Localisation Enabling Governments to Speak to Citizens: July 2007 Issue

ov Language Technology and Document Reading Clearing the Language Barrier Empowering Farmers to Obtain Records of their Lands Re-engineering Land Records Computerisation

S U BS C R I B ER C OP Y NO T F OR S A L E

IS s n 0 97 3 -1 61 x

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| issue 7 | july 2007

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enhancing efficiency and access to government services commentary

measuring the value of public it investments state focus: haryana

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Localisation Enabling Governments to Speak to Citizens

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Cover Features

6 9 11 14 16

Importance of Localisation in India Barun Kumar Sahu

Using Indian Languages on Computers Interview: Dr Srinivasan Ramakrrishnan, Director General, CDAC

OSS and Localisation Efforts R. K. Verma, Dr P R Gupta and Govind Raj

Clearing the Language Barrier Nokia Corporation

Language Technology and Document Reading

Ahmad Khodaverdi Darian

18 20 27

Local Language Computing Interview: Michel Gambier, General Manager- Information Worker Business

Group, Microsoft APAC

Social Computing for the Masses Avik Banerjee

Empowering Farmers to Obtain Records of their Lands

Interview: Rajeev Chawla, Secretary, e-Governance, Government of Karnataka

Re-engineering Land Records Computerisation

Ajit Kesari and Ajay Kumar

Computerisation of Land Records in Uganda Dr Nasani Batungi and Joan Batungi

country focus: kazakhstan

Enhancing Efficiency and Access to Government Services

Intervies: Kuanyshbek Yessekeyev, Chairman, Agency for Informatisation and Communications, Republic of Kazakhstan

commentary

Measuring the Value of Public IT Investments

Steven Furst

Stae focus: haryana

Implementing National e-Governance Plan in Haryana Anuraj Rastogi and Ghanshyam Bansal

REG U LAR FEATURE

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s On 46

July 2007

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 eGovernment 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, egov, G-4, Sector 39, NOIDA (UP) 201 301, India. tel: +91 120 2502180-85, fax: +91 120 2500060, email: info@egovonline.net

Editorial Calendar 2007 Month

solution focus

application focus

state focus

JULY localisation and language technology land records Haryana AUGUST

e-forms and document management

income tax/commercial taxes Tamil Nadu

SEPTEMBER

interoperability and open standards

central excise

Punjab

OCTOBER

wireless

municipalities

Kerala

NOVEMBER

e-governance architecture

courts Madhya Pradesh

DECEMBER

mobility police West Bengal

Editorial Calendar 2008 january Web Accessibility Technology Railways

Bihar

february Enterprise Architecture

e-Business Gujarat

march Authentication & Digital Signature Technology

Privacy & Security

april

Uttar Pradesh

Broadband Defence Rajasthan

may Electronic Voting

e-Democracy Sikkim

june Web Semantics Water Himachal Pradesh july Meta Data & Data Standards

e-Procurement Assam

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president

EDITORIAL All About Accelerating Localisation

Dr. M P Narayanan editor-in-chief

Ravi Gupta sr. editor

G Kalyan Kumar SR. sub editor

Prachi Shirur Marketing

Gautam Navin mob: +91 9818125257 email: gautam@csdms.in Debabrata Ray mob: +91 9899650692 email: debabrata@elets.in designed by

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Lipika Dutta (+91 9871481708) Manoj Kumar (+91 9210816901)

editorial correspondence

It may sound too basic to re-emphasise that e-Governance is citizen-centric and not officer-centric. But there is no denying that localisation continues to be the key in implmenting it fast. Any dithering on it will beconstrued as an assault on the concept of equal opportunity and even a violation of human rights. At the demand side, the time is ripe to launch new initiatives albeit collectively. Across the board; G2C, G2G and G2E or even B2C, B2B services are craving for more attention in the localisation area. With e-Governance fast transforming into m-Governance, localisation is asserting itself as never before. In the current issue of the magazine localisation is the core theme, where an array of experts unlocks their scholarly thoughts. The problem with India, as some experts point out, is that the hardware is ready but the development of content for various projects is lagging abysmally in pace. In other words, e-Readiness of various government services offered to the people are dragging. Reason is Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unique situation. Only 5% in India speak English. About 40 % knows Hindi. Nearly 80% of people speak their native tongue. To reach out to this vast mass, and curb the digital divide, all out efforts are needed on localisation. Bundling of multi-lingual software with PCs and other access devices will be one way of promoting it in the country as in China.

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India as a member of Unicode Consortium and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is committed to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of Indian language text in modern software products, web technology Standards and other related standards. Before concluding, it is heartening to note the progress in egovernance in the far flung Mizoram, state in India, where for the first time property registration is going online, moving away from manual registration in wills, mortgage and Lease. A state-wide roll out is under process now.

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.

This is expected to add more transparency in land transactions, reduced court cases on ownership of land, faster delivery of certificates to citizens and removal of land disputes. More delighting will be the news that plans are afoot to make the system highly web-enabled.

egov is published in collaboration with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. (www.elets.in) ÂŠ Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies 2007 www.csdms.in

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in ov

July 2007

CO V ER FEATURE

Importance of Localisation in India Localisation is an important requirement in a globalised world and especially in pluralistic society like India. As the demand for services through IT grows in India, localisation will be the crucial requirement. There has been a general lack of awareness in India about the localisation. However, loalisation should be central to the National e-Governance Plan architecture, and G2G, G2C, G2E, B2B, B2C services. Unicode standards will pave the way for interoperability, collaboration and development of software tools in Indian languages. Barun Kumar Sahu Lack of Localisation for India

Localisation and Empowerment

India is a vast country, and plurality is its hallmark. The country takes pride in its linguistic, ethnic, social, cultural and geographical diversities. In this backdrop, localisation should have been the salient feature of IT sector in India. However, an industry is influenced by the market it caters to. For a very long time, the major market for the Indian IT industry was clients based in developed countries. Even the boom, the BPO (Business Processing Outsourcing) sector in recent year has produced localisation of a different kind in the globalised world: The employees of the call centers located in India learn how to adapt to the ambience of foreign countries; they learn about nuances of American accents, French slang and Australian names!

Simply put, localisation aims at achieving equal opportunity to access in this information age irrespective of native language, culture and region. It aims to bridge the digital divide. e-Governance is citizen-centric, rather than officercentric. The services are necessarily to be interactive and transparent, rather than being merely presenting information. e-Governance means taking government to the doorstep of the people. This implies that localication will have to play a crucial role in e-Governance. The central government and the state governments have embarked on an ambitious National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) and several Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) have been identified under the NeGP. e-Governance is not so much about technology, as it is about efficient delivery of services. Good governance means citizens being able to avail services from the government speedily, on 24x7 basis, at a convenient location and in a cost-effective manner. Technology is used to improve the quality of service, and the delivery of service. With many states adopting ICT as key instrument in

Lack of Awareness about Localisation

There is also lack of awareness regarding localisation for the Indian ambience already available under various operating systems and application software. Localisation for popular software are available in the form of language interface packs (LIPs). These packs are more than mere text substitution: they take care of the localisation issues. Language interface packs for Microsoft Windows and Office have been available quite some time now, and these are available for all major Indian languages. User interface in Indian languages are available for Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) such as Linux, OpenOffice etc. However, there is not much awareness about these tools. Support is also available for calendar based on Saka Era (Hindu calendar), but there appears hardly any popular demand for Saka Era calendar even by the Indian government organiation for whom Saka Era is the official calendar. Indeed, support should be available for other popular local calendars, such as Vikram Samvat, Bengali Samvat, and Nepali Samvat etc. }

OpenOffice Writer with Hindi user interfac

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improving the public service delivery especially in rural areas, rural India is all set for IT revolution like never before. Government organisations are creating huge IT infrastructure in terms of setting up of networks, financing rural cyber cafĂŠs and information centers. Government investment in e-Governance is truly phenomenal. Several projects are under public-private partnership (PPP) mode. Indeed, considering the demand for services in rural areas, the spread of telecommunication network across the country, and the computing power of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inexpensive devices, the target of only 100,000 common service centers may appear too conservative.

India too. Thanks to the expansion of telecom networks with huge bandwidth throughout the country and the everdeclining cost of computers and networking equipments, IT has penetrated into even rural and tribal areas. Even geographically remote locations are enjoying excellent connectivity, and the remoteness, as far as IT is concerned, is not a handicap. Being a vast and complex country, the scope of localisation is immense in India. Usually a locale identifier for localisation consists of a language identifier and a country identifier. Thus, only one variant of Hindi is accepted i.e. Hindi-India.

Experience of Cyber Kiosks

Governments have set up several cyber kiosks to deliver government services to the people. There have been several initiatives across the country. Gyandoot, Community Information Centers (CICs), e-Seva, CARD, LokMitra, BangaloreOne, e-Chaupal etc are just a few examples. Experience shows that while the hardware was ready, the development of content for these projects lagged behind. The e-Readiness of various government services offered to the people too lagged behind. Consequently, instead of being self-sufficient, some such initiatives became dependent on government support leading to inefficiencies. Even if all services provided by the WindowsXP with Urdu LIP; directionality of everything changes to right-to-left government were e-Ready, still the revenue from government services would not be enough to make a large number of centers a However, Hindi as spoken and written in different Indian viable proposition. This is especially because governments states, is different. Hindi terminologies used in government have been withdrawing from several sectors, and allowing offices in Bihar are quite different from those used in Rajasthan. private sector to provide these services. The private services It is not only true for Hindi but for most Indian languages. will have to be the major source of revenue for the cyber Urdu of Hyderabad is quite different from Urdu of Meerut, kiosks. Thus, private sector will have to develop localised so Urdu (India) is an insufficient locale identifier. Bengali contents to cater to the local needs. of Rajshahi is quite different from Bengali of Chittagong, so Bengali (Bangladesh) is an insufficient locale identifier to capture the localisation requirements. Malayalam is written Scope of Localisation in two styles: traditional and reformed, which should be properly identified; localisation should take care of this too. The recent dubbing of the popular film Spiderman-III in India is not a small country. In terms of number of speakers Bhojpuri language, a language that is not even recognised by as mother tongue, Hindi is the second most popular language the Constitution of India, points to the immense potential of in the world. Even languages like Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, localisation in India. There is a vast and largely untapped Tamil, etc. are quite high in the popularity chart. Neverpotential in localisation. Indeed, localisation is not an India- theless, these languages are quite deficient in terms of locaspecific requirement. Cyber space today is increasingly global lisation in these languages. A lot of work still needs to be done and internationalised, reflecting the diverse linguistic, ethnic, in machine-translation, voice recognition, optical character social and cultural predilections of the world community. recognition, handwriting recognition etc for these languages. Unlike in the past when the IT industry was primarily geared G2C, G2G and G2E services offer a lot of scope for to cater to the demands in the developed economies, as the localisation; even B2C, B2B services require localisation in the Indian economy develops and the service sector becomes globalised economy. As e-Governance is transforming itself to more-and-more prominent, there is a growing market in m-Governance, there is need for localisation there too. ov

July 2007

cover feature

importance of localisation in india

Localisation and Government

India is a member of Unicode Consortium and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organisation originally founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in modern software products and standards). India became a member of these consortia with the objective of proper representation of Indian languages in the Web Technology Standards and related standards. India has put forth several recommendations before Unicode Consortium for better encoding of Indian languages. All modern and ancient Indian scripts have been or are being included in the Unicode standards. Proposals have been put forth for including special notations and characters used in Vedic hymns, which have not been encoded so far. Also, there is need for further refinement in the formation of letters and ligature or conjuncts in Indian languages. Centre for Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and many other organisations are contributing to the localisations efforts, including machinetranslation from one language to another. The Constitution of India recognises twenty-two languages - apart from English which has the status of associate official language. The constitutional recognition of these languages is meaningless unless these languages get their due share in the cyber space in this information age. The front-end of all government websites and service delivery mechanisms should be simultaneously available in all the twenty-three languages, apart from English. Localisation should be basic to the NeGP architecture. Government must take a lead in the localisation efforts. Moreover, the state governments and other constitutional bodies also have their own official languages. For example, the Chakma District Council promotes the tribal Chakma language. Thus, there is a need for even more refined localisation. Localisation and Marketing

If the foregoing arguments appear to insinuate that localisation is all about government, then it would be entirely incorrect. Internationalisation and localisation are primarily driven by the private sector in the globalised economy, and can be viewed as part of the marketing processes of segmentation and targeting. The demand for localisation is so huge that there are many companies catering to only localisation of software, product design, packaging, promotion etc. If you open the official website of some MNCs, it is likely that what you will see in the browser will be the localised content as per locale identified by the website. So, do not be surprised if the official website of Microsoft opens in Hindi in your browser without your asking for the content to be in Hindi. As the penetration of PCs and other electronic devices increases and connectivity becomes widespread through broadband and WiMAX, there will be increasing demand for local content. A little more than a decade ago when the

cable TV was being opened to the private sector, financial viability of regional cable TV channels was questioned. Today, there is a plethora of regional cable TV channels catering to whole lot of local and special interests. Indeed, it would be incorrect to view localisation as addressing only the needs of the rural market. Information Technology has facilitated and accelerated the pace of globalisation. It has bridged the gap between the people, and made distance irrelevant. Interestingly, the same information technology is also facilitating localisation. IT tools are increasingly being used in e-Learning. e-Learning offers immense scope for localisation. Many ATMs offer options in Indian languages depending on the geographical locations. The landline and mobile telephony services also offer assistance in local languages. Illiteracy and Localisation

An important aspect of localisation in India is consideration for the illiterate and the semiliterate population. The illiterate and semiliterate people form a huge chunk of the population in India to be ignored from any meaning public activity. We just cannot afford to keep this vulnerable section of the population on the other side of the digital divide. In order to reach the illiterate and semiliterate population, it is essential that the software have audio content, and use symbols and jingles to communicate the message. Of course, this underlines the importance of voice recognition and text-tospeech tools for Indian languages. Localisation and FLOSS

Unless there is a paradigm shift in the business model and proprietary software vendors bring about a sea change in their marketing strategy, free/libre open source software (FLOSS) is likely to play an important role in the mass-based localiation. Proprietary software costs huge money, and use of open source software may reduce cost to affordable levels. Moreover, detection of pirated software will be easy in a wired world and it will be vulnerable to malicious attacks. Pirated software may be too risky inasmuch as computers and other devices will be used not just to type text or browse static web pages, but also to make financial and contractual transactions and generate outputs of evidentiary value. Moreover, volunteers can develop open source software even though it is financially unviable. For instance Linux supports the Tibetan script (used in Tibet/Bhutan/parts of India) not available in proprietary softwares. In fine, localisation is the future in a globalised world, and it cannot be any different for India. Barun Kumar Sahu (barun_sahu@yahoo.com.) is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of 1992 batch. He has written four books. His latest book â&#x20AC;&#x153;Make Computers Speak Your Languageâ&#x20AC;? (published by Unicorn Books Pvt Ltd, New Delhi; ISBN 9788178061214) is on text processing in multilingual environment. At present, he is posted as Director (Personnel) in Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

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COVER FEATURE

Using Indian Languages on Computers Centre for Development of Advanced Computing

www.cdac.in

“Given the fact that provision of e-Governance services to broad-based citizens are likely to pose many other challenges which we are all familiar with, localisation can help to take a significant distance in provision of e-Governance services”. Says, Dr. Srinivasan Ramakrishnan (ramki@ cdacindia.com), Director General, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) Pune.

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) is a pioneer in developing and proliferating the use of Indian languages on computers. What is the broad vision and goals of CDAC’s technology mission? The broad vision and goals of C-DAC’s technology mission is what we call “nurturing living languages and dissolving language barriers”. This is particularly relevant in an inheritantly multilingual country like India where we are in a unique position of having 22 professionally recognised languages. Its broad goals include: • Seamless interaction with computers by the common man and needed tools for common man developers. • Setting language standards • Contributing to linguistic tools and lexicon resources for building spellcheckers, grammar checkers, thesauri, ontology, etc. • World class research in the area of Indian languages, semantic web and semantic search. • Multimodal interactions such as optical character recognition, handwriting character recognition, speech recognition, text-to-speech ov

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• •

Solutions in the area of Indian language machine assisted translation systems, cross lingual information retrieval, summariser Frameworks which enable support to application software developers (such as those in e-Governance domain), ISVs (an independent software vendor (ISV) is a business term for companies specialising in making or selling softwares, especialy for niche markets), in a number of contexts and platforms including evolving worldwide web standards to support localisation.

How important is localisation in furthering e-Governance, especially in developing countries? To the extent localisation, especially in developing countries, refers to the context of access to services which they can relate to easily, it brings into picture attributes of user interface in local languages. User interface is something, which most of the people are likely to be familiar with and hence, there is a removal of an additional layer of barrier in provision of e-Governance services. Given the fact that provision of e-Governance services to broad-based citizens are likely to

cover feature

Using indian languages on computers

pose many other challenges which we are all familiar with, localisation can help to take a significant distance in provision of e-Governance services. In many situations, localisation is necessary for successful implementation of e-Governance in any country. It makes it easy for a commoner with minimal education in the rural areas to obtain services through computers and internet. In India, where over 90% populace are non-English speaking, localisation brings added advantage by which people can fill up forms, get information of government schemes and do interactions of day to day relevance readily. Localisation also removes fear or mental block in usage of such systems cutting across age groups. I would definitely say that for any e-Governance project to be successful, the choice of interface and interactions in local language is absolutely essential. Besides, we can also think of multi-modal interactions in local languages in the coming years, making access to service even more friendly. What are the different multilingual technologies CDAC is adopting for localisation? As I mentioned earlier, C-DAC has over the last 18 years started work in the area of Indian Language Computing technologies. Technology standards and products started from Initial Ionic State Configuration Interaction (IISCI) to Unicode, from linguistic tools, lexical resources and Corpora for building spellcheckers, grammar checkers, thesauri in all the 22 official languages, productivity tools, domain specific dictionaries, synonym dictionaries, i-Plugin, GIST SDK, transliteration tools, database translation utilities, bulk HTML converters. There have been many multilingual technologies C-DAC has been adopting. The process/tools used for localisation depends upon the application software to be localised, environment in which it is working (operating system) and whether it is adhering to standards or not. Besides, localisation can mean going beyond translation of the user interface to include date, time, currency, calendar and such attributes of local context/ culture. C-DAC has developed Indian language technologies addressing all these issues. In fact, hard coded localisable strings pose great difficulty, since customised tools need to be developed for each of them and that too for specific application and operating system. At times these had also been necessary. C-DAC has also been instrumental in developing a localisation framework which facilitates semi-automatic conversion of Website to Indian languages. The localisation framework developed is based on a translation memory approach. In case of localisation of Free and Open Source Software such as BharateeyaOO, browsers, email client, multi-protocol messenger, etc. standard tools available in the free and open source domain are being used. How important is standards in local language computing? Standards are of utmost importance. Standards are like traffic rules; whether one likes it or not one need to follow the same, otherwise troubles abound. Non compliance to the standards can pose serious threat for data compatibility, 10

India being multilingual country with 22 scheduled languages plus English as associate language it is important (rather should be made mandatory) to follow standards. Adherence to standards also makes life simple as in case of Indian language searches and cross lingual information retrieval, semantic web and so on. portability across platforms. Huge amount of resources may have to be deployed for conversion of legacy data to adapt to the standards.Â India being multilingual country with 22 scheduled languages plus English as associate language it is important (rather should be made mandatory) to follow standards. Adherence to standards also makes life simple as in case of Indian language searches and cross lingual information retrieval, semantic web and so on. Standards also open up opportunity on Global Business fronts. Major standard adherence by state governments may include inputting methods, storage standards, font standards, lexicons, and most importantly the standards for the W3C. How developed is India, as compared to other countries in Asia, in local language technology? As far as local language computing is concerned, there are two goals â&#x20AC;&#x201C; first, to enable support to local languages in systems and devices and secondly work in the area of Natural language processing, speech technologies, image processing and soon. As compared to other countries local language technology, especially the enabling one has been satisfactory (with few exceptions), while on the natural language processing and other areas there is a lot to do. Unlike other countries India has a problem through the compounding effect of 22 languages; and has posed serious technological challenges. So, as far as development in this area goes, it is little below the satisfaction. This is just because of complexities in the given domain. Please tell us some of your future plans in advancing the localisation programme in CDAC? C-DAC has already started work on localisation of some basic tools which are required on day to day basis by common man (this includes the Government working staff as well) in all the 22 scheduled languages. They include Open Office suite, browsers, email client, multi-protocol messengers, content management system, GIS packages and so on. For 10 Indian languages (Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Oriya, Assamese, Urdu, Kannada & Punjabi) the work has been completed while the work for the rest of the languages is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. These will provide a sound foundation for comprehensive localisation of e-Governance applications in all languages in the country. On-going work as indicated earlier will help address emerging technologies as well in the coming years. www.egovonline.net

C O VER F EAT U RE

oss and Localisation Efforts Creating a Niche for e-Governance The article describes an e-Governance model based on Open Source Systems (OSS) and localisation and its effectiveness for developing countries like India. R.K. Verma, Dr P R Gupta and Govind Raj

CT-driven development is fast becoming the cornerstone of the new development paradigm for the global economy. e-Government programmes can bring reforms in public sector governance by building up an infrastructural base and by improving service delivery. It would also be helpful in engaging the citizens into a multi stakeholder partnership towards the development of a knowledge society. e-Governance initiatives by the state can create awareness among the stakeholders about the potential of ICT in economic and social empowerment in a knowledge economy. Some of the services being provided through e-Governance includes service delivery to citizens through on-line facility/ portals/community managed service centers, record management, public grievance handling, tax-collection, reservation systems etc. More can be done in health, education, transport, judiciary where government has a major delivery role to play. The functionality of application deployed can range from data collection, information processing, MIS, decision support systems to knowledge management. One of the obstacles in reaping the benefits of e-Governance programmes is the digital-divide, which appears across the world, not only in developing countries where it is commonly perceived to exist, but also within developed countries, due to the fact that, in most countries only the well off are getting the benefit of ICT. This divide has to be bridged for regions and countries to reach full ICT deployment. Further, e-Governance models used in a developing country should be based on innovative application of knowledge and technology. It should bring more people under the governance sphere and aim to improve the services being provided under the governance sphere. In a country like India where diversification exists due to language, literacy, geographical and cultural variations as well as economic differences, the digital divide is quite prominent. In order to make e-Governance initiatives effective, the penetration of ICT needs to be increased. An increasing number of Indian government initiatives in e-Governance are being employed to improve the delivery of public services to the people. The synergy obtained through the interaction between new technologies, educated ov

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population and an enabling environment for knowledgebased economies can make India a knowledge economy. The Government of India has put efforts through its Linux initiatives for taking technology to masses at low cost. Further, localisation efforts for providing the language interface to the IT products are other initiatives to bring benefits of ICT to the masses. The efforts are many fold from academics, research community, private players as well as government agencies . This article elaborates on the e-Governance initiatives of Government of India. It describes an e-Governance model based on Open Source Systems (OSS) and localisation and its effectiveness for developing countries like India. OSS , Localisation and e-Governance

Open source philosophy describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end productâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sources. The term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet and its enabling of diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. Some of the reasons for using open source softwares include low total cost of ownership, lack of software piracy issues, availability of source code leading to high degree of customisability and scalability, adaptability for variety of applications, community cooperation and extensive support freely available on Internet. Localisation

Literacy in developing countries is significantly lower than that in developed countries. Further, users do prefer their native language instead of English as a medium of communication, thus imposing a requirement on application interface. Therefore one of the major parameters for successful e-Government implementation is the deployment of applications in local languages so that every citizen of the country can access it, without any hassle. India has 22 languages listed in the constitution and also about 500 versions of spoken languages. Only 3 percent of 11

oss and localisation efforts

cover feature

the Indian population can speak in English while close to 40 percent of the Indian population speak Hindi or one of its variants. English being the available interface, the divide between population having access to computing and the ones that do not, become more.

The Indian Government does not rule out the use of proprietary software in favour of open source software. Government agencies like Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), National Informatics Centre (NIC) and state governments are extensively using and advocating the use of open source. Back in the year 2002, the Government of India had announced that all government tenders would stop specifying Microsoft or any other vendorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name, while floating software tenders, thus opening ways for Linux and other OSS vendors. It plans to set up special interest groups, which will include people from academia, and industry, which will explore means to deploy Linux in e-Governance, defence and education. Why Open Source

The Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) of Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has been mandated to bridge the digital divide by developing IT tools in local languages in India. Since 1991, TDIL has sponsored research in developing Indian language computing resources, processing systems, tools and translation support systems and localisation of software for Indian languages. The use of Indian languages so far has been in office management applications mainly in the government and the public sector. OSS and Localisation

In the open source environment, it is easier to modify things according to specific needs in contrast to proprietary software. The open source development stack is becoming popular among students and developers due to its easy availability and widespread community support. Localisation of open source software is a transparent and communitydriven process. Governments need to encourage the use of local language applications in their departments. In context of India, it is equally important to ensure that most of the softwares for workflow process and documentation systems is enabled in local languages. Open source philosophy offers the perfect solution for easy computerisation and mass spread of technology - both from a localisation and cost standpoint. Some of the efforts, such as provision of language interface with applications, development of IndLinux, AnkurBangla, PUNLINUX, etc, for creating language interface on open source operating systems, have been made by Government of India and communities working for bringing IT to masses . As India is advancing towards efficient delivery of e-Government services, and empowering more Indians with the power of IT, there are compelling political, economic and cultural reasons for India to consider radical and fresh approaches based on open source philosophy. 12

In the context of developing countries two major impediments for e-Governance initiatives are adoption of technology and change management. Open source based solutions offer low cost solutions as an alternate to rapid advancement of technology and for increasing expectations of stakeholders. As open source solutions are developed using open and collaborative methods, additional modalities for verification and assessment of deliverables and project performance are available to the evaluation process. Open source can improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of solutions provided through government policies and services. For citizen services, in addition to enabling cost-effective solutions, open source can improve the delivery of citizen services by promoting interoperability and long-term accessibility. Open source IT solutions facilitate transparency through public observation and accountability. Finally, encouraging open source in e-Governance policy can benefit projects for which collaboration is important. Most importantly from an economic perspective, encouraging open source in government policies can also help meet the economic goals of local regions, especially in developing nations. Open source has the potential to develop local enterprises and to develop manpower with fewer resources. Incorporating open source into e-Governance will provide flexibility, and local economic development, especially valuable for developing economies. A limited number of Indian language based applications are developed and deployed in e-Governance domain for generating static reports, using Indian language template. Most of these applications still have English interface. Few applications are enabled at data input-output in local languages. Common Service Centre (CSC) development plan of Indian government is one major initiative with emphasis on local language interface. CDAC Initiatives

CDAC, Noida is putting efforts for localisation to IT products for a long time. Some of the products developed by CDAC, Noida, include Lekhika â&#x20AC;&#x201C; platform independent word processor, Chitraksharika: optical character recognition (OCR) for Hindi, translation support www.egovonline.net

system, bilingual dictionaries, on-Line Hindi Vishwakosh (dictionary), on-line bilingual IT terminology, Abhigyan live CD version of Linux with Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Punjabi interface, text to speech synthesiser. CDAC has used these products for various e-Governance projects it has handled for many state government agencies, hospitals and institutions. CDAC also developed a product for information collection and dissemination to and from village level user which is based on LAMP technology (software bundle comprising Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database server and PHP, the programming language), and provides local language interface for users through Abhigyan.

model based on cost-effectiveness and sustainability and a legal framework, which is inclusive and forward looking. For a developing country, additional important factors can be localisation of products, community building, and timings of deployment of e-Governance projects. R.K. Verma (ramkaran.verma@gmail.com) is Director, Systems and Development, GGSIPU, Delhi. A B.tech. From IIT, Delhi in Electrical Enggineering, he has specialised in software engineering & project management & quality assurance, embedded systems. Previously, he has served as Executive Director, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Noida Dr P R Gupta (poonamgupta@cdacnoida.in) has about 20 years experience in academics and research . She has M.Tech from IIT Delhi and Ph.D. in Computer Sc & Engg from KNIT, Sultanpur. Presently, she is working as Associate Professor at CDAC, Noida.

Conclusion

P Govind Raj (pgovindraj@cdacnoida.in) is a software professional with about two year experience presently working with CDAC, Noida. He has been involved in development of ABHIGYAN-a Live CD Version of Linux with Indian language support.

Ideally the critical success factors for e-Governance include functional architecture founded on customer centricity, technology architecture founded on standards, business

Obituary: Prof. V.K. Samaranayake

Sri Lanka’s ICT industry champion The ICT industry in Sri Lanka lost its most valued member after Professor V.K. Samaranayake passed away on Wednesday, 07th June 2007, aged 68, in Stockholm, whilst attending a review of the Swedish government’s ICT development assistance programme. Prof. Samaranayake was the Chairman of the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka from 2004. He was also the Emeritus Professor of Computer Science of the University of Colombo. He was the founder Director, University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) of the University of Colombo. He served at the University of Colombo for a continuous period of 43 years since his first appointment in 1961 immediately following his graduation from the same University. He was the founder of the Department of Statistics and Computer Science (DSCS) and of the Institute of Computer Technology (ICT) of the University of Colombo. These two institutions were merged as the UCSC in 2002. He was a Fellow of the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project and the National Centre for Digital Government of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In 2005 he was a Visiting Fellow of the Digital Vision Programme of Stanford University, USA. Prof. Samaranayake served the Council for Information Technology (CINTEC), the apex National Agency for IT in Sri Lanka as its Chairman for a period of 12 years. In the field of IT he has pioneered work on IT Policy, Legal Infrastructure, EDI/e-Commerce, Security, Internet Technology, Computer Awareness and IT Education. He was actively involved in the formulation of the ISO 10646 standard for Sinhalese Characters and in the development of multilingual web sites. He was also instrumental in helping to apply computers ov

July 2007

in many areas of governance, including in national elections. He was also actively involved in introducing ICT to rural communities and was engaged in developing Multipurpose Community Telecentres. He was a member of the advisory panel of the Asia IT&C program of the European Commission. He chaired the National Y2K Task Force that coordinated the very successful crossover to year 2000. More recently he initiated the External Degree of Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) of the University of Colombo which in its very first year of operation has attracted 5000 registrations. He was the Chairman of the Project Management Committee of the SIDA funded project to enhance internet connectivity of Sri Lankan Universities. He was the President of the National Academy of Sciences during 1998-1999 and the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science during its golden jubilee in 1994. He was also the President of Infotel Lanka Society. The Government of Sri Lanka has honoured Prof. Samaranayake for his contribution towards IT by the award of Vidya Prasadini in 1997 and the national honour Vidya Jyothi in 1998. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has presented its President’s Award for International Cooperation to Prof. Samaranayake in 1996 in recognition of his contribution. At its convocation held in January 2005, the University of Colombo conferred on Prof. Samaranayake the Degree of Doctor of Science (Honouris Causa) for his outstanding contribution to the University. Reshan Dewapura, COO, ICTA said: “Everyone in the ICT industry in Sri Lanka has either met or worked with Professor Samaranayake. It was his sense of commitment towards ICT development in the country coupled with his boundless energy that set him apart and allowed him to make lasting alliances and friendships both personally and professionally around the world. There is no doubt that Prof’s tireless commitment to the ICT industry has made his contribution over the years remarkable. He will be greatly missed.” 13

CO V ER F E A TURE

Clearing the Language Barrier Contributed by Nokia Corporation

www.nokia.com

Linguistic diversity forms fascinating challenges and new discoveries for everyone involved in extending the reach of information and communications technologies (ICTs).

he official documents of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) stated that “the Information Society should be founded on and stimulate respect for cultural identity, cultural and linguistic diversity, traditions and religions.” Linguistic diversity, in particular, comes into focus every time someone uses a mobile phone or writes an SMS. WSIS also highlighted a global commitment “to promote the inclusion of all peoples in the Information Society through the development and use of local and/or indigenous languages in ICTs.” Mobile phone language support forms an increasingly important issue for manufacturers and operators trying to win customers as mobile communications spreads to new markets.

understanding of different cultures. Also, as mobile phone manufacturers create language support, they maintain close cooperation with local partners who develop and test languages in their regions. From Assamese to Yoruba

According to the prominent website Yourdictionary.com, an estimated 6,800 languages are spoken in the world today. With so many to choose from, what are the practical

Better Access

Mobile communications companies stand together with governments in recognising the significance of local languages. In its Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, UNESCO encourages ling-uistic diversity – even in cyberspace. The document also lists a goal Arag signage of “countering the digital divide” by, among other things, “fostering access by the developing countries to the new technologies.” Increased language support translates into better access for more people and enhances interaction with local cultures. Language and culture are inevitably closely linked, so taking into account the diversity of languages, supplements 14 }

considerations for deciding which languages mobile phones need to support? A phone manufacturer listens closely to what local governments, partners and experts say about the business and cultural situation in a given area. For instance, Nokia started offering Nigerian languages Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo. www.egovonline.net

A Word About Literacy In addition to linguistic diversity, another language-related factor can affect mobile phone usage in a number of markets: illiteracy. The UN estimates that nearly 800 million people worldwide are illiterate – UNESCO defines literacy as “the ability to read and write, with understanding, a short simple sentence about one’s everyday life.” By this definition, a significant number of new or potential mobile phone users are regarded as illiterate. Researchers are examining what can be done to support their desire for personal, convenient communication. Illiteracy often stems from a lack of formal educational possibilities and the preferred solution would be to raise general levels of literacy. Field studies by Nokia have documented barriers to communication that affect illiterate mobile phone users. Challenges exist in researching illiteracy, which is often associated with social stigma. To avoid negative connotations, it is sometimes called “non-literacy.” The studies have shown that contact management and asynchronous messaging present particular barriers to convenient communication, but the issue is not straightforward. Greater support for non-literate users is starting to appear in handsets – the speaking clock and icon-based phonebook features in the Nokia 1600, for example. One way to think about the issue is that everyone is effectively illiterate somewhere in the world – for example when traveling to foreign countries with indecipherable street signs. To get a feel for what it is like to be non-literate, try this simple test: switch the user interface language on your phone to one you do not understand.

Based on local demand, it offered all three in a combined pack. The Nigerian Communications Commission greeted the introduction of Nigerian language support by commenting, “In today’s ICT world, it is important that products have local inputs.” All Nokia phones everywhere include default menus and user interfaces in a common global language, English. In India, a second standard, Hindi, is also included in all packs, but also eight other languages are available there: Bengali, Gujarathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. Languages on the rise

The decision to include a certain language, or even a certain alphabet, can depend on politics as well as business. In one country bordering Russia, the leader has declared Latin letters the official alphabet but most citizens are still more familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia. Memory capacity can also form a factor – the software for some languages takes up more space than that of others. Chinese language packs currently require the most memory, with their thousands of supported characters. In most cases one phone can support up to five languages. Nokia currently offers support for more than 68 languages in its mobile phones, and the number is constantly rising. The next ones to be released include a range of African and Asian languages.

Localisation Courses Offered by University of Limerick The University of Limerick (http://www.ul.ie/), Ireland is offering two new programmes in Localisation, designed with the support and help of eminent industrial and academic experts in the field. The Graduate Diploma in Localisation Technology is aimed at those who want to learn how the world’s digital publishers localise their products, while the Masters in Science (M.Sc.) in Global Computing and Localisation deals with the underlying scientific and business issues in localisation.

Graduate Diploma in Localisation Technology

This programme is aimed specifically at students who might not have a technical background but who would like to become involved in localisation and, above all, the technical aspects of localisation. The Graduate Diploma in Software Localisation is offered on a one-year full-time and a two-year part-time basis. The programme is accredited by The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP) and corresponds to its Certified Localisation Professional (CLP) Level 2. The programme introduces students to all aspects of localisation, with an emphasis on localisation technology. Master of Science in Global Computing and Localisation

This programme caters to new and emerging requirements with a focus on high-quality research output. In addition, while it is centred around the technical aspects of localisation, it recognises the need for localisation professionals to have a good understanding of international business organisation. Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) to develop teaching/ research in localisation/internationalisation are currently in place with universities in Africa, South America and Malaysia. For more information contact Reinhard Schaler, Course Director at reinhard.schaler@ul.ie, www.localisation.ie/MSc

July 2007

COVER FEATURE

Language Technology and Document Reading

In the past two decades, language technology has developed and produced “single - sentence generation” capability and “limited - purpose multi sentence paragraph planning capability”. These possibilities are numerous and available. Analysing documents with complex layouts, recognition of printed texts and distinguishing running hand writing is still a large research area. Ahmad Khodaverdi Darian

anguage technology is also called Human Language Technology (HLT) that consists of Computational Linguistics (CL) and Speech Technology (ST) as the core of it. It is closely related to computer sciences and general linguistics. In order to process a language on a computer, different aspects like the science and art of the languages as well as the grammar of the language is needed. In an object oriented view, root words and their usages are important. Hand writings are considered as the language usages. National Language Generation (NLG) is the area of investing how computer programmes can make high-quality natural language texts from computer internal representations of information. This area of study consists of entirely theoretical (linguistics, psycholinguistic) to entirely practical subjects (as the production of outputs of computer programmes). In the past two decades, language technology has developed and produced “single - sentence generation” capability and “limited - purpose multi sentence paragraph planning capability”. These possibilities are numerous and available. Analysing documents with complex layouts, recognition of printed texts and distinguishing running hand writing is still a large research area. The major challenges of hand writing are words and line separations, segmentation of words into characters, recognition of words when lexicons are large and use of language models in aiding preprocessing and recognition. In order to understand large textual units, combination of smaller units is understood. The main goal of linguistic theory is to indicate how large units of words meaning arise out of the combination of the smaller ones. Analysis and describing of 16 }

the hand written documents provides information that can be used for different purposes and provides links to different areas of study and researches in the past. Process of hand written documents is not just something to recognise the documents and use their information, but it can be also helpful for children to learn to write. There are many new inventions dealing with intelligent electronic notebooks, signature verification and other recognition systems to process written documents. Hand writing is a complex task and involves emotional, rational, linguistic and neuromuscular functions. When implementing any “pen-based” system, these factors should be considered. For this, the control of the movement of pen and perceiving the line images are important. Even in the computer age, still paper has its interesting scheme and “paper is the most popular medium for sketching, note taking and form filing, because it offers a unique combination of features: light, cheap, reliable, available almost everywhere any time, easy to use, flexible, foldable, pleasing to the eye and to the touch, silent” . “On-line hand writing recognition” is the notion of

www.egovonline.net

recognising hand written documents recorded with digitising equipment. Of course, this recognition faces difficulties as: Restrictions on the number of writers. Constraints on the writer: entering characters in boxes or in combs, lifting the pen between characters, observing a certain stroke order, entering strokes with a specific shape. Constraints on the language: limiting the number of symbols to be recognised, limiting the size of the vocabulary, limiting the syntax and/or the semantics. “On-line hand writing recognition” researches were academic until beginning of the nineties, but the situation has changed and in recent years the rapid growth on pen computing industry is happening. Many companies are trying their best to produce new equipment to read and write different words. Converting “pen trajectory data” to pixel images is a need to analyse documents and process them by optical character recognition (OCR) recognisers. Hand written recognition needs number of distinguished features. In order to get best results the following should be considered: “Preprocessing operations such as smoothing, de-slanting and de-skewing and de-hooking and feature extraction operations such as the detection of line orientations, corners, loops and cusps are easier and faster with the pen trajectory data than on pixel images. Discrimination between optically ambiguous characters (for example, ``j’’ and ``;’’) may be facilitated with the pen trajectory information. Segmentation operations are facilitated by using the penlift information, particularly for hand printed characters.

Immediate feed-back is given by the writer whose corrections can be used to further train the recogniser”. Many years ago it was a dream, but today it has become reality to recognise cursive hand writing. Of course, the recognisers are not improved and still need to be completed. Researchers and developers are trying to improve the pen computers. The industry is currently focusing on two kinds of products as: “Data acquisition devices for form filling applications requiring only a limited alphabet and allowing very constrained grammars or language models. Users such as commercial agents would be willing to print characters in boxes or combs. Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) combining agenda, address book and telecommunications facilities (phone, fax and mail). Users would want to use natural unconstrained hand writing, cursive or hand printed. “ Document analysis is mostly document image analysis that interprets the content of documents. Document analysis is the area of concerning the recognition of written language in the image form. Interpreting old documents to reach to their content and organisation to receive knowledge inside them, is one of the considerations of our time. Ahmad Khodaverdi Darian (darian_50@yahoo.com) is Ph.D., Project Engineering Management, Bircham International University, USA. His thesis titled ‘Land Information System’ received the Excellent Grade by the evaluation team of Bircham International University. Darian has written various articles and reports on e-Government, land information system, management information system and has researched on Chomsky’s work about linguistics.

Localisation World Conference Localisation World is a conference and networking organisation dedicated to the language and localisation industries. It aims at providing a network for the exchange of high-value information in the language and translation services and technologies market. Localisation World held its ninth conference at the Berliner Congress Center, Berlin Germany, 19-21 June 2007 The theme of the conference was Local Language First!. The conference saw the participants from corporate, developers, and practitioners across the world. The conference covered a wide range of issues in the world of translation and localisation. Three concurrent tracks with information and discussions were held about linguistic assets, with case studies from a wide range of applications. The conference sessions were geared towards professionals seeking to learn about new tools, methods and business practices in the areas of localisation and internationalisation. Networking and mutual problem discussion opportunities were abound at the social gatherings, meals and break periods. Exhibitors had provided information about their products and services to all levels of attendees.

July 2007

COVER FEATURE

Local Language Computing Enabling Governments to Speak to Citizens

www.microsoft.com

“Local language computing is absolutely essential in enabling governments to communicate with citizens. Of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, 32 percent of them are from Asia. Yet, many of the word processing amenities (e.g. grammar and style checkers), do not exist for native Asian languages” enlightens Michel Gambier (michel.gambier@microsoft.com), General Manager - Information Worker Business Group, Microsoft APAC, in an interview with egov magazine. Microsoft has been the frontrunner in the localisation revolution. Please tell us about the objectives behind Microsoft’s local language programme for the governments? Microsoft’s Local Language Programme (LLP) is designed with close government collaboration in mind, and help realise societal and economic benefits of the growing IT industry by enabling computer usage in local languages. The LLP also addresses several critical goals of national and regional governments worldwide. These include developing a robust local IT economy; building universal IT solutions for multi-language cultures; and enabling the use of regional languages in technology to facilitate the preservation of language and culture. This means that regardless of the native language citizens may speak, there is a version of Microsoft Office available so they can work the way they want and need to. 18 }

How important is local language computing for governments in order to communicate with citizens, especially at the grassroots level? Local language computing is absolutely essential in enabling governments to communicate with citizens. Of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, 32 percent of them are from Asia. Yet, many of the word processing amenities (e.g. grammar and style checkers) which we enjoy in English and European languages do not exist for native Asian languages. With local language support built into the 2007 Microsoft Office system, governments will be able to accelerate IT literacy among the native language-speaking community. They will also be able to reach out to both urban and rural citizens, and empower them to become comfortable and productive in using technology. www.egovonline.net

Microsoft has included 14 Indian languages in its newest version of Office 2007 under its Project Bhasha. How has been the response? The response has been overwhelmingly positive. By successfully introducing 14 Indic languages into the 2007 Microsoft Office system, we are furthering our commitment to enable people to work and communicate in their native language through software. We also introduced the Bhasha online community portal, BhashaIndia (www.bhashaindia. com), which has become a one stop center for all resources related to Indian language computing. The portal has over 15,000 registered users and continues to grow by the day. Apart from articles, news, snippets of interesting information and resources like applications related to Indic computing, BhashaIndia’s panel of experts also answer related queries that users post on the forum. What has been the other key deliverables of Project Bhasha? What is the current status of the project? Under Project Bhasha, Microsoft has developed local language interface packs (LIPs) for Microsoft Windows Vista and 2007 Office system in 14 Indian languages and built a vibrant local language community. Microsoft will also be launching Language Interface Packs (LIPs) for 2007 Microsoft Office in 13 Indian languages including Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Punjabi, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Nepali, Konkani, Telugu, Urdu, Assamese and Oriya before the end of 2007. In addition, Microsoft has signed Memorandums of Understanding for Project Bhasha with the Orissa, Punjab and West Bengal governments. We are also working closely with several state governments on the localisation of e-Governance applications in the relevant local language. Microsoft is also doing other such projects for localisation in APAC region in collaboration with governments there. Please tell us about some of these projects? There is tremendous empowerment in working in your own language–especially as the information revolution has made sweeping changes in the way governments communicate with and serve their citizens. The opportunities are endless. With the LLP and a localised interface for its citizens, governments can pursue a digital access strategy where previously it did not make sense. This opens new opportunities to increase online document access, form submission, and other means of making government more efficient and responsive. In 2004, for example, the Malaysian government was moving rapidly toward e-Government programs, and their business community was introducing e-Banking and other commercial products. With the introduction of the Bahasa Melayu LIP, local companies are able to provide technology solutions, particularly for small businesses and cottage industries, in the national language. Local IT companies have also benefited from developing more products or services that are Bahasa Melayu-enabled, such as handwriting recognition software and even speech recognition programmes. Could you tell us about the technology solutions being ov

July 2007

adopted for local language computing? What are your plans to make these solutions and software packages easily accessible? An LLP is a downloadable application that enables users to install their local language as a “skin” on top of an existing installation of Office Standard Edition 2007 and/or Windows Vista. These include: • A desktop localisation solution for both Windows Vista and Office Standard Edition 2007 (Word/Excel/ PowerPoint/Outlook). • A single language translation that local governments/ experts agree best serves their citizens’ needs. • Local solutions such as spelling checkers, translation dictionaries, and screen savers may be developed. What are the challenges you face in this field? How do you overcome them? Microsoft Office is the default standard for business communication, and building a new product that will serve billions of people around the world is a big responsbility. That was why we set out to make Windows Vista and 2007 Office system the most tested products in Microsoft’s history, with over one billion user sessions and over five million beta downloads. We have also worked very closely with academia and government agencies from Asia Pacific and around the world, to understand the needs of each country. We continue to take a long term view that through technology, we can break the digital divide, and can empower more people to use the computer. Apart from introducing new languages into 2007 Office system, we also realised that supporting readability on the screen is essential when localising any language for the computer screen. That was why Microsoft decided to invest heavily in the research necessary to develop new fonts catered for different languages. For example, there are only 52 characters in the English language. However, agglutinative languages like Japanese have a very complex morphological system. Therefore, it is important to ensure that people can communicate as effectively on a mobile phone screen as they can on a computer screen. That was why our Advanced Reading Technology Group in Redmond undertook a large project in 2002 to figure out how to make complex East Asian fonts more readable on computer screens. Due to the large scope of the project, Bill Gates had to personally sign-off on the research and the development of a Japanese font for screen readability called Meiryo. Meiryo recently shipped with Windows Vista and won a prestigious type design award in Tokyo from the Tokyo Type Director’s Club. What are some of your future plans for local language programmes? Microsoft’s LLP provides great opportunities to people of all cultures, regions, locations and languages by facilitating access and promoting communication and interaction. Through our efforts with this programme, we look forward to making computers more relevant to common people and creating opportunities for education, public and private services and addressing the digital divide. 19

COVER FEATURE

Social Computing for the Masses Avik Banerjee

he art of communication has transcended boundaries and time with the advent of human enabled technologies, like the computer and internet, cellular devices, internet telephony, advanced voice messaging systems and the likes of them. These have, in turn, spawned a need to re-look at the entire gamut of communication process. They have heralded the era of CMCs (computer mediated communication). When we try to examine the scope of CMCs, we inadvertently think of the way computer technology has come to become an integral part of our lives. However, computer cannot be the preserve of some esoteric communities who dabble in the best known resources available at their disposal. The usage of such technology is not welcome as an empowerment drive or tool of progress. The purpose of computing should be aimed at bridging the digital and economic and associated social divides that can be best done by embracing a technology that can reach out to not a few in the land, but one and all. Therein would lie the real measure of success of technology. One practical approach in understanding this greater cause of social computing is to address the needs of technology for the masses of this sub-continent. In a nation, where, even lesser than a mere 10% of the total living population can speak, read or write English, it becomes necessary to think about aligning the CMCs to address the needs of the polity. Thus, the need of “localisation” is best felt. The need for localisation is needed because of many reasons. Firstly, it breaks the mythical digital divide. Secondly, it encourages more and more people to take score of the multitude of benefits computer technology is intended for. Thirdly, it reinforces amongst today’s youth to appreciate their native tongues. Fourthly, it will definitely lead to preservation and further propagation of the indigenous Indian languages as the technology shall ‘speak’ those languages. This will help, if not completely, but even partially, to hold sway over our culture and civilization. Lastly, it will help research and development and business to grow in parallel language technologies, which will certainly be not English-centric. With such being the foreseen benefits of localisation and advent of language technology and allied research to usher in the new dimension to computer usage, where lies the hitch? There seems to be no visible glitches in language localisation efforts. However, there are issues when the real work is initiated. That is because of quite a few reasons. Firstly, there seems to be a major hurdle with regards to availability of linguistic resources, like dictionaries, linguistic 20 }

rule sets, statistical data, lexical resources, converter plug-ins, morphological analysers, morphological generators, suitable GUI design standards etc. Secondly, there are immense tasks involved in accumulating all linguistic data, rules of grammar, align them with the source language structure. Thirdly, there is scarcity of suitable research and development facilities for carrying out commendable machine translation and language processing based research. This has not, however, daunted researchers, linguists, academicians and statisticians from going ahead with their work on localisation and language technology. There has also been tremendous support from the government-funded organisations and even the ministries at both the central and state levels who have come forward as stakeholders to realise this new found dream and passion. Few examples of how localisation and ICT are affecting people’s lives can be gauged from the various initiatives in this regard – Mahiti Shakti, or the power of information, has transformed the lives of the rural polulace, who now dabble from livestock market research to agri-market trends, also including bills (electricity, water, land records) and land registration and court documents, which are all available just at the click of a mouse. The example of Bhoomi in Karnataka or e-Seva in Andhra Pradesh or similar localisation technology driven e-Gov initiatives in other states of India like West Bengal, Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Punjab and Tamil Nadu have really brought out the desire to make computer the true common man’s friend. In the research and academic front, there is tremendous efforts being put in from the work being carried out at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Information Technologies (IIITs), and the other major institutes of learning. There are many machine translation systems and dialogue systems being developed and they are smoothly in the process of translating your written or oral text onto the target Indian language. The road ahead is not bumpy, it is not silky either. But the efforts have been made and there is hope all is well in the noble efforts towards better percolation of computers into our lives. Avik Banerjee (avikbanerjee@gmail.com), Document Expert, Global Marketing and Sales team, Novartis Heathcare Pvt. Ltd., hold a Masters degree in Computational Linguistics from the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad, and Bachelors degree in Information Science Engineering. Avik has written eight volumes in basic computer science for use in schools across India.

www.egovonline.net

CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards 2006-07 www.csinihilent-egovernanceawards.org

The Computer Society of India with support from Nihilent has instituted a series of awards for recognizing the contributions made in the field of e-Governance in the country. The basic objective of these awards has been to recognize and appreciate the successful efforts by the States and/or Organizations in achieving good governance using ICT. This year the awards are being instituted in the following categories:

Best e-Governed State (Open to all State Governments including Union Territories) Some outstanding efforts demonstrated in excellence in e-Governance by individual state Government departments may also be considered for special e-Governance award this year

Best Project Award(s) G2G/G2E

G2C (Urban)

G2C (Rural)

G2B

Excellence in the following criteria will be considered for giving awards: • • • • •

Process Re-engineering & legal reforms Service delivery (delivery channel and content) Citizen Centricity (Need assessment and impact) Change Management Open to all Central/State Government/UT, Departments & Semi-Government Corporations, State Electricity Boards, NGOs, Municipal Corporations Autonomous bodies and Public Sector undertakings except Banks and Financial institutions.

Eligibility Projects should fall in one of the specified Award categories. Only those projects which have been implemented in India will be eligible. At least 75% of the services (out of total no. of services) delivered by the project should be Government services. e-Governance Awards for year 2006-07 will be for the major initiatives taken during period 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2007. Special incremental efforts to existing projects will also be considered. As on 31st March 2007, project should have been in operation for at least one year from date of official launch of services delivered by the project.

Important Dates Availability of participation froms Submission of the forms Short-listing of entries in all categories Field visit to short listed applicants

May 31, 2007 August 1, 2007 September 30, 2007 October 8 to Nov 16, 2007

Awards distribution ceremony will be held during Annual Convention of Computer Society of India at Bangalore from December 19-22, 2007.

How to apply? • • •

Visit www.csinihilent-egovernanceawards.org for more details Award for State/Departments: Form A, Award for Projects: Form B. In case of Project category, only online form (Form-B) submission will be accepted. However, for State/Department category form (Form-A) submission can be essentially by email and hard copy by courier/post.

Convenor Dr R K Bagga, e-Gov Awards 2006-07 Adviser, IIIT-H rbagga@iiit.ac.in

Past-Convenor Dr Ashok AgarwalConvenor CSI-SIG e-Gov Director, ACS Technologies agarwal.ashok.k@gmail.com

Address for all correspondence/email regarding CSI-Nihilent Award 2006-07 Computer Society of India Special Interest Group on e-Governance 302, Archana Arcade, 10-3-190 St. Johns Road, Secunderabad, AP - 500 025 Tel: 040-2782 1998 Email: csiegovawards@gmail.com and copy to mgr-cms@csi-india.org

localisation initiatives

Pan Asia Localisation Project The International Development Research Programme (IDRC), Canada, through its Pan Asia Networking (PAN) Programme and National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Pakistan, through its Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP) has initiated a three-year partnership in South and South-East Asia to build capacity in regional institutions for local language computing under the banner of PAN Localisation. The PAN Localisation project has three broad objectives: to develop sustainable human resource capacity in the Asian region for research and development in local language technology, to raise current levels of technological support for Asian languages, and to advance policy for local language content creation and access across Asia for development. The countries (and languages) included in the Project are Afghanistan (Pashto, Dari), Bangladesh (Bangla), Bhutan (Dzongkha), Cambodia (Khmer), Laos (Lao), Nepal (Nepali) and Sri Lanka (Sinhala, Tamil). The project aims at the development of character set, collation and other language standards, fonts, lexica, spell checkers, grammar checkers, search and replace utilities, speech recognition systems, text-to-speech synthesis, machine translation. The project will assess both Linux and Microsoft platforms for these specific application developments. Different aspects of localisation technology will be addressed, including linguistic standardisation, computing applications, development platforms, content publishing and access, and effective marketing and dissemination and intellectual property right strategies of the output products. The Project will also build an Asian network of researchers to share learning and knowledge and will publish research outputs including a comprehensive review at the end of the project, documenting effective processes, results and recommendations. In order to discuss and formalise the team structure of PAN localisation project in its Phase II, a meeting of the existing and prospective project partners was held at Thimphu, Bhutan in conjunction with Regional Consultation on Local Language Computing Policy in Developing Asia from January 24th - 27th, 2007. The meeting was aimed to introduce and specify the expectations of the country project teams, the regional teams and IDRC. In 2005, PAN localisation survey of language computing in Asia was conducted to find out the status of language computing of 20 Asian languages. The survey covered computing standards and language technology, including encoding, fonts, keyboard, locale, collation and advance applications.

Language Technology Activities in the Web Technology Sector Joint Research Centre Commission (JRC) has been using language technology since 1998 to fight the information overflow and to overcome the language barrier with the purpose of supporting the European Commission and member state institutions. The ultimate goal is to give users cross-language access to information â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hiddenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in large amounts of multilingual text, in ideally all official European Union languages and more. Towards this, JRC has developed commercially available and in-house tools combined to build the IDoRA system (Intelligent Document Retrieval and Analysis). Some of the key tools developed are retrieiving documents, analysing documents and extracting information from them, and visualising the contents of documents and document collections. Some of the projects in which JRC is working are Modus Operandi, OSILIA, IDoRA for OLAF, Cross-lingual Keyword Assignment, etc. JRC has published many reports in the field of language technology.

22 }

www.egovonline.net

3rd Annual ICT4D Conference and Exhibition

India's Premier ICT4D event 31 July - 03 August 2007 Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi, India

7 Tracks 75 thematic sessions 200 companies 1200 delegates

Organiser

knowledge for change

Co-organisers

Knowledge Partner

Gold Sponsor

UN DP

Department of Information Technology Government of India

Track Sponsors Learning Partner eGovernance Solution Partner

Lanyard Sponsor

Dinner Sponsor

Gold Sponsors

Silver Sponsor

Media Partners

Registration Counter Sponsor

L CATION Exhibitors a CL

www.eINDIA.net.in

Associate Sponsor

Foreword R Chandrasekhar Additional Secretary, e-Governance, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India

Subhas Khuntia Joint Secretary Minisry of HRD Government of India

In most cases abroad, the successful solutions in eGovernance and other sectors have been fueled by solutions created by Indian experts. However, such solutions are never found in India. One needs to understand why such absorption and evaluation is not happening in India. Several eGovernance conferences are happening in India. But in most cases, these are dominated by IT experts and there is genuine dearth of domain expertise. The eINDIA2007 conference is extremely well chosen in terms of domains. I look forward to effective knowledge and expertise sharing among the participants and all stakeholders.

The twenty-first century is a century of knowledge economy. ICT skills will contribute significantly to creation, dissemination, and application of knowledge in all spheres of life. To put in place a system which should enable this, there is a need for successful collaboration among Central Government, State Governments, academic institutions, industry, and civil society. In this context, the eINDIA2007 conference focusing on several key themes will be a valuable source of input to the Government and other stakeholders.

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Mapping ICT4D Knowledge

eINDIA2007- The location The venue of eINDIA2007, Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhiis a perfect embodiment of all qualities synonymous with the quality of Taj Hotels, Resorts & Palaces. Standing apart in service, its facilities, and of course, in its distinguished patronage, this hotel has played host to Heads of State, corporate moguls and high profile businessmen from across the world. Nestled in six acres of lush greens in the exclusive Diplomatic Enclave of the city, the hotel Taj Palace is one of the best business hotels in Delhi. It is also recognized as the Convention Centre of the city and boasts of 13 halls including a special preview hall for private screenings to large halls, to accommodate seminars for 700 delegates and even a grand reception for 1000 guests. The environment is perfect for workshops, networking and recreation.

Listen to key decision-makers' needs eINDIA2007 gives you access to government IT decision-makers with the need, the authority, and the budget to buy your products and services. Focused sessions for sponsors to position their solutions Sponsors could benefit from the key sessions, panel discussions and workshops, by participating in the discussions and presenting their solutions to the quality audience from around Asia-Pacific and beyond.

eINDIA2007 Website

Taj Palace Hotel Sardar Patel Marg, Diplomatic Enclave New Delhi, India -110 021, Tel: (+91-11) 2611 0202 Fax: (+91-11) 2611 0808, 2688 4848, Email: palace.delhi@tajhotels.com, Web: www.tajhotels.com

Top Reasons to Exhibit at eINDIA2007 Targeted audience eINDIA2007 brings the right mix of quality delegates unparalleled at any other INDIAN forum. Unlike many other general IT fairs, it addresses the need to bring region's top public sector buyers at one place thus saving time and resources of focused suppliers.

Visit the eINDIA2007 website (www. eINDIA.net.in), which will provide you all the latest information and updates, as well as all the necessary forms, making it easy for you to register online. www.eINDIA.net.in Constantly updated, the website keeps you abreast of all the latest developments as eINDIA2007 takes shape!

Registration fees Indian Delegates Pre Registration INR 5000

On Spot INR 7500

Foreign Delegates Pre Registration USD 200

On Spot USD 300

Valuable opportunity for face-to-face meetings eINDIA2007 maximises the face-to-face time exhibitors spend with key customers and prospects through informal meetings, structured appointments and many networking lunch and dinner receptions.

Fee Entitlements

Organisers

eINDIA2007 is organised by Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), who have more than 10 years of experience in organizing niche events on ICTs for Development across continents along with several government partners.

Sushma Nautiyal (Tel: +91-9873757536)

The Delegate Registration entitles the individual to participate in all technical sessions, workshops, keynotes and plenary sessions, and social functions for all seven: egov India 2007, Digital Learning India 2007, Indian Telecentre Forum 2007, eHealth India 2007, mServe India 2007, e-Agriculture India 2007, and Community Radio India 2007 conferences.

eINDIA2007 Conference Secretariat: G-4 Sector 39, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, 201 301, India Ph.: +91 120 2502180 to 85 Fax: +91 120 2500060 Email: registration@eINDIA.net.in

Key Speakers at eINDIA2007 Ashis Sanyal

Aruna Sundararajan CEO, IL&FS

Amar Kumar Joint Secretary Department of IT, Government of Uttar Pradesh

Astrid Dufborg Executive Director GeSCI

Deepinder Singh Bedi

Senior Director, Department of IT, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India

Amit Goel Advisor, Ministry of Panchayat Raj, Government of India

Arvind Kumar Director (BP&L), Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India

Ajay Madan CEO Essar Telecom Ltd.

Aakash Sethi

Basheerhamad Shadrach

Executive Director, QUEST Alliance, International Youth Foundation

Sr. Programme Officer telecentre.org/IDRC, India

G Narendra Kumar

G P Sinha

Director, Tulip IT Services Ltd.

Deputy General Manager, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL)

Joselyne Josiah

K. K. Gupta

Advisor, Communication and Information for Asia, UNESCO

General Manager, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD)

Secretary, Department of Training & Technical Education and Higher Education, Government of NCT of Delhi

Capt K J S Brar CEO Designmate India Pvt. Ltd.

M Moni Michael Clarke Director, ICT4D IDRC, Canada

Deputy Director General , National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Communication & Information Technology, Government of India

M. Rajamani Joint Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India

Maxine Olson United Nations Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in India

Nancy L. Knowlton President and Co-CEO Smart Technologies Inc.

Dr. P. L. Gautam Vice Chancellor G B Pant University of Agriculture and Technology

Manish Gupta

Dr M C Pant

Vice President Aperto Networks

Chairman, National Open School

Pravin Srivastava

O Nabakishore Singh

Director Ministry of Health & Family Welfare Government of India

Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, Government of India

Dr. Ravinder Singh Director, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India

Richard Alvarez CEO and President Canada Health Infoway

R Chandrashekhar Additional Secretary, e-Governance, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India

Shantanu Prakash

Ranjan Dwivedi National Professinal Officer (eHealth) WHO

CEO Educomp Solutions Ltd.

Shashank Ojha

Sajan Venniyoor

Subhash Khuntia Joint Secretary, Ministry of HRD Government of India

Shankar Nath Goswami Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Media Lab Asia

Vishal Gandhi Vice-President Life Sciences & Technology, YES Bank

Solutions Exchange, UNDP

World Bank

S Abbassi

Trevor Hodge

Department of IT, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India

Vaibhav Magow Director, Marketing HughesNet Fusion Hughes Communications India Ltd.

Sr. VP Investment Strategy and Alliances Canada Health Infoway

Where are you?

www.eINDIA.net.in/register

COVER FEATURE

Empowering Farmers to Obtain Records of their Lands Bhoomi Land Record Computerisation Programme

www.bhoomi.kar.nic.in

The computerisation of land records has led to transparency of the land record and makes the records tamper proof, leads to easy maintenance and fast updation of the land recordâ&#x20AC;?. Read more on successful Bhoomi Programme in this interview with Rajeev Chawla, (secyegov-dpar@karnataka. gov.in) Secretary, e-Governance, Government of Karnataka.

Being the pioneer in digitising paper land records in India, please tell us about the importance of automating land records by governments? The land record is an important document for the farmer and it is required for many reasons. Some of the objectives for a farmer requiring his land record are a) Obtaining a loan from the bank b) Serves as a proof for getting many benefits from the government c) Submission during court cases d) Requirement for seeking compensation or crop insurance during crop failures In the earlier manual system, the land records were maintained by a cadre of 10,000 village accountants and while, officially the price of the land record was a token fee of INR 1, the village accountant would issue a copy of a land record only for a consideration. While the task of obtaining a land record was difficult, the process for effecting a change in the land record (mutation) was even more difficult and the officials would follow a completely discretionary process for ov

July 2007

effecting mutation. The computerisation of land records under the Bhoomi programme has enabled the farmer to approach the computer kiosk set up in the Taluka (local adminstrative unit) and obtain a copy of his land record without any fear or favour. Additionally in case a farmer wants he can place a request for mutation that will be handled through a due process. Computerisation of land records has also led to transparency of the land record and makes the records tamper proof, leads to easy maintenance and fast updation of the land record. Computerisation has also led to laying down standard processes like First in First out (FIFO) for disposal of mutation applications and reduced discretion in functioning of officials. Computerisation of land records has been extremely empowering for the farmer as now he can rightfully make a claim to obtaining a record of the land under his ownership. In Karnataka, the manual systems have been completely abolished and land records are issued through the computerised system. 27

cover feature

empowering farmers to obtain records of their lands

Please elaborate on the Bhoomi software, in terms of userfriendliness, since most of the users are not computer literates. What are the steps you have taken to address the language localisation issue? Many user friendly measures have been taken both during designing and later implementing the software that makes the software user friendly. A few of these steps are a) Extensive inputs were taken from the entire hierarchy of revenue officials in designing the software. The project champion was personally present in the training sessions held for officials in use of software and hence the feedback of the users was incorporated in development of the software. Due to these inputs, the software follows the same process as the previous manual system and hence the officials do not face any changes in working on the computerised environment. b) The user interface is in the local language c) For the senior officials, there is minimum requirement for data entry and most user input is through check boxes or radio buttons. d) Further most of the data entry is done by the lower level officials and these officials have been given extensive training on use of the computerised system. Do you think, language localisation would play a key role in the success of e-Governance projects? Language localisation is extremely important for the success of e-Governance projects. e-Governance projects can be classified into two types a) those in the area of citizen facing initiatives like Bhoomi or b) those that improve the internal functioning of the government like a file monitoring system. For both these kinds of initiatives to succeed, government employees need to work on the system and not leave the work to external data entry operators. While most government employees have knowledge of English, they are more comfortable working on the local language and hence the user interface of all software needs to be in the local language. In both the Bhoomi program and its successor programme Nemmadi (an e-Governance initiative for delivery of various kinds of services to the rural citizens), the software interface and MIS reports are in the local language, enabling government employees at all levels, be it the case workers, the office manager or the head of the taluka office, the Tahsildar to comfortably work on the system. What is the status of Bhoomi today? The Bhoomi program was completed in March 2002. This included computerisation of all rural land records of the state and distribution of these computerised land records from computer centres set up in the taluka offices. However in the past five years a large number of innovations and 28

improvements have been carried out. These are a) Newer and more refined versions of the software have been launched b) The Bhoomi databases at the taluka offices have been consolidated at the state data centre. The replication of databases takes place on a daily basis. Consolidation of database at a single location also enables delivery of land records through the internet. c) The servers in the talukas have been upgraded with more powerful and sophisticated ones.

d) As of May 2007, about 750 telecentres have been established in the villages of Karnataka that are also distributing land records to the farmers. e) The offices of registration department have been electronically linked to Bhoomi offices in the taluka thus transferring electronic data to Bhoomi. In the past five years the number of transactions under Bhoomi have increased manifold and currently about 14 million land records are distributed and 1.6 million mutations are done through the Bhoomi system every year. How have you addressed the security issues? The security issues have been comprehensively addressed in Bhoomi. All the machines of Bhoomi are part of a domain and can be managed from the state data centre. Access to database has been restricted and all users of the applications are authenticated through biometric authentication. Further this biometric authentication is configured centrally through the state data centre. Bhoomi has now been PKI enabled. Pilots are going on in 4 talukas where digital certificates have been issued to the village accountants. What has been your experience of private sector partnership in implementing Bhoomi project? Private sector partners have been extremely important in the implementation of Bhoomi. Initially private data entry agencies www.egovonline.net

were engaged for the data entry of the manual land records. The tasks of handholding the revenue department officials in use of the Bhoomi application and first level maintenance and trouble shooting of the Bhoomi application is done by district consultants, who are engineers hired from the market and placed in each district. The facility management of the entire infrastructure of Bhoomi in the 203 talukas comprising of computers, printers, UPS, VSAT is again done by a private player. One of the complaints against Bhoomi has been that a farmer has to travel to the taluka headquarters for obtaining their land record. In March 2007, 800 village telecentres were established under a public private partnership model that will serve as additional channels for delivery of land records to the citizens. Bhoomi is a great example of a public private partnership where the private sector enables the government to provide a core service to its citizens. What have been the key challenges and key learning of implementing this project on digitising paper land records? The entire scale of the implementation of the Bhoomi programme has been challenging. Among the many challenges faced in Bhoomi were the following: a) Bhoomi has been among the largest e-Governance efforts in the world. It involved digitisation of 20 million land records across the state, with each of these records having 50 fields. These digitised records in turn had to be validated by the 10,000 village accountants who have been traditionally entrusted with custody and maintenance of these records. Both the tasks of digitisation and validation of the digitised data has been a challenge b) The programme of issue of computerised land records was started in 177 talukas of Karnataka in the period of 2001 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2002. Keeping the computerised system up and running and ensuring that there would be no loss of data through hardware / software crashes etc. has been extremely challenging The project team anticipated many of these challenges. The Bhoomi programme was implemented through a consultative process and over the course of the project, numerous meetings were held with all levels of the officials of the revenue department. To handle the technical challenges, the entire process of procurement, deployment and maintenance of the technical infrastructure was undertaken in a comprehensive fashion to reduce any chances of failure due to technology. The programme was also innovative in recruiting a cadre of 35- 40 engineers from the market on a contract basis who would support the government officials of the state in the use of the Bhoomi system. A Bhoomi monitoring cell was set up in Bangalore with officials whose only task was implementation of the Bhoomi project. How do you rate citizen response to Bhoomi project? The response of the citizens has been excellent. Even in the initial days of the project as per a study conducted by the ov

July 2007

World Bank in 2002, the farmers using the system had the following viewpoint a) Ease to use: A majority of users (78 percent) who had past experience with the manual system found the Bhoomi system simpler. Further an overwhelming majority of users obtained their land record on a single visit to the kiosk. b) Complexity of procedures: Most users (79 percent) of the Bhoomi kiosks did so without having to meet any official except the counter staff, in contrast 61 percent of the users of the manual system had to meet two to four officials for their work. c) Error free documents: Users indicated that the Bhoomi kiosks provided error free documents to more users and further these errors were minor in nature and could be easily rectified. d) Reduced corruption: Two thirds of the users of the manual system paid a bribe and needed to do so very often. In contrast, only 3 percent of the users of the Bhoomi system reported paying bribes. e) Staff behaviour: Most Bhoomi users (85 percent) rated staff behaviour at the Bhoomi kiosks as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;goodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;; none of the users of the manual system rated staff behaviour as good. What are some of your plans for Bhoomi programme in the times to come? Bhoomi was launched in March 2002 and in the past five years numerous innovations and improvements have been launched and in the coming few years the process of innovations will only accelerate The Bhoomi project implementation cell had followed a procedure of initially conducting a pilot, incorporating the learnings of the pilot and, thereafter, scaling the initiative. Several initiatives are currently in the pilot stage and will be scaled up throughout the state in the coming few years. Some of these initiatives are: a) All land records and all changes to land records due to mutations will be digitally signed under the IT act 2000. Thus a manual signature will not be required on the land record and an authentic copy of the land record can also be obtained over the internet. b) Prior to mutation (change) of the land record, the land will be surveyed and this will prevent unnecessary disputes in transfers. c) The land records in Karnataka also contains crop details sown in the land, now the crop details will be updated by the village accountants through mobile devices. d) The banks that loan money to farmers on the basis of land record will be able to electronically indicate to the revenue department that the land has been pledged to it. Thereafter, once the farmer has repaid the loan, the bank can electronically release the land. e) For severable public projects, the government notifies land for acquisition. The land acquisition officer will now be able to put down the stage of acquisition in land records. This will ensure that land under the process of acquisition cannot be fraudulently transacted. 29

CO V E R FEATU R E

Re-engineering Land Records Computerisation Government of Madhya Pradesh

www.mpgovt.nic.in

The system of land records in Madhya Pradesh is governed by the Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code 1959, the Revenue Book of Circulars, and the Land Records manual Vol. 1 to 4 (2). The availability of IT as a tool for modernisation of land records started in 1988. The Ministry of Rural Development sanctioned a scheme for computerisation of land records (CoLR) in 1988 in many states of India, with the assistance of the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The easy access of internet has also made it more relevant to have good and robust software for land records. Ajit Kesari & Ajay Kumar Status of Land Record Computerisation in India

Almost all states have started land record computerisation in India. The States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Goa and Gujarat are fully operational and have banned the manual distribution of records of rights. The states of Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim, Andhra Pradesh, Pondichery and NCT are already in an advanced stage of computerisation of land records. Various kinds of land records software operational in different states include Bhoomi (Karnataka), Tamil Nilam (Tamil Nadu), e-Dharni (Goa), Bhuyan (Chhatisgarh), Apna Khata (Rajasthan), e-Dhara (Gujarat), Bhumi (West Bengal), Himbhoomi (Himachal Pradesh) etc.The experiences in various states have been studied by various authors. Some of them are available in the book, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Computerisation of Land Recordsâ&#x20AC;?, edited by Wajahat Habibullah and Manoj Ahuja.The scheme of Comprehensive Modernisation of Land Records has been launched by the Government of India from the year 2007-08 in the 11th plan as 100% assistance to the states showing the importance been given to computerisation of land records. Current Status in Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh has 48 Districts and 272 Tehsils. The number of Khasras records (traditional Indian rural land records, which originally developed in the medieval period) computerised at present is 57.31 million for 11 million owners in 55897 villages. The project of land record computerisation started in the year 1988 when Morena District was selected for the pilot project of Government of India (GoI). The process of computerisation went on in phases in a DOS based environment. The GoI funded the data entry to 2002. The Government of Madhya Pradesh (GoMP) then involved NIC from the year 2002. NIC came up with the version 1.0 of the Bhuabhilekh software in 2003. The present version is version 3.0 launched in October 30 }

2006. This version is being implemented in all the Tehsils of Madhya Pradesh. NIC has also developed software for the District Data Centre in October 2006. Bhuabhilekh comprises a computerised master database of land records that stores plot-wise and owner-wise details on land, crops, revenue, irrigation, demand, collection, land type, tenancy, and so on. This data can be retrieved, changed and updated. The system also allows periodic reports to be generated and issued to landowners including the two important documents Khasras -the record of rights (ROR) - and Khatauni (Khatauni is the register of all persons cultivating or otherwise occupying land in a villa. The version 3.0 also provides for all types of mutation (Mutation indicates the changes that have to be brought about in ownership and title of the land. Mutations are done on the basis of sale deed, inheritance, gift deed, relinquish deed, will, etc.). Version 3.0 is able to generate various kinds of notices in the prescribed formats. It can scan supporting documents for storage, retrieval and printing. It restricts backdated data entry and manipulation and leads to automated updating of revenue records. It can also be used for generation and issue of periodic reports including computerised copies of ROR (P-II), Khatauni (B-1) etc. to the landowners on pre-printed, plain and A4 size stationery. The land records system of MP has in the year 2005-06 provided 1.06 million copies and has generated revenue of INR14.67 million. Vision for the Future - Re-engineering Land Records Computerisation

The experiences of computerisation have all focused on the conversion of the manual data into an electronic format and providing copies out of the database. In some states the land record computerisation program has also attended to the mutation process. The database available in the system is actually not being used to do a lot of other activities www.egovonline.net

involved with the revenue department. In the re-engineered computerisation the following objectives are to be fulfilled. • To maintain accurate land records • To forecast crops accurately • To manage land revenue • To process permissions quickly and accurately • Issue of notices automatically from the database • To reduce drudgery and desk work of field staff in favour of more time in the field • To provide information to public easily • To generate accurate statistics quickly • Generate alerts based on deviations in land use • To generate management reports for the Tehsildar (revenue officer), Collector, Commissioner • To provide data to allied agencies (Banks, Agro-Processing Companies ) The above concept has been used to develop a model for future computerisation of land records in MP. This effort has delivered this model along with a Unified Modeling Language (UML) document for usage by the department. The New System

The proposed system will be a relational database management system (RDBMS) on client server platform. The database will be maintained at the I level. Once the baseline data has been entered the data entry will be done at a weekly frequency at the tehsil level by operators or Patwaris according to a schedule. (A tehsil consists of a city or town that serves as its headquarters, possibly additional towns, and a number of villages. It is the ultimate executive agency for land records and related administrative matters). The data entry with proposed system will be of two kinds, one which upgrades routinely and another for the changes in ownership, which will be on demand basis. The features of data security e.g. audit log for changes, will be provided. The applications for the proposed system will be accepted on the system. The reports will be generated automatically on a fixed time schedule with missing entries being flagged. The system will have ten functionality modules: baseline data entry; changes in records; revenue collection; crop forecasting and estimation; compensation for natural disasters; management reports; reports as per manuals; alerts; queries and external usage of data The above modules have been modeled in Rational Rose Module using UML. Baseline Data Entry

The baseline data of old records will be entered in the system in this module, so that system is operational for further processes. In the new system all the records will be in database format. In the present system many entries in the remarks and other columns are in free text format e.g. irrigation, lease, mortgage, trees, mutations in the year when done. We have also proposed that the recording of addresses be done in the modern way instead of only recording the village ov

July 2007

name. This will help to communicate with parties through phone, mobile or email. Changes in Records

Routine changes in records: The data in the land records regarding the crops sown and the status on the land (tree, well, diversion) is to be updated twice a year. A computerised data entry format for this voluminous data has been designed with validation at the entry time. This will save time and costs to produce accurate data at all times. The collection of land revenue from land owners is also to be entered on a regular basis. Major changes in records: Based on requests for ownership changes, the records will be modified after due processing. Additionally the records also need to be changed on executive orders or judgments of the civil courts. Revenue collection: Revenue demand will be generated and payments received will be entered for individual farmers. Long pending outstandings can be monitored in this module. Crop Forecasting and Estimation: Crop production estimation and forecasting is a very important requirement which is handled in following two ways: 1. Eye estimation on the basis of status of various crops in a village. The reports of individual villages is converted into tehsil level expected production of a crop using the area sown. 2. “Annawari” process which includes identification of plots for sample crop cutting ( which can be automated based on sampling techniques), crop cutting and weight data entry, calculation of crop wise Annawari (percentage production compared to standard) at what ever level. The software will calculate all these figures which are mathematical based. Compensation for Natural Disasters: The state distributes 31

cover feature

Re-engineering land records computerisation

relief when ever the crops are damaged by natural calamities. The damage is identified field wise and then calculations are done by the Patwari for each land owner. This calculation will be done by the system once the patwari enters the field wise damage percentage. This will save time and will bring transparency. Management Reports: The management part covers the requirement of the various levels of officers involved in supervising the land records. This would include an executive-dashboard for each level i.e., commissioner Land Records (CLR), Divisional Commissioners, Deputy CLR, Collectors, Superintendent LR, Sub Divisional Officers, Tehsildar, Revenue Inspector and Patwaris. The requirements of reports would defer from level to level and this will cater to their individual needs. This will help in monitoring of the various processes at all levels efficiently. Reports as per Manuals: The four volumes of land records manual and other GoMP circulars have prescribed a set of reports to be produced at various levels at different intervals and at prescribed dates during the year. We have proposed to automatically generate these reports for usage at different levels at the prescribed dates. Crop data is to be generated on fixed annual timelines. The collection of land revenue can be monitored effectively, officer wise. Reports will also be available for the various activities performed at different levels during monthly, quarterly and annual basis. We have estimated that about 60 days of manual work can be saved for field staff if this work is done through computers. Besides the scope of errors, specially carry over errors will be reduced as in generating â&#x20AC;&#x153;Khasra Panchsalaâ&#x20AC;? (Khasra record for next five years based on earlier registers). Alerts: Many alerts are to be generated for the management, field staff or land owners. Some of them are to owners about applications for their records, to government about diversion of government land, inordinate delays in processing, delays in filing reports or entering data, non payment of dues etc. Queries: The system will be having facility for multiple queries on the fields available. The most common will be to be able to search for oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s land records and take a copy or search report for a Khasra ( 12 years ) External Usage of Data: The data available in the land record is also very relevant to many other users both within and outside the department. Some of them are to banks for loans, issue of solvency certificates, insurance companies, fertilizer requirements planning, calculation of crop compensation in natural calamities, advance tie up for agricultural produce sale, registration of land sale, and selection of beneficiaries for criterion based on land. The usage of this data can be allowed by external users on a payment basis. Impact Analysis

The above features when implemented will have the following impact: Impact on Department

The system will allow better management by Tehsildar, Collectors and Commissioners as they will get the exact 32

information required at their level accurately and online. They will be able to watch everything as it happens. The accuracy of field data would be higher as the field staff would not be involved in activities that are just compilation and their data entry status can also be monitored easily. The state would be able to forecast crop area and status accurately and very early as the data will be available online. The reports being sent at various levels will be on time as deviations will be easy to identify. The notices in the processes will be easily, accurately and timely issued. The public will also get services on time, thereby giving a better public image to the department. The record rooms would also be better as more and more records will be electronic. Impact on Revenue

The collection of land revenue would improve due to better management and computerisation of information of individual land owners. The collection of diversion income would go up both due to monitoring of collection and identification of new cases on an automatic basis. The functionality in the software would make it more attractive for other external users to get data, thereby generating revenue from sale of data. Impact on Field Staff

The field staff would be one of the major beneficiaries. It has been estimated that the reduction in unnecessary table work in preparing information and compilation of data would free sixty days for the patwari and ninety days for the revenue inspectors. This would give them more time for field activities like diversion, compensation, crop cutting and identification of encroachments. Impact on Citizens

The model will also allow easy access to the public for their records using all modern means. They can also be alerted automatically for any issue regarding their land by a third party service provider using the electronic database and its functionality. The public will also be able to get electronic and hard copies much more easily. If the proposed system is implemented and fully utilised it will provide easy access of information to citizens, timely reports, better monitoring, reduce drudgery of staff, ensure quick and accurate calculations, minimise missing entries, allow backup of data and minimise manipulations. Ajit Kesari (ajitkesari@rediffmail.com), IAS, is Secretary to Government of Madhya Pradesh (M.P.), India. He has worked for 13 yrs in the District Administration at various levels including District Collector and Divisional Commissioner, where he initiated the reengineering process of land records.

Ajay Kumar (ajaykumarindia@gmail.com) is currently I.T Consultant to Department of Agriculture (M.P) on AGRISNET Project (Computerisation of offices and providing farmers online services ) & MP Agriculture Marketing Board ( M.P. ) on EKVI Project (Computerisation of Mandis).

www.egovonline.net

COVER FEATURE

COMPUTERISATION OF LAND RECORDS IN UGANDA A Case Study

www.statehouse.go.ug

The application of e-Government in Uganda is a recent phenomenon. Uganda has in principle adopted a uniform tenure system made up of freehold and leasehold. Since Uganda uses the Torrens system of land registration, the systematically adjudicated and demarcated boundaries were defined by coordinates and GPS equipment was used to generate the coordinates for all the boundary beacons. This created digital databases, which underpin the application of e-Government in the administration and management of land records in Uganda. Dr. Nasani Batungi and Joan Batungi

lthough the application of electronic-government in Uganda is quite recent, the national, political and administrative structures are fairly well established in some government ministries. The e-Government Strategy and Action Plan was drafted in March 2004 by the National ICT Coordination Committee, which was charged with the duty of providing political guidance (Uganda Government 2004). This Committee was assisted by an administrative national ICT SubCommittee, chaired by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Works, Housing and Communications. Other members of this Sub-Committee included prominent people from civil society, industries, financial institutions, telecommunications operators, and prominent educational institutions such as Makerere University. The Sub-Committee provided technical assistance to the National ICT Coordination Committee. Because Uganda is at the first phase of evolution in e-Government, the awareness of ICT and e-Government is still limited. However, the decentralised nature of both the Ugandan polity and administrative structure seem to be playing a significant role in facilitating the implementation of e-Government. This observation became quite evident at a one-day conference on â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Enabling e-Government in Uganda,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; held on 6th April 2005, when the Executive Director of Uganda Investment Authority revealed that the expenditure on local government intercommunication and linkages could be reduced by 10% if e-Government is promoted in all the 56 districts of Uganda. At the moment only 4 districts, namely, Kayunga, Mbarara, Mbale and Lira are already computerised. Despite the seemingly late start of e-Government in Uganda, the government showed great commitment when it created a new Ministry of Information and Communications Technology in 2006. e-Governance, being the computerised administration of government transactions intended to harmonise activities at various administration levels, is expected to effectively reduce costs in running public affairs from the lower levels ov

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of government to the Central Government. And through the use of information and technology, government agencies will be able to deliver better results. While the government has to create the right conditions, it is the agencies that actually deliver government information and services and therefore, deliver on e-Government goals. The anticipated outcomes include convenience and satisfaction, integration and efficiency, and participation of the local communities. The overall effect is that the people have access to government information and services, which are convenient and easy to use; this makes it possible for the government to deliver what is wanted. For example information and services will be integrated, packaged and presented to minimise costs for people, business and providers. And the people will be better informed and better able to participate in government affairs. However, it should be noted that transforming the way the public sector operates may not be achieved overnight. This article focuses on the computerisation of the land records in the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development. In this paper, land is defined as a form of wealth and a commodity. As a commodity capable of being bought and sold, land has two special characteristics which distinguish it from all other commodities known to commerce: land is both immovable and everlasting. These qualities make the ownership of land more complicated than the ownership of other commodities. For example, while the owner of commercial goods can remove or destroy them, the owner of land can neither move it nor, in its legal sense, destroy it; his power is limited to the enjoyment or disposition of rights in or over it. Consequently, rights in land can be in the form of easements which are enjoyed by owner of land over the land of another; as security for a loan or for performance of some obligation without handing over its possession; and land can also be made the subject of future interests or even a series of future interests since it can be willed on death. 33

cover feature

computerisation of land records in uganda

Land Rights

In creating and maintaining records of land rights, it must be kept in mind that interests in and powers over land may also be enjoyed or exercised by persons other than the owner, whose interests and powers are correspondingly diminished or excluded by transfer or leases of say 99 years. Even short term tenancies in the form of renting or possessory rights can affect ownership of the land. This explains why it is considered prudent for a prospective purchaser to inspect the land in order to ascertain any overriding interests that may affect his uninterrupted enjoyment of the land. In majority of cases, the state takes more and more powers to ensure that land, whoever owns it, uses it properly. Even the right to sell, is often withheld or restricted, for public policy demands that land shall not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. This is why the state has always had the power of compulsory acquisition, which is a drastic limitation on private ownership. It therefore follows that the State cannot allow anybody to do exactly what he/she likes with land, in complete disregard of the public interest. The state itself will always assert special authority over land, for this is its basic asset. The Torrens system of land registration which is used in Uganda was adopted in 1908. Under this system the description of land records must include the unambiguous definition of the parcel of land, description of its owner, limitations of the right of ownership, and any right or interest which has been granted or otherwise obtained out of it. The Torrens system ensures that the rights in land are transferred cheaply, quickly, and with certainty. According to economists, freedom and ease of transfer are absolutely vital to promoting the best use of land. However, it is almost impossible to devise a system under which conveyances of land can be conducted with the facility of sales of goods, if registration of title is not made compulsory. This is probably the main reason why the government of Uganda has adopted the systematic adjudication and demarcation approach, which must be compulsorily implemented in the selected area. In other words, once an area has been selected for systematic adjudication and demarcation, all the residents must be issued with land titles. At the end of the whole exercise, the land will be owned and held by the citizens in documentary freehold titles while leasehold titles of up to 99 years could be issued out of freehold already owned by the citizens of Uganda to foreign investors and other land developers. In the year 2000, the government adopted a Land Sector Strategic Plan (2001-2011) to entrench the freehold and leasehold tenure systems and to enhance the utilisation of Ugandaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s land resources for sustainable development. The Land Sector Strategic Plan set up various committees to take charge of different assignments. For example committees were formed to take charge of land information systems, systematic adjudication and demarcation, national land policy, and national land use policy. The systematic adjudication and demarcation committee was instructed to come up with a model that would ensure successful implementation of freehold throughout the country. The systematic adjudication and demarcation pilot projects started in 2002 with four 34

project areas selected in the east, north, central and western provinces of Uganda. At least two pilot projects in Rukarango parish, Ntungamo district in western Uganda and Bulowooza parish, Iganga district in eastern Uganda have so far been successfully carried out. The rest of this article will describe how this was done using the most recent GPS equipment. Systematic Adjudication and Demarcation in Rukarango Parish

The political leadership at the district level is vested in the District Council headed by the District Council Chairman and assisted by elected representatives from sub-counties. Each sub-county elects a representative and a woman representative. The political leadership in the district is decentralised to the grass-root as follows: The topmost level is the District Local Council (LC5), followed by the County Local Council (LC4), sub-county Local Council (LC3), Parish Local Council (LC2), and Village Local Council (LC1). The decentralised administrative structure at the district is headed by the Council Administrative Officer (CAO), assisted by assistant administrative officers in charge of counties; the sub-counties are headed by county chiefs while the parishes are headed by parish chiefs. The CAO is also in charge of technical committees and departments including the District Land Board, Land Tribunals, Sub-county Land Committees and District Survey Office. The systematic demarcation committee held sensitisation workshops with district council executive, sub-county council executive, and parish council executive in Ntungamo district, before sensitising the local residents of Rukarango parish about systematic adjudication and demarcation approach which was intended to introduce freehold tenure at the village level. The sensitisation of the local residents was followed by a household survey to assess the personal feelings and views of the local residents about systematic adjudication and demarcation. Although the sensitisation of the residents of Rukarango parish was done during the rainy season, such that few people attended the sensitisation meetings, at least 53% of the residents who were interviewed accepted the systematic program. Only 29% of the residents in the central and 24% in the north provinces accepted the program. The results of the survey showed that the Systematic Demarcation Team which sensitised the parishes in the central and north provinces of Uganda used Radio and News media to sensitise the residents. Because very few residents listen to radios regularly and the majority do not read newspapers, the message about systematic demarcation and documentary title did not reach the grass-root people. Consequently, the Systematic Demarcation Committee allowed the pilot project to start in Rukarango parish while more sensitisation was recommended for the other two parishes in the north and central provinces of Uganda. The Systematic Demarcation Committee, the District Survey Office, the National Survey Office and an ad hoc Parish Land Committee representing the Sub-county Land Committee were all involved in the systematic adjudication and demarcation exercise. The National Survey Office www.egovonline.net

represented the Private Surveyors because none of the private survey firms had acquired the DataGrid GPS differential system, which was the recommended equipment to survey the systematically demarcated boundaries of parcels in the selected parishes. Equally, the ad hoc Parish Land Committee was appointed because the District Council had not yet appointed the substantive sub-county Land Committees. Three adjudication committees were formed to adjudicate land rights in the 9 villages of Rukarango parish. Each adjudication committee was made up of LC1 chairman, representative of women on LC1 committee, a member of parish land committee, two people to drive pegs at identified corner boundaries of plots and to paint them in a conspicuous colour (red was mostly used), and a member of Systematic Demarcation Committee as supervisor. The national survey team also divided itself into three teams. Each team had an advance party to plant markstones where pegs had been placed and a survey party to take measurements over the markstones using the DataGrid hand held GPS equipment. Each survey team moved closely behind the systematic adjudication team. At the end of the field work, the adjudication and survey data were processed into a cadastral map for the parish. The adjudication, demarcation and survey of approximately 3000 plots were completed within three months. The cadastral map was then taken back to Rukarango parish for the editing exercise which revealed the following errors: â&#x20AC;˘ There were cut and paste errors which were introduced into the cadastral map by the cartographer; â&#x20AC;˘ There were missing plots and markstones which had not been plotted or were plotted in wrong places; and â&#x20AC;˘ Shapes of some plots had been wrongly plotted; At least over 90% of the plots were plotted correctly on the cadastral map. The Rukarango systematic adjudication and demarcation pilot project was successful mainly because numbered markstones were used. Although the land titles have not yet been issued to the citizens, the plans to computerise the land registry are in advanced stages. Systematic Adjudication and Demarcation in Bulowooza Parish

The systematic demarcation committee held sensitisation workshops with district council executive, sub-county council executive, and parish council executive of Iganga district at the beginning of 2006, before sensitising the local residents of the Bulowooza parish about systematic adjudication and demarcation approach. The sensitisation of the local residents was then followed by a household survey to assess the personal feelings and views of the local residents about systematic adjudication and demarcation. Although all the five villages were sensitised, the systematic adjudication and demarcation exercise has only been completed in Bulowooza and Madhigandere villages. This is because land ownership issues in the other three villages have not been fully resolved. A total of 784 parcels of land were demarcated and surveyed in 44 days: 295 parcels in Madhigandere were completed in ov

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21 days while 489 parcels in Bulowooza were completed in 23 days. The reduction in time taken to demarcate and survey land parcels in Bulowooza village, which also translated into reduction in costs for the demarcation exercise, was due to a number of factors. Firstly, the survey teams were now familiar with the topography and therefore the movement of the survey teams was better coordinated. Secondly, the GPS base stations were already established which also led to a reduction in the survey procedures. And thirdly, the local residents were friendlier with both the adjudication and demarcation teams and the survey teams which were identifying and taking measurements of the corner beacons. This is because the local residents tend to drop any suspicions they may have had at the beginning of the project. CONCLUSION

Although e-Government is a new phenomenon in Uganda, there are good prospects that it will succeed in many government ministries and institutions. Firstly, the decentralised nature of the Uganda polity and administrative structure that are already in place, have set a firm foundation upon which eGovernment will flourish. Secondly, the gender balance, which is reflected in all government structures, and which was one of the criteria in selecting systematic adjudication teams, will help to streamline some of the existing customary laws that discriminate against women with respect to land ownership. A combination of these two factors is most likely to make freehold tenure system acceptable to the majority of the local population. At least a precedent for creating permanent and reliable data for land information system in Uganda has already been set. There remains the creation of district land offices which will handle land administration in the districts sustainably. When this is done, e-Governance will be well rooted and the land records will be cheaply and efficiently managed for the benefit of the citizens. Dr. Nasani Batungi (nbatungi@tech.mak.ac.ug), is faculty, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Joan Batungi (joanbatungi@mulib.mak.ac.ug), is faculty, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

country focus: kazakhstan

Enhancing Efficiency and Access to Government Services Kazakh Agency for Informatisation and Communications

www.egovcentre.kz

â&#x20AC;&#x153;IT-technologies development is one of the indicators of flourishing and readiness of a country for entering competitive world. Today Kazakhstan aims at joining 50 most competitive countries in the world.â&#x20AC;? Says Kuanyshbek Yessekeyev, Chairman, Agency for Informatisation and Communications, Republic of Kazakhstan, to egov magazine. Interested readers may contact Kuanyshbek Yessekeyev through Artyom V. Shamtsyan (artyoms@aic.gov.kz) Director, e-Government Center of Excellence of Republic of Kazakhstan.

What is the vision and mission of the National e-Government Programme of the Republic of Kazakhstan? In 2004 e-Government Development Programme for years 2008-2010 was accepted in Kazakhstan. The main objective of the Kazakhstan e-Government programme is providing quick and high-quality access to public services, enhancing efficiency of government bodies with the help of ICT, i.e. providing access to ICT for every user in everyday life. To implement the existing objectives, the Agency for Information and Communication (AIC) was to perform a huge amount of preparatory work. Processes of such scale cannot be performed in a flash. First of all we had to work out legal and methodological base development, which would allow the state, population and organisations, function in information society environment. Among the existing objectives we should mention developing and enhancing e-Services provided by state bodies; providing access to 36 }

e-Government services, digital inclusion and enhancing educational level in ICT sphere. First of all, AIC developed basic constituents of e-Government infrastructure, optimisation of information infrastructure of the state bodies and providing e-Government information infrastructure security. This year the agency has developed a project of new e-Government development programme for years 20082010. New goals have been set, we are advancing, and we have gained great experience in the sphere of interaction with state bodies and population of the country. The staff of AIC consists of young and efficient professionals who care for future of e-Government as it is our mutual grand enterprise, the success of which is an objective of vital importance. Can you please tell us which of the projects under the National e-Government programme have already been implemented? First of all, programmes relevant both for AIC and the www.egovonline.net

country in general, were implemented in 2006. On the 12th of April that year, e-Government web-portal (www.e.gov. kz) was launched which currently provides 900 information services. Laws “On Informatisation” and “On Amending Certain Legal Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the Sphere of Informatisation” were developed and enacted. Interagency electronic workflow with digital signature has been implemented in 39 state bodies of the country, pilot model of National Authentication Centre for physical and legal entities has been developed and a pilot project on integrated transportation medium of state bodies has been implemented in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana. Last year we had implemented, on an experimental basis, government databases “Physical Bodies” and “Legal Entities”, in six regions of the country systems. “Land Register”, “Address Register” were implemented, for 15 interactive services of state bodies software was developed and tested in the pilot zone (Citizens’ Service Centres (CSC) of Almatinskiy and Saryarkinskiy regions, Astana) and setting up of 460 public access points was started. 11 classrooms for teaching computer literacy were opened in Almatinskiy, Zhambylskiy, South-Kazakhstan, West-Kazakhstan, Kyzylordinskiy and Atyrauskiy regions where more than 1500 civil servants have been trained by now. In 2006 three pilot projects on e-Akimats (government) development were implemented in East-Kazakhstan region, in Almaty and Astana cities. The objectives for the year 2006 were successfully achieved by AIC and now we have a number of issues of equal importance to be solved in 2007. How far has Kazakhstan progressed in terms of the programme implementation? By now process of those interactive services delivery for which this system was developed has been launched on the e-Government portal. According to the strategy of e-Government services development in Kazakhstan, the portal integrating the sites of all government bodies in the Republic was to pass four development stages. The start was given by the information stage which has been operating since last year: almost all of the state bodies have web-sites of their own where any user can get information concerning legal and organisational base of the given agency. Providing “live” electronic communication between officials and population is the main objective of the second stage of e-Government development, interactive. Today on the government portal (www.e.gov.kz) we have launched new services which used to be available only in case of personally attending this or that government office. Very soon there will be no necessity for the citizens to stand in long queues and lose time waiting for residence certificate, matrimonial status certificate, submitting application for ID documentation and TRN in the citizens’ service centres, for example. Interactive stage, which is now being implemented, pre-supposes implementation of personified e-Services for population. Now e-Government web-portal is integrated with the system of government bodies’ electronic workflow and national databases. This year in March, a service of application submitting was launched on the portal due to which any citizen of Kazakhstan can apply to five Ministries of the Republic and get an answer to his question. Last year ov

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we developed a software and carried out integration with departmental systems for interactive services implementation. In answer to his application a person gets confirmation of the documents being ready at his mail address and goes to CSC to get them. This service is now tested in CSCs of Almatinskiy and Saryarkinskiy regions of the capital. By the end of the year the system will be improved. The documents authenticated by digital signature can be printed at home. Every day eGovernment web-portal is visited by approximately 500 users. Almost all the Akimats and ministries opened virtual reception rooms. Visitors can download reference-document, get acquainted with legal base and find out addresses of various offices. In the third stage of e-Government development, i.e., transactional, it will be possible to pay for various public services via government portal. AIC is planning to develop a payment system based on existing electronic transactional (payment) system of second-tier banks. Actually we plan to integrate these so far separate systems the way we did with the sites of ministries and departments, which now can be accessed by the user from the portal www.e.gov.kz. The fourth stage, stage of information society, pre-supposes gradual increase of the portal users in number, that is, transfer to public services delivery (900 of them are to be represented on the portal in 2009) only in electronic form. As Republic of Kazakhstan is a rather young independent country, do you consider e-Government to be the right means for the development of the country? Undoubtedly! Our country is on the way of economic, social and political rise. Development of life activity spheres of our citizens is one of the main indicators of success and progress of a country. IT-technologies development is one of the indicators of readiness of a country for entering competitive world. Today Kazakhstan aims at joining 50 most competitive countries in the world. That is why development of the so called “electronic environment” for the population is actually a very important process, including not only content of state bodies and their services but the offices themselves which will function in the net. It is necessary that our citizens should use the contents for it to be demanded. Any developed information medium is useless without population using the system. How do you position Republic of Kazakhstan in the context of e-Readiness? In spite of all success in the process implementation, we should not forget the existing issues which we have to solve by means of diligent work of AIC, the country in general, government bodies and companies we interact with. Today only 12% of the population in Kazakhstan has skills to use PCs. Only 8% of the population are active Internet-users. Among the most skilled users are students, managers, specialists and officials. Least skilled users are housewives and workers. There is a huge digital divide between urban and village dwellers. The level of computer literacy of the population is determined by the number of Internet-users. There are only 3 million of them in Kazakhstan so far. The world wide web is mainly accessed from office computers and more rarely from 37

enhancing efficiency and access to government services

coiuntry focus: kazakhstan

home. Students mainly use services of Internet-café. That is why, since last year active measures on reducing tariffs for Internet access have been taken in Kazakhstan. When developing the programme and setting objectives on implementing e-Government in our country, we kept in consideration, what difficulties we will have to overcome and which issues we will have to solve. Today there are no issues which cannot be solved that is why, we can say for sure that our country and our citizens are ready to let different, more convenient and flexible relations with the state into their life. What is the response from various stakeholders – government officials, private players and citizens- towards the new e-Governance initiatives? As we are a state agency and our activity is closely connected with state bodies, we planned our work the way it would be most productive and fruitful. We feel strong back-up of the government following all the aspects of our work. It is the state and government that is primarily involved in the development of our country and facilitation of our people’s life.

AIC and Ministry of Education and Science. By July this year, in all the regions of the country, we will open 512 computer classrooms with 15 “clever machines” in each of them. Akimats take active part in the initiative and have already found necessary premises. 68 centres are designed for training military servants and in 69 orphanages, there will be classrooms providing 24 hour Internet-acces. Each graduate of the state training course will take an interactive test (with this purpose Ministry of Education and Science has opened a special centre of “remote access”). In case the test is passed successfully, the graduate will get a certificate, guidance manual and electronic textbook as a present. Any willing person possessing necessary knowledge can simply take the test and get the certificate providing opportunity for further education. By the way, for future IT specialists there are cost-free “web-universities” with tasks, tests and a real diploma. The government also plans to open a distance education centre and officials plan to launch this project next January. Government procurement for computer machines and managerial aids has already taken place.

Our Agency is now busy developing WAP-version of e-Government and we plan to launch it this year. This project will allow a more real access to e-Government for all mobile phone users. Citizens will be able to apply to state bodies and get answers. In the project of new programme, one chapter is dedicated to m-Government.

What are your plans for mobile government implementation and how important do you think it would be for Kazakh citizens? Our Agency is now busy developing WAP-version of e-Government and we plan to launch it this year. This project will allow a more real access to e-Government for all mobile phone users. Citizens will be able to apply to state bodies and get answers. In the project of new programme, one chapter is dedicated to m-Government. When working at it, we analysed the importance of this step from the point of view of facilitating access to e-Government services for our citizens.

What are the major challenges you are facing in implementing the National e-Government Programme? What are the major lessons learned? Here I would like to touch upon the topic mentioned in the previous answer, the digital inclusion issue and increasing the number of users up to 20%. According to official information only 6% of the population can use computer without being helped. As for generation which avoided technologic boom, it totally “fell out” of informatisation process. Last year Digital Inclusion Programme for years 2007-2009 was developed by AIC. Soon in the cities and rural areas of the country, we will be initiating specialised classes and will grant special certificates to the graduates. Last November, we began preparatory stage for implementing the Digital Inclusion Programme for years 2007-2009. In four regions of the country – Atyrauskiy, Almatinskiy, Zhambylskiy and South-Kazakhstan- computer literacy training courses were started. They gave immediate positive results. Forty academic hours are delivered to each group within a fortnight. The education programme was approved in last July by joint order of the Agency for Civil Service,

How do you foresee e-Government programmes to take shape in the Republic of Kazakhstan in coming years? AIC has studied the experience of Korea, Singapore, Italy, Germany and Estonia and not with the help of theory from guidance manuals but through live communication with representatives of these countries. Nowadays we already have some statistics concerning the project implementation and we can compare our experience and gains with equivalent projects of international scale. So, on the first stage of project implementation, our country followed the path of Ghana, China and Thailand. Peculiar feature of the stage is in presenting static information on web-sites of state bodies. The second stage in 2006-2007 gave opportunity for getting information of a different kind: certificates, electronic form submitting, e-Licensing, government procurement, filling-in declarations. This way is chosen by such countries as Japan, Italy, Germany, Estonia and our state as well. Third stage is to be implemented in the years 2008-2010 in Korea, the USA, Singapore, Canada and Kazakhstan. It already provides opportunity for transactions: taxes, dues and fees and payments. As far as we know, none of the countries have come to the fourth stage where e-Services prevail over paper ones.

www.egovonline.net

commentary

Measuring the Value of Public IT Investments SAP and the Center for Technology in Government

www.sap.com; www.ctg.albany.edu

In countries in Europe and the Americas, as well as in Asia, governments are latching on to the Public ROI idea. A recent study by the London-based Economic Intelligence Unit found that of 776 government executives they polled worldwide, some 69 percent expect to measure the financial, social and political returns from IT investment in the next five years. Steven Furst

cross the world and in particular in Asia, government agencies at all levels find themselves facing a common problem: how to justify investment in information technology when faced with tightening budgets, citizens demanding more services and almost universal reluctance to raising taxes? Government IT professionals and chief information officers know - intuitively - that their IT investment ultimately results in improved efficiency and productivity. But how do they prove this to a skeptical populace and elected officials? And is improved efficiency and productivity truly the ultimate goal? Thankfully, government officials may have an answer. The Center for Technology in Government (CTG), based in Albany, New York, recently released a study that proposes a new method for measuring public return on investment (Public ROI). The goal of the work, which was sponsored by SAP and looked at government agencies in Europe, the Middle East, Canada, and the United States, was to develop a universal, non-proprietary method to help governments track not only the financial return, but also the social and political value of IT investments. They did this by demonstrating a link between technology and its effects on real-life issues and on the lives of the people served by those investments. The results could help justify purchasing IT products and services for government agencies at all levels, in all countries. The CTG work essentially links what happens with agencies’ IT purchases to related effects on the public. For example, a law-enforcement agency purchases updated computer systems, which require fewer personnel to operate. These officers return to the streets, resulting in lower crime.This, in turn, improves public trust and confidence, bolstering higher esteem and political capital among elected officials. Thus, financial IT investment is directly linked to social and political returns. Although the new methodology is being developed on the basis of case studies from Europe and the Americas, ov

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there are numerous examples of IT investments delivering significant value to citizens here in Asia. From on-line grassroots marketplaces in Thailand and rural internet kiosks in India, to world class citizen portals and shared services centers in Singapore, governments in Asia continue to deliver Public ROI. And lest we forget, the antecedent for one of the fundamental principles in the Public ROI approach was voiced long ago by the King of Bhutan when he coined the term “Gross National Happiness” as a better measure of prosperity than GNP. In the same manner, including the measurement of the social and political value of IT investments is more relevant and revealing than measuring financial and operational returns alone.

Case Study: The Austrian Federal Budgeting and Bookkeeping System

Nowhere is there a greater link between information technology efficiency and citizen benefit than in financialmanagement systems. These systems are crucial in the flow of revenue into the government, and the flow of expenditures – such as overtax repayments – and services back to the public. In 1997, the Austrian Federal Budgeting and Bookkeeping System set out to redesign and integrate the electronic workflow of the federal government’s budget and bookkeeping processes. They did this by implementing a single Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution throughout the government. The result? By 2005, more than 85 bookkeeping units had been consolidated into one federally owned, but privately operated, agency. A new, standardised work process for accounting and budgeting throughout the federal government reduced administrative steps and processing time. As of 2005, this resulted in an annual savings of approximately 30 million. 39

commentary

Beyond the financial returns, however, were more farreaching accomplishments. The restructuring of the budget and bookkeeping system soon became a model for implementing a broader ERP system throughout the entire Austrian government. Its success ultimately sparked a government-wide reorganisation and consolidation, as the entire federal government ultimately adopted a single modern accounting and budget that produced increased efficiencies to Austrian citizens. Case Study: Service New Brunswick, Canada

Service New Brunswick (SNB) is renowned for its one-stop shopping approach that provides citizens with a single “window” into government services.These include services from Canada’s provincial and municipal government agencies, as well at the Canadian Federal Government, all linked through linking and maintaining geographic information databases. Citizen satisfaction with the Canadian government’s services speaks for itself, rising from approximately 50 percent in the late 1980’s to 92 percent in 2005. Beyond IT investment, Service New Brunswick evolved from a quasi-governmental organisation into an integrated service provider and economic-development innovator. SNB is now a public corporation with a single shareholder – the

entire government of New Brunswick. SNB clearly proved that good public service makes good business. The Momentum Builds

In other countries in Europe and the Americas, as well as in Asia, governments are latching on to the Public ROI idea. A recent study by the London-based Economic Intelligence Unit found that of 776 government executives they polled worldwide, some 69 percent expect to measure the financial, social and political returns from IT investment in the next five years. Almost all said they would publish the results of these Public ROI studies. With government IT budgets under tight constraints – projected to grow only moderately, if at all by 2012 – Public ROI is clear evidence of an idea whose time has come.

Steven Furst (steven.furst@sap.com), Director of SAP’s Pubic Services Industry Solutions Group in Asia Pacific and Japan, is responsible for government, healthcare, and higher education institutions. He has consulted to a wide range of governments and enterprises in Asian, African, and Latin American countries, as well as the US.

Make Computers Speak Your Language The book is on operating system customisation for Indian languages, text processing, machine-aided translation, Internet search on Indian languages, URL in Indian languages, desktop publishing in Indian languages, keyboard customisation etc. The increasing popularisation of computers the world over has encouraged the development of software environments in local languages. The book has nine chapters and starts with the popular way of using computer, and then goes step-by-step to explain how to write text and data in a chosen language. Explanations have been given in simple manner. Many concepts have been provided in Hindi. Other Indian languages have also received their due. Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages have also been touched upon. The book is written for various platforms: Windows 95 to Windows Vista, and also Microsoft Office. It also covers Linux and OpenOffice environments. The book provides extensive examples on how to type all the complex conjuncts/ligatures in Indian languages. There are over 125 illustrations in the form of hands-on-practical. The book is a must for all government offices, training institutes, educational institutions, desktop publishers, cybercafes and lay people in this age of information technology.

Author: Barun Kumar Sahu Published by: Unicorn Books ISBN: 9788178061214 Pages: 206 Price: INR 175.00

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stae focus: haryana

Implementing National e-Governance Plan in Haryana Initiatives Taken, Achievements and Road Map

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The article sums up the e-Governance initiatives in the state of Haryana, challenges faced and future plans. Anurag Rastogi and Ghan Shyam Bansal

aryana State is one of the most progressive states of the Indian union with a total geographical area of 44,212 sq. kms. Haryana is among leading food grain producers of India. In 1966, it was not even producing significant food to meet its own requirements. Now, with agricultural development, it accounts for 6-7 percent of total food grain production of country by producing 11.5 million tons and contributes 4.5 million tons of food grains to central pool, even though it constitutes only 1.4 percent of the country’s geographical area. Haryana is proud of being one of the first two states with highest per capita income in the country. The e-Readiness Assessment Report – 2005 of India, released by the Department of Information Technology, Government of India, has ranked Haryana as aspiring leader. The state’s e-Governance Vision Statement is, ‘To achieve efficiency, transparency and accountability in governance by providing ICT enabled access and opportunities for all, anywhere, anytime’. The State e-Governance projects have already received 12 prestigious national awards. The Government of Haryana has given special emphasis on implementing Mission Mode e-Governance Projects, identified under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). The State IT department is facilitating the departments and National Informatics Centre- Haryana State Centre (NIC-HRSC) and Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation (HARTRON) are assisting in technical aspects. A welldefined, transparent and efficient system for the systematic approval of the departmental IT action plan has been put in place through various high power committees which include state level IT steering committee (IT-PRISM), state technical committee, society for IT initiative fund for e-Governance initiatives at state level, district IT society in each district. Till date 104 IT Plans/project proposals of various departments/ organisations have been approved by IT-PRISM, covering almost all major departments/ organisations. The work has 42 }

started on most of the mission mode projects (MMPs), being implemented under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) by the government of India, and a significant progress has already been achieved on a number of projects. State Sector Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) under NeGP

During January 2005 – May 2007, a number of prestigious e-Governance projects, including most of the state sector MMPs of NeGP have been initiated and implemented successfully. The summary of initiatives and achievements in implementing some of the MMPs in the State of Haryana, is given in following the sections: Treasuries: OTIS: On-Line Treasuries Information System (OTIS) is an integrated workflow automation system. OTIS facilitate role based dynamic menus and security and automation of treasury functions like payments, receipts, pensions, bank scroll, voucher preparation. A linkage with FD & Banks has been established. Multiple banks can have transactions with single Treasury. OTIS has been implemented at 100% treasuries and sub-treasuries (103 sites). OTIS has received Microsoft e-Governance excellence award 2006. Property Registration: HARIS: Haryana Registration Information System facilitates registration of properties and land. The salient features of HARIS include deed writing, capturing storing of photos, security checks, collector rates, registration fee information, biometric and statistical reports. HARIS has been linked to Mutations & Jamabandies. HARIS is being implemented on a Self-sustaining model. HARIS has been implemented at all 67 Tehsils and 45 Sub-Tehsils covering 100% locations. A significant increase in revenue collection has been recorded after implementation of HARIS. The biometric and photograph of sub-registrar alongwith buyer and seller has been introduced to bring greater transparency. www.egovonline.net

Haryana’s planned e-Governance Initiatives under National e-Governance Plan and other Priority Areas

Land Records: Haryana land records information system (HALRIS) is a complete Integrated workflow automation system of land record components. HALRIS provides a single window interface for deed writing, registration, mutation and copy of Record-of-right (ROR). HALRIS has been implemented in all 20 districts of the state. The copy of ROR services have been started in all districts and ROR data of major Tehsils/sub-tehsils have been made available on Internet website http://jamabandi.nic.in. To bring greater transparency and to ensure hassle free services, the HARIS has been integrated with HALRIS. The HALRIS project has received a “Silver Icon National Award” at the 8th national e-Governance conferences in Feb., 2005.The HARIS, HALRIS dynamic integrated project has received a “Bronze Icon National Award” at the 9th national e-governance conferences in February, 2006. The project HALRIS was also accepted for presentation at International e-Governance Conference, organised by CSDMS, held at Bangkok (Thailand) in April 26-28, 2006. Panchayats:e-Panchayat: The panchayats (village level administrative unit) level works Monitoring and Information System has been implemented under e-Panchayats initiatives as a web enabled village information system. An exclusive website of the department has been launched. panchayats information is being uploaded on to National Panchayats portal. Commercial Taxes: Value added tax management, assessment, collection system (VATMACS) include modules like VAT return processing, dealers registration, fact sheet compilation, statuary forms inventory, road side checking. The VATMACS is being implemented at all 21 Deputy Excise and Taxation Commissioner offices. The daily collections under VAT has been integrated with OTIS to facilitate reconciliation of collections. ov

July 2007

Municipalities: The House Tax Assessment and Collection Information System (HACIS) has been implemented for all municipalities as per state’s latest house tax policy. The database has more than 1 million properties records. Significant increase in tax collection has been recorded. The transparency in tax computation has increased. The birth and death and other certificates issuing system for district headquarter level municipalities are being issued through e-Disha. Implementation of Integrated e-Nagarpalika System using Web Technology covering all major areas of operations has been planned to be taken-up. Transport Regulatory Functions: The Issuance of computerized driving license and registration certificate of vehicles are being implemented at a number of Sub-divisional Magistrates offices. For this, the national software systems namely Sarathi and Vahan have been adopted as a standard across the state. Significant increase in revenue collection has been recorded. Transport Roadways: Target - Complete computerisation of Haryana Roadways with Total Work-flow. Modules Implemented: Traffic and route management, inventory management, vehicle monitoring systems, purchase orders module, service books records with auditing of leaves and increments. Pilot Running in Chandigarh Roadways Depot. Agriculture. AgMarkNet: All 108 Mandies (wholesale marketplace) and 25 Sub Centers of agriculture marketing board have been provided with computing and Internet facilities and training to publish prices of agriculture commodities on daily basis. Other projects such as AgRIS, Agrisnet, national horticulture mission are also being implemented. Police: Police G2G Suite: A suite of software packages (personnel management, payroll system, pension accounting, inventory and vehicle management and control system, budget control including appropriation and variance analysis, audit control and audit para-monitoring system, court cases management, DAK & Meetings Management) has been developed and implemented for facilitating police functioning. Dynamic police web portal with citizen interface has been launched. Employment Exchanges: Internet based employment exchange registration information system initiated in Panchkula, Ambala, Faridabad, Kurukshetra, Gurgaon districts. System helps in submission of candidate’s list to prospective employers instantaneously. Assistance is provided to unemployed youth by registering them and sponsoring them to the prospective employers by matching their qualifications, experience. e-District: The e-District project has been introduced in the state. The comprehensive network (LAN), a modern IT training lab, district level e-Disha centers in each district mini secretariat, a suite of office automation software packages, revenue courts computerization system (RECORD), arm licenses, public grievances redressal, development projects’ monitoring, Chief Minister’s announcements, centralised file movement and tracking information system have been developed. All major functions of revenue administration in a network environment have been planned to be integrated. 43

state focus: haryana

implementing national e-governance plan in haryana

State Sector Additional Mission Mode Projects under NeGP

Health: e-Health.Net: Suite of software packages under eHealth.Net project of Health Department include software to monitor the prevention of food adulteration, Software for medical certification of cause of death, software for processing bed occupancy and mortality rate, DOTS (directly observed treatment short-term for eradication of Tuberculosis disease). Medicine inventory monitoring system, doctors’ leave accounting system and family welfare MIS, malaria monitoring software, software for national school health and G2G e-Office packages have been implemented at civil surgeons offices. This has helped in greater availability of medicines to the patients in government health institutes and Doctor’s in rural dispensaries. e-Health.Net received National Silver Icon Award along with Health Care Foundation at 8th national e-Governance conference. Education: (a) Technical Education: Haryana has successfully implemented the on-line off-campus counseling project for all engineering admissions during 2006. Haryana is first state to implement such a system in India. MIS for polytechnics, their students and examination information system has been developed, its web enabling is being done for Internet based implementation. (b) Haryana School Education Board: All major functions of school education board, Bhiwani, have been automated, administrative reforms were carried out and all results, admit cards, provisional certificates are published on web. This project has received National Gold Icon Award at 8th national e-Governance conference. Social Welfare: Pensions: Haryana pensions processing and information system (HAPPIS) for more than 1.2 million pensioners. The system is helping in timely disbursement of pension to old age and other pensioners every month. It has been linked with birth and death, ration cards and photo ID cards. It also helps in detecting fraudulent cases. The HAPPIS information is published on dynamic web portal at http://socialjusticehry.nic.in. Beneficiaries can check their disbursement status. HAPPIS received National Silver Icon Award at 6th national e-Governance conference. Other Welfare Schemes: The on-line acceptance of applications from citizens for various schemes of Social Welfare departments has been implemented through District e-Disha centres. The IT plan for Department of Women and Child Development has been prepared and implementation initiated. The information in respect of all Anganwadi workers has been published on Web. Food and Civil Supplies: e-Food.Net: Web enabled food procurement and storage monitoring system. The procurement and storage of food grains is being monitored through e-Food.Net system at all District Food and Supplies Controllers (DFSCs). The project had received “Merit Citation” National Award at 7th national e-Governance conference. The e-Food.net will network organisations involved in procurement and distribution. The focus of e-Food.net is expected to be on public interface, inter-departmental and intra-departmental information sharing. All these 7 agencies will be connected through the State Wide Area Network 44

(SWAN) to the state data centre. The backend processing will be done by individual agencies. The connectivity of mandies and warehouses, automation of food grains movements will be taken-up. At the same time, online ration card registration and issuing system and fair price shops activities MIS has also been planned. There are some other computerisation initiatives going on in the food and civil suplies. Public Works Department (PWD): IMPACT-Haryana, the integrated monitoring of PWD (Building and Roads, B&R) activities is a web based monitoring system, which has been developed and implemented across the state for more than 4500 works of PWD amounting to more than INR 300 millions. The IMPACT project has been published as a case study in 10th National e-Governance Conference and in Indian Road Congress conference. The roads programme (Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana) is being implemented at all 21 offices of B&R. All the tenders are being published on web through VPN. An interactive website has been developed and launched. The GIS based layer of all roads is being created on state map. Challenges and Needs in Implementing e-Governance Initiatives

Focus on Government Process Re-engineering and Change Management: Need for business/administrative process re-engineering and change management in service delivery departments like utilities, urban development, revenue, transport, social justice and empowerment, health, public health, commercial taxes, Haryana uraban development authority and Police department. The aim is to eliminate unnecessary steps and bring objectivity in decisionmaking process. There is a need for re-writing of procedures in various areas of governmental activity and re-looking at the activities per se. The involvement of users during entire phases of project life cycle, addressing issues faced by them and motivations of employees at all levels is a critical success factor. Capacity Building in Departments: Capacity Building at state level and project level is absolutely necessary. There is a need to set up state e-Governance mission team, project level e-Governance mission teams) by finalising regular manpower policy on priority. Better training of government officials is required to appreciate the importance of IT projects in present day scenario is must. Institutionalisation: The human element is crucial to the success of automation projects. Once a key champion of the project leaves, the administration becomes less responsive and the centre’s key value proposition to the communities disappears, as also the change of key individuals results in loss of all efforts and initiatives earlier taken. Behind every successful e-Government project is an individual champion. Project management processes need to be institutionalised. Project Ownership and Management: There is a need for better ownership of IT projects by the departments. The department ownership of e-Government is vital, because no www.egovonline.net

•

A beginning has been made, now it is the time to scale up the initiatives already taken to the web technologies. It is intended to offer transactional services where the common man is interacting with the government through a unified, integrated web enabled system. The e-Disha Ekal Sewa Kendra (CSCs) is being established across the state, through public-private-partnership (PPP) model. external agency can drive the kind of change that is needed in implementing e-Government. However, a department may not have the capacity to use the correct method and latest design techniques in developing the application, e-Government efforts should therefore be supported by a central agency, which can provide the necessary guidance in the use of correct methodology and act as a facilitator in identifying services to be delivered and in preparation and implementation of ICT detailed project reports. Synthesise e-Governance Initiatives: There is also a need for developing policies/frameworks for bringing in comprehensiveness/standardisation to the approach. A focus is required on having a common core infrastructure for all departments and common standards and frameworks for interoperability/scalability of applications. Financial Sustainability of e-Governance Projects: Working out a self-sustainable revenue model. Build-in the concept of user-charge into e-Governance projects at the initiation stage. Applications Roll-out Strategy: In e-Government initiatives, not all steps need to be, or should be, automated. However, such projects need clearly identified goals and measurable benefits to citizens and business in terms of delivery times, reduced corruption and lower costs. Focus on applications, which have a potential in improving the quality of citizen interface. Strategic Framework and Steps taken to overcome the same

All organisations are required to prepare their IT plans, before embarking upon ICT initiatives. • In Haryana, till date the IT- PRISM (State level IT Steering Committee) has approved 104 IT plans / project proposals – Work Started on all projects • Stress on Government Process re-engineering while approving all IT Plans • SWAN implementation started, by 31st October, 2007 • Common Service Centre (e-Disha Ekal Sewa Kendra) – Started implementation of the scheme ov

July 2007

• •

e-Governance and capacity building road maps prepared Each department can spend upto 5% of its budget for ICT initiatives Secretariat for information technology is in place as a consortium of State IT department, Secretariat branch, NIC-HRSC, Society for IT initiative fund for eGovernance, District IT Societies and Hartron

Conclusion : Plan for future in e-Governance Front

A beginning has been made, now it is the time to scale up the initiatives already taken to the web technologies. It is intended to offer transactional services where the common man is interacting with the government through a unified, integrated web enabled system. The e-Disha Ekal Sewa Kendra (CSCs) is being established across the state, through public-private-partnership (PPP) model. The PPP partner is required to provide all computing and networking infrastructure and recurring expenditure. The issues of project architecture, security infrastructure, government process re-engineering, service level agreements, audit, publicity, etc. will be been addressed jointly with PP partner, Delhi Education Institute and Training (DEIT), National Informatics Centre - HRSC and line departments. The issues of connectivity are being dealt with keeping in mind the present status and the future scenario with SWAN in place. Backend operations and integration of departmental applications with databases would be handled by the IT department in technical consultation with NIC – HRSC and the front end operations of running the e-Disha portal of the state government would be handled by the PPP partner. Respective stakeholders shall work as per their roles and responsibilities, which would be clearly delineated. The project would be a trendsetter in the state and will ensure delivery of services with efficiency, effectiveness and transparency. The management of such a project would definitely be a stupendous task and would involve coordination of all the stakeholders. The synergy and convergence of efforts of all the parties would be necessary for smooth working of the citizen centres. HARTRON would provide the project management arm to the State Government, whereas, the technical aspects of Portal and e-Disha Application software shall be supervised by NIC Haryana State Centre.

Anurag Rastogi (ssit@hry.nic.in), IAS, is working as Special Secretary and Director IT, Government of Haryana. He did his B.Tech. from IIT Roorkee, He also worked as Director Panchayats and Development Haryana. Ghan Shyam Bansal (sio@hry.nic.in), is working as Senior Technical Director in National Informatics Centre (NIC), Department of Information Technology, Government of India. Currently he is posted as State Informatics Officer Haryana and heading the Haryana State Centre of NIC at Chandigarh.

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