www.egovonline.net
Volume II issue 7, July 2006
ISSN 0973-161X
The e-Government magazine for Asia and the Middle East
Tall hopes Introduction of wireless and communication technologies will lead to transformation in government policies and will directly impact the social and economic lives of rural areas
Augmenting PURA initiative through cost-effective implementation PAGE 12 Interview: Sanjay Aurora, Interwoven PAGE 21 ‘High on intent, low on execution’ PAGE 42 Effectively strengthening Malaysian judiciary PAGE 27
IN THIS ISSUE Cover Stor y
9
India bracing for a long haul Danish A. Khan and Anuradha Dhar
12
Wimax: Augmenting PURA initiative through cost-effective implementation Rakesh Radhakrishnan
18
Radio Technology: Aiding rural e-Governance initiatives efficiently Ananjan Datta
Regional Focus: Kerala
Event Diary
33
36 38
‘Change-management difficult to handle’ Interview: P H Kurian, IT Secretary, Kerala
National Summit on e-Forms Now, Have greater control over your documents Seminar on Open Document Format
In Practice
27
e-Syariah: Effectively strengthening Malaysian judiciary Ismail, S.E. and Abd. Hakim, A.A.S
Industry Perspective
21
Providing enterprise content management solutions Interview: Sanjay Aurora, Regional Vice President, Interwoven
Commentar y
42
‘High on intent, low on execution’
News Review
6 8 19 30 40
Asia Business Middle East India World
Regular Features
45 46
numbers What’s On
Rajdeep Sahrawat
Read all the articles online at www.egovonline.net | July 2006
3
Editorial Guidelines egov is a monthly magazine providing a much needed platform to the voices of various stakeholders in the arena of e-Government, apart from being a repository of valuable information and meaningful discussion on issues of e-governance in general, and e-Government in particular – both to the specialist and the generalist. Contributions to egov magazine should be in the form of articles, case studies, book reviews, event report and news related to e-Government project and initiatives, which are of immense value for practitioners, professionals, corporate and academicians. We would like the contributors to follow these guidelines, while submitting their material for publication. • Articles/ Case studies should not
•
•
•
•
exceed 2500 words. For book reviews and event report, the word limit is 800. An abstract of the article/case study not exceeding 200 words should be submitted along with the article/case study. All articles/ case studies should provide proper references. Authors should give in writing stating that the work is new and has not been published in any form so far. Book reviews should include details of the book like the title, name of the author(s), publisher, year of publication, price and number of pages and also send the cover photograph of the book in JPEG/ TIFF (resolution 300 dpi). Book reviews of books on e-Governance related themes, published from year 2002 onwards, are preferable. In case of website, provide the URL.
•
The manuscripts should be typed in a standard printable font (Times New Roman 12 font size, titles in bold) and submitted either through mail or post. • Relevant figures of adequate quality (300 dpi) should be submitted in JPEG/ TIFF format. • A brief bio-data and passport size photograph(s) of the author(s) must be enclosed. • All contributions are subject to approval by the publisher. Please send in your papers/articles/ comments to: The Editor G-4, Sector 39 NOIDA (UP) 201 301, India Tel +91 120 2502180-87 Fax +91 120 2500060 Email: info@egovonline.net
Editorial Calendar 2006-07 Solution Focus
Application Focus
October
Interoperability (Open Standards, Open Source Software)
Transport
November
eForms
Police
December
Information and Network Security
Passport Visa
January
Metadata and Data Standards
Income Tax
February
e-Governance Architecture
Courts
March
WiMAX
Posts
Have your daily cup of hot morning tea with hot ee--Government news!
4
Log on to www.egovonline.net www.egovonline.net |
EDITORIAL Vol. II, Issue 7
July 2006
President Dr. M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta Sr. Assistant Editor Anuradha Dhar Assistant Editor Danish A. Khan Sub Editor Prachi Shirur Designed by Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Web Zia Salahuddin Ramakant Sahu Circulation Himanshu Kalra Editorial and marketing correspondence eGov G-4 Sector 39 NOIDA 201301, India Tel: +91 120 2502181-87 Fax: +91 120 2500060 Email: info@egov.csdms.in 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. egov is published in technical collaboration with GIS Development (www.GISdevelopment.net) © Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2006 www.csdms.in
The push factor For any government, the realisation of an e-Government vision is an arduous task and a long journey indeed. Primarily, a government’s foremost desire is to see the fruits of governance reaching common citizens promptly. It is possible only when there is a nationwide network of its several departments effectively supported by an appropriate infrastructure for delivery of services to citizens. This could be achieved with the help of a robust telecom infrastructure to ensure proper and adequate connectivity, particularly in rural areas. President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’s Vision 2020, which prominently focuses on PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas), is in itself a strategic initiative having the potential to empower Rural India amply ensuring India’s participatory role in its own economic and social progress in the next 10-15 years. This would fructify only when all the villages across the country are fully networked with high-end connectivity, which a capable telecom and wireless infrastructure can readily provide. At present, the telecom and wireless sector has emerged as one of the key sectors responsible for India’s resurgent economic growth. During the last two years, this sector has moved on to a higher growth path of an average rate of 40-45%. In terms of number of phones, India recently crossed 146 million mark thus becoming the fifth largest network in the world after China, USA, Japan and Germany. There is an immense potential to expand telecom network in India since the current teledensity in the country is only about 13.02% as against more than 100% in USA, Japan and Germany. China’s teledensity stands at 55%. In the developed countries, the demand has already saturated. India is therefore, in an enviable position to surpass these countries within next 4-5 years. Evidently enough, the mobile segment with a substantial contribution of both public and private sector would nonetheless lead the future growth. A total of 250 million phones is being targeted by December 2007, and further 500 million connections by the year 2010. The cellular networks are expected to cover 3,50,000 (out of 6,07,000) villages thereby covering 450 million people by 2006. Almost 85% of the geographical area in India is to be covered by mobile telephone by 2007. In fact, telecom and wireless technologies are playing a vital role today in vastly improving access to various e-Government services to citizens. Thanks to the ever-increasing connectivity, a lot of people-to-people (P2P) interaction is taking place with each passing day. Connectivity has spurred efficient delivery of eGovernment services such as declaring examination results through SMS, online railway booking etc. With growing awareness in citizens to avail e-Government services from the confines of their homes, offices etc., slow but steady pressure is mounting on government to deliver these services fast enough. All this, however, depend on the strengthening of the telecom and wireless infrastructure on a massive scale. The strengthened infrastructure would lead to increased connectivity necessary to take the e-Government movement forward. This is undoubtedly a push factor for e-Governance in the country.
Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in
| July 2006
5
A SIA iGov2010 masterplan in Singapore
After successful implementation of eGovernment Action Plan (eGAP) II, the Singapore government has unveiled a new US$2bn five-year masterplan called iGov2010 to move e-Government forward. Raymond Lim, Minister for Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Finance and Foreign Affairs, launched the iGov2010 plan recently at the annual iGov Forum. The iGov2010 plan comprises four strategic thrusts that include increasing reach and richness of e-Services; increasing citizens’ mindshare in eEngagement; enhancing capacity and synergy in government; and, enhancing national competitive advantage. Earlier, the eGAPII plan was launched in 2003, and spread over three-years. Lim said, “US$2bn would be invested under iGov2010 to transform backend processing to achieve front-end efficiency and effectiveness. There would be strengthened focus and emphasis on transcending organisational structures, changing rules and procedures, to reorganise and integrate the government around customers’ and citizens’ needs and intentions.”
e-Passbooks to be introduced in Pakistan e-Passbooks system or electronic passbooks would shortly be introduced in Pakistan. Along with, the government is also considering identifying legal and prudential requirements to create equal opportunities of financial intermediation to the citizens. 6
NEWS REVIEW According to National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) officials, there are plans to computerise land records in the country to ease the process of loan applications. Currently, the titles are maintained manually and are not relied upon by the financial institutions while considering loan requests. Further, the situation becomes compounded since loans are not given by all banks against the agriculture passbooks issued under the Loan for Agriculture, Commercial and Industrial Purposes Act, 1973.
Agency of Sri Lanka), said, “We have invited several IT companies to set shop in Sri Lanka. Already, most of the top IT companies operating in the e-Governance sector are involved in this project as a result of which some actions are being seen. The government has been proactively pursuing for IT investments in the country and is offering several incentives like announcing three year tax holiday for the companies even with minimal investments.”
US$100mn e-Gov investment in Sri Lanka
Stress on better e-Governance in China Chinese leaders have stressed the need for effective e-Governance to improve delivery of information and services, encourage citizen input and make the government more accountable, transparent and efficient. The leaders reiterated the need for faster and more comprehensive development of government websites in order to provide the people with better, more transparent online services. By the end of 2005, there were more than 2.6 million websites in China, of which more than 100,000 are government portals.
Spurred by development on the e-Government front in several countries the worldover, the Government of Sri Lanka has also decided to make the country e-nabled. The Sri Lankan government in partnership with the World Bank has invested US$100mn on eGovernance projects in the country. Spread over a 5-year period, the project covers six core areas including ICT policy, leadership and institutional development, information infrastructure, reengineering government, ICT HR capacity building, ICT investment and private sector development and e-Society.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who is also the head of National Leading Group on Information, while addressing a national meeting recently at Beijing, said, “eGovernance should be accelerated to boost the reform of government administration and management, improve efficiency and services to the public and allow the public to participate in the decision-making process.” Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan, the deputy head of the National Leading Group on Information, disclosed, “By 2010, a nationwide electronic governance
Fayaz Hudah, Program Manager, ICTA (Information and Communication Technology www.egovonline.net |
network would be set up for providing a mechanism for information sharing. More than 50 percent of administratively approved programs would be published online by 2010.”
Brunei unveils e-Government project to fight corruption
Brunei recently unveiled the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB)’s e-Govern-ment project ‘Integrated Corruption Information System (ICOINS)’. The signing ceremony was officiated by Pg Dato Paduka Hj Ismail Pg Hj Mohamed, Permanent Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office. The I-COINS project is aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of ACB’s functions and operations. The I-COINS would also provide online information for the public in seeking advice on preventive measures of any occurrence of corruption as well as to provide information thereby lessening physical contacts. The project, which is worth US$2.9mn, is expected to be complete by the end of 2006.
In Thailand, move to reduce e-Auctions opposed Citing that e-Auctions for government procurement contracts cause delay in public spending, the Thai Finance Ministry has decided to raise the minimum value of government procurement contracts to be awarded by e-Auction from THB2mn (US$521,751) to THB5mn (US$1.30mn), contending that the higher ceiling would | July 2006
expedite public spending particularly in the provinces. The move comes in the wake of complaints by provincial governors that government spending has been slowed down in their respective provinces because of |e-Auctions. However, some senior Finance Ministry officials oppose the move saying that e-Auctions curbed corruption significantly. The Finance Ministry’s move has also drawn criticism from economists, who allude that eAuctions are not a serious cause for delays in public spending but in fact prevented corruption. Pairoj Vongvipanond, former Dean of the Economics faculty at Chulalongkorn University, argued, “If the government wanted to curb corruption it should stick to current eAuction procedures. The merit of the e-Auction was that it disclosed information and allowed more bidders, resulting in lower costs to the taxpayer.” It may be recalled that prior to e-Auctions, information was often disclosed to just a few bidders
degrees in Information Technology, Science, Health and Engineering.
Korea holds Global e-Government Conference The Home Affairs Ministry of Korea recently organised ‘Global e-Government Conference with CIOs’ at Seoul, which was attended by top Korea policymakers such as Government Administrators, Home Affairs Minister Lee Yong-sup, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, officials from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations (UN). The conference, which was sponsored by the Korea e-Government Forum, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the National Computerisation Agency (NPA), was organised to share ideas about providing high-tech solutions for the legislature, judiciary and administration. The participants unanimously opined the need for policymakers to focus more on the needs of end-users while operating eGovernment programs instead of dwelling more on technical aspects. In his opening remarks, Lee Yong-sup said, “The Korean
familiar with specific government agencies thus leading to collusion among bidders and between bidders and government officials.
e-University by 2007 in Malaysia A proposal to create an e-University by 2007 has been endorsed by foreign ministers from countries in Asia and the Middle East at a meeting of the 30 member states of the Asia Co-operation Dialogue in Doha, Qatar, recently. The e-University would receive US$50mn from Malaysia. To be managed by Open University Malaysia, the e-University would initially admit 4,100 students, while aiming for 28,450 students by 2011. The courses on offer are to include Undergraduate, Masters and Doctoral
government had been putting in significant efforts to innovate administrative processes through e-Government, and the efforts are beginning to produce impressive results.” In 2005, Korea ranked 5 th in the UN’s eGovernment readiness rankings consecutively for the second year, following the US, Denmark, Britain and Sweden. Korea ranked 13th in 2003. 7
BUSINESS Nortel eyeing Indian SMBs, e-Government segments Aiming to expand in India, Canadian telecom solutions provider Nortel Networks Corp has started eyeing small and medium businesses (SMBs), e-Government activities and contact centres. Nortel recently signed a 5-year managed services agreement with Indian telecom company Bharti Televentures in an attempt to expand Indian operations. Phil Edholm, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President (VP), Strategy and Architecture, Enterprise Solutions and Packet Networks, said, “The signing of agreement with Bharti Televentures amply indicates Nortel’s keenness to further expand in India. The company would be targeting SMBs and call centres.” Ravi Chauhan, VP, Nortel India, while speaking to mediapersons, said that Nortel’s first Network Operations Centre (NOC) is being opened at New Delhi. The NOC would be taking care of the customers’ networks. “Nortel India is in talks with various players in the e-governance space in the country to promote its products, especially the LG-Nortel series of hybrid videophones,” he further explained.
Visa International, to enhance Nigerian e-Payment market In an attempt to develop the Nigerian eP a y m e n t system further, World’s largest provider of credit card and electronic payment 8
NEWS REVIEW solutions Visa International has entered into a partnership with ValuCard. Gavin Young, Country Director for Nigeria at Visa International CEMEA (Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa), said, “The venture with ValuCard will allow both organisations to develop electronic payments and the card market in Nigeria bringing to the economy the significant benefits of a cashless society.” Launched in 1976, Visa offers debit cards, Internet payment systems, value-storing smart cards and traveller’s cheques. It is currently present in more than 160 countries worldwide, and is owned by more than 21,000 financial institutions.
success or failure of various e-Government projects can be decided. But this would be the one area to be effectively addressed by Sun’s partnership with IIT-Delhi. We would be working towards creating an entity for measurement of such issues, so that we are in a better position to handle questions like — whether Wimax is a right solution for hilly regions or not?”
Spectrum Business launches Ejurix
Sun Microsystems, IIT-Delhi to set up e-Gov lab Mumbai-based Spectrum Business Support Ltd. has come to the aid of the legal profession by launching online library Ejurix, which would provide easy access to 2.5 lakh judgments spread across more than 12 lakh pages. The e-Library would provide information on judgments, acts, rules, regulations, notifications and circulars.
IIT-Delhi campus
Technology solutions provider Sun Microsystems in association with IIT-Delhi would be setting up e-Gov lab in Delhi. Expected to work in areas such as measuring the success of various e-Government projects and other social aspects relating to the e-Government phenomenon, the lab would be located in the IIT-Delhi campus. Jaijit Bhattacharya, Country Director, Government Strategy, Sun Microsystems, said, “e-Governance is one of the most promising segments within the country today. However, there are not many parameters on which the
D. B. Modak, Spectrum Managing Director, said, “It is our attempt to make legal reference a friendly process. Our product makes life easier for almost everybody involved in the legal process. In order to gain access all you need is an Internet connection and our subscription, which is at Rs. 5,000 per quarter for unlimited search. Currently, Ejurix has close to 100 customers and plans to raise that to 3,000 by year-end,” and added, “The company plans to convert its 10,000-strong customer base — including the Supreme Court of India, seven high courts, the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the income tax and customs departments and innumerable individuals — into dedicated Ejurix users.” www.egovonline.net |
C O V E R
S T O R Y Telecom & Wireless TTechnologies echnologies
India bracing for a long haul Danish A. Khan and Anuradha Dhar
F
irst came the sprawling network of bright yellow ‘STD/PCO’ phone booths across the country, which helped connect people of India thereby providing instant employment to millions, even in the far-flung regions and remotest corners. Sam Pitroda, great visionary and technocrat, realised the importance of connectivity and a ‘wired’ India two decades ago. It was he who brought telecom revolution in the country. Next came the era of cellular phones. Mobile telephony made advent in India in 1995. It took three years to cross the one million mark in 1998. It crossed three million in 2000, five million in 2001, 10 million in 2002 and finally, 50 million in early 2005. Though the earlier perception was that mobiles would be for the rich and strictly an urban phenomenon, it did not take much time to prove otherwise. | July 2006
The kind of direct impact mobile phones has on the economic and social lives of the poor is profound. Today, we hear stories of villagers selling their products or knowing the latest market price of agricultural commodity through mobile. From stringent government monopoly, Indian telecom market has now become vibrant with multiple players and stiff competition. According to a June 2005 study paper of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India is one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world. The telecom industry is developing the fastest among all sectors in the country. India has crossed 100 million telephone connections, which puts India as the fifth largest telephone population in the world, after China, USA, Japan and Germany. As such, GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) mobile
communication is currently in the leading position in the development of telecom market. In the past five years, the number of GSM handset users has increased tenfold. The next few years is likely to see a dramatic expansion in the number of handset subscribers with the growth rate of more than 50%. It is expected that by 2008, there would be some 200 million GSM users, accounting for 75% of all telecom subscribers. Insofar as the growth of wireless technology in India is concerned, there has been a consistent increase over the years. There is no gainsaying the fact that wireless technologies represent a rapidly emerging area of growth and importance for providing ubiquitous access. Undoubtedly so, India today surpasses several big countries worldwide in terms of possessing world-class wireless networks. A single standard — GSM 900 9
— covers the entire length and breadth of the country thus providing unique benefits for telecom operators to support countrywide mobility.
Telecom Market status The current market status for the telecom industry in India by all accounts depicts quite a promising future. As on 13th April 2005, of the estimated 100.27 million total telephone connections in India, there were close to 53.94 million mobile connections and 46.33 million fixed line connections thereby showing that the number of phones (fixed and cellular) per 100 population stood at 9.13%. Further, mobile phone sector is bracing to overtake the fixed-line sector in a big way. Almost 60,000 new mobile connections are being added daily. Notably, telecom companies have anticipated the number would become three-fold in the next two years. Announcing the plans for the telecom industry, Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, declared that by 2007 India would be carpeted by telecom network and all the villages connected by phone. The country would have 250 million telephones and the teledensity would be about 22%. There is a tremendous potential to expand telecom network in the country since the teledensity as of now is pegged at only about 13.02% against over 100% in the 10
US, Japan and Germany. At the current rate India is expected to surpass the developed countries in the next 4-5 years, where the demand has already saturated. As also in terms of having a subscriber base, India is also far behind its neighbour China, which has the largest subscriber base of more than 600 million. To give a boost to the telecom industry, the Government of India (GoI) recently raised the limit for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in telecom companies from 49% to 74%. The GoI expects to raise a part of the planned US$20bn investment to strengthen telecom infrastructure
through FDI. Amply indicating that this augurs well for the economy, the economists have linked a 1% growth in telecom penetration to a 3% rise in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Currently, in India airtime rates are among the lowest in the world. Leading telecom private players in the country such as Hutch, Airtel, Reliance, Escotel, Idea and the state-owned BSNL and MTNL are at a cutthroat competition to build their individual massive subscriber base. Over the last few years, call rates have dropped sharply due to escalating price war. This has also given a significant boost to the rural market. In the eastern part of the State of Uttar Pradesh, for example, while the first 100,000 connections took five years to reach, the same number was sold by Airtel in less than two months earlier in 2005. According to V&D100 2005, the 10 th Indian Telecom Industry Report, released by a prominent Communications business magazine Voice & Data, private operators accounted for 43% of the total telecom services revenue in 2004-05 in the Indian telecom market.
Wireless Options Worldwide, various wireless technologies continue to evolve. However, the growth of wireless technology in India has been increasing consistently over the years. In fact, wireless technologies represent a rapidly emerging area of growth and
www.egovonline.net |
importance for providing ubiquitous access. India is expected to see the growth of wireless data services through 2.5G technologies and the exploration of data applications over the next 2-3 years. A wide deployment of Bluetooth and Wireless LAN in the home and enterprise markets is to be witnessed in future. The growth of wireless data services, however, depends on the availability of more relevant content, which is still wanting. Besides, the fate of wireless technology also depends on the usefulness of content and applications, interoperable standards, and user acceptance. According to Eric A. Brewer, some of the most promising wireless technologies for rural connectivity are: • CDMA450: CDMA is the technology developed by Qualcomm that is widely deployed as CDMA2000. CDMA450 is a variation that runs at 450 MHz and is good solution for mixed data/voice service and also for large flat areas in which a single expensive
•
•
tower could cover a large rural area. WiFi: Though a low cost solution, the normal usage of WiFi (as defined by the 802.11 standards) provides short range connectivity intended for sharing and relatively poor support for voice connectivity. This is a good solution for hilly areas or places with line of sight among villages (to minimize tower costs). WiMax standard (802.16): It has higher bandwidth and is very | July 2006
suitable for replacing fiber for wireless backbone networks. But there are some challenges, for example, the standards are still in flux, demonstration networks are still rare and WiMax equipment is expensive.
Future plans The future model of tele-info services has to be both futuristic and financially viable. It must have the capabilities to meet the future needs of e-Commerce, tele-info services, social services such as e-Education, e-Health and delivery of public services including e-Governance. Broadband appears to be an appropriate platform for rollout of services and development of last
mile connectivity through wireless technologies appears to be most suited considering cost-effectiveness. There is a need to finalise the legal, institutional and regulatory modalities of opening of broadband services in the rural areas quickly to leapfrog the broadband rollout. Dayanidhi Maran, while spelling out his vision for the next two years, indicated that the Internet connections are expected to increase to
18 million by 2007 from 5.45 million in December 2004. Broadband connections are targeted to be 9 million during this period. The GoI also recently announced a new broadband policy in keeping with increasing connectivity across the country. The policy aims to target 20 million broadband subscribers and 40 million Internet subscribers by the end of 2010. The future for telecom industry in India, undoubtedly, holds promise. As we have seen, the industry as such is growing at an increasing pace. There is a tremendous potential for growth, as connectivity still remain beyond reach
particularly in the rural hinterland. As the current scenario indicate, fixed-lines would be left far behind in the race being overtaken by wireless communica-tions on a massive scale. The Government of India’s decision to raise FDI is significantly aimed at giving the industry the much-needed boost. However, the growth of wireless technology sector would significantly depend on the availability and utility of the content, the issue of interoperability, and the user acceptance. 11
Augmenting PURA initiative through cost-effective implementation Rakesh Radhakrishnan As part of the 2020 Vision and the Next Generation Communication and Information Technology Solutions emerging today to fulfill the IT and communications needs within the PURA initiative context in India, it is pertinent to explore different perspectives from which Architectural Integration and Functional Alignment can take place
P
URA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) is a strategic initiative that has the potential to empower Rural India and can ensure that India, in its entirety, can participate in economic and social progress in the next 10 to 15 years. One key characteristic of PURA is the 30-60 km of ring road connecting a cluster of villages along with a link to a nearby city. For example, there are more than 100 villages near a place called Dhamal in Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, a town that is about 100 kms from Chennai. The proposed PURA initiative would essentially connect these villages around the town of Kancheepuram with a circular ring road (2 lanes in each direction) and would further connect to a link road (or a National Highway) that connects Dhamal to Chennai. The idea is 12
to connect all of rural India with 5000 such projects at a cost of INR500-1500mn (US$10.79-32.37mn) for each project. Along the lines of providing the physical connectivity, there are also plans to provide network connectivity to this cluster of villages within a 30–60 km range. All major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore etc. already have fiber networks. Therefore, the ideal cost effective implementation of small metro sized networks (50 to 80 km range) that would cover these cluster of villages wireless, would involve Next Generation Wireless Networking technologies (high throughput, high speed 40MBps and low cost) that also leverages existing Internet connecting wire-line implementations such as Cable and Fiber Optic networks.
WiMAX, an IEEE 802.16 standard, has the potential to augment the PURA initiative with ubiquitous coverage in all the 5000 cluster of villages essentially covering the entire nation. It can effectively cover 25,000,000 square kms, which far exceeds India’s total land area of 3,300,000 square kms. Even based on a conservative estimate of 1 implementation for every 5, nearby PURA cluster could potentially cover 5 million square kms, reducing the need to approximately 1000 such implementations instead of 5000. In India, recently (early 2006) VSNL in conjunction with Aperto Networks has successfully deployed such wireless MAN in 65 cities, with plans to deploy in 200 additional cities by mid 2007. It is pertinent to understand the pros www.egovonline.net |
and cons of WiMAX. These could change over time. The positive aspects of WiMAX are the following: range of 5000 to 9000 square km would easily cover one or more cluster of villages of PURA; implementation process is cost effective; momentum towards WiMAX based 4G in neighbouring nations including Pakistan and Korea; usage of unlicensed spectrum (2.5 GHz and more); potential delivery of Voice, Video and Data over the same Access Network (negates the need for other last mile access networks); offers mobile access as well (laptops, mobile TV etc.); standards based (with embedded patented technologies from firms such as Nortel) and supported by Intel, Nortel, Alcatel etc.; can leverage Open Source software extensively to offer localised services; Technology is alignable with LAN (802.11) and WAN (802.20); good throughput and bandwidth; and, base stations can be Solar Powered (harnessing replenishable resources such as Solar and Air). The negative aspects of WiMAX are as follows: still requires Network Access Points (NAP) to connect to the Internet (via Cable networks or Fiber Optic NAP in cities); terrain characteristics affect deployment designs and costs as well (hilly regions, dense forest areas etc.); WiMAX deployments are still in TRIAL phases in USA, UK and Korea; requires clients to be WiMAX enabled; and, may require upgrades to 802.20 in later phases.
A WiMAX tower station can connect directly to the Internet using a high bandwidth, wired connection (e.g., a T3 line). It can also connect to another WiMAX tower using a line-ofsight, microwave link. This connection to a second tower (often referred to as a backhaul), along with the ability of a single tower to cover up to 3000 square miles, is what allows WiMAX to provide coverage to remote rural areas. In fact, WiMAX can actually provide two forms of wireless service. There is the non-line-of-sight, WiFi sort of service, where a small antenna on the computer connects to the tower. In this mode, WiMAX uses a lower frequency range — 2 GHz to 11 GHz (similar to WiFi). Lowerwavelength transmissions are not as easily disrupted by physical obstructions; they are better able to diffract, or bend, around obstacles. There is line-of-sight service, where a fixed dish antenna points straight at the WiMAX tower from a rooftop or pole. The line-of-sight connection is stronger and more stable, so it is able to send a lot of data with fewer errors. Line-of-sight transmissions use higher
frequencies, with ranges reaching a possible 66 GHz. At higher frequencies, there is less interference and lots more bandwidth. WiFi-style access would be limited to a 4- 6 mile radius (perhaps 25 square miles or 65 square km of coverage, which is similar in range to a cell-phone zone). Through the stronger line-of-sight antennas, the WiMAX transmitting station would send data to WiMAXenabled computers or routers set up within the transmitter’s 30-mile radius (2800 square miles or 9300 square km of coverage). This is what allows WiMAX to achieve its maximum range. The final step in the area network scale is the Global Area Network (GAN). The proposal for GAN is IEEE 802.20. A true GAN would work a lot like today’s cell phone networks, with users able to travel across the country and still have access to the network the whole time. This network would have enough bandwidth to offer Internet access comparable to cable modem service, but it would be accessible to mobile, always-connected devices like laptops or next-generation cell phones.
Working of WiMAX In practical terms, WiMAX would operate similar to WiFi but at higher speeds, over greater distances and for a greater number of users. WiMAX could potentially erase the suburban and rural blackout areas that currently have no broadband Internet access because phone and cable companies have not yet run the necessary wires to those remote locations. A WiMAX system consists of two parts — WiMAX tower and WiMAX receiver. A single WiMAX tower can provide coverage to a very large area, as big as 3000 square miles (~8,000 square km). A WiMAX receiver and antenna could be a small box or PCMCIA card, or they could be built into a laptop the way WiFi access is today. | July 2006
13
National WiMAX deployment The requirements for the deployment of a National WiMAX includes cooperation between IT, Telecom and Government organisations for multiple pilots — between 4 or 5 in potential locations in the North, South, West, East and Central India, closer to major cities. For example, one Pilot could involve IBM and Erricson, another with Sun Microsystems and Alcatel, and another with HP and Nortel etc., in conjunction with carriers in India such as Reliance, Bharti, VSNL, Tata etc.; Common Infrastructure SW Services (open source) per cluster of villages — customised with location specific information, entertainment, education, news etc. (based on requirements captured from local regions). For example, one region might have a heavy concentration of cotton production and clothing manufacturing, and their specific needs have to be met in terms of information services; tie-up and partnership with engineering and science schools in rural locations per cluster of villages, for facilities and volunteers (offering internship opportunities);
assessment of administrative staff requirements and cost of such human resources to augment network deployments per location, based on Pilots; assessment of the requirements of connectivity to India’s Internet backbone; vendor participation and funding for trials (in terms of network equipment, hardware and software tools) with assistance from the Indian Government and Educational institutions (approx. US$2.5mn for 5 trials); accurate estimates of costs of implementing and maintaining; and, defined set of implementable security functions.
High Level Conceptual Architecture India has a total of 3.3 million square kilometres of land area that requires network coverage. Roughly, 5000 square kilometres can be covered with one WiMAX deployment at rough cost of US$0.5mn. This would require about 750 to 1000 deployments (of WiMAX MAN’s) to cover all of India’s rural areas. Therefore, a conservative estimate is US$500mn to cover all the 5000 PURA locations. Such implementation should take into account and leverage existing
High-level Architecture (deployment)
assessment of ongoing operations and maintenance costs based on the 5 Pilots (OA&M requirements documentation); assessment of hardware and software costs and requirements based on the 5 Pilots (web servers, application servers, security requirements, and more); assessment of networking requirements and costs between W-MAN and NAP’s located in cities (T1, T3, fiber link etc.); 14
infrastructure such as building (engineering colleges), existing cell towers, open-source software, student and volunteer workers, gifts and grants from Fortune 100 tech companies etc., and strive for reducing the overall cost of implementation and maintenance in order to offer free network access to the masses. As part of the Pilot phase and feasibility analysis, a thorough analysis
of the demographics and distribution of villages around towns and cities needs to be captured and understood. The work being accomplished as part of the highway infrastructure and PURA ring roads can be reused as well. These characteristics (demographics, population distribution, village clusters, town and city locations etc.) along with terrain data, logistics for solar energy and the availability of the internet backbone will determine the exact number and locations of the WiMAX base station deployments around the nation. However majority of this deployment architecture can be determined based on what is being learnt from the 5 pilots. A phased approach beyond the 5 pilots could potentially begin with increments of 25 to 100 deployments per quarter, completing the full rollout within a span of 10 to 16 quarters (2.5 to 4 years). This initiative in conjunction with the PURA initiatives must be treated as a New Entrant ISP covering rural areas (non competitive due to its reach to remote areas where ISP’s do not exist) and offering connectivity for free – fixed and mobile. However as an ISP this venture could potentially generate revenue from Local Service Providers offering valued added applications including interactive games, video conferencing, VoIP telephony, instant messaging, streaming media etc., and to enterprises that offer there services to these remote locations. Revenues that could potentially be used for operations, administration and maintenance costs, in the long run. One key factor that needs to be noted is the fact that a WiMAX deployment only offers Access Networks across rural India. However, there are basic services that would be required for such large-scale deployments as well as connectivity to service networks via a core network. Such services include primarily AAA (authentication, authorization and auditing) services, OSS and Billing — if revenue generating services are offered such as content services, or if service and content providers are charged for the reach of their services. However, these services are to be augmented with localized services as well, based on local regional requirements in terms of information services, content etc. www.egovonline.net |
WiMAX offering fixed and mobile services
Based on this solution architecture, each deployment of a MAN (1000 such deployments can be replicas of the few that gets tested, first), would include Base Station, Service Network Gateway, Redundant AAA Servers (highly distributed identity systems), Redundant OSS/B Servers (Open Source Linux
has to offer (from online education to school going children to online Bachelors and Masters degrees); access to a participative Internet — sharing wedding albums to posting Blogs on subjects of interest; access to a collaborative Internet – sharing knowledge – virtual events etc. For example, online tutoring over the
Given the background and objectives of PURA and the high level visionary leadership offered by India’s leaders such as President Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Dr. PV Indiresan, the same spirit should be applied to this National Wireless Network — for the People (the rural population of India) and by the People (volunteers, organizations, NRI’s and government agencies) — to ensure India’s supremacy from all perspectives — social, economic and cultural by 2020 based), Basic Local Service Servers (web, news, application servers), switching gear for connectivity to main link to the backbone, and WiMAX enabled terminals to test.
Strategic Benefits The long term strategic benefits include direct employment generated by the 1000 plus deployments in terms of operations, administration and maintenance staff; direct employment generated by the 1000 plus deployments in terms of managing the links to local service providers (e.g., local tourism and availability of hotel rooms, availability of specialist doctors and treatment centres); access to all the information resources that the Internet | July 2006
Internet for a world of children needing affordable tutoring; promoting indigenous solutions to a global market. For example, farmers can promote a specialised fruit juice (only available in India) that acts as a boost to the human immunity system (taps into the massive Ayurvedic product base in India); empowers local folks with local and global information; indirect employment generated via augmenting effects; industries in rural areas leveraging the MAN for disseminating sensory data (from sprinkler systems to electronic goods — all generate sensory data throughout the manufacturing and supply chain management processes); travel and tourism in rural areas
benefiting from high speed connectivity; transportation and logistics benefiting from high speed connectivity; increase in telecommuting due to reach of the access network; benefits for the old aged and handicapped in terms of services offered via the access network; communication possibilities during natural disasters; emergency communication possibilities in rural locations; live webcast of India’s major events (cultural and social) from and to rural locations; more effective participation of rural India with a global community for productive purposes; stimulates next generation network services and business models around these services (location based, presence based, identity enabled, etc.); and more.
Conclusion India has this opportunity to leapfrog other developed nations in terms of skipping major 2G, 3G and 3.5G deployments and laying the foundation for a 4G public network directly at a fraction of the cost when compared to traditional 3G networks. The specific technology offered by WiMAX (802.16 protocol) and OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multi-plexing) and its respective reach is well suited with the PURA concept. Leveraging programs from leading vendors such as Intel, Nortel and many others, India can potentially trial multiple implementations of the WiMAX standards based on products recommended by the WiMAX Forum. Also, given the background and objectives of PURA and the high level visionary leadership offered by India’s leaders such as President Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Dr. PV Indiresan, the same spirit should be applied to this National Wireless Network — for the people (the rural population of India) and by the people (volunteers, organizations, NRI’s and government agencies) — to ensure India’s supremacy from all perspectivessocial, economic and cultural by 2020. About the author Rakesh Radhakrishnan is Sr. IT Architect, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
15
Radio Technology
Aiding rural e-Governance initiatives efficiently Ananjan Datta
Wire-line technologies are not really feasible for a successful eGovernment strategy. However, the use of radio technology is capable of solving many of the problems being currently faced by governments trying to provide rural connectivity 16
T
he World Bank defines ‘eGovernance’ as referring to “the use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government”. These technologies can serve a variety of different ends such as better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. The resulting benefits can be less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost reductions. Traditionally, the interaction between a citizen or business and a government agency takes place in a government office. However, with emerging information and
communication technologies (ICTs) it has now become possible to locate service centres closer to the clients. Such centres may consist of an unattended kiosk in the government agency, a service kiosk located close to the client, or the use of a personal computer in the home or office. Analogous to e-Commerce, which allows businesses to transact with each other more efficiently (B2B) and brings customers closer to businesses (B2C), e-Governance aims to make interaction between the government and citizens (G2C), government and business enterprises (G2B), and inter-agency relationships (G2G) more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive.
e-Governance initiative requirements For any e-Governance initiative, there are some technical and commercial criteria that any solution must meet before it can be seriously considered. Some of the main www.egovonline.net |
criteria include throughput, scalability and adaptability, transaction latency, reach, price, broadband connection speed, and support for industry and international standards. Throughput: How much data can the system transmit? An e-Governance initiative has to be self-sustaining in terms of generating revenues by piggybacking paid-services on the same network. Hence, the bandwidth required will change depending on the services to be offered like VOIP, e-Biz and market/ weather reports etc. Scalability and adaptability: It should be seen whether the bandwidth can be increased as and when required and the network can be extended easily. The network bandwidth should be able to arbitrarily grow while offering increased performance levels that might be demanded in the future. The network should be able to expand to provide future connectivity to any device, at any time and at any location within the specified coverage area. Transaction latency: The time taken in accomplishing a given task needs to be assessed. However, different applications tolerate different latencies. Reach: The location where the service is to be provided needs to be identified. An e-Governance initiative will ideally reach every village. It therefore becomes important to ascertain that the technology used is capable of doing this. Price: The cost needs to be determined. How much does it cost up front? What are the recurring and maintenance costs? These factors will determine the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the project. Broadband connection speeds: The technology should be able to provide adequate bandwidth to support typical rural applications and services, such as Distance Education, Tele-medicine, Entertainment etc., concurrently and at a reasonable number of locations. Support for industry and international standards: The technology should support industry and international standards to ensure lower costs and interoperability with different vendor equipment. In a country like India, with limited resources, there are further dimensions | July 2006
that need to be considered while selecting a system – Ruggedness, and Reliability and durability. Regarding ruggedness, the operating temperature range of the equipment should be from -40ºC to +80ºC. The equipment should be about 95% humidity proof. For reliability and durability, the communications net-work should be recognised as a critical infrastructure and should not have a single point of failure. Fail-over and redundancy mechanisms should be embedded to ensure high levels of uptime.
Obstacles Some of the major issues facing any e-Governance initiative in India include infrastructural inadequacies, time frame required for installation, costs, and geography. Issues such as power supply, telecom connectivity and bandwidth come in the purview of infrastructural inadequacies. In rural India, the availability or lack of electricity is well known. Despite best efforts, a number of villages still remain to be connected to the rest of India by telephone. Howsoever, when telecom connectivity is concerned, even if it is there the available bandwidth is not enough for Internet connectivity for e-Governance projects. The time required to set up leased line/cable networks is usually measured in months and years for far-flung areas in rural India. The use of traditional methods to provide connectivity – wires and cables on poles or underground – is expensive because of labour and material costs. Given the long distances and the difficult terrain that is often involved, Wire-line connectivity is impractical for all of India’s 638,365 villages.
Solution For a successful e-Governance strategy, Wire-line technologies are not really feasible. Rather, many of the problems facing governments trying to provide rural connectivity can be overcome by the use of radio technology. To confront Infrastructural inadequacies such as power supply, telecom connectivity and bandwidth appropriately, installation of radios is important. To suitably tackle power supply problem, radios that work on AC as well as DC power can be installed (Hence, there is a possibility of
using a solar panel for power supply). Wireless radio links provide an easy way to provide telecom connectivity even when there are no phone lines. Radios (manufactured by MakSat as per its claim) can provide connectivity at broadband speeds over distances of up to 75 kilometres. It is very easy and fast to set up Wireless links, sometimes in a matter of days as there are only installations at the two ends. Besides saving on labour and material costs, Radio links also save on recurring costs of leased lines as they work on the free ISM Band of 2.4 GHz. Using OFDM technology (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing), there are Radio links that can work on NLOS (Near Line of Sight). OFDM uses a composite of narrow channel bands to enhance its performance in high frequency bands (such as 2.x/5.x GHz) in urban and rural applications where building-clutter and foliage can negatively impact the propagation of radio waves. Already, a point-to-point link installed has been working satisfactorily over a distance of 75 kilometres. Radio communications systems can be rapidly deployed - sometimes in days and weeks rather than the months and years of wired systems. Radio is less sensitive to distance or terrain difficulties. Radio can be cost effective, which is very important in a county like India where the cost per user/village has to be very less so as to provide the widest coverage possible. Radio is arguably a solution for the provision of service to the world’s telecommunications ‘have-nots’. All Wireline technologies like ADSL and Cable have drawbacks, while Satellite links are still prohibitively expensive compared to Radio Links.
Wireless Infrastructure requirement In case the system being installed is wireless, then there are some additional features which should be present. These include Wireless broadband connectivity, operation in multiple frequency bands, multiple device support, robust error correction, centralised management solution, quality of service, and security. The kiosks should be able to easily connect wirelessly in select locations and outdoor areas in the identified Gram 17
A proposed e-Governance model
Panchayat/Village to various applications and services, at any time. The system should be able to operate in multiple frequency bands (licensed and license exempt, if required) and over a wide range of channel bandwidths. For both connectivity and application access and usage, the wireless network should be able to support desktops, laptops, PDAs and similar devices. Robust error correction would allow the system to be deployed in less than ideal radio conditions. There should be a centralised management solution. The Service Provider should be able to control and manage the e-Governance centres established within a large area (may be a district) from a central location. Tools should therefore be available for efficient management of such infrastructure and to ensure that critical maintenance can be performed quickly with minimal disruption to the network community. There should also be provision for remote upgradation of the software provided with the equipment. There should be a focus on quality of service (QoS). The wireless network should support latency and packet losssensitive applications such as streaming media, and it should have the ability to dynamically allocate bandwidth based on priority. The bandwidth allocation should also be remotely managed. Regarding security, it is possible that several government services would be provided through the network wherein 18
confidential data would flow from the secured State Data Centre only to the authorised user. It is therefore necessary to have a robust but easy to use security solutions, transparent to the user wherever possible, woven throughout the wireless infrastructure to ensure confidentiality and integrity of all data passing over the entire network.
Case Study A few projects for various state governments have been undertaken by MakSat Technologies. One such project was undertaken for the state of Jharkhand. The state wanted to provide an interface for tourism information and for citizens to contact the various government departments through 15–20 kiosks spread across the selected cities. The kiosks were to be connected with a server kept at a centralised location, from which all the applications would run. The project rollout was to be in a phased manner and take the less possible time. The bandwidth had to be enough for Multimedia applications and the system had to be scalable and expandable for future additions to the services and if more kiosks needed to be added. The equipment had to be rugged to sustain extremes of temperatures and humidity. Accordingly, one Base Station with an omni antenna for the central location and the Slaves for the Kiosks, connected in a Hub and Spoke configuration, were provided. Since the costs were to be kept
as low as possible, Point to Multi-Point links between the central location and the kiosks were recommended instead of a Mesh network. The bandwidth provided is 2 Mbps, which can be increased in the future as and when required. The maximum distance of a Kiosk from the central location is about 20 kilometres. The equipment provided can sustain temperatures of 40°C to 80°C and can take humidity levels of up to 95%. Another solution that can be provided to States for their e-Governance initiatives is a Mesh network, which can seamlessly cover the entire city. The network is very robust and self-healing as there are multiple paths to each node. The network can be used to provide wireless Internet connectivity, which will make the project self-sustaining by generating revenues for the state.
e-Governance project for rural areas For rural areas, the solution consists of a Radio Hub every 30 kilometres or so. The Hub will be connected to the Government Offices and Procurement Centres by Point-to-Point radio links. The Radio Hub will further connect to local PoPs (Point of Presence), which will distribute the services to villages in a radius of 5 kilometres. Each village will have a kiosk run by local entrepreneurs, which will provide services. Internet connectivity can be taken either at the State Administration offices or at sites near the Radio Hubs and distributed over the Wireless network. This project can be made self-sustaining by charging (or rather allowing the local entrepreneurs to charge) fees for the services. The project can be rolled-out in a matter of days for each such unit. This makes it a very costeffective solution for rural areas. Remote management and monitoring software allows the state to have a centralised control system. About the author Ananjan Datta is Manager Business Development, MAKSAT Technologies, New Delhi
www.egovonline.net |
MIDDLE EAST Population Register, ID Card system for UAE citizens
Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE
Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, has issued a proclamation introducing Federal Law number 9 for 2006 for the Population Register and ID Card System for all citizens and residents of the UAE mandating the Emirates Identity Authority (EIDA) for its implementation. The Population Register and ID Card project, which is the first project of its kind in the Middle East, is aimed at providing security for its holders by preserving their privacy and affirming their identities. Under the project, an advanced population register of all citizens and UAE residents would be established, and an advanced personal ID Card would be issued replacing many other identification methods such as labour cards, driving licences etc. The project envisages the inclusion of all family members above the age of 15, with each of the family members getting their individual ID number to be used for any governmental transaction and service.
Jordan to open ‘electronic gate’ Omar Kurdi, Jordan’s Minister of Telecommunication and Information Technology, has said that Jordanian government would soon launch the eOmar Kurdi Government project ‘electronic gate’ to enable citizens complete | July 2006
NEWS REVIEW
procedures via Internet network connecting over 18 government institutions. Already, some 7,700 government employees have been trained to operate the system. The Italian government, in 2005, had contributed about EUR450,000 (US$565,969) to the project for implementing and developing e-Accounting and e-Procurement applications, and providing technical assistance to their implementation.
Dubai School of Government, Microsoft sign MoU Aiming to improve public administration and excellence in government standards and performance in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, Dubai School of Government (DSG) and Microsoft Gulf recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The MoU, which was signed between Nabil Alyousuf, Executive President, DSG, and Charbel Fakhoury, General Manager, Microsoft Gulf, is to exchange expertise, technology infrastructure and support for specific research initiatives and projects.
Charbel Fakhoury, General Manager of Microsoft Gulf and Alyousuf, Executive President, DSG
According to Fakhoury, Microsoft would assist DSG in issuing case studies on ICT and eGovernment adoption and implementation in the MENA region; release an annual report in collaboration with international organisations to benchmark e-Government readiness in the Arab countries and highlight e-Government best practices in the MENA region; host regional policy forums; and offer advance training to senior government officials and executives from the MENA region.
Focusing on e-Government in Oman Oman has decided to accord priority to e-Government implementation. Ahmed bin Abdulnabi Macki,
Qaboos bin Said, Sultan of Oman
Oman’s Minister of National Economy and Deputy Chairman of the Financial Affairs and Energy Resources Council, said that eGovernment is emerging as a common public administration tool worldwide, and that Oman is also committed to implement the eGovernment strategy that it had started implementing three years ago. Currently, Oman is in the process of building necessary infrastructure for providing eGovernment services. There are plans to launch a convergent network soon with the help of the national telecom company Omantel. The e-Government strategy in Oman includes a series of programmes such as online statistics, e-Tendering, one-stop-shop for registration of companies at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, electronic fund transfer, smart identity cards, geographical information systems, education, etc.
ePay System adopted by Dubai Land Department To enable the users of http://www. dubailand. gov.ae to make online payments, the Dubai Land Department has adopted Dubai eGovernment’s ePay System. Using the ePay System, Dubai landowners would now be able 19
However, the most important feature of the website is that it is divided into divisions and departments to allow visitors to use the new services without much complication. The website is also directly linked to the eGovernment website to enable visitors to finish most government-related business online.
to make payments for replacement deeds of titles issued following loss or damage of original title deed and for site plans on request. Besides, ePay System can also be used to make payment transactions for evaluations undertaken by the specialist committee at the Land Department upon owner’s request. Landowners would be able to make online payments through MasterCard, Visa, Amex or eDirham. Currently, several organisations in Dubai such as Dubai Municipality Department of health and Medical Services, Dubai Police, Department of Civil Aviation, Tejari and eTQM College are using the ePay System.
New edition of Qatar Ministry of Interior website launched The new version of Qatar’s Ministry of Interior website, http://www. moi.gov.qa, was recently launched by Shaikh Abdulla Bin Nasser Bin Khalif Al Thani, Minister of Internal Affairs, at the Milipol 2006 exhibition. The website, which virtually represents the ministry, has four sections. The first section provides information about the Ministry of Interior and lists all authorities, departments, subsections, and divisions under the ministry. The second section is for locals and their services. The third section is dedicated for expatriates. The fourth section is for prospective visitors looking for information about visa issuance and other legal regulation matters prior to their visit. 20
All UAE airports to allow new e-Gate card use
kingdom. A 16-member Saudi ICT delegation recently visited Malaysia during which setting up of an ICT training institute in Riyadh as a government-private sector initiative was considered. The two countries would explore collaborative projects in the areas of ICT and multimedia including data recovery and hosting services, technology park development, public-private partnership collaboration on e-Government projects, content/media and computer-based engineering services. The institute would be developed with Saudi investment of SAR120mn (US$32mn). Earlier, the Saudi Arabian government announced to invest SAR3bn (US$800mn) for e-Government projects over the next five years.
e-Government website Bab Al Bahrain launched The new e-Gate card issued by the Ministry of Interior Naturalisation and Residency Departments would now enable people to use at all the airports across UAE. Earlier, this facility was available at the Dubai International Airport, but has now also been extended at Abu Dhabi and Sharjah International Airports, Al Ain International Airport, Ras Al Khaimah International Airport and Fujairah International Airport. The fees for the issue of the e-Card have also been unified in all the emirates in UAE. Beginning June 2006, the fee for registration and renewal of the UAE e-Gate card has been increased from AED150 (US$40.85) to AED200 (US$54.47). The e-Gate card, which is issued only to adults, ensures the speedy processing of passenger entry and exit through Passport Control and Immigration without requiring the passengers to stand in queues.
Saudi Arabia, Malaysia to cooperate on ICT initiatives Saudi Arabia and Malaysia have decided to collaborate to further ICT development in the
Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, King of Bahrain
In an effort to link all government ministries and provide efficient and expeditious services to citizens online, the Government of Bahrain launched its e-Government website ‘Bab Al Bahrain’. According to Shaikh Ahmed bin Attiyatalla Al Khalifa, President, Central Informatics Organisation, the website is a comprehensive framework that enables government administrations to provide their services electronically. The website is also equipped with a central payment system. The citizens have been provided with a number of essential governmental services while efforts are on to provide more services such as electricity and water bill payment. www.egovonline.net |
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
Providing enterprise content management solutions What technology solutions does Interwoven provide to the public sector? Interwoven is the leader in enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. Content management is the management of different types of information, that exist in digital forms such as text documents, images, video files, web content, through the use of common desktop applications and easy-to-use content authoring tools. Such information exists in two forms, structured data, or unstructured data – data that does not reside within a database or spreadsheet or on someone’s desktop. ECM solutions are especially important for unstructured data that makes up 70-80% of every company’s information. So what we do is to manage pieces of unstructured information so that they are versioned, stored, archived, and records are kept properly? This has a very significant impact today on what people are trying to do, whether it is government, bank or private sector company. For example, how do you make good amount of services available on the Internet, because it is cheaper, it is better, your citizens want it and the corporate citizens also take an advantage. And to provide both kinds of services, you need a very strong platform for web content management, where they can find the right information at the right time The second aspect, which is very important is how you manage your papers in the organization. Scanned documents become one step to it, but how does it flow through the organization, how many people are looking at it, how many people are approving it, when the job is done and where is that paper stored. That is a very important piece that is gaining a lot of attention from all kinds of businesses and the government because of regulatory compliance issues, such as banks need to store certain information for certain years, country regulations and so forth. Uncontrolled content can be a liability for regulatory compliance and legal discovery. How do you tackle the issue of content updation? This is a very important point. In fact, when you look at very many sites, the content is not updated or different versions may reside on different sites. So the out-dated information becomes the wrong information since it is not valid today. It is also risky today to have wrong information on the websites. When we thought about doing the content management, it was not just managing the content; it was about democratisation of the process. I am using this word ‘democratisation’ very carefully. For instance, egov publishes this egov magazine, you own the content, but you are not the web specialist, you are not the web technologist. So you have the content in MS word or any other format, and send it to your IT folks. The IT folks may deal with hundreds of | July 2006
Interwoven, Inc. is the leader in enterprise content management solutions for business, enables organizations to unify people, content and processes to minimize business risk, accelerate time-to-value and sustain lower total cost of ownership. In an exclusive interview to Anuradha Dhar of egov, Sanjay Aurora, Regional Vice President, South Asia / Hong Kong, informs about advantages of their solutions and their success stories in e-Government initiatives
21
such requests on a daily basis. They prioritize, then the IT guys will load up your data and then a new change comes; it is a process. Now what we provide is that you. the business owner have the capability of publishing content, through a workflow. So, the mistakes are reduced. But you are even more like a template and a work area, these are technical terms, but you know the content better than the IT people, so you should own what goes in your website. Because the website is what your content is. And to facilitate the democratisation, you have things like template, etc. where the copyright body is very clear that, although there are 30 people publishing content, the look and feel, the style, the must have that will go away. So internally, there is workflow, the email that goes around, so when you publish a new article, you like to publish it offline, you will go through an approval process, but you will be in control. So, we are talking about content updation made very easy for the business users. And the biggest advantage here is the accelerated time to market the right information to reach the right platform and corporate compliance is maintained.
the technology platform needs to be changed, which is a very important criteria today. The second thing that we bring to the table today is our customer knowledge. The fact that we have worked with the Australian government, the Singapore government, the Brunei government, have domain expertise, can share best practices and references gives us an edge over competitors.
We bring to the table today our customer knowledge. The fact that we have worked with the Australian, Singapore, Brunei government, have domain expertise, can share best practices and references gives us
Can you tell briefly about some of your success stories in eGovernment initiatives? I would say, one of the biggest successes in the government sector for us is in Australia. There are several case studies publishedDOTARS, Queensland Government, LGAQ, Department of Justice WA. Several large government departments have done significant amount of work with Interwoven and have provided references. In Singapore, we have done a significant amount of work with various government bodies such as the Ministry of Education, National Heritage Board, IDA and so on. The initiatives range from publishing content to be fitted in, to customizing solutions. For instance, we worked with the National Heritage Board in Singapore in digitization of their artifacts as to how to keep it in the library where people can come in. It is a very unique way of putting a digitized museum and that is what we are working on right now.
Does Interwoven provide e-Government an edge over strategy consulting? No. We definitely are a product company. competitors What we do have are partners, right from the global companies such as Accenture, HP, How long you have been associated with BEA as well as local and regional partners such as Satyam and the public sector in Asia compared to international market? Wipro, who have strong e-Government experiences and best We have been associated with the public sector for six years in practices. So, they will then go and put Interwoven solutions as Asia and ten years with the government sector internationally. part of the package for the wider e-Government strategy. In US, we have a very large government sector federal practice. So, a lot of work has been done in the US. Australia was the What advantages you give to the customers as compared to first, in context of Asia-Pacific, where significant amount of work was done. And then, we did work in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong many of your local and global competitors? I think what advantage we give to customers is two-fold. One is Kong and Taiwan. providing a world class robust tool. Being a product company, when you are building a long-term strategy, it is a lot of What percent of business is coming out of Asia? experience that we have gained in the field. So, the biggest We are unable to disclose any figures. We do not have figures advantage that we bring to the market, is an enterprise-level, measuring individual regions or countries. scalable, proven and reliable software; which means when you start building a strategy, need an extend growth and when you What is your future plan for the e-Government sector? say, “I have launched in a state, now can I make it multi-lingual Our future plans are to concentrate on providing e-Government in 22 states, then you do not look back and say my car engine solutions with our partners that will enhance citizen was weak�. Up scaling, regionalisation, even globalisation can experience. India, of course, is a part and parcel of the company’s be done using our software. Companies like GE, Citibank, growth plan. We are right now aligning ourselves to Queensland government, etc. are running their worldwide the eGovernment market in India because I believe; there is a infrastructure leveraging on our technology. very large initiative there. With Interwoven experience in the So, the advantage that we bring is the robust, proven e-Government market, we are well placed to provide the platform, which can start small but when you go regional, solutions for the exponential growth that the e-Government is statewide, countrywide, you will not have the limitation that growing at. 22
www.egovonline.net |
23-25 August 2006 Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi
Vision 2010 Organisers
knowledge for change
Co-organisers
Department of Information Technology Government of India
Media partners
UN DP
ov
Supporting partners
Exhibitors
L CATION
Programme Advisiory Board M P Narayanan President CSDMS
R Chandrashekhar Additional Secretary, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India Chairman of the Board
Subash Khuntia Joint Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource and Development Government of India Co-chair of the Board
Ashis Sanyal Director, MoCIT Government of India
Aman Singh CEO, CHiPS Chhattisgarh
G. D. Gautama Principal Secretary IT, Government of West Bengal
N Vijayaditya Director General National Informatics Centre Government of India
N S Kalsi Secretary IT Government of Punjab
Prakash Kumar Joint Secretary Department of Earth Sciences Government of India
P H Kurian Secretary IT Government of Kerala
R. S. Sharma Secretary IT Government of Jharkhand
Renu Budhiraja Director, e-Governance Division MoCIT, Government of India
Syedain Abbasi Director, MoCIT Government of India
Sanjeev Gupta Secretary IT Government of Himachal Pradesh
S R Das Sr. Director, MoCIT Government of India
Otem Dai Commissioner (IT and S&T) Government of Arunachal Pradesh
Zohra Chatterji Principal Secretary IT & Electronics Govt. of Uttar Pradesh
Jaijit Bhattacharya Country Director, Govt. Strategy Sun Microsystems Pvt. Ltd.
Manas Chakrabarty Head Hole-in-the-Wall Education Limited (HiWEL)
Manash Chakraborty CEO Learnet India Limited
Nivedan Sahani Vice President Govt & PSU Business Bharti Tele-Ventures Limited
Puneet Gupta Country Manager- Public Sector IBM India Ltd.
P Ravindranath Director- Govt. & Public Affairs HP India Sales Pvt. Ltd.
Rohit Kumar Country Head, Public Sector Microsoft
R. Ramki Director, Global Operations & Solutions SAP India Pvt. Ltd.
Rajesh Janey Vice President EMC Data Storage System, India
Shantanu Prakash Managing Director Educomp Solutions Ltd.
S P S Grover Senior Director Oracle India
Tarun Maliak Head Microsoft - Rural Computing Strategy India
Vijay Kumar Vice President NIIT India Ltd.
Vivek Aggarwal CEO Liqvid e-Learning Services Pvt. Ltd.
Vishal Gupta Director Total Learning Sources
Basheerhamad Shadrach IDRC
Veena Joshi Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
Government Representatives Aruna Sunderrajan CEO, Common Service Centre Initiatives, Government of India
Industry Representatives
International Agencies Ashish Garg Country Coordinator GeSCI India
'egov India 2006' aims to focus mainly on how IT in public sector could be an instrument to increase India's competitiveness for fostering a leadership economy. It will address other important e-Governance issues reflecting present situation and future aspirations. It would also provide a platform to hear case studies and debate on the realities and strategies of e-Governance in India.
Key topics • •
National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) – Present Status and way forward Capacity Building for e-GovernanceSecure e-Government
Indian Telecentre Forum 2006 aims to discuss, and deliberate multi variate issues concerning policy, technology, best practices and business models relating to implementation and sustainability of rural ICT centres and their returns in terms of socio-economic development. The event is expected to follow a consultative mode, with due consideration for making it highly participatory and interactive in nature, bringing together the best of minds, thought leaders, practitioners and stakeholders from government, business and civil society.
The Digital Learning India 2006 conference aims to take stock of the progress made by India in using technologies as an enabler of education. The conference will deliberate on the enabling policies and infrastructure, challenges of resources, identify the critical success factors that build and sustain initiatives in ICT in education, and the role of the school principals/teachers and strategies/ programmes to strengthen their capacities to achieve the goals of education.
Key topics •
National ICT in education policy
•
Asian success stories in ICT in school education
•
Supporting infrastructure for ICT in education connectivity, hardware, content
•
Teachers capacity building for ICT integration in school education challenges and practices
•
State Wide Area Network (SWAN)
Key topics • Common Service Centre (CSC) Initiative in India
•
Workshop on e-Governance in Municipalities
•
International Perspectives on Telecentres
•
Standards and Interoperability
•
Indian Telecentre movement
•
Security
•
Global Cross Cutting Session
•
WiMax
•
Private Sector Initiatives
•
•
Alliances & Linkages for Successful Telecentre Networks
ICT in Sarva Shiksha Abhiayan- leadership reflections in states
•
Distance education for non-formal capacity building opportunities for content, technology and service providers
Important Dates Last date for receipt of abstracts: 15th July 2006 Acceptance Notification: 20th July 2006 Last date for full papers: 4th August 2006 Final confirmation: 10th August 2006
Important Contacts For Exhibition Rakesh Tripathie (rakesh@csdms.in) Mo: +91-9899821364 For Registration Himanshu Kalra (himanshu@csdms.in) Mo: +91-9818485406
•
Content, Connectivity & Capacity Building
•
Mission 2007
•
Monitoring & Evaluation Methodologies
•
Measuring outcomes in ICTs in education
•
Sustainability Issues & Lessons Learnt
•
Strategies of scaling up ICT in education projects
Exhibition The ICT triple conference will host an exhibition of latest e-solutions, services, initiatives and case studies from across Asia and beyond. Professional service providers, IT vendors, consulting firms, government agencies and national/international development organisations involved in the ICT in Education domain are participating in the exhibition. Exhibition Fee (per square meter)
Shell Scheme
INR 9800
Conference Registration Fee Conference
Academics/Institution
Govt.
NGO’s
Private
Overseas
Delegates
INR 3000
INR 4000
INR 5000
INR 7500
USD 300
Spot Registration
INR 4000
INR 5000
INR 7500
INR 10000
USD 400
The Delegate Registration entitles the individual to participate in all technical sessions, workshops, keynotes and plenary sessions and social functions for all three/any Digital Learning India 2006, egov India 2006 & Indian Telecentre Forum 2006 conferences.
Visit the following link to register online:
http://www.egovonline.net/egovindia/del_registration.asp
Organisers profile Organisers
Supporting partners
Centre for Science, Development and knowledge for change Media Studies (CSDMS) is a leading Asian non-governmental institution engaged in advocacy, research and community building in ICT for Development through capacity building and media initiatives. www.csdms.in
Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) was launched in Bangkok on Thursday 13 December 2001 at the 2001 UNESCO-ACEID conference with the objectives to support educational research and researchers in the Asia-Pacific region, to promote greater communication between researchers and policy makers, administrators and educational practitioners, to disseminate educational research findings and to support the development of educational research skills in the Asia-Pacific region. http://www.apera.org
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 particular. www.GISdevelopment.net
Co-Organisers Department of Information Technology (DIT) under the Ministry of Information Technology, Department of Information Government of India is Technology Government of India the Central department responsible for all administrative functions relating to formulation, execution and implementation of IT policies in India. www.mit.gov.in UNDP is the United Nation’s global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. They are presently working in 166 countries, working with them on their own solutions to global and national
UN DP
development challenges. www.undp.org.in.
CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT
Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) G-4, Sector 39 Noida - 201301, India Tel. : +91-120-2502181- 87 Fax: +91-120-2500060 Web: www.egovonline.net/egovindia Email: info@egovonline.net
Bellanet promotes and facilitates effective collaboration within the international community, especially through the use of ICTs. Bellanet aims to support effective development practice by sharing its expertise in information and communication technologies as well as its skills in facilitating organizational learning and knowledge sharing. Bellanet delivers its program through three main Program Lines - Online Communities, Knowledge Sharing and Open Development. Together they represent key approaches to building institutional and individual collaboration skills and maximizing the potential of ICTs to support collaborative development work. In addition to this, three important crosscutting areas are also considered and woven into all aspects of Bellanet’s work: Gender Equality, Capacity Development, and Monitoring and Evaluation.
www.bellanet.org global e-schools and communities initiative (gesci) is an initiative of the UN ® ICT Task Force that aims to improve education as a cornerstone of sustainable socio-economic development and a key mechanism for enabling people to share a country’s prosperity. The organisation is working towards providing ICT platform for schools, support for training and capacity building and monitoring/reporting of various educational ICT projects. www.gesci.org. Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) was set up in 1998 with a mission to ‘Promote Internet for the benefit of all’. With the formal announcement of Internet privatization in India, ISPAI had taken a leading role in monitoring the process in the country. ISPAI seeks opportunities to encourage and promote the use of Internet and
IT enabled services, such as E-commerce, eGovernance, Health Care and Distance Learning www.ispai.com. Korean Agency for Digital Opportunity & Promotion (KADO) was founded in 1984 as Information Communication Training Center and in 2005, it is Designated as the Specialized National Agency for Knowledge Information Resource Management in Korea with a vision of systematic and comprehensive digital gap reduction among social class, region, age and nation groups and improvement of information welfare for the deprived in particular and the public in general. www.kado.or.kr Plan International, a child-centred development organisation works with 1.3 million children, their families and communities in developing countries all over the world, implementing projects at the grassroots level in education, health, water and sanitation, incomegeneration and cross-cultural communication. Plan works across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, in communities where many struggle to meet their basic needs. www.plan-internatinal.org Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is Switzerland’s international cooperation agency within the Swiss Foreign Ministry. Together with other federal offices, SDC is responsible for overall coordination of development activities and cooperation with Eastern Europe, as well as humanitarian aid. www.sdc.admin.ch The telecentre.org is an initiative developed by the information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) program of International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Microsoft Unlimited Potential Program to support community telecentres across the world. www.telecentre.org USAID-India under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is an independent government agency of United States working in India with the objective of providing economic development and humanitarian assistance. USAID-India is working closely with the Indian Government on key areas of development pertaining to Disaster Management, Economic Growth, Energy and Environment, Equity and Health. http://www.usaid.gov/in
e-Syariah
I N
Effectively strengthening Malaysian judiciary
P R A C T I C E
Ismail, S. E. and Abd. Hakim, A. A. S.
Old order maketh way for new: (Left) A traditional Shariah court in session; (Right) e-Syariah in Malaysia
I
slam has been acknowledged as the official religion of Malaysia in the Malaysian Federal Constitution, being practiced by the majority of Malay community. In reality, many believers of Islam do not know much about the Islamic jurisprudence or Syariah. Ipso facto, Syariah, governs both the secular and religious life of a devout Muslim. Syariah is the Arabic word for Islamic law, also known as the Law of Allah. So to speak, Syariah covers not only religious rituals, but also many aspects of day-to-day life such as politics, economics, banking, business or contract law, and social issues. The term Syariah refers to the body of Islamic law. Some accept Syariah as the body of precedent and legal theory before the 19th century, while other scholars view Syariah as a changing body, and include reformed Islamic legal theory from the contemporary period.
| July 2006
e-Syariah Technology brings possibilities and changes far beyond human expectations. Possibilities once thought of as far-fetched imagination in science fiction movies have become a reality in the 21st century. In this millennium, technology drives the modernisation of Government operations. The e-Syariah website, which was initiated by the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) in 1998, aims to enhance the effectiveness of the Islamic Justice Department electronically in order to improve the efficiency of the Syariah courts. The e-Syariah project costing MYR39mn (US$10.58mn) would link all the Syariah Courts online providing benefits to court administrators, judges, lawyers and clients. The e-Syariah facility is to be implemented in 102 courts across Malaysia. The e-Syariah applications include Court Case Management System
One of the flagship applications of the e-Government in Malaysia, e-Syariah is a one-stop centre to provide quality information and customer friendly services to the Muslim population, while improving the overall efficiency and decisionmaking process of the Malaysian Syariah Court 27
of Syariah Court cases. The extensive links ensure that all information related to a particular case is easily accessible. This is to enhance efficiency, and thus helping to avoid delay of cases. The departments include National Registration Department, Malaysian Islamic Development Department (JAKIM), Immigration Department, Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM), and Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister’s Department. Prior to e-Syariah, the National Syariah Court Department has been looked upon as a department having left behind by the country’s economic and technological advancement. The eSyariah is drawn from the National Syariah Court Department’s revamp of its administration. for workflow management; Syarie Lawyers Registration System to manage registration, application and renewal of lawyers’ licenses; e-Syariah website, an information centre for the Syariah court community; and, a web-based Library Management System. As such, the introduction of e-Syariah invariably means that the government does not want to see Islamic law enforcement (processes) remaining outmoded. Earlier, instances of Syariah court cases (which largely involve disputes under Islamic family law) dragged on for several years. Even, women organisations greatly highlighted the need for cases filed with the Syariah court to be expedited more efficiently. The Syariah Court Management System is linked to the Muslim database maintained by the Ministry of Community Development, and allows particulars of couples to be verified prior to the registration of cases. Basically, the new system has computerised the manual operations of the court, including registering new cases for counselling, tracking counselling outcomes, referral of cases to court hearings, and provides printed statistical reports to profile divorce cases. Without computerisation, all Syariah courts in Malaysia tend to do their operations based on their own system, and this generally makes it difficult to trace or retrieve cases that involve Syariah courts of other states in Malaysia. Besides, chances of overlapping are always there since court cases are filed in different states. 28
Psychological benefits of e-Syariah
Another interesting aspect of this website is that it enables the user to calculate and divide the Faraid using the online Faraid calculator. Faraid is a section of the Islamic law that deals with the distribution of the estate of a deceased person among his heirs in accordance with Allah’s decree in the Holy Quran, and also in accordance to the Hadith or tradition of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH). It is considered as one of the important aspects in Islamic teachings. In this portal, the users have to fill in the information needed, and this user-friendly system immediately gives the result for the recipients of Faraid. Since many of Muslims nowadays face difficulties in dealing with the distribution of the Faraid, this system can solve their problems, and thus the Islamic family institution can be well preserved Regarding the inter-agency network, this facility enables the e-Syariah to be linked with various government departments connected with the management
Apart from the foreseeable benefits (rapid access to information, and speedy judicial process), there is another benefit of e-Syariah which is the psychological benefit. In Malaysia, members of the public who generally seek information on Syariah law are those who have problems involving disputes under Islamic law and the family matters. These problems are not the kind so as to give unwarranted attention. Cases such as divorce, polygamy, custody of a child, the distribution and allocation of a deceased family member’s estate and property are all very sensitive, and for those involved, the less people knew about it, the better it is. Furthermore, because of the nature of their situation they tend to isolate themselves from society. They may feel shy or apprehensive to go personally to the JAKIM office and seek advice. Not knowing what to do, whom to trust and confide in with their problems, affects them psychologically. It has been suggested that shy and socially isolated individuals communicate more on the Internet because it provides some protection from social anxiety. Through the e-Syariah website, such individuals willing to maintain anonymity and keeping their dignity intact would be able www.egovonline.net |
to gather information discreetly on their own. The opportunity to remain anonymous through the use of the Internet gives these people more freedom and confidence to ask questions where normally they do not dare or find it embarrassing to talk with another person. Once they are satisfied with the amount of information they have gathered, it would then increase their confidence to seek help personally. It must however be made clear that eSyariah is not promoting impersonality. There is no technology that can replace the human factor in Syariah law as such. e-Syariah should be looked upon as a tool to improve the handling and processing of matters pertaining to Syariah law. More importantly, it is an alternative channel of communication for those in need of assistance. Not everything in life can be solved through immediate face-to-face interaction. Sometimes before personal interaction takes place, the troubled person would prefer to gather as much information on his/her own, or assess the situation before seeking anybody’s assistance. With the knowledge they have gathered, it will slowly turn their frustration into confidence. Their self-confidence increases, because now they know a little bit more of their rights in regards to Syariah law, and how to exercise those rights. Apart from getting information by reading the content posted on the eSyariah website, users can also get an “interactive” feedback and gain a much more detailed information with regards to their problems by sending emails to e-Syariah counsellors or experts on the Islamic Family Law. However the success of email correspondence also lies heavily on the responses that a person gets. The counsellor at the other end must be sensitive enough to the situation of the troubled person, and try to connect and build trust. Once trust has been forged, the interaction can then be brought to the next level, that of faceto-face communication. In the e-Syariah website, a list of Syariah lawyers is also provided to the users. This is another helpful facility, since not all of us are lucky enough to have an acquaintance with a Syariah lawyer. eSyariah provides the service where the users can look at the list of the Syariah lawyers through the website. The lawyer | July 2006
registration component will be used for the registration of new lawyers and for the renewal of practising certificates — all maintained in a database to facilitate monitoring and coordination by the authorities. The website shows the record and the type of the cases handled by them. Thus, the user can choose the best lawyer suitable for their cases. Through this web portal, the user can directly register with the lawyer for handling his/her case in order to save time. The user can also know the status of his/her case from the e-Syariah portal. This system would provide the Muslim population and the law practitioner’s easy access to register and review status of cases online. Being able to look for a lawyer without physically having to go from one lawyer’s office to another really helps a lot in terms of time and money. Another reason that frustrates those in need is when it comes to dealing with the Islamic Justice Department, which has a reputation of delaying cases brought to the Syariah court. This situation of course increases the stress level, since they would want their cases to be expedited. For its defence, the Islamic Justice Department cites the delays mainly caused due to absenteeism of the parties involved in these cases. As a corrective measure to improve the department’s service, e-Syariah has introduced a Court Scheduling System where people can arrange their schedule based on their preferred time with reference to the court trial schedule. This facility may not sound much, however it definitely lifts the psychological burden faced by those with separation. e-Syariah enable couples who have Syariah cases to quickly identify, and book a time for their divorce court hearing after they have gone through the counselling, thus clearing their cases faster.
Conclusion Finally, it must be admitted that the eSyariah website cannot and should not be treated as the “magic wand” to solve all the problems. It can at best be only considered as an enabler. The extent of the eSyariah website to help those in need depends on the amount of information or content that is available. This, however, depends on the constant monitoring and updating of the content by the responsible authorities. The website has been regularly gathering feedback from users for its improvement in order to better fulfil their needs. The most important aspect of eSyariah project that would be beneficial to
the internal and external users is the standardisation of the administration processes, and enabling Syariah courts to be linked. This would greatly enhance the image of Syariah law and Islamic teaching in Malaysia specifically, and thus would be looked upon by the rest of the world in a favourable light. This would also result in preserving the quality of the services of Syariah courts and enhance the efficiency in controlling other agency under the Islamic Justice Department. The use of ICT and the implementation of e-Syariah is primarily to ensure services and information regarding Syariah law are easily accessible to the public. About the authors Ismail, S. E. and Abd. Hakim, A. A. S. are associated with Faculty of Administrative Science & Policy Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia
29
INDIA GoI commit US$5bn for e-Governance
NEWS REVIEW have to be web-based and security of the nationwide e-Governance infrastructure would also be ensured.”
‘Compile nationwide database of criminals’: Kalam
“To make the government services more accessible to people electronically, the Govern-ment of India (GoI) would be spending INR230bn (US$5bn) over the next five years,” announced Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister for Telecommunications and IT, at a press conference at New Delhi recently. Maran, while unveiling the components of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), said, “Currently, both central and state government are spending nearly INR300bn (US$6.53bn) every year on an average on various e-Governance services. We are trying to centralise them and trying to set up CSCs (Common Service Centres) or delivery systems that would be integrated with every department along with uniform standard that can be accessed from anywhere and not necessarily differ from state to state.” Explaining about mission mode projects, Maran disclosed that there would be 26 mission mode projects with the States having the flexibility to add up to five state-specific projects. The major projects would cover CSCs, land records, commercial taxes, agriculture, police, education, pensions, income tax and banking. “The entire effort involves 500 implementation agencies, two lakh sites and an estimated 70,000 man-years of effort,” said Maran, and added, “The Centre would encourage use of open source and other software for the e-Governance plan but they should be able to connect with projects in other parts of the country. All projects would 30
Indian President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, while addressing the 37th All India Police Science Congress at Bangalore recently, stressed the need to create a nationwide database of criminals that is readily available online at all police stations, and that there is continuous updating of data as well. Kalam also said that there was a need to establish a police eGovernance grid through high bandwidth network and generating an action plan for progressive induction of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in the police forces.
police verification would be done away with. However, the home ministry is citing s e c u r i t y concerns and has expressed reservations on the verification issue. Ahamed said, “We would soon initiate the process of issuing e-Passports, which has been introduced by almost all the developed countries. The government would introduce it stage by stage. In the first stage, diplomats and officials would be provided e-Passports, and by 2013 all the passport holders should have e-Passports.” It may be noted that the MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) would adopt the ‘identity-based passport issuing system’ instead of the ‘local identity system’ under which the police verifies whether or not an applicant resides at the address furnished in the application form.
Small savings online service launched
For an effective and efficient working of the police, Kalam mooted a five-point suggestion asking the Police Science Congress to actively consider promotion of research in the areas of police intelligence, police administration, police management and networking.
e-Passports for Indians by 2013
A website of the National Savings Institute (NSI), http://nsiindia.gov.in , was recently launched by the Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram recently at New Delhi. Aimed at facilitating citizens’ interface with the government in the area of small savings on an e-Governance platform, the website focuses on dissemination of information and online redress of complaints related to central government’s small savings schemes; extension agency system for deposit
E. Ahamed, Union Minister of State for External Affairs, has said that India would also initiate the process of issuing e-Passports just in the same way as it has been done in several developed countries. By 2013, all Indian nationals would have e-Passports. Besides, for certain categories of people the mandatory www.egovonline.net |
mobilisation under these schemes; and services provided by NSI and its regional offices. Besides, commonly used forms for depositors can also be downloaded from the website. According to NSI officials, the single window mechanism for online management of queries and complaints is a major feature of the website. The website enables users to use a unique auto-generated code number through which they can post a query or complaint from any location on the website and track its status. Once a query or complaint has been accordingly filed, the NSI’s concerned regional office would ensure settlement of query and/ or the complaint through suitable interface with the state government, post offices or bank, as the case may be, and respond through electronic mail or post as indicated by the user. Besides, offline queries and complaints received by the NSI and its regional offices can also be transferred to the online system for tracking and monitoring by the institute.
Now, Mizoram has its own e-Government software Mizoram’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) department has developed and launched its own indigenous special software named ‘Office Procedure Automation Software’ in a major attempt towards taking the first step towards e-Governance. Lalthla Muana, Deputy Secretary – IT, said, “All secretariat offices and departments in the state capital have now been connected through computer. All district headquarters with the state capital Imphal have also been connected with video conferencing capabilities. The main objective being to monitor all pending files in the respective departments, so that the required 32
files can be tracked later if necessary,” and added, “The end-users can now feed, query, track and take reports of date whenever it was required.”
e-Services to become easy in Uttaranchal
Roadblock for Road Information System in Karnataka Road Information System (RIS), a World Bank-funded e-Governance initiative by Karnataka’s Public Works Department (PWD), is facing roadblock in its implementation owing to political pressure by the Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs). The RIS had mapped the condition of each road in the State, the traffic density and whether the particular road needed repair or maintenance. Significantly, the RIS was being considered for replication in the rest of the country in future. Ideally, the RIS is formalised after an annual survey is done at 600 “traffic count-points” while once in five years a detailed road survey is done at 16,000 count-points to identify road condition and traffic density.
However, the PWD has expressed its inability to fully implement the RIS citing lack of funds, which only comes through the local politician or MLA. According to PWD sources, “The RIS is almost never used. Information is generated only in the hope that sometime, it will come of use.” The Times of India quoted Congress MLA Sharanprakash Patil as saying, “If PWD does have a RIS, they should inform us about it. We are aware which roads actually need work. I do not think any MLA will fix a good road. There is not much discretion involved.” In Karnataka, each MLA gets Rs. 50 lakh to be spent entirely at his/her discretion.
In Uttaranchal, citizens would now find it easy to access government e-Services as a central data repository and a public key infrastructure (PKI) is being developed in the State. The project is worth INR87.20mn (US$1.9mn). Currently, there are eight million citizens and 109 government departments in the State. The project, the first of its kind initiative in India, is expected to be complete by the end of 2006. The project, which has been awarded to the Singapore-based IT services vendor CrimsonLogic, includes a household survey, design and implementation of the repository or Citizen Data vault, and the development of PKI for citizens to access government services online or via public kiosks. During the last phase of the project, about 80,000 citizens or one percent of the State’s population would also be issued smart cards under the PKI pilot aimed at facilitating secure authentication during transactions between the government and its citizens and businesses. In future, the smart cards would also eventually cover all State e-Services such as application for permits and government schemes and grants, tax payment and job registration.
Read NEWS online at www.egovonline.net www.egovonline.net |
REGION FOCUS: KERALA
P H Kurian, IT Secretary, Kerala
‘Change-management is difficult to handle’ “We believe that for a state like Kerala, which has 100 percent literacy and large number of people living outside the state, high tele-density and computer literacy is a must for evolving a knowledge society, where e-Governance becomes fully successful,” says P H Kurian, IT Secretary, Kerala (India) to Anuradha Dhar of egov What is the allocated budget for the e-Government projects in the State? Kerala is the only state where 3 percent of the planned budget of every department is required to go in its automation. This decision was taken 4 years back. So every department is getting computerised now in some form or the other. But some departments | July 2006
with more public dealing, need to spend more than 3 percent, for instance, department of civil supplies, panchayats, registration, land revenue, motor vehicles. Apart from the 3 percent budget for e-Governance in all the departments, there is e-Governance annual budget of INR1800mn (US$39.11mn) annually.
What are the immediate plans of your department in e-Governance? The immediate plan is to complete SWAN. Government offices, educational institutions and other service delivery institutions in Kerala will be linked through SWAN project. The successful eGovernance projects like e-Pay and citizen call centers would be made more broad33
based. We are committed to GoI rural connectivity also – rural connectivity infrastructure, the plan has been given, we are deliberating on the technology issues. After our proposal gets the approval from the GoI, I think byMarch 2007, the rural connectivity project will be complete. Completion of computerisation of all the panchayats in the state is next pressing issue, since that is where the maximum citizen interaction takes place. Can you briefly touch upon the major e-Government initiatives of Kerala? We started off with providing all the services of various departments at one counter. We are working on the billing system currently such as telephone bills, electricity bill, water charges, and so on. We are adding more services one by one. Three months back we had taken a decision to expand this to all the municipalities. Municipal centers not only have the payment system but also they have the added services like the birth certificates, death certificates, and the other services of the municipalities. Now we would be gradually expanding this to panchayats also. Our next initiative is the digital divide-bridging programme called ‘Akshaya’, under which it is visualised to have the community service centres that we are planning in the national e-Governance programme. This we started in 2002 in Malappuram district of Kerala. These centers are also converted as the service delivery centres, for government payments, for procuring government forms, submitting application forms, whichever department has the backbone in place; those services will get expanded now. We also believe that for a state like Kerala, which has 100 percent literacy and large number of people living outside the state, high teledensity and computer literacy is a must for evolving a knowledge society, where e-Governance becomes fully successful. To achieve this, we have launched a massive programme for making at least one member in each family e-Literate. To that effect, Malappuram is complete and work in 7 districts is on now. By the end of 2006, we will have around 2800 community centres in place, which will cover 2250-2500 34
Akshaya Centre
Our next initiative is the digital divide-bridging programme called ‘Akshaya’, under which it is visualised to have the community service centers that we are planning in the national e-Governance programme. This we started in 2002 in Malappuram district of Kerala. These centers are also converted as the service delivery centers, for government payments, for procuring government forms, submitting application forms, whichever department has the backbone in place; those services will get expanded now families per centre. By the end of 2007, the e-Literacy will be complete, and all these centres will get connected through broadband under NeGP. Out of 630 centres scattered in Malappuram, 400 odd centres are now stabilised. Now, from these community service centres some government service functions are being done. We also wanted to have the private business to happen from there. The Air India booking, mobile phone bill collection is happening in Malappuram. Then, people are getting the e-Commerce model right now. In agriculture, we have the farmers undertaking the multi-community
exchange for pricing, selling their products through community exchange. Another of our initiative is the IT enabled link for students. We have a novel project in the Education Department called IT @ school, which aims at providing computer enabled education to all school children of the state in a period of three years. The project is to be implemented initially in the high schools in the state, both Government and private aided in Kerala. For college/higher education, we have the state-wide educational grid to cover all colleges and institutions of higher learning, which will facilitate the www.egovonline.net |
creation of subject specific e-Learning communities centering on designated institutions as resource centres for various subjects. The objective of the grid is to formulate dynamic partnership between existing institutions of higher educations and centres of excellence for upgrading the quality of course content and teaching. What are your plans to integrate all the e-Government initiatives in Kerala? In our Indian system, integrating all departmental functioning is not possible. In other States like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, where they have instituted a separate Secretary for e-Governance, all that the Secretaries can do is to push the various departments for e-Governance (they are in the advisory role), but cannot integrate these departments. But with National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), this is possible. When the NeGP is implemented, we will have the Mission Team. The State Programme Management Teams (PMT) will come to function in all the states. The role of eGovernance department would be to coordinate with the PMT, and then the integration I think, will be possible. Our advantage is that if the infrastructure is in place like the State Data Centres (which are already in place in Kerala), we can have all the portals housed there.
bound to become transparent. This is not happening now. The Information Act has come to be in place now, so probably this would help? Absolutely, there is no doubt about it. The departments would find it difficult to give answers in the conventional mode, by ducking it out. They would definitely have to provide information. e-Government would ease the handling of the requests. For instance, the panchayat plan – what is the name of the project, how much money is coming, and so on. If all this information is there online, then nobody needs to go to departments for information, they would go to the panchayats and avail of the schemes. Otherwise, the departments used to find it difficult to handle the information requests. Now, all the information could be there in the websites and people have to pay only the Internet charges. Does Kerala have a State Action Plan for e-Governance? A plan with budget and milestone is not yet in place in Kerala. Please tell us about your plans on the capacity building aspect of government officers?
We have the modernisation of government programme – ADB funded programme, which has covered around 3000 government officials covering all the citizen interactions departments. These are all the service delivery improvement officers and International standards of delivery have been benchmarked. How is the state performing in e-Governance as compared to the other states? Government of India (GOI) has rated Kerala in the second best group. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra are in the first best group. However, in terms of our reach, we are not very far away. In terms of the number of departments that are digitised, almost all our departments are automated; only thing is they are not full fledged with back-end. Back-end is only there in transport department. Registration is 80% complete. Land record is something like 40% complete. Out of the 1200 panchayats and municipal boards, in 65 of them back-end is complete. As far as the number of departments covered, we are the best compared to other states. In teledensity, nobody can beat us.
What kind of challenges you are facing in implementation? Challenges are there – for instance, from the bureaucracy, from the political parties, from the system, it’s basically the change-management. To make the backbone connectivity is the hard part of it. The soft part is managing change, which is not easy not only in Kerala but also in India as a whole. Stakeholders, especially the public, needs to be very strong. When they become vocal, demand services, government is bound to provide the services and | July 2006
35
EVENT DIARY
National Summit on e-Forms
Courtesy NIC, e-Governance standards to take shape M
N. Vijayaditya, Director General (NIC) welcoming D S Mathur, Secretary (IT), Govt. of India
Participants attending the summit
N. Vijayaditya, Director General (NIC), D. S. Mathur, Secretray (IT), Mr. Moni, Deputy Director General (e-Governance Standards), Govt. of India
36
any developments initiated by various government agencies are seemingly done in isolation. Different development platforms are used and the applications under different platforms are seldom interoperable with the result that it is difficult to integrate them even though many have similar features and functionalities. Added to this, is the fact that there is no single agency responsible for framing enforceable e-Governance standards and processes that must be adhered to by all developers. There is a perceptible need to institutionalize the task of codifying e-governance standards and processes for the sake of ensuring interoperability of applications and solutions. Evolving standards and adoption of these for various components of e-governance is indeed a high priority activity and is critical to the success of NeGP. Further, the Dept. of Information Technology (DIT) is encouraging multiple agencies to get involved in e-Governance initiatives and therefore, setting standards in e-governance applications and maintaining them have become a matter of great concern and importance. Keeping in view of the strategic and contemporary importance of standards for e-Governance, DIT has instituted an apex body to oversee the process of bringing out e-Governance standards. The following five areas have been identified to begin with: 1. Network and Information Security 2. Metadata and Data Standards for Application Domains 3. Quality and Documentation
4.
Localization and Language Technology Standards 5. Technical Standards and eGovernance Architecture As regards the Institutional mechanism and processes are concerned, an Apex body has been constituted under the chairmanship of Secretary, DIT with senior representatives from Government, NASSCOM, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), etc. with a mandate to approve, notify and enforce the Standards formulated by various Working Groups and to oversee that they are in accordance with international practices in this regard. National Informatics Centre (NIC) is the DIT arm with a presence in all the States and Districts in the country. NIC provides a range of services to all the government departments at the Center, States and Districts. National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been entrusted with the task of originating white papers on all the desired standards. A separate “eGovernance Standards Division� has been created by NIC to steer the process of evolving the Standards. These white papers would serve as discussion papers for working groups to develop the Standards. Working Groups have been constituted in all the areas mentioned above with members from DIT, Associations, Industry, Academia, representatives from Central and State Government etc. Once the Apex Body approves the standards developed by Working Groups, STQC will be responsible for release of these approved Standards on the web and make them available to all www.egovonline.net |
the stakeholders for Panel Discussion Chaired by Additional Secretary (DIT), free download. STQC Mr.R.Chandrasekar will further ensure conformance & certification (where required) of these standards. A separate “e-Governance Division” has been created by STQC for this purpose. Subsequent to the Participants attending the summit through VC issuing of these initial standards, STQC will be responsible for enhancement of these systems, to be discussed through National in work flow, which involves a Service standards and liaise with the national & Summits. As e-Forms is one of the focus Oriented Architecture (SOA) and international standardization bodies for areas, NIC recently held a “National accessible to people with disabilities. The Summit was inaugurated by Sh. harmonization and acceptance of these Summit on e-Forms” for e-Governance standards. (STQC - Standardisation, on June 12-13, 2006 in association with D. S. Mathur, Secretary, DIT. In his Testing and Quality Certification, is the the Industry partners IBM, Microsoft, inaugural address, Secretary (IT) emphasized that in order to make NeGP Directorate of DIT with offices across the Oracle, Adobe and Newgen. Forms have been the currency for all reach the un-reached - the common man, country. It provides Services in Quality & Information Security with specialization activities of the Government. The concept it is essential to develop applications and in Testing, assessment & evaluations of a form originated with paper document solutions, based on e-forms, in local using International Standards to Indian with the intent to collect, store and present languages with strong Workflow Process information, using paper as medium. The Automation, over SWAN and NICNET. industry and users) R.Chandrasekar, Additional The e-Governance Division of NIC form and the information it contains are and STQC function in close coordination inseparable, once the form is filled-in. Secretary, DIT, N. Vijayaditya, DG (NIC), with e-Governance PMU of DIT, which is Now, however, with the transmission of S. N. Tripathi, Commissioner & Secretary, responsible for overseeing their working. paper to digital medium, the paper form Dept. of Information Technology (Orissa), One of the important outcomes of has become the electronic form (e-Form). Pankaj Agarwal , Representatives and The e-Forms are playing an speakers from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle this initiative is to herald a standards-based approach in all e-Governance application increasingly important role in how ,Adobe and Newgen , Officers from developments by multiple agencies. Government operates its business and Central/State Government Ministries/ When enforced, the data, metadata and communicate with its citizen. The benefits departments including NIC Headquarter operational specifications will be are more. It is efficient; it can be made officials and Industry participated in the standardized in order to facilitate real-time secure through encryption; it can be two day summit. NIC officials from State management of government activities authenticated using digital certificate; and Centres also participated in the summit through video conferencing. Suchitra and services. E-Governance Standards it is user-friendly. Adoption of e-Forms in Government Pyarelal, Technical Director and Head of will have far reaching influence on the accelerated growth and spread of e- process, which are related to G2G, G2B, the Division welcomed the gathering and G2C, G2E and G2X, will be addressed introduced the theme of the Summit. Shri Governance across the country. It is considered important that the smoothly, more than 50% of processing M. Moni, Deputy Director General (enew standards should allow transparency complexities. Meta-data driven e-forms Governance Standards) conducted the between all kinds of e-governance provide an opportunity to reorganize the Summit and initiated the deliberation on applications, without in any manner government’s data collection activities, formulating a National Policy on e-Forms disturbing existing legacy applications and eliminating redundancy, promoting data which is expected to reduce 50% of their codes. This effort will also support sharing, facilitating components based complexities while implementing the eboth NeGP Mission Mode Projects as well architecture, promoting Reuse & Governance Programme in the country. The summit aimed to assess the as the other projects of the Central and Harmonization across forms, high degree of inherent consistency across forms, realistic requirements of India’s e-Gov State Governments. reducing reporting burden and reducing projects and a draft policy document for cost. Capturing data from e-forms is implementation of e-Forms as electronic e-Forms Summit In this process, National Informatics nearly always demonstrably faster than front-end to all key applications, was Centre has identified various areas, which capturing data from paper, and the built- arrived at, after intense brainstorming will have a greater impact for accelerated in validations in e-forms ensure a higher sessions, deliberations and panel development and deployment of ICT degree of accuracy. e-Forms participate discussions. | July 2006
37
EVENT DIARY
Now, have greater control over your documents Seminar on Open Document Format
T
he Department of Management Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in association with NIC, hosted the first National Seminar on Open Document Format (ODF) on 23rd June with the aim to increase awareness about ODF in India. The seminar was supported and represented by the leading technology institutions and academia like Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Open Source Software Resource Centre (OSSRC), International Congress on Electronic Governance (ICEG), Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, National Informatics Centre (NIC), IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and global IT majors like Sun Microsystems, IBM, TCS, Red Hat and Novell. The seminar was inaugurated with the traditional lighting of the lamp by the eminent dignitaries such as R. Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Information Technology, Aruna Sundarajan, CEO, Common Service Centre Initiatives, Government of India, Jaijit Bhattacharya, Country Director, Sun Microsystems, Prof. Rajanish Das, IIM Ahmedabad and Dr. D. Moni, NIC among others. The speakers deliberated on the potential of ODF in India and action points, which when adopted, would change the way data is managed in the country. ODF is an open XML based document file format that enables the retrieval of information and exchange of documents (including spreadsheets, charts and presentations) without regard to application or platform on which the document was created. The Open Document Format is created to enable its users to have greater control over and direct management of their own records, 38
www.egovonline.net |
information and documents. ODF is available for implementation and use free of any licensing, royalty payments, or other restrictions. ODF has been an approved OASIS standard (Organisation for the Advancement of Structure Information Standards) since May 2005, and has been implemented by multiple vendors in a variety of products as well as in multiple open source software projects. Bringing this to India are the key members of the National ODF Alliance - which primarily include Sun Microsystems, IBM, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, CDAC and faculty from IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Mumbai. Welcoming this initiative and highlighting its importance in Indian IT Scenario, R. Chandershekhar, said ODF is a great tool to realize India’s vision to deliver services in integrated manner. Considering the need to adopt open standards to make the data systems more interoperable, ODF is a great technological leap. He congratulated this initiative of leading private & public organisations and wished them all the best in this endeavor. Prof. Yadav, Director, IIT, Delhi reiterated that the stress on the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) shows importance of e-Governance for a transparent and accountable government. Emphasising the importance of ODF for Indian economy, Jaijit Bhattacharya, said, “As documents and services are increasingly transformed from paper to electronic form, there is a growing problem that governments and their constituents may not be able to access, retrieve and use critical records, information and documents in the future. Through the use of a truly open standard file format that can be implemented by numerous and varied applications, the Alliance seeks to enable governments and their constituents to overcome the issue and provide access year after year.” Similarly, Aruna Sundarajan stressed on the importance of ODF in a developing country like India. She said, “ IT is one of the most powerful tools to reach out to the poor and inaccessible. Therefore, it is extremely important that the building blocks of this technology should remain extremely sovereign and open”. | July 2006
“Government has been encouraging open source”
R. Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Govt. of India
On Indian government’s stand on open standards
“The government has already given the indications that it is supportive of open standards. Apart from the government stand for and adopting open standards, government has also been encouraging open source and a National Resource Centre for Free and Open Source Software has been set up by CDAC.” On the awareness among the government officials regarding the open source and open documents
“Among the government officials involved in implementing eGovernance, there is some degree of awareness. It certainly requires a lot of action and lot of awareness building. But outside of the community that is implementing e-Governance, the awareness of ODF is really quite low. It needs to be promoted really actively.” According to her, ODF is the most appropriate tool for the Common Service Centres that are to be set up as part of the NeGP initiative since it reduces cost and leads to long shelf life of IT assets. Prof Rajanish Dass talked about the economic aspects of ODF. Quoting the IIM, Ahmedabad study, informed that
between September ’04 and December ’05, out of its total IT software purchases of Rs 30 lakh, the Delhi government spent over Rs 24 lakh on buying licences for office suites. With OpenOffice available for free download from the internet, the government can now save the entire amount. Thus he added, “ODF is costeffective, it provides the freedom from vendor lock-in and is very useful for nurturing the ICT enabled economy”. Recognising the advantages of ODF, it has been adopted already by the Life Insurance Corporation, Allahabad High Court and the Election Commission. However, Dass cautioned that the road ahead for ODF Alliance is quite challenging and suggested to create awareness regarding the benefits of ODF among decision makers and common people promoting ODF right from the level of school and colleges. Rajdeep Sahrawat, Vice President, Nasscom said, “In today’s borderless economy, every firm regardless of size needs to integrate with its customers and suppliers through exchange of documents. Adoption of consistent document standards like ODF can significantly increase inter-operatibility and reduce the cost of B2B and B2C transactions. This is especially true for the small and medium enterprises (SME’) that can compete effectively by leveraging digital infrastructure at par with larger organisations. Similarly, SME firms in the IT industry engaged in developing IT products will be able to reduce the cost of product development by adoption of standards like ODF. ODF is a great technology leveler.” There were also talks by B. Singh of Bureau of Indian Standards and Dr. M. Moni, NIC where they informed the steps being taken towards standardinsation and open documents by the Indian government. Umashankar from the Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) informed that the state wide area network (SWAN) in Tamil Nadu being implemented by the ELCOT is totally based on open sources. The seminar concluded with a resolution to organise more such seminars and to add more partners to the ODF Alliance to familiarise people and organisations with ODF. 39
WORLD South African taxpayers take to e-Filing Some 2.7 million taxpayers earning a basic salary of ZAR60,000 (US$8,080.68) and above per annum would now be filing their tax returns online for the first time in South Africa. This became possible after the launch of eFiling system by the South Africa Revenue Service (SARS) recently. According to SARS, ever since the launch the e-Filing service has been accessed by a total of 1,520 users. Till date, SARS has received 1,401 applications from individuals to register as users, 68 submissions of tax returns and 119 tax practitioners registering as intermediaries. The taxpayers would be filing their returns until July 14th this year.
e-Voters’ Register in Nigeria
NEWS REVIEW e-Voting comes under fire in US With the primary election season heating up in the US, the issue of deployment of electronic voting machines has come under fire, and legally challenged. The issue has been raked up in the aftermath of the disputed Florida ballot count in the 2000 Presidential election amidst allegations of intentional manipulation of electronic vote data. Lawsuits have been filed to block the purchase or use of computerised machines. A non-partisan advocacy group — Voter Action — recently filed a lawsuit against the State of Colorado and nine counties arguing that the electronic voting machines are vulnerable to software tampering, fails to keep easily recountable printed record, and may miscount, switch or not record votes and even add phantom votes. Similar lawsuits were filed in California and Arizona this spring and New Mexico in 2005. According to Electronic Data Services, a consulting group, about one-third of the USA’s 3,114 counties use some electronic systems. Among these, half of the counties use optical scanners that read dots or marks that voters pencil in on ballots. The rest vote using hand-counted paper ballots and lever-type machines.
Slovenia revamps e-Administration Portal
Nigeria is to come up with the e-Voters’ Register soon. Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) recently approved NGN233mn (US$1.89mn) for the pilot scheme of the e-Voters’ Register. The Nigerian government and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are jointly working towards this. According to Frank Nweke Jnr, Nigeria’s Minister for Information and National Orientation, the e-Voters’ Register is not slated for use in the 2007 elections but is aimed at checking the challenges Nigeria faces in managing elections. The pilot scheme is to be handled by four companies. 40
Slovenia recently launched its revamped eAdministration portal while simultaneously introducing a central information system. The portal now includes all public administration services in one place. One of the most popular online services is the extension of vehicle registration in addition to all the existing services. However, the central information system would be for receiving online applications as well as electronic authentication purposes.
EU e-Government annual spending reaching EUR11.9bn The economic impact of e-Government across the European Union (EU) is huge, according to
the e-Government Economics Project (eGEP). In 2004, as per eGEP claim, the ICT expenditure of public administration alone for EU25 amounted to EUR36.5bn (US$45.84bn), with the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain being the largest markets. In terms of measured per capita and/or as a percentage of GDP, the ICT expenditure is highest in the Nordic countries such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden, with the UK catching up. While, the second group that includes France, Germany, Netherlands, Austria and Belgium is lagging behind. Notably, Italy and Spain have the smallest budgets for e-Government. The e-Government expenditure in 2004 totalled EUR11.9bn (US$14.94bn). According to eGEP forecast, the future e-Government research and pilot programmes could boost EU25 GDP up to 1.54% or about EUR166bn (US$208.48bn) by 2010. A EU-initiative, the European Commission Modinis programme funded the eGEP project. www.egovonline.net |
COMMENTARY India’s e-Governance program
‘High on intent, low on execution’
I
n perspective, it becomes important to examine here the hypothetical case of a large firm that is under pressure to improve its performance. This firm’s organisational structure consists of a large headquarter responsible for corporate functions including finance, HR etc., and over 30 business units operating autonomously. All of the business units have internal IT teams led by individual CIO, who operate independently from the corporate IT team. As part of its overall turnaround strategy, the firm’s leadership team has decided to revitalise business operations through deployment of IT. Subsequent to extensive deliberations and involvement of expensive consultants, an IT strategy and high-level implementation plan has been prepared for the firm. The various corporate functions and business units are granted complete autonomy to implement the IT strategy at their respective level. Due to lack of incentives or corporate policies, there is no attempt to collaborate among the business units to synergize the IT investments. This has further resulted in a lack of common IT standards within the firm. A prevalent culture of one-upmanship among the business units has resulted in more attention being focused on supply side investments rather than what business outcomes have been achieved as a result of the IT investments. It does not take a Nostradamus to foretell that the future IT landscape of this enterprise will resemble a spaghetti plate. Not only will a fortune be spent to deploy IT at the corporate headquarter and business units, but a greater fortune will be spent on getting the IT infrastructure to work and subsequently maintain. If we replace this fictitious enterprise with India, the corporate functions with central government ministries and the business units with the states, the above 42
Even though a National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) is in place in India, it appears to be high on intent and Rajdeep Sahrawat Vice-President, Nasscom
hypothetical scenario closely resembles the Indian e-Governance program. While a National e-Governance plan (NeGP) exists in India, it appears to be high on intent and low on execution details. Consequently there is little coherence and synergy between the efforts of the central ministries and the various state governments. Each central ministry and state government is free to decide the velocity and content of its e-Governance initiatives. There is no single agency responsible and accountable for ensuring e-Governance implementation in India in a timely and efficient manner. Given that the Indian taxpayer is paying for the e-Governance investments and the gargantuan size of the planned e-Governance investments (over INR 260mn), it is imperative that the current approach to implement e-Governance in India undergoes a thorough and holistic review.
low on execution details. There is little coherence and synergy between the efforts of the central ministries and the various state governments. As such, to implement e-Governance in India the current approach needs to undergo a thorough and holistic review
Revitalizing the Indian e-Governance program In perspective, the revitalisation of the Indian e-Governance program significantly www.egovonline.net |
depends on an honest assessment and taking some vital steps. The steps, rather suggestions, include enabling legislation for e-Governance, creating a nodal body for e-Governance, business process reengineering of e-Government processes, outcome-based assessment of eGovernance, reusability, infrastructure optimisation, and interoperability through standards. Enabling legislation for e-Governance: Any e-Governance implementation will result in multiple interactions, i.e., G2C, G2B, G2G etc. Being uncharted territory in India, these interactions are likely to generate issues whose redressal will require legal reform to avoid miring the eGovernance initiatives in a sea of litiga-
ment legislation to implement e-Governance. Delivery of public services electronically requires legal reforms to make the digital content legally enforceable. Specific areas requiring attention are electronic signatures and electronic documentation, electronic communication among governmental agencies and citizens, data protection and data security, access to public information, networking of authorities and databases. Besides, there is also a need for comprehensive e-Government legislation to provide the regulatory framework for e-Governance implementation. Such legislation should define the administrative and organisational models and their responsibilities to support e-Government, establish accountabilities for the various
tion. While India has a number of legislations which impact e-Governance, e.g., RTI (Right to Information) Act, IT (Information Technology) Act etc., there has been little or no attempt to examine the comprehensibility of the present legislative framework with the future requirements of e-Governance. An enabling legislative framework for e-Governance should broadly cover areas such as delivery of public services electronically and a comprehensive e-Govern-
Government ministries and departments, identify tasks and implementation measures required to implement e-Government and propose the financial sources and procedures/process for the development of e-Government. An example of such enabling legislation is the US Electronic Government Act of 2002. Nodal body for e-Governance: Currently, the scenario is such that presumably everybody or nobody has responsibility for implementing e-Governance in
| July 2006
India. State governments and central ministries are free to implement e-Governance on their own whenever it is convenient to them. Apart from peer pressure, there is no other incentive to force a government department to implement e-Governance. This democratic approach has resulted in a non-standard and skewed implementation of e-Governance. Therefore, a statutory body responsible for e-Governance implementation in India need to be created for ensuring a systematic and successful e-Governance implementation. This nodal body should be equipped with requisite regulatory powers to enforce standards, plans, budgets and decide project priorities at both the state and central government levels. An example of such a body is the Office of the e-Envoy in the UK, which was established to coordinate the e-Governance efforts in UK. Business process re-engineering (BPR) of e-Government processes: There is little doubt that Indian government processes are archaic and sheerly out-of-step with the changing demands of its consumers, i.e., the Indian citizens. Merely automating government processes in their current form will not deliver the expected benefits of e-Governance, and frankly will be a waste of budgetary allocations earmarked for e-Governance projects. Therefore, all government processes targeted for e-Governance should undergo a detailed BPR exercise to rationalize and improve the existing processes. Rationalized processes enabled through IT would go a long way in helping the government achieve the e-Governance objectives of improving the quality of a citizen’s life. Outcome-based assessment of e-Governance: Any announcement of a new eGovernance initiative or an update of existing initiatives focuses on supply side factors including number of PCs, network connections, kiosks, villages covered etc. Little attention is paid to a simple question – How has the quality of life of the citizen improved through deployment of e-Governance? As such, each e-Government initiative should define and publish its expected outcomes while initiating the initiative. Benchmarking the actually achieved outcomes against the expected outcomes should be used to measure the success of an e- Governance initiative. Reusability: A large proportion of gov43
www.tribune.com
The Government of India has earmarked INR 260mn (US$5.64mn) for eGovernance representing a huge investment, which can have other alternative deployments. Out-ofbox thinking and innovative implementation models are sine qua non to ensure that every rupee invested in e-Governance ultimately improves the citizens’ quality of life ernment processes especially at the state level are fairly similar in almost all the states. Differences if any are more often than not superficial in nature. This situation is extremely conducive for the e-Government program to adopt an approach of ‘Create once, deploy many time’. Applications created in one state should be 44
deployed across other states. The states should be encouraged to adopt reusability by proposing incentive models including offsetting the cost of development. The successful e-Seva application developed in Andhra Pradesh should be implemented in other states too, instead each state developing own G2C applications. Not only will this approach reduce the time to market e-Governance projects but also have a tremendous impact on reducing the e-Governance implementation costs. The other major advantage of this approach would be the relative standardization in government processes across India. Infrastructure optimisation: With the focus on supply side factors as a benchmark of e-Governance progress, there is very little attention to sharing infrastructure capacity. Each state is investing huge amounts to create infrastructure capacity including data centres, disaster recovery centres, networks, and network operating centres etc. More often than not the infrastructure is never used at the capacity levels it is capable off. To optimise the infrastructure investments, infrastructure sharing should be promoted and enforced. Infrastructure capacity at national and regional centres should be established to cater to the requirements of a cluster of states. The states can pay for the infrastructure based on their consumption. This is analogous to the power grid model where states draw power from the national grid and pay for what they consume.
Interoperatibility through Standards: No IT system exists in a silo. To operate successfully, it has to communicate with other constituents of its ecosystem. Similarly, interoperatibility would be a key element for the success of e-Governance implementation in India as every application will be required to communicate with citizens, businesses and other government departments. To enable a seamless flow of information and documents among the various constituents of the Indian e-Governance ecosystem, it is important to ensure that data and document exchange standards are established and their compliance is enforced in each e-Governance initiative. Despite having a vibrant economy, India remains a country with many pressing societal problems, which need huge resource investments. Poverty continues to bedevil large sections of our country and as a nation we cannot afford profligacy. The Government of India has earmarked INR 260mn (US$5.64mn) for e-Governance representing a huge investment, which can have other alternative deployments. Out-of-box thinking and innovative implementation models are sine qua non to ensure that every rupee invested in e-Governance ultimately improves the citizens’ quality of life. Therein, lies the success of the e-Governance program. * These are author’s personal views www.egovonline.net |
numbers 7 76 percent rise of the global market for Wi-Fi phones in 2005, according to a report by Infonetics Research. The number of units shipped globally rose 112 percent last year ($102.5 million), and will increase by 158 percent this year, the report adds, and will reach $1.9 billion in 2009.
400
million INR to be invested by Tata Teleservices in its plan of expansion in rural India. The company is looking at a rural expansion strategy for the current year, which would run simultaneously with the plan to bring new corporate customers through enterprise solutions.
leading Asean telecom operators officially joined hands to deploy a transpacific undersea link to USA.
10.1
percent of British mobile users use their cellphones for applications such as- uploading video, using chat, uploading a photo and/or accessing a dating service- than their counterparts in France, Germany or the United States.
500,000 5 mobile lines will be laid down as part of contract between the telecommunication and post company of Libiya with the Chinese Company of Huawei Technologies. The $37 million project will cover a huge area in Libya and it is expected to be ready in 8 months.
1.4
million new subscribers were added by the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-based telecom operators in India in January 2006. Out of this 1.4 million, 2.24 lakh subscribers are in the fixed wireless and the rest through wire line. The total user base of CDMA has now increased to 24.6 million.
| July 2006
million USD worth network as part of Internet Protocol based telephony, video and data system called the Next Generation Network (NGN) launched by Uganda Telecom. Through the service, Uganda Telecom can now converge separate services such as the video, voice, data and telephony networks into one platform for its customers. Source 1.4
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/02/08/stories/ 2006020802330400.htm
5
http://allafrica.com/stories/200606020775.html
7
http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/06/06/d6060601033.htm
10.1
http://www.telecomweb.com/news/wbf/charts/17327.html
76
h t t p : / / w w w. v o i p - m a g a z i n e . c o m / i n d e x . p h p ? o p t i o n = c o m _ content&task=view&id=1725
4,00
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1577165.cms
500,000
http://en.ljbc.net/online/news_details.php?id=1626
45
WHA T’S ON WHAT’S This section lists upcoming e-Government conferences, exhibitions, and other public events for the benefit of our readers. 12 – 13 July 2006
4 – 8 September 2006
22 September 2006
The European Conference on IT Management, Leadership and Governance Paris France
International EGOV conference 2006 Krakow (Poland)
2nd International Workshop on eGovernment and Data Protection (EG&DP-2006) Varna Bulgaria
http://academic-conferences.org/ecmlg/ ecmlg2006/ecmlg06-home.htm
http://www.uni-koblenz.de/FB4/ Institutes/IWVI/AGVInf/Conferences/ egov2006
www.tu-sofia.bg/saer/
6 – 8 September 2006 I-KNOW ’06 - 6th International Conference on Knowledge Management Graz Austria
27 – 29 September 2006
http://www.egovonline.net/events/eventsdetails.asp?EventID=79
http://www.egovonline.net/events/eventsdetails.asp?EventID=77
19 – 21 July 2006
7 – 8 September 2006
5 – 6 October 2006
e-Revolution 2006 Hotel Taj Chandigarh India
2nd Conference on eServices in European Civil Registration Tallinn, Estonia
European e-Skills 2006 Conference Thessaloniki, Greece
http://www.erevindia.com
http://www.riser.eu.com/Conf/ conf_intro_new.htm
13 – 16 July 2006 IADIS International Conference e-Society 2006 Dublin Ireland http://www.iadis.org/es2006/
27 – 28 July 2006 National Summit on Identity Management Convention Hall, NIC New Delhi http://egovstandards.gov.in/events/nationalsummit-on-identity-management
2 – 4 August 2006 2nd International Workshop on electronic voting Vienna Austria http://www.e-voting.cc/topics/Conference
23 – 25 August 2006 Hotel Taj Palace New Delhi India
11 – 13 September 2006 The 6th Enterprise Architecture Conference & Exhibition Practical Approaches for Federal Programs Ronald Reagan Building Washington, DC
4th Quality Conference for Public Administrations in EU Tampere Finland
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/5640/ 5744
9 – 11 October 2006 t-Government World Europe 2006 Amsterdam The Netherlands http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/tgov/
25 – 27 October 2006
http://www.e-gov.com/EventOverview.aspx? Event=EA06&NoCache=632870559470560595
eChallenges e-2006 Conference Barcelona, Spain http://www.echallenges.org/e2006/
11 – 14 September 2006
6 December 2006
International Conference on eGovernance Enhancement via Knowledge Management Selangor Darul Ehsan Malaysia
2nd Annual Event Information Management in the public sector London http://www.kablenet.com
http://www.eg2km.org/main.html
7 December 2006
3 – 5 September 2006
20 – 22 September 2006
The EURO mGOV 2006 Sussex University Brighton, UK
Smart Event ’06 – World e-ID 2006 Sophia Antipolis France
www.icmg.mgovernment.org
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/5642/ 5744
eGovernment Conference 2006 Copenhagen Denmark http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp? containerId=IDC_P11911
Tell us about your event at info@egovonline.net 46
www.egovonline.net |