challenges: - Lack of unified standerds - Multiple service providers - Isolated communication islands of government bodies.

Culture and economic challenges: - Poor penetration of credit cards - Inexistence of suitable e-payment method.

Basic Infrastructure Project

- e-Signature and Public Key Infrastructure.

- Document of standards.

- Government gateway.

- Government communication network.

- Simple but comprehensive e-Payment framework

Providing timely, customised and quality measured government services to the citizens and investors through convenient delivery channels.

-

Service Delivery Project

- Reengineering services and availing them through the Networks (Internet, Telephone and Mobile) - Establishing service centers, everywhere (postal offices, IT clubs, and telecenters).

- Establishing programs to distribute PCs for homes and SMEs.

- Reluctance and mistrust of automation.

- Inflexibility to modify workflows (wrongfully thinking its illegal) - Multiple auditing bodies.

- Overlapping authority among government bodies.

- Adopting new philosophies and practices of modern management.

Back office Automation Project

- EISI-Government ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning).

- Document management and electronic archiving.

- Business process automation.

- Reluctance of information sharing among government bodies.

- Security and privacy issues.

- Ownership and copyrights issues.

- Lack of unified data dictionary and definitions.

Economic Databases and Decision Support Project

- Creation and update of databases.

- Drafting standards and laws for information sharing, copyrights, and ownership.

Increasing efficiency and reducing expenditure.

Providing accurate and updated information to serve investors and to support the decision making process.

10

Reputation of quality of services.

Inconvenience of delivery mechanisms Overlap among service providers.

Computer illiteracy and low PC and internet penetration.

www.egov.csdms.in |

With as many as 700 + services provided by the Egyptian government, here are a few samples

Internet and affordable PC initiatives have been taken. They provide Internet access at local call cost over phone line and PCs are available at low cost through easy instalment terms. Several access points are created that help citizens access government services online in postal offices, kiosks, IT clubs, and community centres. The Egyptian services portal is also designed to accept new methods of connection to the portal engines like SMS (Short Message Service), IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition), which is under implementation and will be available soon.

Citizen Services

Business Services

• The Birth certificate/national ID replacement services • The college enrollment guide • Car license renewal service • Tourism complaints system • Egypt Air flight inquiry service • Cairo Airport traffic • Electricity bills inquiry • Public libraries and others

• Taxation and custom services • Export Guide • License service for telecommunications companies and others

a transaction routing engine, multiple service providers’ connectors and is supported by a payment engine. This project has been designed and implemented in cooperation with Microsoft and its Egyptian partners.

Service delivery project This project is about tailoring government services to meet citizens and investors needs and expectations. The project introduces the customer relationship management (CRM) culture to the government, where citizens are being viewed as customers.

Automation of governorates The project also includes a special track for the automation of local governorates.

It aims at simplifying procedures at local government bodies and establishing back end systems to support the online delivery of governorates services.

Back office automation project Program components Based on the above targeted solutions, several projects were created in the program.

The basic infrastructure project The basic infrastructure project targets 5 arenas: Legal and Regulatory Issues, Standards, Public Key Infrastructure, ICT Readiness and Government Gateway. The e-Signature law, approved by the parliament is considered a milestone for EISI-Government implementation. Other laws are currently in the pipeline such as the cyber crime and electronic contracting. Four documents have been drafted by the EISI-government workgroup defining the framework requirements in Networking and Messaging, procedures for implementing a document management system and electronic archives, interoperability standards and the code of practice for information security management.

The Government Portals www.Egypt. gov.eg and www.misr.gov.eg are designed as one-stop-shop for all government services ranging from simple queries, submitting forms and full transaction. The gateway is composed of a registration and authentication engine, | July 2005

The project proposes automation through a unified EISI-Government applications package for ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) that includes payroll, accounting, budget, personnel, inventory and procurement. e-Documentation is the second arena that is being sought. The first pilot included five Ministerial offices along with the Prime Minister Office. Business process automation was targeted in several high demand citizen service area. Over 28 projects are now implemented in courts, notary public offices, and others.

National and economic databases and decision support project The aim here is to avail accurate information for decision makers through compiled, linked and mined databases that cover different economic sectors.

This will serve the government and valuable for investors to complete their feasibility studies and assure reduced risk to their targeted projects.

Conclusion EISI-government is strongly emerging with a clear vision and policies encouraging community participation, public-private partnership, co-operation between government bodies, human resource development and quality assurance. The e-Government program is a move in the right direction to an efficient and integrated delivery of all government services and allowing higher levels of transparency.

Mohamed Sameh Bedair is e-Government Program Director of Ministry of State for Administrative Development, Egypt.

SBedair@ad.gov.eg

11

NOTEBOOK

In focus: Italy egov brings you an exclusive interview with Lucio Stanca, Minister for Innovation and Technologies, Government of Italy – the key person entrusted with the responsibility for transforming Italian public administration through the use of ICT.

“Italy is one of the

first countries in the world to introduce and execute Code for e-Government

”

Minister Lucio Stanca Ministry for Innovation and Technologies, Italy

The ‘e-Government Action Plan (22 June 2000)’ is the rulebook as far as deployment of e-Government initiatives in Italy is concerned. Tell us about the vision of Italy in this area?

When the present Government took office, Italy was lagging behind many countries in terms of IT penetration and usage. It was precisely with the aim of bridging this gap that the Government created the new Ministry of Innovation and Technologies that I guide. It put modernisation of Italian public administration as a focal point of policy and set itself a target for growth and competitiveness through use of technology. e-Government initiatives of Italy has set itself with two major goals: (i) simplification of relationship between public offices and citizens/businesses; and (ii) greater efficiency of Government processes using technology. We have already made enormous headway towards achieving these goals, notably in the public sector, which has undergone a transformation through the use of ICTs. In past four years, the Government has introduced various regulatory reforms and laid foundations for an efficient public administration that is more responsive to the demands of public and businesses. These regulations have been formalised in the form of “Code for e-Government”, which for its homogeneity and completeness, can be considered a “Magna Carta” for any modern public administration. Italy is one of the first countries in the world to introduce and execute this important reform. The Code also accords centrality to right of citizens and obliges the entire

Government machinery to adopt information technology as their main tool of work. In essence, we have assisted the birth of “digital citizen”, having new rights and opportunities.

The services that are available online vary from accounting, e-Procurement, e-Taxation, e-Payment, Government intranet, population registry, cadastre, e-Customs, e-Justice, to e-Statistics. Are these services in full transactional mode? What are the feedbacks from people/users?

Many of the applications are already up and running. For example, 100% of income tax returns are now made online and we have many more on-going e-Government projects. A Public Connectivity System (PCS) has been set up to network all central and local public offices, including Italian consular offices abroad. For citizens, e-Government is becoming an indispensable faculty that gives them access to public services without restrictions of time or place. A poll has found that 54% of Internet users in Italy make use of Government websites, which is higher than other developed countries like Britain (50%) and Germany (40%). In addition, 62% of visitors to Italian Government websites have declared themselves as “very satisfied” with the services they find there.

The structure of the Ministry for Innovation and Technologies comprise of 4 Offices and 12 Services. It seems that there is a very thin line between, say, the Office for the Information Society (Division for Digital Technologies for Citizens and Businesses) and the Office for Digitalisation of Public Administration (Division for Regional and Local Government) – what is the inherent mandate that separates these offices?

The Ministry for Innovation and Technologies (which is from an administrative point of view a Department within the Presidency of the Council of Ministers) was established with a Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, on 27 September 2001. It is made up of four Offices and 12 Services - two of which report directly to Head of the Department. The Office for the Information Society is in charge of promoting, coordinating and steering activities for the development of the Information Society as well as for relevant administrative, regulatory and planning measures. It concerns itself particularly with projects

The Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force) set up by G-8 leaders has engaged Italy to coordinate international action against digital divide and launch specific initiatives on e-Government.

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www.egov.csdms.in |

and programmes for digitalisation in areas relating to young people and businesses. The Office for the Digitalisation of the Public Administration, on the other hand, is responsible for organising the regulatory strategy of the Department and specifically, preparing laws, regulations, administrative directives and legal texts.

Italy has undertaken commendable work in Iraq, Mozambique, etc. in the arena of ‘ICT for better public administration’.

What is Italy’s commitment on the ‘e-Government for Development’ Initiative and in the ‘e-Europe Plan 2005’?

In the G-8 Summit at Genoa, Heads of State and Governments approved an Action Plan to bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries. On this occasion, Italy announced its intent to implement e-Government projects in developing countries and those with transitional economies.

Thus emerged a new priority for Italian Development Cooperation – ‘e-Government for Development’. We’re already working on 16 projects in 14 different countries. In addition to projects in Iraq and Africa, we are working in Latin America, the Caribbean and eastern European countries, such as Macedonia and Albania. In the Middle East region we are working in Jordan and Lebanon. Italy has also taken up a proactive role in the European scenario through the ‘e-Europe’ programme under the framework of Lisbon Strategy. This programme adopts an open method of coordination among representatives of the Member States contributing towards identification of legislative needs, objectives and common actions for ensuring most effective use of ICT for citizens, business and Government.

Considering the potential of our Government made e-Government policy as the priority issue during the semester of Italian Presidency of the European Union in 2003. Our point of view has been shared by the European Commission and by Member States, resulting in the initiative to become a success.

What have been the efforts to address the change to an electronic form of Governance in Italy (for instance - ICT training for Government employees, process re-engineering, etc.)?

Kindly elaborate.

Change has always been a source of suspicion, especially when it affects engrained processes and habits. The digital revolution must therefore be cultural before it can be technological.

For this reason, the Government has rolled out programmes for instructing and re-training public sector employees with the aim of increasing both quality and quantity of ICT use in transactions between public offices and citizens or businesses. We are also promoting e-Learning through new technologies as it has immense potential to cater to large number of people at once and make them technology-friendly.

It is wonderful to know that you have taken initiative for promoting safe and informed Internet usage, especially by children (“Internet & Children” Code). Kindly elucidate this agenda, briefing on how it helps in creating Internet ethics.

Internet is a very powerful tool of knowledge, communication and social progress. However, by virtue of its enormous potential, Internet can also pose a risk for the society and propose | July 2005

ITALY: FAST FACTS • • • • • • • • •

More than 40% of the “priority” services are available online.

More than 1.5 million digital signatures have been distributed.

71% of public sector employees are now ICT-enabled compared with 31% in 2001.

144 million e-mails are exchanged among Government offices.

164 million e-mails are exchanged between Government and public offices.

Percentage of population using a computer: 37% (2002) Percentage of population using Internet: 29% (2003) Internet usage by enterprises of 10+ employees: 83% (2003) Internet usage by enterprises for interaction with public authorities: (A) Obtaining information: 68% (2003) (B) Obtaining forms: 53% (2003) (C) Returning filled forms: 35% (2003)

much that is bad and even offensive. It would be mistaken, however, to try to avoid these dangers by limiting its availability. Rather, it is necessary to regulate and monitor them. To address this issue, the Italian Government has formed a Technical Committee in July 2002, comprising representatives from ten Ministries and two public watchdog bodies (namely, Communications Authority and Data Protection Authority). Another Government initiative is “Who’s Afraid of the Internet” - a section of the Government portal (Italia.gov.it) containing practical information and advice on safe web surfing. The same portal also offers downloadable filter designed by the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) that preventatively screens language, images and content of websites. In collaboration with ten other Ministries who are engaged in our national anti-paedophile plan (“Ciclope”), we are proposing for a multimedia publication for women (mothers, teachers et al), who play a crucial role in the education of children. In addition, our Parliament is currently examining a Bill to combat the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography on the Internet. The Bill proposes a thorough approach to the problem by outlining specific technical, organisational and administrative actions that could restrict offensive use of Internet, specifically by young users.

Tell us about the OECD-MENA initiative? Any similar work plan for Asia on North-South partnership?

Italy is quite active in MENA countries area with projects in Jordan, Iraq, Morocco and Tunisia and a forthcoming project in Lebanon. The regional approach has always been our preferred ‘modus operandi’ in this area. As for Asian initiatives, the Italian Government took part in launching the e-Government Conference in Amman and also decided to sign Memorandum of Understanding with Government of Jordan and UNDP to start implementing projects.

(The full interview is available at the website www.egov.csdms.in)

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NOTEBOOK

DACNET Digital opportunities for fostering agricultural growth “In agricultural development, there is no time for complacency, we have to continue to develop better technologies, new crop varieties and animal products to meet the challenges ahead. We have to use all information on the available farm technologies to the farmers’ fields. The job is formidable”.

Norman E. Borlaug, The 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

The vision 2020 Document of Department of Agriculture of India envisages that “the tools of ICT will provide networking of agriculture sector not only in the country but also globally and the Centre and State Government Departments will have reservoir of databases” and also “bring farmers, researchers, scientists and administrators together by establishing agriculture online through exchange of ideas and information”.

The National Conference on Informatics for Sustainable Agricultural Development (ISDA) organised by the Ministry of Agriculture and National Informatics Centre (NIC), in May 1995, has given much-needed “roadmap” to usher in “ICT led agricultural development” in the country. The National Agricultural Policy (2000) lays emphasis on the use of ICT for achieving a more rapid development of agriculture.

Developments in e-governance provide opportunities to harness the power of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to make the business of governance inexpensive, qualitatively responsive and truly encompassing. During the Ninth Plan, e-Governance Infrastructure like - Public Information and Facilitation Centre, Video Conferencing Facility, in-house ICT Training Centre were established and made operational in the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC) offices at Krishi Bhawan and Shastri Bhawan in New Delhi. The website www.agricoop.nic.in has become the ICT4D gateway.

DACNET In the overall strategy of ushering in e-Governance paradigm, the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation has initiated the project “DACNET” (http://dacnet. nic.in) as a Central Sector Scheme, to provide IT apparatus in its Directorates, Regional Directorates and Field Units located through out the country with the following components: • ICT infrastructure and networking of Directorates, Regional Directorates and their Field Units for Internet and Intranet access with the central project unit • IT empowerment of employees through specialised training programmes • Development of applications • Development of software for strengthening e-Governance solutions A state-of-the-art Data Centre has been established to provide G2G, G2E and G2C services. Active directory, database, website, Intranet portal are some of the services offered to DACNET Users. The Directorates are equipped with Database Server, Internet Security Accelerator (ISA), Vision-2000 and Office-XP on Windows-2000 Platform. The Field Units are equipped with the latest MS Windows-XP and the Office-XP with local language Support.

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Application software Application Software are categorised as generic to all the Directorates as well as specific to individual Directorate and its field offices. The requirement analysis for information system modeling was undertaken using analytic (bottom-up) and synthetic (topdown) approaches. Application software have been developed using evolutionary prototyping and iterative development methods. This was done inspite of the fact that software development process in Government sector, face high risk in user interface design because of change in leadership, change in priority, improper requirements specification and inadequate business logic. Application software developed and implemented under DACNET, among others, include: • Plant “Quarantina” • Crop Weather Watch • Market Prices Analysis • Bio-fertilizers Informatics on-line • Integrated Pest Management Information System “IPMIS” • Central Registration Online Processing System ”CROPS” • Knowledge Management System “e-Granthalaya” • Office Automation Packages identified under minimum agenda of e- governance • Farm Machinery Informatics on-line

www.egov.csdms.in |

IT empowerment One of the project components under DACNET was IT empowerment of employees through specialised training programs. The total number of participants covered under these training programmes is about 6000 from various Directorates and Field units spread all over India. The training programme was conducted on four different modules viz.

• Office productivity tools (2697 employees trained) • Database design and analysis (2137 trained) • Decision support systems (675 trained) • Geographic Information System (425 Trained)

Conclusion Our economic and industrial growth is independent on productivity in agriculture.

Convegence of core technologies and e-Governance has become the tool for sustainable development and globalisation of economy.

Agriculture in India needs a “productivity and quality revolution”, which can be brought out through the much-needed reforms in information access, extension services, credit, marketing, pricing, rural infrastructure and most importantly land reforms. All of these can be attained through effective use and application of modern ICTs.

M Moni is Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC) moni@hub.nic.in

Alka Mishra is Technical Director, National Informatics Centre (NIC) amishra@hub.nic.in

| July 2005

What DACNET is doing?

•

• • •

Providing e-governance solutions for strategic applications like plant protection & quarantine, weather watch, marketing & inspection, nutrient management etc.

Providing useful databases and information packages for marketing opportunities and agri-business.

Information exchange among all stakeholders (Directorates, Regional Directorates, Field Units).

Availability of extension and advisory services on demand facilitating “agri-clinics”.

Spectrum of users • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Agricultural Marketing Information System Network (AGMARKNET) National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE) National Institute of Agricultural Marketing (NIAM) National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) Tribal Co-operative marketing development federation of India Ltd. National Consumers Cooperatives Federation (NCCF) National Tree Growers Federation (NTGF) Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) Jute Corporation of India (JCI) Export Promotion Councils (EPCs) National Horticulture Board (NHB) Commodity Boards Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) FICCI, ASSOCham, CII National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) Food Corporation of India (FCI) Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) Planning Commission & State Planning Boards Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) & it’s 89 Institutes/Directorates State Agricultural Universities (SAU) & their Zonal Research Stations State Agriculture Departments District Agriculture Departments Agricultural Economics Research Centres Traders, Processors, Sellers, Agents etc Extension Education Institutes Farming Community and other Stake holders 15

NOTEBOOK

e-Trikala: First Digital City in Greece Different approaches give alternative definitions for the ‘Digital City’. Digital environments containing official and unofficial information collected from a small community and made available through a unique portal are called “Information Cities”. Moreover, a network of organisations, social teams and enterprises operating in a city area is defined as a Digital City.

The project has extended those previous approaches by defining the Digital City as “the global information environment, focusing on the needs of a mediumsized city”. The environment contains Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions, but is not designed to offer digital public services or to create digital communities. The primary targets of the Digital City are: a) to offer digital means for supporting social needs in all daily transactions. b) to acclimate the local community to the notion of the Information Society, and c) to collect official and unofficial information from the local community in order to support sustainable growth of small societies.

The concept of the Digital City According to the extended definition, the Digital City offers ICT means and methods to cover social needs in the city area. Because cities can have different needs related to the above axes of precedence, each Digital City will be unique. However, all digital cities have the same development principles and they are all based on a multi-tier architecture consisting of layers namely Infrastructure layer, Service layer and Users and Back-office layer (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The three-tier architecture of the Digital City.

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a)

Infrastructure layer: This layer consists of hardware and software infrastructures necessary for the Digital City’s operation. (e.g. fiber optic Metropolitan Area or wireless broadband networks, network equipment, intelligent transport system, points of access (such as infokiosks), operating software systems etc.). b) Service layer: They represent the development and delivery of products and services of an organised unit to the public. Digital Cities realise life events and situations according to special cases occurring in the city area. Moreover, digital services are developed to treat social cases, offer public information and to present the ‘Human Face’ of Administration in the local community. The Service layer is the most critical issue of the Digital City since it provides a framework for communication between citizens and organisations of the Public and the Private Sector, and it is related to the diffusion of digital activities to the community. c) Users layer: This layer comprises of all different unique users or teams of users – such as citizens, civil servants, public organisations, schools, local enterprises – who transact with the Service layer and applications they need to transact with the Digital City. d) Back-office layer: This layer refers to all organised authorities and enterprises that produce and deliver information to the end - users or execute public services and digital transactions in general.

The development of the Digital City can follow the top-down procedure, based on the design and implementation methodology employed by Municipal Agencies since local communities are ‘close’ to the Municipalities and Municipalities are aware of all local needs.

On the other hand, a local community is a dynamic evolving environment, whose needs - which are not ICT simulated - are not static and therefore cannot be mapped out just once.

Digital City considers that the ICT means and methods allocate current needs and simulate related transactions. (Figure 2) www.egov.csdms.in |

e-Trikala The e-Trikala project (www.trikalacity.gr) consists of some initial phases and has predefined some future phases for the proper operation of the digital environment. The implementation methodology of e-Trikala, the first Digital City in Greece describes the strategic planning for digital local governance, which is extended beyond the citizen digital dispatch and focuses on all possible profitand non-profit-oriented services. The municipality developed a working group consisting of special executives (project managers and ICT seniors coming from the academic and private sectors) to design and to implement the initial phases of the project. Later, representatives of social teams (such as schools and teams of people who need special care) were incorporated into the work team and brainstorming procedures were implemented delivering special aspects both with top-down and bottom-up flow. The whole procedure was a participatory design process, which is dynamic and occurs often during the implementation of the project.

The initial phase consists of the subprojects that deliver necessary infrastructure and services: 1. Infrastructure projects: It refers to the installation of both a fiber optic Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) and a Wi-Fi broadband network in the area of Trikala, the installation of the primary domains to offer specific digital services and the allocation of basic access points for the citizens (‘intelligent stations’ of the intelligent transport network, info-kiosks for accessing public information and for e-Ticketing, IVR call centre, KEP office as a front-desk for the Digital City, tele-work centres and access point in the Municipal Library).

2. Digital service projects: This refer to the design and deployment of e-Government services through a portal application.

Moreover, a collaboration environment for civil servants who execute all possible non-automated public services was designed. Furthermore, primary non-profit digital services, such as telecare and distant learning services, were designed.

3. Projects aiming at the constitution of the ‘critical mass’ of users: The successful dissemination of the Digital City will be based on social acceptance, which will be undertaken by a critical mass of users | July 2005

Figure 2: The Digital City creates a new virtual environment that consists of more than one virtual teams, sharing knowledge through Digital City’s area aware of all available public services and procedures. Relevant projects were designed: training courses for all organised teams (civil servants, students, members of people who need special assistance, employed and unemployed citizens etc.), briefing projects on the benefits of broadband networks and projects which aim at the development of teams of volunteers (unemployed and students).

The development methodology of e-Trikala consists of the following considerations:

Social consideration The Digital City must be an open environment able to be accessed by all citizens, even those who are not ICT skilled or who do not have ICT equipment to access the Digital City. The methodology provided for the installation of access points in public buildings (such as the Municipal Library) and the development of training courses oriented to both primary ICT skills and to Digital City services as means to

Trikala announced as the first Digital City initiative in Greece by the Greek Vice Minister of ‘Economics C. Folias late last year will finish its first phase by the middle of 2006. It consists of a number of individual ICT projects, some of which are already implemented while some are in the design phase. The project is developed under the responsiblity of the Municipality of Trikala.

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treat the digital divide. Moreover, the procedure that has been followed during the design of digital services aims at uploading through multiple channels, accessed by all possible devices (digital TV, 3G cell phones etc). Additionally, elderly citizen can access digital services through the special KEP office of the Digital City.

Technical consideration Some basic principles were settled upon regarding the ICT infrastructure and digital services: 1) The procurement of standardised equipment and of applications built upon open standards 2) Scalability, mobility and interoperability aspects 3) Simplification and usability

Information consideration From the multiple facets that were kept in mind with regard to information production, ownership, security and deployment, the e-Trikala project set the following targets: 1) The definition of specific XML schemes to structure the information that is produced and exchanged.

2) The use of specific metadata – related to the project – describing ownership and versioning. Moreover, information belonging to the Municipality will be hosted in the Digital City’s infrastructure, and authorisation will be necessary for both access and storing transactions.

3) The Digital City will behave like a ‘trusted third party’ for all local institutions and will verify the application and deliver the appropriate results.

Ethical consideration Here are some of the following ethical issues that were looked into: 1) Consent of all involved parties must be secured, while the operation and the risks of the Digital City must be previously presented in detail.

2) The authorisation of the Digital City to act as a trusted third party must be accepted by all involved partners.

3) Citizens must be aware of all parties who will have access to sensitive personal data.

4) Technical administrators will not have access to private data or to global data coming from different applications. Only authorised parties will have authorisation to view and investigate global data.

5) Security options will be applied to infrastructure and information level.

Security will be applied even in the portal of the Digital City, in order for third parties not to investigate visitor statistical data.

6) The participant who will administer the operation of the Digital City will be responsible for monitoring and supporting social participation.

In e-Trikala, the Municipality followed the top-down implementation procedure as authorised by the city council. However, after the first presentation of e-Trikala, citizen reactions against a possible digital divide and regarding privacy concerns caused a technophobic retroaction to the initial design. Since the Municipality had gained the confidence of the local community, it managed to handle the initial reactions and to proceed to the incorporation of social teams into the design team. This can be a lesson for all projects related to Digital City projects.

Future steps The Digital City discovers all social and technical aspects related to the Information Society and to the interconnection between traditional and virtual spaces.

In the development methodology of e-Trikala, we tried to present how all these aspects were considered and treated. The combination of bottom-up and top-down design of the new digital environment was selected to support the risk management of all aspects and encourage social involvement.

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Projects already implemented • Promotion of Broadband use in the area of Trikala • Municipal Library’s helpdesk Projects already designed • Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) • Wireless Broadband Network • Municipal digital public services via e-Government portal • Tele-care system Projects at the design phase • Training courses on ICT for Civil Servants • Electronic marketplace for local enterprises • Geographical Information System of emergency management • Metropolitan ERP System • Distance learning courses • Digital broadcast system for cultural events

The Digital City of e-Trikala is still in the implementation phase. However, we predict that it will constitute a dynamic environment that will evolve and be driven by social needs.

This Digital City will be a test for all participants – the Government, the Municipality, citizens and enterprises – to create virtual communities and to co-exist in a new environment.

The future steps of the Digital City are the maintenance of the framework – which represents a huge investment – and the administration of the dynamic technical, informational and social evolution that will occur. Marketing options and social issues will both be taken into consideration, while academicians and social workers will be invited to support this endeavour.

The complete article with references is available online at www.egov.csdms.in

Anthopoulos Leonidas is the scientific coordinator of the e-Trikala project for the Municipality of Trikala and he is supervising the development of several e-Government projects. lanthopo@sch.gr

www.egov.csdms.in |

COMMENTARY

Leadership reflections for e-Government European perspective e-Government calls for strong leadership at different levels to provide a strategic vision and operational implementation of innovation and change processes in public administration. In terms of e-Government, ICTs and the Internet imply modernised service delivery processes regarding the sharing of data, business process redesign and human resources.

This in turn requires organisational change, new top-level leadership (e-Leaders), with mid-level leadership (e-Champions) supporting their work. Both clerical staff and managers need to develop a new and challenging set of skills. A new type of (general) manager is required. Apart from basic technical skills, general managers need an understanding of information management and the information society. Managers must be able to lead (and not be lead by) the organisation’s IT department, outside partners and must be able to integrate the organisation’s ICT strategy with its broader goals (OECD, 2003). At present, the Member States of the European Union are developing intensive training programmes to support the development of skills for staff, in line with the complex evolutionary process underway.

The main common priorities for training in the public sector in the EU concern subjects linked to leadership skills, digitisation of the public administration and European integration (EPAN study 2003).

e-Leaders – the top-level leadership eLeaders at the strategic and operational level share a basic core of competencies for successful e-Government implementation.

Strategic leadership Strategic leadership implies decisions closely linked to organisational priorities, and the ability to offer support to others. Some basic components of competencies can be summarised as follows: • The ability to enhance the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is vital. Clear assumption of responsibilities and understanding of roles, mutual respect, openness are required together with shared objectives, good communication channels and cooperation. | July 2005

•

•

•

The capability to take and implement (even unpopular) decisions. There might be times when it would be difficult for example, decisions on issues related to people that oppose changes related to ICT. The ability to communicate is crucial. Communication allows a two-way interaction integrating the know-how of organisational work and the rules, norms, values, and myths that motivate people to act effectively and efficiently.

Ensuring visibility within the entire organisation. During the process of change, involving different units and departments is of utmost importance, as is to demonstrate that leaders fulfil promises and meet expectations.

Operational leadership At the operational level, heads of department and programmes related to ICTs in public administration should have the ability to develop a leadership strategy based on two criteria: the digitisation of public services and the management challenges related to public affairs facing an increasingly intensive use of ICTs. In doing so, a set of specific aspects should be considered (SC&TPS, 2000) : • Focus on how IT can reshape work and public sector strategies • Use IT for strategic innovation, not simply tactical automation • Utilise best practices in implementing IT initiatives • Improve budgeting and financing for promising IT initiatives • Protect privacy and security • Form IT-related partnerships to stimulate economic development • Use IT to promote equal opportunity and healthy communities.

e-Champions – Mid-level leadership e-Leaders require a set of e-Champions in different units and departments throughout the organisation (and - for integrated government solutions - most likely across Table 1: Essential skills for dealing with e-Government processes Skills

Needed by

Information Technology Basic IT literacy Specialist IT skills

All employees, managers and IT specialist

Information management Internal information management External information management Privacy protection Feedback mechanisms Information Society Understand capabilities of ICT Ability to evaluate trends Foresee ICT’s impact on organisational culture Ability to set ICT strategy Management/Business Organisational change Risk management Accountability frameworks Financing arrangements Co-operation and collaboration Public-private partnerships

Managers and IM specialists

Managers

Managers

Source: OECD

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Table 2: Training systems in EU Member States (ex EU-15) EU Member States

Semi-decentralised

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Portugal Spain Sweden The Netherlands United Kingdom

Decentralised

Centralised

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Source: Hellenic National Center for Public Administration (2003)

organisations) to effectively implement e-Government. e-Champions are managers or mid-level staff, even base line personnel in small organisations, who understand, share and promote the strategic vision of e-Leaders addressing e-Government. Their role is vital in stimulating and deploying change throughout the organisation. e-Champions require clear work teams, sharing decision processes and agenda setting. At the same time, they support the strategic and operational leadership. e-Champions promote a bottom-up approach communicating the specific needs of each department in order to ensure that they are taken into account in the global approach to e-Government of the organisation.

Training programmes Decision makers in the European Union (EU) have on various occasions emphasized the importance of leadership skills for effective e-Government implementation.

Member states have started to address skills requirements in their e-Government and/or modernisation strategies. It is crucial that decision-makers and managers understand that investment in appropriate skills will ultimately pay off. More specifically, the Mid Term Programme 2004-2005 for Cooperation in Public Administrations in the EU aims at “identifying the acquisition of the different skills (not only technical skills) which are needed by managers (and clerical staff) to govern and manage change. By the end of 2005 the e-Government skills required will be appraised and recommendations will be agreed by the Member States” (EPAN Mid Term Programme 2003).

As a recent study in he EU has confirmed that approaches to training of public employees vary in the EU, in addition responsibilities for training are quite scattered among the different levels of administrations in the EU Member States (EPAN, 2003; for details see also table 2). To date a variety of training schemes (short term) and educational programmes (postgraduate programmes) have been developed in the EU member states (e.g. UK, Finland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Estonia to name but a few). At present a common understanding of a core training curriculum does not exist within the EU. However, training programmes within the EU Member States very often follow the scheme outlined by the OCED (see table 1).

It is interesting to note that according to a recent EPAN study (EPAN, 2003), subject linked to leadership skills and the digitisation of the public administration are the main common priorities for training in the public sector in the EU together with knowledge and skills related to EU matters. The European Institute of Public 20

Administration (EIPA) provides management training for European Commission officials in cooperation with national schools of public administration, as well as managers in national and regional administration. In response to the challenges described above, EIPA is presently developing a training programme that focuses on change management and e-Government skills in European Public Management.

One of the themes of this year’s eEurope Awards for e-Governance is “the right environment”. This ‘category’ focuses - among other issues - on skills and professional development in public administrations. (www.e-europeawards.org)

Conclusion As pointed out above, the practices of a society are embedded in the practice of institutions and evolve with them. This is why changes in institutions of business, government, etc. matter and why leadership is so important. However, “in the world of today’s organisations, the idealisation of great leadership leads to an endless search for heroic figures who can come in to rescue the rest of us from recalcitrant, non-competitive institutions”. One might ponder if... “this very thinking [might] be a key reason such institutions prevail”; and finally, “might not the continual search for the hero-leader be a critical factor in itself, diverting our attention away from building institutions that, by their very nature, continually adapt and reinvent themselves, with leadership coming from many people in many places, not just from the top?” (Senge, 2002).

The complete article with references is available online at www.egov.csdms.in

Christine Leitner is Senior Lecturer; Head of eEurope Awards Project Management Secretariat, European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht, The Netherlands. c.leitner@eipa-nl.com

www.egov.csdms.in |

CONFLUX 2005 PREVIEW

Programme Committee Dr M P Narayanan President, CSDMS Chairman, Programme Committee

Prof Karl Harmsen Director, Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (CSSTE-AP)

Dr Sanjay Tyagi Director, Software Technology Parks of India

Amitabha Pande Principal Resident Commissioner, Government of Punjab

Dr M P Gupta IIT Delhi

Subhash Bhatnagar Consultant Advisor e-Government, The World Bank

Deepak Maheshwari Secretary, ISP Association of India

Dr Morten Falch Technical University of Denmark

Dr Thomas Riley Chair, Commonwealth Centre of e-Governance

Jeremy Millard Danish Technological Institute

Prof Michael Blakemore University of Durham

Prof V S Ramamurthy Secretary, Department of Science and Technology

J N Singh Secretary, IT Gujarat Government

Dr Rohan Samrjiva LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka

Vijay Kumar Additional Commissioner, Income Tax, Government of India

The Grand New Delhi 17 - 19 October, 2005

e-Government: Evolution or Revolution?

Organisers

Conflux 2005 Secretariat Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies G - 4, Sector-39, NOIDA - 201 301, India Tel: +91-120-2502180 to 87, Fax: +91-120-2500060 URL: www.conflux.csdms.in

Media partners

www.conflux.csdms.in

Conflux 2005: 17 - 19 October, New Delhi, India

e-Government: Evolution or Revolution?

Introduction It is a well-established that Information and communication technologies (ICT) can help the governments and the public sector to deal with the challenges of economic, social and environmental development and contribute to boosting economic growth and innovation. However, driving good governance with the appropriate change management strategies, state of art technology and robust public private partnership models are the key to success or failures of the e-Government initiatives.

Dr M P Narayanan President, CSDMS

“

With a focus on the practioners’ perspective for converting e-Government vision to actionable strategies, the conference is a must for all the stakeholders involved from industry, government or political arena.

”

Conflux 2005: The e-Government Conference, a joint effort by Center for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), Government of NCT of Delhi, major departments of Government of India, key academic and civil society organizations, and multilateral agencies.

The aim of the conference is to provide a knowledge sharing platform and a forum for policymakers, practitioners, industry leaders and academicians for converting e-Government vision to actionable program.

National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)

Hon’ble Chief Minister, Shiela Dikshit will be inaugurating Conflux 2005.

“In the 21st century we would like to have the best of the world that has gone by, and the best of what can be created in the new world.

” R. Chandrashekhar, Joint Secretary (e-Governance), Ministry of Communication and Information Technology will be delivering keynote address at Conflux 2005.

“For us, e-Governance means ensuring or facilitating that services reach citizens - the rural mass, which is devoid of bare - minimum; improving the efficiency of

The Government of India has launched the National e-Governance Plan which is

government functioning; and ensuring better

perhaps the biggest initiative launched in the country towards usage of ICT in

quality of services.

”

governance.

Conflux 2005 will discuss in detail about the roadmap of the NeGP, the implementation plan, the possible impact and ways to take the message of NeGP agenda to a much wider and deeper level within the governmental system.

Prakash Kumar, IT Secretary, Delhi will be a key speaker in Conflux 2005.

At the conference, the State governments would be encouraged to discuss their NeGP action plans, time-lines, potential areas of collaboration with the industry and the civil society and within the government.

International participation Conflux 2005 will showcase some of the good practices in e-Government from several countries from Europe, South Asia, South East Asia, Middle East and North America. Conflux 2005 will be one of the few knowledge sharing events in e-Government, which have judicious mix of national and international perspectives at the single platform.

“If a person cannot find the information relating to any government department or services online, it can be presumed that it is not available

”

anywhere else.

Special Sessions e-Panchayat The success of the national e-government plan of India largely depends upon the capacity building and enhancement of the absorption capacity at the Panchayat level. The strategic framework to bridge the access divide at the grassroot level has been prepared by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj. The right implementation will help Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) leapfrog traditional problems of developments like poverty , illiteracy, corruption, disease, unemployment and social inequalities and move rapidly into the modern information age.

Key Tracks Track I: Technology framework for e-Government

In order to discuss the strategies and know about the current developments in the sector, Conflux 2005 will have a dedicated session on the subject in association with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, GoI. The session will focus on studying the existing initiatives, experiences of various departments and civil society organisations and experts on building skills and absorptive capacity of PRIs. Additional, the participants will also debate the government initiatives and plans to create enabling

This session will cover technology solutions for key focus areas of a typical National e-Government Plan. Besides, e-Government enterprise architecture, security issues in e-Government, interoperability issues, e-Health, e-Education citizen identification and authentication mechanisms, back office automation, providing single window services through web, Citizen Relationship Management (CRM) solutions from

infrastructure at grassroot level for the delivery of electronic public services.

ICT in Education There is abundant evidence that the use of ICT can lead to positive academic outputs, higher literacy rate, better attitude towards schools and better understanding of the abstract concepts. The audience that gains most from use of modern technologies in education are low income households, people with disabilities, marginalised communities if the right approach is taken.

various countries will also be covered.

Track II: e-Government strategic framework and future strategies

The ICT in Education session during Conflux 2005 will focus on using ICTs for improved learning, support strategies for disadvantaged groups, study of ICT impact on society and discussions on evolving most conductive education environment on ICT usage for eradicating infopoverty. The session will be organised in colloboration with Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.

The strategic options and best practices with a view to learn from national and international experiences for developing

e-Health

strategies will be the thrust of this track.

For a health system to function effectively there are two basic requirements- appropriate services should be made to the people and the services should be accessible to all. Information generates awareness and greater awareness leads to better decision-making, better service provision and greater outreach of the services as well. This is the role played by ICT in health in a nutshell. Right from the radio and television to computers, the Internet, remote sensing and satellites, ICT has increasingly become more and more specialised in information collection, storage, management and dissemination, and it is this, which lends it indispensable to all development efforts, including public health. This session on e-Health will be organised in collaboration with leading government and non-government organisations in this sectors.

Track III: e-Government applications for local governance and role of civil society e-Government framework for Panchayati Raj Institutions (local governance institutions), citizen participation in e-Government projects, delivery mechanisms and social inclusion, rural knowledge centres for local content generation, etc. will be the focus of the track.

Key sectors to be addressed •

Citizen services

•

Passport department

•

Transport

•

Income tax/Commercial tax

•

Police departments

•

Treasuries automation

•

Land records

•

Postal department

•

Municipal e-Government

•

Registration services

| www.conflux.csdms.in

Organizers’ profile Co-Organisers

Organisers Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies

Danish Technological Institute (DTI), Denmark

Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) is a leading Asian non-governmental institution engaged in advocacy, research and community building in e-government, ICT for Development and knowledge management issues through capacity building and media

The Danish Technological Institute (DTI) is one of the oldest technological institutes in the world. DTI has successfully carried out a projects like BEEP (Best e-Europe Practices), PRISMA (Providing innovative service models and assess-

initiatives. www.csdms.in.

ment). www.danishtechnology.dk.

GIS Development Pvt. Ltd.

The Society for Promotion for e-Governance

GIS Development strives to promote and propagate the usage of geospatial technologies in various areas of development for the community at large. It remains dedicated to foster the growing network of those interested in geo-informatics worldwide and Asia in

The Society for Promotion of e-Governance (SPEG) is a mission mode organization in India for the promotion of e-Governance and e-Democracy as tools for enhancing efficiency and transparency in government services to the citizen.

particular. www.GISdevelopment.net.

www.egovindia.org.

Supporting Partners

Host State Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Government of Delhi has been rated as one of the spiring leaders in the latest e-Government rediness ranking report of Government of India. In the past few years, Delhi Government has executed creditable work in integrating/ automating services from various government departments, and making electronic public services available. www.delhigovt.nic.in.

Institutional Partner Indian Institute of Technology Delhi It is a premier centre of excellence for higher training, research and development in science, engineering and technology in India. It has been engaging in e-Governance documentation, analysis and events for the past few years. www.iitd.ac.in.

The Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance The Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance (CCEG) is a think tank operating under the auspices of an e-Governance program of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, UK. www.electronicgov.net.

Technical University of Denmark (DTU) DTU is a self-governing university contributing to value creation in society on a sustainable foundation: through collaboration on R&D activities with private enterprises; through applications for patents and establishment of new enterprises and through the University’s education. www.dtu.dk.

Internet Service Provider Association of India With the formal announcement of Internet privatization during the later part of 1997, ISPAI had taken a lead role in monitoring the privatization process. www.ispai.com.

ISPAI

Internet Service Providers Association of India

www.conflux.csdms.in |

COMMENTARY

Knowledge-based e-Government It is by now well documented that effective e-Government implementation often requires fundamental changes to skill requirements, learning activities and the knowledge acquisition process of public sector staff. Basic ICT skills (such as use of a PC, mobile devices, standard programmes) are a precondition.

More advanced ICT skills (e.g. software development, web-design, database design, the use of specialised programmes, etc.) can be required depending on the type of work to be performed.

In addition, however, modern working conditions often require further mixes of generalised and more advanced skills and competencies. In a fast changing government work environment with a wide variety of work forms, there is an increasing need for individuals to take responsibility for their own work, skills and knowledge development. This includes fostering abilities like self-organisation and self-management, inter-personal skills, dealing with unexpected rather than routine situations, greater initiative, self reliance and knowledge management, etc.

Much work is increasingly being organised on a ‘project’ basis wherein, individuals or teams are given a specific task or project, some resources, quality requirements and a deadline. Although many work processes remain routine in both traditional and e-Government contexts, most government workers are being exposed to these new demands on their abilities. Indeed, ICT can in the best circumstances take over routine functions, leaving workers free to undertake more interesting tasks and become knowledge workers.

ICT thus has a somewhat paradoxical effect on skills and competencies, requiring simultaneously both more and less independence on part of the individual worker. On one hand, ICT contributes to placing more responsibility on individuals to enhance their skill profiles, especially in contexts where there is more independent working (including teleworking or e-working, where staff may work while being at home or on the move) and where each employee has specific responsibility to complete her or his work successfully.

On the other hand, complex nature of new types of work and the knowledge needed to successfully complete it often requires more cooperation and team work. | July 2005

As ‘e-Business’ is migrating to ‘kBusiness’ , the ‘e-Government’ will migrate to ‘kGovernment’ (knowledgebased Government) in the sense that technology will become unremarkably ubiquitous and intelligent services will be provided by intelligent Government.

Thus, government organisations like private companies, are increasingly pressured to provide continuous learning for individual employees in order to match fast changes taking place in the new public management environment. They also need to enhance ‘organisational learning’ through management of knowledge within the organisation. Only if Governments are able to systematically preserve and exploit the collective know-how of their workforce will they be inclined to invest in training activities. This will reduce the threat posed by departing employees as well as ensuring that the productive potential of the organisation is fully maintained and exploited. Thus, knowledge management within government is closely related to continuous learning of the workforce.

Knowledge in the public sector In the same way as ‘e-Business’ is migrating to ‘kBusiness’1 , the ‘e-Government’ will migrate to ‘kGovernment’ (knowledge-based Government) in the sense that technology will become unremarkably ubiquitous and intelligent services will be provided by intelligent Government. kGovernment will be based upon personalised intelligent government, accessed by spatially and socially mobile individuals using knowledge management and knowledge engineering approaches, artificial intelligence and ambient technology. This will be anytime, anywhere, any service, and on user’s terms (‘me’ Government), in which citizens or their electronic agents actively self personalise the electronic services, which can ‘learn’ (for example, through ‘neural processing’ - an electronic process which mimics learning and is becoming increasingly used in agent and other technology) how citizen uses the service and adapt accordingly.

Developing notions and practices of kGovernment is part of wider goals aimed at raising both the efficiency of public sector and quality of its output. More importantly, to attempt for reducing the trade off traditionally present between these two. Unlike the private sector, the public sector neither has an external market nor internal mechanisms informed by pricing system which can send appropriate signals to decision-makers about user demands and choices. However, efficiency and quality in the public sector are basic requirements for overall economic competitiveness and are also policy objectives in their own right.

In this context, e-Government and more specifically kGovernment can, as in the private sector, help reverse the supply chain so that consumer choice can be better understood and supply can be more closely matched to demand.

The potential here is thus even more important than in the private sector, which in addition has the market to guide such matching, not directly available in the public sector. Secondly, again as in the private sector, interaction costs can be reduced and both de- and re-intermediation can take place, leading to organisational change, a reduction in bureaucracy and an unbundling of activities. This allows the public sector to focus on its core functions (i.e. doing things which the market cannot do or which are politically desirable) and enables outsourcing of non-core functions 25

to the private or civic sector. Thirdly, kGovernment can introduce much greater transparency on both supply and demand sides. There may be a danger, however, in going too far with transparency (such as performance measurement of individual staff) as this could undermine internal motivation and the public service ethic and introduce competition in a context where it may not be entirely appropriate2 .

Ambient intelligence space The concept of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) Space4 provides a vision of the Information Society where the emphasis is on greater user-friendliness, more efficient services support, user-empowerment and support for human interactions. People are surrounded by intelligent intuitive interfaces that are embedded in all kinds of objects and an environment that is capable of recognising and responding to the presence of different individuals in a seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible way.3 This is a powerful vision of ICT technology in 2010 and one that could provide a platform for the developing notion of kGovernment. Indeed, AmI is an essential building block of ‘me’ government in which individuals experience seamless and unobtrusive access and fulfilment between different electronic services, different service providers and across borders.

In the new infrastructural paradigm of AmI, people will participate in a multiplicity of parallel, overlapping, inter-leaved and evolving one-to-one, one-to many, and many-to-many relationships. Some of these relationships will be very short-lived and some of them established temporarily and instantaneously. Much of the communication between participants in these relationships will be asynchronous, as it is now. This means that virtuality applies to time as well as space.

In AmI Space, ambient networks with objects and subjects will be moving all the time without physical connections in many instances and without standard identification, since anonymity – which is orthogonal to security – is often required. There will be constantly moving inter-changeable agents, which manifest themselves to users through such things as caches, liquid software, and downloadable applications.

Security in the AmI Space is a paramount concern and will require solutions very different from those of today’s systems which are predicated on relatively stable, well-defined, consistent configurations, contexts and participants in the security arrangements. It must also be recognised that the market will require safe and economic migration away from today’s techniques – firewalls, smart cards, etc. – to the new techniques of AmI Space. The new paradigm will instead be characterised by ‘conformable’ security, in which the degree and nature of security associated with any particular type of action will change over time with changing circumstances and with changing available information so as to suit the context.

Security policies in this environment must evolve, adapting with experience.

From ‘e’ to ‘k’ Government Knowledge-based government is closely linked to developments in ambient intelligence needed to provide powerful, easy-to-use electronic public services. There are huge challenges here, however, not least in relation to security and control, as noted above. For example, the concept of user identities will need re-thinking away from geographically determined identity, as it is now, to virtual identities linked to a ‘digital territory’ like AmI Space.

Managing knowledge within Government Already, some of the most promising approaches to delivering improvements in the functioning of public administrations are being built upon better knowledge management. In particular, initiatives are centred on new approaches to communication and knowledge sharing both within governmental and partner organisations and across organisational boundaries. These initiatives began with a focus on data standards, ICT infrastructure and proceeded to government process 26

re-engineering and to the need for “rethinking things before automating them….[which] has become absolutely crucial if the Internet and the powerful technology developed around it are to be put to efficient use.”4 This kGovernment approach recognises that however sophisticated ICT systems may become, organisations will not get full benefit unless the people that use them also change how they work and learn to exploit them. This is precisely the sort of thinking required to meet some of the other challenges driving the kGovernment agenda. For example, the quiet revolution that is going on to shift to evidence-based policy making in government. Extending consultation to involve community experts and stakeholder groups whilst speeding up the process from research to policy-making to delivery can only be achieved through maximising new ICT knowledge management tools and techniques in areas such as communication, collaboration, security, data modelling and forecasting.

To achieve this and the wider benefits associated with kGovernment, alignment of ICT, ambient intelligence, information management, process change and learning strategies under the knowledge management banner is fundamental. If we want to transform public services, then the delivery organisations themselves need transformation. And getting the right strategy for information and knowledge must be at the heart of that change. A full commitment to kGovernment is essential. www.egov.csdms.in |

Managing knowledge about users of Government Modernising government services through the adoption of ICT also need to lead to a substantial improvement in the quality of relationship with citizens. In fact, many experts suggest that governments must undergo a radical change in their approach to services, putting citizen’s needs and requirements at the centre of their action and their processes. For example, public administrations should reorganise to adopt the principles of CRM, (Customer Relationship Management) - renamed as Citizens Relationship Management to take into account the specificities of government services. This is an essential component of the kGovernment paradigm, which is expected to provide necessary tools to personalise services, consolidate information about the customer-citizen relationship and streamline back-office procedures.

Unfortunately, reality is never as neat as theory. The potential of CRM benefits has been hyped in the recent past, especially by software suppliers and management consultants. Experiences in the private sector suggest caution as well as useful lessons for government agencies. A series of case studies of European service companies implementing eCRM6 show that putting the customer first is a long and complex reorganisational process. Most companies feel to be only at the start of a learning curve. Multi-channel strategies presenting a similar, coherent interface imply careful internal coordination, while a true personalisation of services is still difficult to achieve. However, results in terms of improvement of customer satisfaction are starting to be seen and companies believe that the main principles of CRM are worthwhile goals. Their experiences provide useful reflections on the pitfalls and perspectives of adoption of similar techniques for electronic public services, which does point to a long learning and implementation curve for the public sector in implementing individualised services. However, in the interests of data security and privacy, administrations also need to strike a compromise between ever more personalised treatment and the most scrupulous respect for protection and handling of personal information.7

(R)e-balancing Government Within the context of organisational change occasioned by e-Government, there is an overriding need for a new form of public service | July 2005

ethic amongst civil servants, to encompass a strong user (citizen and business) focus.8 This should include but not be exclusively based upon treating users as ‘customers’ and should also emphasise transparency, openness and e-democracy so that users are also treated as voters and tax payers and not just as consumers.

A multi-channel (including both face to face and digital) approach is necessary in which efficiency (productivity) equity and service quality are balanced. Research undertaken by Prisma has shown that technology, if wisely applied, can help reduce the trade off between all these goals.9 In principle, Government and e-Government should be driven solely by the needs of the society it serves (citizens as individuals and in groups and formal organisations, as well as by business). In order to realise this vision, it is useful to examine both demand and supply side of e-Government as part of the developing market for electronic public services. This is exemplified in the figure below which shows the (r)e-balancing between front and back office which needs to take place in order to benefit all main stakeholders and reduce trade-off present between the three ‘e’s of Government (i.e. economy, equity and environment) by applying the fourth ‘e’- electronic Government.

The diagram below illustrates some of the major elements distilled by Prisma (2002). Noteworthy are:

(R)e-balancing government

Demand — ‘front’ office citizen interface and service 1. e-services – online services based around citizen and business life events (do-it-yourself or via human amplifiers) 2.

3.

traditional services and channels supported by ICT – human, organisational and physical

e-democracy – greater accountability, openness, transparency, accessibility, participation, etc.

Must get bigger and better

•

•

Supply – ‘back’ office administration 1. intra Government Process Re-engineering – incorporating knowledge management and data inter-exchange within the public administration 2. inter Government Process Re-engineering – incorporating knowledge management and data inter-exchange between public administrations and across borders 3. re-engineering of legacy technology, organisations, processes, skills, mindsets, etc.

Must get smaller and smarter

On the demand side, ICT can support and enhance quality improvements to Government services delivered in traditional ways such as - health, education and social care. It is important that the technology does not replace frontline staff leading to a more impersonal, lower service quality, rather, directly support such staff by improving quality of services they deliver and by making them more responsive to citizen needs. Rather than a technologydriven approach, it is important to let people do what they do best and let technology do what it does best.

On the supply side, much recent debate has been focused upon the need for e-Government to adopt the rigours of eBusiness and in relation to the reorganisation of Government structures and processes to follow down the path of Business-Process-Reengineering (BPR). However, many see Government as remaining distinctive from business for many reasons, including the fact that Government cannot choose its customers and that users of Government services take on a variety of roles, including as voters, tax payers as well as 27

consumers. Thus, a ‘Government-Process-Reengineering’ (GPR) approach may be more appropriate in the context of public, private and non-profit sector partnerships.

Indeed, BPR applied directly to e-Government is often taken as a euphemism for downsizing, and fought over in this context. By aiming for a re-balancing (an ‘e-balancing’) of the ‘front’ and ‘back’ offices, as part of a gradual and deliberate policy of fully exploiting knowledge-based Government principles, there can be a win-win situation for all.

Thus, it is not a question about down-sizing Government – this is firmly a political decision and outside the scope of interest of this paper. But it is a question of down-sizing the administration (the back-office) and up-sizing services (the front-office); i.e. a re-balancing from back to front office, from administration to services, from control to content – preferably on a planned, continuous and relatively long-term basis. Thus, it may not be a question of an overall saving of resources but one of freeing up and re-deploying resources to other more deserving areas of Government.

This involves the transformation of Government to prioritise the production and distribution of public goods (‘content’) rather than public administration (‘control’). In this way, kGovernment can link the private market benefits of both citizens and businesses with electronic public services as public goods10. Also it implies: • a centralisation of back office functions, even up to national and international levels, exploiting open technical platforms, comprehensive security systems, interoperability, standardisation based on knowledge management principles, integrated processes, shared databases and economies of scale and scope. Steps towards centralisation of back-office function include ‘middle-office’ and ‘shared service centres’.

• a de-centralisation of front-office functions to provide high quality but relatively simple customised electronic public services based on both CRM and data protection principles, related to the appropriate regional or community level, grounded in local situations and responding to a large variety of individual needs of citizens and businesses. All this should be targetted towards respecting and promoting democracy at all levels – the subsidiarity principle writ large.

Although the above vision is both powerful and practical, by itself, it is not a complete panacea despite leading e-Government policy makers decisively in the right direction. The ‘front-office’ / ‘back-office’ dichotomy can only take the debate so far, as many of the e-Government issues cannot be reduced to one or other of these two categories. For example, is CRM a back-office or front-office function? Clearly it is both and there are many such examples. In the sense that the debate is about control (back-office) function versus content (front-office) function, there has of course been a clear separation historically but as we will move towards ‘intelligent content’, it will no longer be possible to distinguish between the two (the content will itself be in control) and the dichotomy will become redundant. Even though this is probably still ten years or more away, governance will have, to all intents and purposes, outgrown ‘bureaucracy’. It will have to truly become knowledge-based and intelligent government.

4 ISTAG (Information Society Technologies Advisory Group), 2002, ISTAG: trust, dependability, security and privacy for IST in FP6, the European Commission: http://www.cordis.lu/ ist/istag.htm.

5 and 7 Upgrade, 2003, eGovernment: public administration for a new century, ‘Upgrade’, the European Journal for the Informatics Professional, Vol. IV, No. 2, April 2003: http://www.upgradecepis.org.

6 STAR, 2001, Implementing eEurope in the public domain: selected case studies, Issue Report 3 of the STAR (Socio-economic Trends Assessment for the digital Revolution) project, a research action supported by the Information Society Technologies Programme of the European Union, 2001-2003, contact http://www.databank.it/star 8 Millard, J. (ed), 2003b, Progressing the Information Society: the role of government, workshop and proceedings of the JANUS (Joint Analytical Network for Using Socio-economic research) project, a research action supported by the Information Society Technologies Programme of the European Union, 2002-2004, 17 February 2003. Available from http://www.janus-eu.org and http://www.beepgovernment.org Millard, J. (2003a) ePublic services in Europe: past, present and future – research findings and new challenges, prepared for the European Commission’s Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), Sevilla, Spain, September 2003. Available from: http:// www.cordis.lu/ist/about/socio-eco.htm and http:// www.beepgovernment.org 9 PRISMA, 2002, Pan-European best practice in service delivery, deliverable D3.2 of Prisma, a research action supported by the Information Society Technologies Programme of the European Union, 2000-2003, contact http://www.prismaeu.net 10 Local Government Brief, 2003, Of modems and men – installing eGovernment in the eEast, Open Society Institute, Winter 2003..

References 1 See the Knowledge Connections web-site: http://www.skyrme.com/pubs/kcomm.htm 2 The danger of potentially crowding out the ‘intrinsic motivation’ of public sector staff with “too much transparency” was highlighted by Luc Soete (Professor of International Economics, MERIT, the Netherlands) during his presentation on the Economics of eGovernment, at the eGovernment 2003 Conference, Como, Italy, 7-8 July 2003: http:// europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/egovconf/index_en.htm.

3 ISTAG (Information Society Technologies Advisory Group), 2001, ISTAG scenarios for Ambient Intelligence 2010, compiled by IPTS, Seville, The European Commission, February 2001http://www.cordis.lu/ist/istag.htm.

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Jeremy Millard is Head of E-Government Programme, Centre for Competence Development & IT of Danish Technological Institute, Denmark jeremy.millard@teknologisk.dk

www.egov.csdms.in |

COMMENTARY

Assessing citizen centricity of government websites As the Internet is gradually transforming the social and economic fabric of our communities, Government agencies worldwide are evolving into ‘e-governments’ to enable a better and broader access to government services. Web Portals having the ability to integrate disparate infrastructure and applications have emerged as the logical front end for government initiatives to deliver a wide variety of information and services to its citizens. A large number of government websites have been set up all across the world over the last few years. However, their effectiveness depends on what they have to offer in terms of information, interaction and transaction. Since a majority of target audience of a government website are the common citizens with varied educational, cultural and demographic backgrounds, the development framework for these websites has to be designed to ensure citizen centricity, usefulness, effectiveness and efficiency in access.

Evaluation studies carried out from time to time by researchers worldwide have revealed a number of strengths and weaknesses of the government websites. A study carried out by Kristin R. Eschenfelder on the US government websites emphasised that “to enhance the overall usefulness and impact of federal websites, careful consideration should be given to their purpose, structure, operation and federal information policies (particularly as they relate to information dissemination) should be re-examined”. Another study by a research team at Brown University in North America led by Darell M West revealed a large number of shortcomings in government websites, especially on privacy issues and those relating to universal accessibility. An assessment of New Zealand Government’s websites by a team from Victoria University led by Rowena Cullen highlights the main problems with the Government websites are lack of clear purpose, lack of good metadata and lack of adequate feedback and contact information. These findings also suggest the requirement for the sites to be made such that they can also be used by physically challenged or disabled people. | July 2005

Citizen centric websites Studies and surveys conducted to gauge the public expectations and response to a typical government website indicate the top two priorities in the visitors’ minds are: 1. To be able to access the website fast and conveniently 2. To get useful, authentic and up-to-date information and services To achieve the first, it has to be made sure that the website is fully accessible across a broad range of technologies, platforms and audiences, including citizens with varied physical challenges. The second objective can be achieved by adopting a citizen-focussed approach right from conceptualisation to design and development of the website. User Centric Design and Usability Principles/Guidelines/Best Practices can be applied during the development of the websites, such that the entended objectives can be achieved.

Citizen centricity assessment Though available research on the subject reveals a few instances of efforts made by organisations/individuals to judge the effectiveness of websites, per se, the area of defining assessment criteria specifically suited for government websites is relatively less explored. Based on the findings of some of the research carried out in this area and applying the principles of User Interface Design and Accessibility, it is felt that citizen centricity of the websites can be assessed around five broad categories namely accessibility, navigation architecture, content, design and layout and credibility.

Accessibility Accessibility refers to the extent to which the website and its contents are available to a wide range of users with varied levels of physical capabilities/skills and technologies. The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an internationally agreed recommendation for website accessibility for people with special needs and it is expected of the Government websites to follow these standards. The government websites under evaluation may be studied and tested to check how easy/difficult it is for the common citizens (even those with physical disabilities) to search and access them, and whether the portals appear and function correctly on the commonly available browsers.

The presence of metadata information, which is vital to ensure a good visibility of the site in major search engines is also to be adequately tested. The response/ download speed of the sites is another important criteria for testing the accessibility and checking how much time it takes for a common citizen with a relatively slow Internet Connectivity to access the information given on a government website.

Since a majority of target audience of a government website are the common citizens with varied educational, cultural and demographic backgrounds, the development framework for these websites has to be citizen centric, useful, effective and efficient.

29

Government websites should also have a section on related links to facilitate access to websites of parent ministry/department and other associated organisations.

Navigation architecture Navigation architecture includes all those features which make it convenient/ inconvenient for a user to browse the contents on the website. The navigation architecture should be such that users spend minimal effort/clicks in locating and using the desired information and services online. During evaluation, it may be tested whether links to all the information important from citizens’ point of view are preferably provided on the Home Page itself. The language articulation of the link titles also plays an important role in guiding the user to reach at the right content and hence, due emphasis should be accorded to well formulated and self explanatory link titles. Government websites should also have a section on related links to facilitate access to websites of parent ministry/department and other associated organisations. The website may also be reviewed to check whether it is possible to search through the contents of the complete site from a single point and also to check if any online help/guidance is provided to guide the visitors through the key sections. Another assessment parameter in this category is whether the website provides the facility to the visitors to personalise/customise the web pages as per their own preferences.

Content The content in a government website site has to be defined in a manner that a common citizen understands. Apart from quality of the content, equal emphasis need to be given to the way it is written and presented. The content on the government sites may also be reviewed for some of the important features desired by citizens, namely - online services, opportunity for interaction and participation and a facility for submitting and tracking grievances. Another important pre-requisite for an effective government website is the availability of comprehensive contact information (email, postal address, telephone and fax numbers), which may be used by a citizen to approach the Government functionaries.

Design and layout Government websites should have simple and citizen friendly design and layout so that people find it comfortable and convenient to access the desired information. The color scheme and positioning of design elements should allow legibility and easy reading. It may be studied whether the site in question maintains its identity upto the last level pages.

Credibility Credibility in this context refers to the extent of trust, which a citizen can impose on the government website with respect to security and legal requirements.

Government websites must raise citizens’ confidence by abiding with the law and explaining their terms and conditions clearly to the users. The issue assumes more importance when it comes to online transactions as well as making payments through the website. Well worded disclaimers, privacy policies, terms and conditions and copyright information enhance the credibility of the website and help in further building the users’ trust.

Another equally important aspect related to credibility is the site address or the URL. As per the international naming conventions, each country has reserved certain domain(s) for government websites (e.g ‘gov.sg’ (Singapore),‘gov.in’ (India) and such domains are not freely available for registration by anyone as 30

they are allocated to a government department only after due verification. The websites under evaluation could therefore be tested on such reliability aspects including presence of ownership information, proper privacy policies and legal information. The sites may also be tested for the presence of any broken/ dead links which can significantly damage the credibility of the website.

Assessment techniques A variety of qualitative and quantitative assessment techniques can be appropriately deployed to assess the websites on the basis of Assessment metrics (see the table).

• Lab testing: Lab testing involves inviting a select group of users in the Lab set-up and making them access and navigate the various sections of the website.

Structured testing is then carried out on the way different users browse through the site and use its various online features. The users may also be interviewed about the site functionality, design, ease of use etc. This method, though providing for a detailed and specific feedback, can be applied only to a limited number of users due to relatively high cost implications and time consumption.

• Online user surveys: This involves the website visitors responding to questions posed through pop-up surveys which appear whenever the website is accessed.

The questionnaire should preferably be multiple-choice based with the number of questions not exceeding twenty and the respondents being required to check the relevant option and fill in some personal details. This technique allows the website managers to survey a large number of users in a relatively short span of time.

However, it has been observed that the response rate amongst first time visitors to the sites is not high, thus leading to the possibility that the survey is mostly answered by frequent visitors which may allow for biases to crop in.

• Interviewing focus groups: This would involve selecting a focused group of target users and a moderator asking them a prepared set of questions about the usability and citizen orientation of the website. The group could also be asked to perform certain test exercises such as availing a specific citizen services online or downloading an application form from the website. Such interviews could be www.egov.csdms.in |

Assessment metrics

•

1. Accessibility 1.1 Accessibility for people with special needs 1.2 Visibility in search engines 1.3 Response time 1.4 Compatibility with mainstream browsers 2. Navigation Architecture 2.1 Minimal effort/clicks 2.2 Consistency 2.3 Self explanatory links 2.4 Related links section 2.5 On-site search facility 2.6 On-line help 2.7 Personalisation/Customisation 3. Content 3.1 Citizen orientation 3.2 Clarity, accuracy and currency 3.3 Content in regional language 3.4 Content formats 3.5 Opportunity for interaction with the govt.

3.6 Citizen services – online 3.7 Grievances – lodging and status tracking 3.8 Phone/email directory 4. Design-Layout 4.1 Identity 4.2 Consistent layout 4.3 Legibility 4.4 Headers on pages opening in new window 4.5 Content prioritisation and positioning 5. Credibility 5.1 Ownership information 5.2 Legal information 5.3 Privacy policy 5.4 Broken/dead links 5.5 Domain name (URL)

•

•

carried out either face-to-face or in the form of ‘virtual’ group discussions.

Syndicated surveys: This method involves getting access to the results of third party surveys carried out on the users to monitor the performance and functionality of the websites on a general basis. Though such survey results have high statistical validity, they may be too general for a government to extract evaluation results and data pertaining to the aspect of citizen centricity.

Informal user feedback: This involves analysis of visitors through guest books, e-mail forms, helpdesk, phonelines etc.

Such a feedback can help the government departments to eradicate snags and errors in the site and also to formulate questions and exercises for formal user surveys. | July 2005

•

•

Usage data analysis: This kind of evaluation technique involves the analysis of the web log data collected through specialised software installed on the web servers. Quantitative data like page views, number of hits, unique visitors etc can be obtained through this method, which allows a government department to track overall usage trends over time. However, the technique is prone to errors as the software measures the usage by tracking the IP addresses of the computers being used and not of the users themselves.

Besides the above method, the technique of Internet Audience Measurement could also be applied whereby usage data is collected from a large panel of web users who agree to have their web surfing monitored constantly and the pertaining data keeps getting collected on their individual computers from where it is picked up later and aggregated.

Web performance data: The technique here involves measuring the site’s performance on technical aspects like the download time, speed of data transfer, number of broken links, accessibility for the disabled etc. There are various specialised tools, testing software and free websites which facilitate an online evaluation of a website on such aspects.

Heuristic analysis: Finally, an important method of qualitatively assessing a government website is through heuristic analysis or an expert review. In this approach, a panel of experts reviews the website and evaluates it against a set of parameters such as those defined in the above assessment metrics and assess the effectiveness of the site.

Conclusion To move government websites to a higher level of evolution, it is important to shift the focus away from a Government’s perception of itself to the citizen’s perception of the Government. It is recommended that a well-defined web evaluation strategy be crafted to monitor the performance and citizen centricity of Government websites on a regular basis. Assessment guidelines and parameters, such as, the metrics developed as a part of this study can prove useful to web developers both at the planning stage of a Neeta Verma new website as well as to improve is Senior Technical Director the citizen centricity of existing and heads Web Services, websites. The metrics could be Multimedia Applications further enhanced by assigning and Internet Data Centre weightage to various parameters Group at National in order of priority, so that Informatics Centre. websites may be evaluated as obneeta@nic.in jectively as possible. Specialised software tools could also be developed to facilitate the evaluation Sonal Kalra process and improve the accuracy is Scientist B and Editor of of results.

Complete article with references is available at www.egov.csdms.in

Acknowledgement We gratefully acknowledge the valuable feedback and unstinted support received from all our colleagues at Web Services Group at NIC Headquarters, New Delhi. Further, opinions expressed in this paper belong solely to authors and do not reflect the views of NIC as an organisation.

Informatics, an E-Gov Bulletin published by National Informatics Centre. sonal@nic.in

Mohandas VS Scientist D and is a Senior Designer at National Informatics Centre. mohandas@nic.in

31

BOOK

Book review Information Revolution and India – A Critique S S Gill 2004; Rupa & Co; New Delhi 329 Pages; Price INR 395 Technology and the society have a symbiotic and interdependent relationship. Though the technology by itself could work as a panacea to create the ever-elusive digital bridge, its perpetrators are not immune to that ancient human trait we call ‘greed’. Amidst the ongoing tug of war for the control and the freedom of Internet, it is worth reminding that information control is inherently linked with vesting of, and wrestling for power.

Retired civil servant S S Gill had two specific close encounters with the IT revolution in India – firstly, when he served as the Secretary of Information & Broadcasting in the mid eighties and secondly, when he was the first CEO of Prasar Bharti more than a decade later in 1997-98. Besides, he has been interacting with a plethora of visionaries, government officials and academicians while writing this Critique.

This is a comprehensive book starting with a primer on IT (for the lay readers) and then, goes on to develop the theme of its growth story interlinked inevitably with the globalisation, work and employment, information warfare and its impact on democracy.

Being a bureaucrat, the author had a ringside view of the slow and easy pace of working in the government. The key motivation for computerisation is well described as “Each ministry is an empire in itself…During colonial times, life moved at a slow and easy pace, so delay in taking decisions did not matter much…what could [be] better … than computerisation of information contained in thousands and thousands of files, and its instant retrieval and manipulation by the click of a mouse…And above all, there was the Internet to provide immediate horizontal linkages across the whole country and the world.”

There are chapters like IT and the People, IT and the Business but the best is IT and the Government. Herein, he describes the monolithic government machinery, history of NIC (National Informatics Centre) and PRS (Passenger Railway Reservation System) of Railways. One comes to know that PRS actually handled a plethora of variables, which no other railway could even imagine – just think about

all sorts of quotas & classes and the possible combinations. Similarly, NIC developed its own network connecting the Districts and the Courts. The book does suffer from little emphasis on redesigning the whole governmental process using IT – an area where the impact could be much more tangible and meaningful than the automation alone.

According to the famed Quantum physicist Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty both momentum and location of a particle cannot be determined very accurately. Similar is the dilemma of anyone trying to put a finger on the pulse of ICT sector by measuring the relevant quantitative parameters with respect to a specific point in time. The author veers clear of this by attributing and rightly so, that the changes in the sector would ensure that the figures in the book are almost always wrong!

At the same time, developments till mid-2003 have been recorded rather well.

Of course, there is mention of Naidu, Krishna, GE but so are the oft-forgotten yet important moves like setting up of IT Task Force in 1998 by the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. All the same, the language is authoritative and shows the mastery on the Queen’s lingua franca, albeit tampered with the obviously Americanised spellings – thanks to the word processing software’s default settings.True to its name, the book lives up to its name and ends with a stark reality “man’s insatiable greed is turning [Information Technology] into nightmares”.

Deepak Maheshwari is Secretary, Internet Service Provider Association of India d_maheshwari@sifycorp.com

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NEWS REVIEW

INDIA West Bengal bags country’s first rural Internet connectivity project...

West Bengal government has been benefited from the panchayat rule and the various rural decentralisation experiments to clinch the country’s first pilot project of rural Internet connectivity beyond the district headquarters up to the gram panchayat level of a district.

The central government has sanctioned approx USD 1.1 million for implementing voice, video and data network in the 277 gram panchayats, 31 blocks and six subdivisional towns for Barddhaman district, the largest district of the state.

... and its municipalities will get training on e-Governance

Delhi launches online registration of birth and death ertificates...

The Municipal Corporation of New Delhi (MCD) recently opened the scheme of registrations of births and deaths online.

The Online Institutional Registration (OLIR) has brought 278 hospitals under the scheme. Now, the birth or death certificates can be accessed through MCD’s official website http://www. mcdonline.gov.in Satbir Singh, Mayor of Delhi, inaugurated the ‘‘storage room’’ at MCD zonal office in Civil Lines, from where the scheme will be operated. This facility would go a long way in simplifying the procedures.

The hospitals would be provided with passwords to make entry of their respective documents. One could also procure the certificates by ordering them through a payment gateway on the website.

following Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD’s) footsteps.

The DDA’s online Public Grievances Redressal Monitoring System, developed by the National Informatics Centre, was set up last week to help officials trace grievances and action taken by the body. DDA officials said that they have been receiving lots of public grievances departmentally but there is no centralised system or data for them to keep track of how many grievance cases they receive in a month or a year. They will now have computerised records of all cases. They said that from next week, when a citizen files a complaint against a DDA department, it will be uploaded for senior officials to see. DDA has trained five officials from each department as ‘grievance officers’, who will be in charge of monitoring and disposing of cases. DDA will also set up a counter at the reception at Vikas Sadan to look into public grievances.

... and makes grievance redressal forum The Delhi Development Authority (DDA, www.ddadelhi.com) has decided to set up an online grievance redressal forum the functions of the municipalities. The state government would provide a guideline to all the municipalities on how to improve the condition of various civic amenities such as drinking water, sewerage or garbage disposal.

Centre shifts to e-Governance mode

In West Bengal, India, the Minister for Urban Development, Ashok Bhattacharya has said that a Bangalore-based IT company, E-governance Foundation has been appointed by the state government of West Bengal to educate employees of 40 municipalities on the technicalities involved in e-Governance. He further said that they are aiming to computerise all | July July2005 2005

The centre has directed all state governments to set up a nodal agency, a programme steering council headed by the Chief Minister and an apex committee headed by the Chief Secretary to pursue state mission mode e-Governance projects. The projects are to be taken up through public-private partnerships.

The mission mode projects relate to land records, road transport, property registration, agriculture, treasuries, munici-

palities, gram panchayats, commercial taxes, police and employment exchanges.

These state mission mode projects are part of the USD 2660 million national e-Governance plan, which is to be completed by 2007. So far, the focus was on central mission mode projects-DCA21, income tax, passport visa, immigration, central excise, pensions and so on. Now the institutional framework and norms are being put in place to launch and synchronise e-Programmes at the state level.

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Q&A with N S Kalsi IT secretary Punjab Government of Punjab has realised the potential of Information Technology for SMART (Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent) governance. The secretary IT, Mr. N.S. Kalsi , through the unique citizen service concept “Sukhmani” is trying to transform the way government services are offered to citizens. The government is aiming to provide around 120 services to the citizens of punjab in an integrated manner through the Sukhmani service centres.

The centres are being created and maintained with the help of Sukhmani Societies at the distric level. The dynamic IAS officer and MD of Punjab Infotech Limited discusses the e-Government initiatives in his state in an exclusive interview withhe e-gov team.

Punjab Government has taken many key initiatives in e-Government.

Would you like to elaborate the e-Governance plans of the State for the benefit of our readers?

Government of Punjab is committed to provide a responsive and effective administration for the welfare of the public. The Government envisages a scenario wherein every citizen shall be able to access the benefits of Information Technology.

Currently, Punjab government has been taking several positive initiatives for providing good governance across the State to use the power of Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) to transform the citizen-government interface in a meaningful manner. On the top of the list are the public dealing and revenue generating departments. Improving the delivery of citizen services at the cutting edge level, especially by establishing a one-stop-shop for providing all Government services in an integrated manner, describes the major strategic initiatives taken by the Government of Punjab under the e-governance plan.

Already, more than 15 essential 34

services of the Deputy Commissioner’s office have been made available to citizens under the Suwidha project in all 17 DC offices in an integrated manner. This facility is now being extended to the subdivisions as well with an aim to provide easy services to the general public right near to his/ her home place. The Government is planning to open more than 250 delivery channels for providing services of most departments in an integrated way.

There are two vital factors with a view to reach the grass-root levels. One is rural connectivity and other is the role of the databases i.e. citizen database, business database, property database and department database. As a pre-requisite for the same, the State Government is working out details for the establishment of State Wide Area Network for Voice, Video and Data traffic for covering all district headquarters, sub-divisional headquarters and block headquarters in the whole State.

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and Administrative Reforms (AR) have taken up simultaneously for ensuring maximum benefit of e-governance.

The State Government is also in touch with Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India for the implementation of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) under which Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) in citizen area would be implementation at the State level.

What role Punjab Infotech is playing in implementing of e-Governance in the State? What is the role of e-Governance Society?

Punjab Infotech is acting as an executing arm to the Department of Information Technology for the implementation of small e-Governance projects in the State. In the absence of technical manpower with most departments, services such as feasibility study, acquisition of IT products, development & hosting of web-sites, trainings etc. are being provided by Punjab Infotech.

The role of Punjab State E-Governance Society (PSEGS) is to administer the implementation of E-Governance projects of the State Government for the overall benefit of the citizens and public by setting up the necessary administrative, financial, legal and technical framework, implementation mechanism and resources in the State of Punjab. This society would act as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the implementation of e-Governance projects in the State. NeGP would also be implemented at the state level by the State level body PSEGS. Would you like to elaborate on the Sukhmani service centres? How many of them are in operation and how many are planned for future? Could you mention a few locations of these centres?

Sukhmani service centres called “Sukhmani Centres”, in short, would be set up by PSEGS for the provision of integrated single window access to various citizen services provided by various departments/ organisations in an efficient and transparent manner. SUKHMANI stands for Smart, Unified, Knowledgeable, Humble/ Honest, Moral, Accountable and Novel Initiative.

The Government related services of those Departments/ Organisations whose backend operations have been computerised are being offered under this project.

The citizens would be able to get the service by paying a nominal ‘facilitation charges’ that has already been worked out by the Government. The delivery of services at Sukhmani Centres would be very fast and around 150+ services have been identified which would be available at these centres. It is planned to cover entire State by opening around 250+ centres spread uniformly throughout the districts.

The society is in the process of short listing a system integrator for this project who would set up all the centres and would also be responsible for its operations and management for a period of five years after the contract. He would also integrate the existing Sukhmani application with any new application software that a department is ready with after it’s backend computerisation.

At present a pilot Sukhmani centre is working at Ludhiana for the last more than www.egov.csdms.in |

one year where services related to utility bill payments like electricity bills, water/ Sewerage bills, etc are being offered to the public. The application software has been developed by Microsoft.

Has the State conducted or planning to conduct any citizen feedback survey on these centres?

The State Government is planning to conduct a citizen feedback survey once at-least 25% of the planned centres have been established. However, citizen feedback survey for Suwidha project concerning to provision of DC office services has already been conducted and has been planned again What are the initiatives taken by the State Government to build capacity of the employees for implementation of the projects?

The State Government is laying stress on trainings of the existing manpower and development of Human Resource/ trained manpower in various components of Information Technology and its related fields. The basic training programs namely DoE-ACC based IT Primer-I, IT Primer II and System Administration for Government employees are going on a regular basis with the help of Government-own training institutes with an aim to make them IT literate, MS office and internet connectivity/ e-mail.

Training of IAS officers to act as CIOs and Dy CIO is another initiative with a view to play a leadership role in the planning, implementation and management of Information Technology projects in the governance of the State.

In line with NeGP, the State Government has been laying immense focus on Capacity Building to provide for overall direction, standardisation and consistency across initiatives and at the same time, to have the resources and flexibility to drive this plan.

How is the response of a training course recently conducted by CDAC for the deputy CIOs of the State Government? Are you planning similar courses in future?

The response of the Dy CIO’s program conducted by CDAC was 100%. The participants from various departments took | July July2005 2005

“Punjab is pretty well placed on the e-Governance front. All pre-requisites for a strong and self-sustaining e-governance regime are in place.” deep interest in learning ways and methods for administering the implementation of e-Governance projects. Similar courses are also being planned in co-ordination with other institutes like Mahatma Gandhi State Institute of Public Administration (MGSIPA) and National Institute of Smart Government (NISG), Hyderabad.

Are you getting adequate support from the political leaders for your e-Governance initiatives?

Yes. In Punjab, political leaders fully recognise the power and use of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) in taking it to the masses. I would like to share that both Chief Minister Punjab and Chief Secretary have been our driving force for implementing e-Governance initiatives. We have been getting regular support and interventions from the political leaders for the e-Governance initiatives. Wherever required, projects are reviewed at the level of minister of the concerned department so as to remove bottlenecks, if any, at any stage. Video conferencing facility is a media for tele-meetings with state officials for effective monitoring of various schemes, programmes and projects.

How do you rate e-Governance implementation in Punjab compared to UT and other States?

Punjab is pretty well placed on the e-governance front. All pre-requisites for a strong and self-sustaining e-governance regime are in place. Creating the right governance and institutional mechanisms and setting up core infrastructure and policies are backbone for any e-Governance to succeed. So far, Punjab has made significant progress in both these areas.

Every State Government has been striving hard to put it to maximum use to draw benefits of Information Technology.

States have been learning not only from other State Governments but also from its mistakes. We need to create a conducive and friendly environment for taking along all stakeholders to successfully implement e-Governance projects.

What are the key upcoming projects in the area of e-Government? Would you like to share the future strategy and roadmap with our readers?

Major pilot projects are also nearing completion in the important public interface areas like Land Records, its integration with Property Registration and Transport Services (SARATHI and VAHAN). The successes of these pilots are being rolled out in the entire state on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model for the benefit of the citizens. Expression of Interest (EoI) for integrated two projects namely Land Records and Property Registration has already been invited, in which would be rendered through 150+ centres upto tehsil level. Very soon, bids would be floated for the replication of Transport Services in the entire state.

The State Government is currently taking necessary steps for extending the Suwidha project in all 72 Sub-divisions level. Multi-purpose Service Card (MSC), being piloted at Fatehgarh Sahib, is about providing IDs to citizens and its integration with departmental databases.

Farmers are being trained on the technology so that they can see the latest rates on the www.agmarknet.nic.in portal.

After successfully launching the computer education in 1299 schools covering 7.5 lac students, next batch of 1700+ Government schools are being undertaken this year to impart compulsory computer education for the students from Class VI to XII with the participation of private sector.

The State Government would very soon invite bids for the establishment of State Wide Area Network for Voice, Video and Data traffic with 2 mbps bandwidth for covering all district headquarters, sub-divisional headquarters and block headquarters in the whole State. All delivery channels would be connected to this backbone for communication.

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Karnataka plans computer kiosks at village panchayat centres

In an attempt to carry out IT benefits to rural areas, the Karnataka government is planning to set up multi-purpose computerised kiosks at all 5,600 village panchayat centres in the state, under a central scheme.

The Food Minister of the state, H S Mahadevaprasad, by announcing this, has said that it would be possible now to pay electricity bills and property tax at the proposed kiosks, besides acquiring birth and death certificates, land records and proposed food identity cards for ration card holders, among other services. Even the services related to ‘Bhoomi’ project would be linked to the proposed kiosks.

The users of these services would be charged a nominal fee. He further said that the proposal for setting up these kiosks under the Rural Digital Service (RDS) scheme of the centre would be brought up before the state cabinet soon for clearance. Private entrepreneurs who would be selected through tenders would manage the kiosks.

Rural Andhra to experience ‘mini e-Seva’ centres The Andhra Pradesh government is going to set up 9,000 ‘mini e-Seva’ centres across 23 districts in the first phase to offer over 35 services in a big way, encouraged by the success of ‘e-Seva’ services in it’s capital city of Hyderabad 36

coupled with its decision to bridge the digital divide across the state. The same will be extended to the remaining 13,000 panchayats once the first phase is completed in the next six months. It will be implemented under the Chief Minister’s project named after RajIV (Rajiv Internet Village) and has selected two consortia of implementation partners to take up the first phase project.

R P Sisodia, Director, Department of ICT, government of Andhra Pradesh and head of e-Seva said that the RajIV programme is not just about rural ‘e-Seva’, Andhra Pradesh portal and kiosks, it is about enabling transformation of the rural economy through the use of ICT. Andhra Pradesh government has also issued a Letter of Intent (LoI) to a consortium led

by Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) for setting up Rajiv Internet Village (RAJiv) centres. BEL would be the principal partner in the consortium, Radiant Infosytems Pvt Ltd, IBM and BSNL are the other members.

Jharkhand goes for e-Tender system

Madhya Pradesh government plans to go online Madhya Pradesh (MP) government joins together with Tata Consultancy Services through its subsidiary MP Electronics Development Corporation to allow citizens to reach out information related to the government.

The plan is to provide information on land records, public works, irrigation and public health, etc. and create payment gateways by making the state’s administration online. The joint venture will continue for 10 years and then the state government will get the assets.

Tata Consultancy Services will create information kiosks across the state and link them to ‘Gyandoot’ kiosks (earlier set up by the Digvijay Singh government).

Himachal government offices go online Himachal Pradesh government offices are set to be connected through information technology (IT) under an e-Governance project that the administration hopes will bring in transparency and speed up decision making.

Jharkhand Information and Technology (IT) department has prepared a software, which will help the state start the e-Tender system, already functional in Delhi government.

The e-Tender has been christened as e-Nivida (tender). The Tender Information System (TIS) can be accessed through the website http://www.jharkhand.gov.in under which the work order of the state government which goes through tender will be available.

A report for the approx. USD 16 million project had been sent for approval to the Centre after which work would commence on IT project to link government offices across the state. A government spokesman said that the Himachal State Wide Area Network (HIMSWAN) will connect the state secretariat in Shimla, the capital city of Himachal Pradesh, to all state government departments at the

The website contains all the information on tenders such as date, amount, last date of tender nature of work and other vital information needed for a contractor who wants to bid for the tender. The government hopes that such initiatives will bring transparency into the system. www.egov.csdms.in |

district, sub-division and sub-district levels. In the already completed first phase of the HIMSWAN project, launched earlier 2005, a local area network has been established in the state secretariat with a provision of 600 nodes that will help provide at least one computer per three officials.

Bihar starts the e-Governance process The Indian state of Bihar will step into e-Governance mode when the state capital is directly connected through video-conferencing with nine divisional headquarters by the end of this month.

State Chief Secretary K.A.H. Subramanian said that the facility, to be formally launched May 25, would be extended to district headquarters of 37 districts of the state from May 31. He also said that videoconferencing would help the top brass of the state administration keep in touch.

The facility would also permit regular feedback from the district magistrates about day-to-day developments related to government schemes. The cost of setting up the facility at the state capital and divisional headquarters would be approx.

USD 0.3 million and for linking each district with the state headquarters would cost approx. USD 35000. State-owned National Informatics Centre Network (NICNET) will set up the infrastructure for the facility.

Punjab introduces computer education in state-run schools Punjab government has begun implementation of the Integrated Computer Technology project in 1,299 upper | July July2005 2005

as part of the Kerala Government’s ambitious plan to introduce the programme in other districts, the administration would set up 176 computer learning centres in various parts of the district. The scheme would be a stepping stone for generating massive economic growth and creating direct employment opportunities in the district, she added. primary schools, which have more than 0.75 million students to impart computer education in state-run schools. While it would spend approx. USD 9 million every year on this project, another 1,000 schools are expected to be added from this academic year.

Quoting the Director General (DG) for school education, Anurag Aggarwal, in an official release said that under this centrally sponsored computer literacy programme, about 1.3 million students from Class VI to Class XII, in 5422 upper primary schools, would be imparted computer education based on guidelines of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

Kerala government to launch e-Literary centres in Kozhikode district

After the successful implementation of the ‘Akshaya’ programme in the neighbouring district of Malappuram, the administration of the state government of Kerala has recently decided to launch the e-Literary centres in the Kozhikode district of the state as well, aimed at addressing the socio-economic inequities in the society by bridging the digital divide.

Kangra to get common e-Governance centre In India, the Deputy Commissioner of Kangra district in Himachal Pradesh, Bharat Khera, has announced recently that e-Governance centres in all subdivisions of the district will soon be made functional and subdivisional magistrates and tehsil officers working under the same complex will have a common e-Governance centre.

HRD Ministry’s new effort to bridge the digital divide Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry is hoping that the third attempt to bridge the digital divide between private and government schools succeeds where the earlier two endeavours of Computer Literacy and Studies in Schools (CLASS) in the 1980’s and revised-CLASS of 1990’s failed.

HRD Ministry is optimistic about the new approach named as Information and Communication Technology@Schools Scheme and hopeful that universalisation of computer literacy would percolate to students in small towns and the subordinate divisions of a district in India. The scheme has four main components such as partnership with state governments and union territories for providing computer-

The Collector Rachna Shah has said that 37

aided education to secondary and higher secondary government schools; establishment of two self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology (SMART) schools in each state which would be technology demonstrators; universalisation of computer literacy through the network of Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti to incorporate computer literacy to 10 neighbouring schools; and financial assistance to State Institutes of Educational Technologies under the project mode so that they become selfsufficient. HRD officials feel that the new scheme would enable pupils to acquire necessary skills required for both higher education and employment.

Oracle India sets up a model to implement e-Governance projects Oracle India has set up a model to successfully implement e-Governance projects. Drawing from its experience in various states, the company has created a model that will replicate its experiences of various e-Governance projects.

Senior Director of Oracle India, S.P.S Grover said that they are now moving to the second tier of enabling inter-department and a government-to-citizen (G2C) interface. Oracle plans to create a force of e-Managers, who will have the working knowledge of government departments as well as the technological knowledge. The idea is to create a single repository of information that can be accessed by all users and hence minimise search time and costs.

The company has created a model for a networked data hub that will serve as a single source of information regarding a person for different government departments.

The citizen data hub will provide all information relating to a person to the different government departments and public utility services. Once operational, this hub will house citizen data from different government bodies like the 38

transport office, water boards, electricity boards, income tax department, police records, land records and public distribution system. The product could also be used by large organisations to create a repository of employee information and help manage its human resources better.

Oracle India’s Senior Director S. P. S. Grover said that the data hub is a concept developed by the Oracle-HP e-Governance centre of excellence. The hub will create a unified repository of citizen information by integrating and managing information from various departments.

Oracle hopes that this model will be well received by the government as well as many private sector companies.

BAHRAIN Bahrain launches e-Gov solution centre The Bahrain e-Government solution centre was inaugurated by Sheikh Ahmed Ateyatalla Al Khalifa, President of the Central Informatics Organization (CIO), Tom Francese, Vice President, EMEA of IBM Software Group and Abdulla Ishaq, General Manager of Bahrain Business Machines (BBM) recently. The event was also attended by a number of senior officials from the Bahrain government and the Kingdom’s business community.

CIO and IBM have worked closely together over the last two years to build an endto-end e-Government infrastructure for Bahrain on a platform based on open standards. Bahrain is the first government in the Middle East to join a growing number of governments around the world who are adopting open standards for their e-Government initiatives in order to benefit from reduced costs and increased flexibility. The Bahrain e-Government solution centre will be linked to a network of IBM e-Government centres worldwide. The centre will have access to the latest technologies and skills and

be able to provide countries in the Middle East with the expertise to deliver real value to citizens as they start to roll out e-Government Services.

UNITED KINGDOM Welsh Assembly introduces website on Work-Life Balance Welsh Assembly Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning, Jane Davidson, recently, launched the http:// www.wlbinwales.org.uk website which aims to provide free information, advice and guidance on Work-Life Balance to employers, employees, unions and the general public.

The launch of the website is said to be one of the key strands to the Welsh Assembly government’s policy for more effective work-life balance for employers and employees in Wales promoting the benefits of work-life balance and communicating those benefits across the public, private and voluntary sectors in Wales.

UK promotes open source software for local government The UK government’s National Computing Centre (NCC) has launched an open source test laboratory to encourage takeup of open source solutions among public sector organisations.

The Open Source Laboratory is part of the Open Source Academy, a national project funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s e-Innovations initiative. The lab aims to provide facilities for local authorities that want to trial open source applications without running the risk of disrupting existing services.

A spokesman for the NCC has said that the creation of the Open Source Laboratory will help public sector organisations evaluate alternatives in an independent www.egov.csdms.in |

test environment without compromising current service delivery. Use of the lab is available to all public sector bodies free of charge. The first user of the facility will be Cheshire County Council, which is evaluating a solution for desktop services that uses open source and proprietary technology.

AFRICA East African regional states to consolidate e-Government strategy The East African Community member states of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania held discussions recently aimed at consolidating the region’s e-Government strategy that will streamline communication systems.

The earlier meeting held in Tanzania last year, identified customs and immigration control, e-Parliament, e-Health, e-Banking and procurement as strategic areas to be tackled in the push for an economic community based on information knowledge.

The discussions held in this meeting centred around on minutes of the Tanzania meeting.

The Director of the Regional Economic Commission for Africa, Mbaye Diouf, has said that the areas outlined agreements and protocols that should sustain e-Government services, applications and content in a harmonised manner. Kenya’s Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, James Rege inaugurated the meeting.

programmes, which together enable ICT to be procured and offered to the public.

DUBAI

It is named Government Elecronic Network (GovNet)-Pilot, the project is a part of Mozambique’s national ICT Policy Implementation Strategy, which aims to improve public services and increase transparency in the public sector. The pilot has established a common communications platform for the Ministry of Public Administration, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Science and Technology, among others, giving them a unified e-mail system, Intranet, and document management system, as well as cost-effective shared access to the Internet. The network is now being used by over 500 government employees through nearly 400 work stations. As part of the project, a new government web portal has also been launched at http:// www.govnet. gov.mz, intended to increase public access to information.

The site will gradually add content from all government ministries and other information services to encourage public participation in national policy processes.

Namibian government ties up with Microsoft

| July July2005 2005

Dubai Municipality (DM) has bagged the Best Middle East e-Government Portal award during the 10th Middle East Information and Communication Technology Excellence Awards presented at a ceremony held on the sidelines of the 11th GCC e-Government Forum at Dubai World Trade Centre on 25 May, 2005.

The award recognises an Internet portal that furnishes combined e-Government services provided by different government organisations as a one-stop repository where businesses and citizens can gain access to all government services. The e-Government initiative of Dubai Municipality, started in 1999, has been a pioneer in providing e-Services not only in Dubai but in the region as well.

All its services are provided through one access point, which is the DM portal http:/ / www.dm.gov.ae.

Mozambique govt. implements e-Gov pilot project The government of Mozambique has successfully implemented an e-Government pilot project connecting 15 national public administration entities in Maputo.

The initiative is funded through the Development Gateway Foundation’s e-Government Grants Programme, in partnership with the Government of Italy.

Dubai Municipality gets Best Middle East e-Government Portal award

AUSTRALIA The Namibian government and Microsoft recently marked the completion of a twoyear collaboration to create a new approach to provide Namibian schools and communities with access to technology and computer related training.

The joint initiative is named, African Pathfinder and comprises a broad range of

Australian government supports open source software to facilitate e-Democracy The government of the Australian State of Victoria recently, issued a call for tenders for the development of open source 39

based electronic voting machines. An inquiry into the potential of e-Democracy in Victoria has recommended the use of open source software regarding the adoption of electronic voting kiosks.

The state expects to facilitate the ballot for people with poor English skills by the use of electronic voting machines.

According to the Electronic Democracy Subcommittee chaired by Michael Leighton, the use of open source software prevents abuse and encourages public confidence in the integrity of the system.

ESTONIA President halts the e-Voting plan Estonian President Arnold Ruutel feels that the electronic voting process needs to be more secure before it can be extended to the national elections in 2007 and therefore has halted the e-Voting plan.

A month ago, the Estonian parliament had agreed to the Internet voting for use in local elections coming up this October. The system uses the country’s identity card system as the basis for voter identification. Voters would need to have an ID card reader attached to the computer to vote online. Although around 60 percent of the population owns an ID card, the number with card readers is much lower.

The president emphasizes a more thorough debate on the uniformity of elections and the reliability of voter identification. According to him e-voting would violate the principle of uniformity of elections.

MALAYSIA Perak to be a ‘knowledge state’ by 2020 The state government of the Perak in Malaysia has launched a strategy to 40

transform Perak into a ‘knowledge state’ by 2020.

The plan will be disseminated in two stages and will focus on three areas: knowledge infrastructure, knowledge economy and knowledge society. A total of 25 initiatives will be put in place to support the strategy, whose mission is to make ICT the bedrock of the Perak economy.

One of the targets of the plan is to have a broadband network installed in all government agencies by 2006; other goals are to have 63 per cent Internet penetration throughout the state by 2010 such as Internet kiosks in all town centres and 40 per cent e-mail usage in rural areas.

The government said that it wants to establish Perak as an attractive location for outsourcing, shared services centres and call centres.

IRELAND Irish government launches health portal

SRI LANKA PM launches e-Society development initiative The launch of the e- Society Development Initiative (e-SDI) by the Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) under the patronage of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa will take Sri Lanka into a new era where all sections of the society would reap the benefits of the developments of ICT. The overall goal of the e-SDI, is to facilitate access to ICT amongst the most vulnerable groups in Sri Lanka, and ensure that the benefits of ICT development flow to these groups.

By facilitating a more balanced access to information within Sri Lankan society it is envisioned the e-SDI will assist in closing the development divide between urban and rural areas, help to integrate post conflict regions and thereby contribute to the broader national objectives of development, growth and peace.The key feature of the e-SDI will be the e-Society Fund through which two types of grant mechanisms will be operated over the next four years.

UGANDA Uganda shifts toward e-Government The Irish government has officially launched the ‘Harley Street of cyberspace,’ an online communications network aimed at health professionals and the general public.

The website, http://www.healthhub.ie is developed by Odyssey Internet Portals in collaboration with the Irish College of General Practitioners. It is developed in an attempt to facilitate the interaction and communication of health professional organisations with their members and with each other, as well as providing the general public with a point of access to health professionals around the country.

Uganda’s Ministry of Finance, Planning and Development (MoFPEP) and HewlettPackard (HP) have announced the completion of the first phase of a multimillion-dollar integrated financial management system (IFMS).

The system, which was implemented at six government ministries and four local government bodies, aims to support the improvement of public sector budgeting, financial management and accounting, and allow disparate departments and systems to share information seamlessly.

For daily news on egov log on to www.egov.csdms.in www.egov.csdms.in |

FACTS AND DATA

How e-Ready are Indian states?

India: e-Readiness Assessment Report 2004 is published by Department of Information Technology, Government of India and prepared jointly by DIT and National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). The e-Rediners index has been based on three bread categories ‘Environment’, ‘Readiness’ and ‘Usage’. A multi-stage principal component analysis has been used to construct the e-Readiness index of the State.

Region and State wise distribution in terms of e-Readiness index Region

States

Status

Central

Chattisgarh Madhya Pradesh Punjab Uttar Pradesh Uttaranchal Jammu & Kashmir Himachal Pradesh Haryana Delhi Chandigarh Tamil Nadu Pondicherry Lakshadweep Kerala Karnataka Andhra Pradesh Andaman & Nicobar Islands Bihar Jharkhand Orissa West Bengal Dadra & Nagar Haveli Daman & Diu Goa Gujarat Maharashtra Rajasthan Arunachal Pradesh Assam Manipur Meghalaya Mizoram Nagaland Sikkim Tripura

Average Achievers Expectants Aspiring Leaders Average Achievers Below Average Achievers Below Average Achievers Average Achievers Aspiring Leaders Aspiring Leaders Leader Leader Expectants Least Achievers Aspiring Leaders Leader Leader Least Achievers Least Achievers Below Average Achievers Average Achiever Expectants Least Achievers Least Achievers Aspiring Leader Aspiring Leaders Leader Average Achievers Least Achievers Below Average Achievers Least Achievers Below Average Achievers Below Average Achievers Least Achievers Average Achievers Least Achievers

North

South

East

West

North-east

Source: www.mit.gov.in/ereadiness/report.asp

| July 2005

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ABOUT TOWN

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Conflux

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2005

The e-Government Conference

This section lists upcoming e-Government conferences, exhibitions, and other public events for the benefit of our readers.

10-12 July 2005

19-22 September 2005

9 - 11 November 2005

EURO mGOV 2005: Mobile Government Conference United Kingdom

GTC East 2005 Seventeenth Annual Government Technology Conference Albany New York, USA

Government Technology Africa 2005 Johannesburg South Africa

www.icmg.mgovernment.org/

http://www.govtech.net/gtc/?pg= conference&confid=230

13 July 2005 London e-Government Conference 2005 London, United Kingdom http://govnet.co.uk/london/

14 July 2005 2nd National E-Gov Conference 2005 Birmingham bookings@e-gov.info

27th July, 2005 NASSCOM e-Gov Summit 2005 Delhi, India http://www.nasscom.org/ printforthcoming.asp

15 – 17 November 2005

FT E-fficiency in Government Conference London

GTC Southeast 2005 Fifth Annual Government Technology Conference Atlanta Georgia

http://www.financialtimesconferences.com/ pages/conference.asp?ecode =ZZ1107

http://www.govtech.net/gtc/ ?pg=conference&confid=253

10-11 October 2005

17-19 October 2005

17-18 November 2005

Conflux 2005 The e-Governance Conference The Grand New Delhi India

Government Health IT Conference Washington, DC

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http://conflux.csdms.in

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http://www.fcw.com/events/ghit/ e

Conflux

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2005

The e-Government Conference

19-21 October 2005

22-26 August 2005 EGOV05 International Conference on E-Government Denmark

eChallenges 2005 Slovenia, Austria http://www.echallenges.org/2005/

www.confadmin@faw.uni-linz.ac.at

26-28 October 2005

12 September 2005

IFIP International Conference on eBusiness, eCommerce and eGovernment (I3E’2005), Poznan, Poland

User Involvement in e-Government development projects Rome, Italy

http://www.terrapinn.com/2005/govtechza

http://www.multiagent.com/dailist/ msg00056.html

24-25 November 2005 Ministerial eGovernment Conference Manchester United Kingdom http://www.europa.eu.int/information_ society/activities/egovernment_ research/ minconf2005/index_en.htm

4-7 January 2006 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 39) E-Government Track Kauai, Hawaii http://www.ctg.albany.edu/conference/hicss

http://www.effin.org/egov-workshop.html

19-21 September 2005 The 5th Enterprise Architecture Conference & Exhibition Washington, DC United States of America http://www.e-gov.com/events/2005/ea

27-28 October 2005

30 January - 2 Febuary, 2006

The International Conference on E-Government (ICEG 2005) Lord Elgin Hotel Ottawa, Canada

GTC Southwest 2006 Seventeenth Annual Government Technology Conference Austin, TX

http://www.academic-conferences.org/ iceg2005/iceg2005-home.htm

http://www.govtech.net/gtc/ ?pg=conference&confid=276

Tell us about your event at egov@csdms.in 42

www.egov.csdms.in |

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Conflux 2005

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The e-Government Conference

The Grand New Delhi 17 - 19 October, 2005

e-Government: Evolution or Revolution?

About Conflux 2005

Key sectors to be addressed

Conflux 2005 is a three day conference and exhibition being organised by Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) and GIS Development, in collaboration with Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi.

• • • • •

The objective of the event is to showcase e-Government developments in India and other parts of the world and learn from the successful practices in the region. The conference will serve as a platform to bring experts from various countries, key government representatives, industry, academia and grassroot NGOs all together to discuss and bring forth the key issues related to the e-Governance.

Land records Registration services Transport Municipal e-Government Passport department

• • • • •

Open Source Benchmarking tools and evaluation methodologies Public private partnership models International best practices National e-Government Action Plan

Key sessions

Key administrators/e-Government practitioners from the following bodies: ! Central Government ! State Governments ! Local authorities ! Government agencies and other relevant government organisations ! Corporates providing e-Government services ! Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) including ICT companies providing e-Government and e-Commerce solutions ! Politicians ! Bureaucrats ! Chambers of commerce and other associations ! Community leaders ! Community-based organisations

• • • • •

knowledge for change

Host state

Rural governance models Citizen service centres Local content for local governance Role of civil society organisations in e-Government Right to information vs. duty to publish

Paper submission deadline Abstracts Acceptance Full paper

July 30, 2005 August 07, 2005 August 30, 2005

Important contacts General enquiry/Information Abstract/papers submission Registration Sponsorships/exhibition

info@conflux.csdms.in papers@conflux.csdms.in registration@conflux.csdms.in sponsorship@conflux.csdms.in

Supported by

ISPAI

Government of NCT of Delhi

Internet Service Providers Association of India

Media partners

Co-organisers

Department of Science and Technology

Income tax/Commercial tax Treasuries automation Police departments Postal department Citizen services

Key topics

Participant profile

Organisers

• • • • •

SP eG

For more details, please contact: Conflux Secretariat G - 4, Sector - 39, Noida - 201 301, India Tel +91-120-2502180 to 87, Fax: +91-120-2500060 Web www.conflux.csdms.in, E-mail info@conflux.csdms.in

ov The bimonthly magazine on e-Governance

Promoting Global Trade & Investment

w w w. i 4 d . c s d m s . i n

Commonwealth BUSINESS

Institutional partner

www.conflux.csdms.in

Asia's first and only monthly print magazine on e-Government. ov www.egov.csdms.in