financially empowered: July 2011

watch out for

1-3 AUGUST, 2011 the ashok, New Delhi, India

www.eworldforum.net

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON e-GOVERNANCE

juLY 2011 > ` 75/VOLUME 07 n ISSUE 07 n ISSN 0973-161X www.egovonline.net

PSUs:

Performance Structures Unlimited

policy watch

financially

esd bill 2011

mandating e-services

empowered Technology driven financial services are enabling those at the bottom of the pyramid to participate in the mainstream economic and social process

Gaining Roots, Expanding Outreach...

BI studies show that only 54 per cent adults in India have a bank account and of the 431 districts targeted for achieving 100 per cent financial inclusion in 2006, only 204 have been successful. Concerns on the front of income distribution and poverty alleviation cannot be met without full-scale expansion of banking and other financial services. Indian growth story is impressive, yet there are concerns on issues like income distribution and poverty alleviation, where lot remains to be done. Sensing an opportunity, banks, technology providers and microfinance agencies are rushing into partnerships to roll out no-frills accounts, expand the network of Business Correspondents, and launch biometric smart cards, micro ATMs and mobile banking services to drive this mission. It’s not just a social or political objective; financial inclusion will also augment the topline growth of the banks. The cover feature on Financial Inclusion explores its status and how we can progress on the path of economic development taking along all stratas of society. Technology plays a key role in this with e-Banking and m-Banking now coming to the picture. Talking about growth, PSUs have contributed significantly towards the Indian economy. The best among the PSUs are given the title of ‘Maharatna’ or ‘Miniratna. The special focus takes a stock of how far the IT adoption has taken place in PSUs in India. Also featuring is a’Policy Watch’ section that talks about the Electronic Delivery of services. As far as public services are concerned, in the last five years, the core ICT infrastructure in the form of State Wide Area Networks, State Data Centres and front ends in the form of Common services Centers are largely in place. Implementation of Mission Mode Projects has ensured availability of a few services electronically. With the implementation of e-District project, the high volume services at district and sub district level will be delivered electronically. In order to penetrate e-services vertically and horizontally the union ministry of Information technology has proposed the draft of the Electronic Service Delivery Bill (ESD) 2011. When enacted, the bill will make it mandatory for every government organisation to deliver public services only in electronic mode. eGovernance in India is certainly gaining roots and expanding outreach. Hope you will find this issue informative!

ravi guptA Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

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April 2011

May 2011

June 2011

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Contents july 2011

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

PSU focus PSUs: Performance Structures Unlimited How are PSUs leveraging IT for refining their functioning

policy watch Bringing Accountability for e-Governance A detailed report on the ESD Bill 2011

Analysis Integrating your Way to Success

12 | cover story

Reaching the Bottom of Pyramid Financial inclusion allows people to participate in the economic and social process, it should be technology-driven through ICT for last mile connectivity

Read all about ERP

case study G2C Sanchar Shakti: ICT to Empower Rural India A G2C initiative by USOF to assist women SHGS

The behind-the-scene process and journey of IRCTC

On progress made in e-Governance in Madhya Pradesh

further reading

How IT is helping in better fuctioning and increased efficiency

e-Governance as it is and what the future holds

Editorial india News news world news corporate

psu focus RK Tandon

psu focus I V Sharma

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

in person Anurag Jain

in person Ajay singh

case study G2C Jhansi Jan Suvidha Kendra (JJSK) A mobile based G2C m-Gov initiative for redressing public grievances

03 6 8 9

july 2011 issue 07 n volume 07

President Dr M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief: Dr Ravi Gupta GM FINANCE Ajit Kumar dgm strategy Raghav Mittal

second grid

INbox

grid name

www.facebook.com/egovonline www.twitter.com/egovonline

partnerships & Alliances Dr. Rajeshree Dutta Kumar, Sheena Joseph, Shuchi Smita, Jaunita Kakoty, Ankita Verma EDITORIAL Divya Chawla, Dhirendra Pratap Singh, Sonam Gulati, Pragya Gupta, Shally Makin (editorial@elets.in)

watch out july 2011 issue of our Partner Publications

Sales & marketing Jyoti Lekhi, FahimulHaque, Rakesh Ranjan (sales@elets.in) subscription & circulation Gunjan Singh, Mobile: +91-8860635832 subscription@elets.in Graphic Design Team Bishwajeet Kumar Singh, Om Prakash Thakur Shyam Kishore Web Development Team Zia Salahuddin, Amit Pal, Anil Kumar IT infrastructure Mukesh Sharma, Zuber Ahmed Events Vicky Kalra human resource Sushma Juyal legal R P Verma accounts Anubhav Rana, Subhash Chandra Dimri Editorial & Marketing Correspondence egov – G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA–201 301, India Phone: +91-120-2502181-85 Fax: +91-120-2500060 Email: info@egovonline.net egov is published by Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd in technical collaboration with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS). Owner, Publisher, Printer: Ravi Gupta, Printed at H T Media Ltd, B-2, Sector-63, Noida 201307 , U.P. and published from 710 Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50 Noida, UP Editor: Ravi Gupta © All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic and mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage or retrieval system, without publisher’s permission.

Asia’s First Monthly magazine on ICT in Education

The Enterprise of Healthcare (www.ehealthonline .org)

(www.digitalLEARNING.in) Highlights World Education Summit Special Issue: Convergence of Global Thought Leaders Interviews: Smt D Purandeshwari, Minister of State, Ministry of Human Resource Development Smt Vibha Puri Das, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, GoI Sri Amit Khare, Joint Secretary, Department of Higher Education, GoI Prof V S Ramamurthy

Highlights Cover Story: Reforming Medical Education to Benefit Masses - The only way to make healthcare affordable is to create a massive education network for training Medical, Dental, Paramedical and Nursing Students Interviews: Dr Shakti Gupta, HoD, Hospital Administration, AIIMS Dr Arun Kumar Agarwal, Dean, Maulana Azad Medical College Dr Tatyarao Lahane, Sir J J Group of Hospitals Dr N K Mohanty, Medical Superintendent, Safdarjung Hospital

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news

projects people policy events products

Biometric Attendance for Haryana Teachers Soon In a bid to keep a tab on teachers and to prevent their increasing absenteeism from government schools, Haryana government has decided to install biometric fingerprint scanners in around 2622 government schools in the state. “Many cases of teachers’ absenteeism have come

to light in Haryana government schools during the past few months. The situation is worse in the schools that are located in rural areas. “This project will be completed by August. The biometric scanners are being installed under the centrally sponsored scheme for information and

JK to Launch SSDG

communication technology in schools,” he added. Biometric fingerprint scanners would store the information about teachers like their time of arrival in the school and leaving the school. This scanner will read the fingerprints of the particular teacher and nobody could replicate them.

In order to keep redundant government paperwork at bay, Jammu and Kashmir gears up to launch a State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG) to facilitate e-governace in the Valley. The SSDG which is expected to be launched by September this year, will route requests from citizens to government departments and send responses vice

Project Rolled Out in Punjab to Strengthen Upcoming GST Regime

Thane Launches Portal for Clearing Building Proposals citizen search for approval details, TDR proposal application and status tracking. The portal is integrated to SMS and payment gateways. The portal uses “AutoDCR” a product developed by Pune-based company, SoftTech Engineers, for providing online building plan scrutiny and approval using CAD based technology. The GIS enabled system allows full georeferencing of drawings submitted.

Wipro Infotech has bagged a contract from the Punjab government to deploy the Tax Management System across the State. Wipro will be responsible for design, implementation and management of IT infrastructure and outsourced transaction processing along with other support activities. This includes procurement, deployment, operations and maintenance of the Department’s IT Infrastructure at various project locations as well as data migration, setting up of various front windows,

training, helpdesk and maintenance activities. The Excise and Taxation Department is one of the major revenue collecting agencies and plays an important role in the fiscal structure of the State. Wipro would also undertake design, development, customisation, testing and rollout of the Application Software across the state including support for a period of 5 years. The engagement includes migration of the application and data to the new Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime when it

e-Tendering Initiative Launched in Goa The Goa government is launching an e-Tendering initiative, which will enable contractors to bid, compete and be paid for government work projects online, Chief Minister Digambar Kamat announced on Thursday, 26th May 2011. Unveiling the initiative to be serviced by the Karnataka State Electronics Development

06 egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

versa. The gateway is a core component in e-governance infrastructure and will facilitate exchange of data between various departments in the state government. “The SSDG will act as a nerve centre and will handle a large number of transactions which, in turn, will ensure swift redressal of public grievances,” said an official.

tax management

e-services

The Town Planning Department of the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) in Maharashtra has gone online with a dedicated portal launched to clear building proposals. It offers online application for building plan approval, proposal status tracking, and

service delivery

Corporation (KEONICS), Kamat said that e-Tendering would make the process transparent. “Through this method, we will be able to achieve transparency. The contractors do not even have to come to the office to fill the tender, give the bill and even collect the payment,” he said. Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC)

is the agency which will be implementing the e-Governance software. “Any contractor from any part of the world will be able to fill the e-Tender if he is eligible. It is a user friendly technology,” he said, adding that the software followed norms of all Public Works Department and Central Public Works Department (CPWD).

is rolled out nationally. Migration of the application and data as required for implementation of GST is also a part of the project. The department had proposed a scheme for computerisation of Sales Tax procedures in July, 2000. To implement this, the government created an autonomous body called Excise and Taxation Technical Services Agency (ETTSA).

india

State Data Centre Launched in Bengaluru

A Rs 57-crore data centre designed to meet requirements of Karnataka government for the next decade was set up recently. The centre will offer latest technologies including virtualisation and provide the servers on demand to various department of the government to facilitate e-Initiatives. The centre will host e-Governance initiatives such as Unique ID, Registration Department, Transport Department,

Municipal Administration, e-Procurement. The data centre is being maintained by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).The 4,000 sq ft data centre is the biggest in the country for implementing e-governance. Offices of all departments would be connected with the data centre within the next two years. At present, about 3,000 offices have been connected to the data centre. About Rs 4,000 crore had been allocated for implementation of e-governance and other administration reforms and initiatives in the state for the current financial year.

news

UID

Get Paid for Your Unique ID, Enrol and Earn Rs 100 To accelerate the enrolment process in the Aadhaar project of UIDAI, the Karnataka government will shell out Rs 100 to every poor pensioner and job-seeker under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The government will directly transfer Rs 100 into the bank accounts of beneficiaries of social security schemes — pensioners, physically disabled and widows — and those of rural employment

guarantee scheme who are below poverty line after they produce relevant documents as proof at the time of enrolment.

employment

i-Code Cards for Better Employment in Bihar The Department of Posts (DoP) has launched i-Code cards in Bihar to help the unemployed find better job avenues. It is an initiative that would work as an e-Employment exchange and bridge the gap between the employee and the employers. The candidates would have to bear onetime cost of Rs 300 to procure the i-Code cards through the post offices. Under the

scheme, the candidates would be enrolled at the website www.icodecity.com. The system developed by i-Code management system private limited would create profile of all enrolling members on line and allot each of them a unique i-Code number along with password. The candidates can update their details. The same data would be made available to companies absolutely free.

biometrics

connectivity

MCD to Use Technology to Check on its Education System In a move aimed at bringing more transparency in its schools and keeping a tab on teachers’ working, MCD would introduce e-Governance from July this year. Chairman of the MCD Education Committee Mahinder Nagpal said, “The move will help in making teachers of MCD schools more responsible.” He said with introduction of the new system, all MCD schools will be linked to headquarters of education department and its zonal

offices through Internet. This will help officials of education department to directly monitor the activities in MCD schools, he said. Initially, the system would be launched in 190 MCD schools in Shahdara (North) zone and subsequently in other zones. “e-Governance will not only lead to transparency in the functioning of teachers in MCD schools, but also make them more responsible towards imparting quality education,” he added.

Biometrics Enrolment Begun in Ukhrul, Manipur For the first time in the census population a new Biometric enrolment was officially launched under National Population Register (NPR) . During the function organised, the Biometric Enrolment was inaugurated by the Deputy Commissioner/Principal Census Officer Ukhrul, N Ashok Kumar IAS. The exercise

would entail photograph, iris-imaging and finger printing for every person above the age of five years for the purpose of entry in National Population Register (NPR) and Unique Identity Cards would be issued which will be the conclusive and universally acceptable identity and residence proof quality education,” he added.

Ration cards to be Succeeded by Smart Cards in Haryana In another important development in Public Distribution System (PDS), ration cards are going to be replaced by smart cards in Haryana. This is in a bid to increase transparency in PDS and Haryana will become the

first state in the country to have this kind of facility for the citizens. Initially, it would be started in four blocks of Ambala, Sonipat, Sirsa and Gharaunda on pilot basis. The work to prepare smart cards will begin from May 27.

A Haryana government official informed that unique identification card (UIC) of the people in all age groups would also be prepared alongwith smart cards and the smart cards would eventually be linked with UIC.

Committees at district and village level would be formed to monitor the process of preparing UIC adding that smart card making camps would be organised in schools at village level and Nambardars and Sarpanches

of the villages would be roped in this process. Proper publicity would be made by visiting door-to-door in villages on the prescribed time and date so that no family could remain uncovered.

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

news

world

ICT

New ICT Projects Announced in Algeria Algerian ICT minister Moussa Benhamadi has announced a number of IT projects aimed at democratising the use of the internet across the country. One of these, the “1 PC per family” initiative will initially target teachers

and their pupils. It will involve the provision of computers, broadband internet and training, paid through specific financing mechanisms. It will then be extended to health care facilities, with those located in the more populous north of

the country sharing best practice with those in the south. A convention is being drafted in collaboration with the health ministry including a pilot telemedicine project to connect via a hospital in each of the 10 southern

ICT

e-SERVICES

The India-Tanzania Centre of Excellence (CoE)was recently inaugurated in Tanzania recently. It has been implemented by city-based Centre for Development

Seventy new electronic projects are to be launched in Bahrain in the next few years, it was declared by Deputy Prime Minister and Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology Chairman Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa. He said the move would allow everyone to communicate and interact direcly with government departments through social and technical channels. Shaikh Mohammed was speaking while opening the fourth Bahrain

Manmohan Singh Inaugurates C-DAC’s Centre of Excellence

of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). The CoE will offer diploma and certificate courses targeted towards students from varied backgrounds who aspire to make a successful career in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry. The CoE was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Dar Es Salaam. The aim of the centre is to promote ICT in Tanzania, a statement released by the C-DAC said.

ONLINE GOVERNANCE

Bahrain Civil Service Bureau Goes Hi-tech The Civil Service Bureau (CSB) has activated online services in cooperation with the Electronic Government Authority. “The CSB stopped issuing the traditional paper statements and launched the e-salary service in November 2009”. IT Systems Director Ahmed Abdulrahman Al-Matawa said. The cyber system has since then

been expanded to cover all ministries. “The essential aim is to reduce the costs of printing, transportation and distribution and ensure the expedite issuance of e-salary and job-related data”, He said. New innovative services are being developed to benefit employees via the E-Government gate, SMS and other technological means.

08 egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

districts (wilayas) via dedicated broadband link with a counterpart in the north. Its aim is to enable southern doctors to make diagnoses in consultation with those in the coastal cities. The government has also launched an ICT

training project aiming to support 1 million residents of all ages and social status, in partnership with the professional training ministry. Several training centres will be established and financed through an existing ICT development fund.

Bahrain to Introduce 70 e-Services in a Year

International eGovernment Forum at the Isa Cultural Centre, in Juffair. The Deputy Prime Minister said Bahrain had

taken a giant leap towards eGovernment excellence and had positioned itself as one of the leading players in the field.

BIOMETRIC

Biometric Access for Foreigners in Malaysia Malaysia is all set to use biometric system on foreigners entering the country from next month, the Immigration Department has informed. However, Persons with Disabilities (OKU) and children below 12 years of age would be exempted from the system. For a start, the system would

be installed at 61 of the 96 entry points into the

country and the rest by end of the year, he told reporters here. In another development, he said the department would introduce a system for Malaysians to renew their passports through its website. It was now being carried out in Klang Valley and would be expanded to other areas next month.

industry

STATE DATA CENTRE

uid

Prithvi Info bags Mizoram SDC project Hyderabad based ICT firm —Prithvi Information Solutions— has bagged the Rs 12.5 crore Mizoram State Data Center (SDC) project. The state-of-art project is primarily for the design, site preparation, supply, installation, commissioning, maintenance and operations of the State Data Center at Aizawl.

The initial build phase of this SDC is expected to be completed in six months time, followed by 5 years of Facility Management Services for the Data Center. The proposed SDC will be connected to the State Wide Area Network (SWAN), which will help provide the access to the e-Governance applica-

ACQUISITION

tions and services to government employees through Intranet and to the citizens through public Internet and CSC. Earlier Prithvi had bagged SDCs from state governments of Haryana, Nagaland and a Data Center project from MAHAGENCO (Maharastra Generation Company), Mumbai.

Green firewalls

Glodyne Technoserve Acquires Comat Technologies Glodyne Technoserve Limited announced the acquisition of Comat Technologies, another solution provider of e-Governance services in India. Comat has created a niche in the e-Governance sector in the country having worked with governments in using technology to provide services that ensure reach to millions of people and bring efficiency in the processes. Comat acquisition will help Glodyne expand its reach in new states and add several key partner-

news

ships and relationships with governments for providing citizen-centric programs. Amongst others, Comat has a pipeline of current projects such as UID services. It has also implemented PDS program which encompasses complete computerisation of the Food and Civil Supplies department covering over 10 million families across Karnataka. Glodyne intends to fully leverage these opportunities to continue to expand its presence in the e-Governance space.

World’s First Green Firewalls With the adoption of Intellienergy Green Technology, one can get upto eighty percent reduction in power consumption. ZyXEL Communications, one of the providers of complete broadband access solutions has come up with the world’s first Green firewall productsUSG-20 and USG-50.The exclusive Intellienergy Green Technology reduces power consumption through the medium of traffic, link status and smart fan. ZyXEL is committed to developing products that protect the environment and also helps its users to reduce their energy costs

without compromising performance. ZyXEL is committed to responsible environmental practices throughout the business and technology, developmental process. With key benefits like secure connectivity, proactive protection, policy compliance, network resilience, manageability, cost-effectiveness, the Unified Gateway Series comprise of key applications like ZyWALL USG clean-traffic architecture and endpoint security which protects against network risks such as viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, spyware, phishing attacks.

Sanovi Tehnologies Bags UID Project Deal Sanovi Technologies Pvt Ltd, announced that it has bagged the disaster recovery management contract for India’s Unique Identification (UID) project, ‘Aadhaar’. As part of the agreement, Sanovi Technologies will provide Disaster Recovery Management (DRM) software that combines monitoring, reporting, testing and drill automation capabilities for this data-intensive UID project. This scalable, industry standards based will be used at the datacenters in Bangalore and New Delhi. “It is a great honor for us to be associated with such a prestigious project of the Government of India like Aadhaar (Unique Identification Project),” said Chandra Sekhar Pulamarasetti, Founder & CEO, Sanovi Technologies.

PNB Focuses on Dedicated IT Innovations Punjab National Bank has announced it would focus on expansion of technology driven services to meet its present requirements. PNB executive director Rakesh Sethi said it is today’s demand to serve customer’s better with technology driven services like internet

banking, mobile banking, SMS alerts, and the bank’s thrust will be on this to maintain its well established position in the market. He added that time and not money “is a major factor today and the bank which shortens the duration of dealing, will be ahead in

competition.” “Customer’s major concern while depositing money is its safety and SMS alert is best system to check the money has been deposited or withdrawn and also decreases likelihood of any fraud,” he said at a press conference here. Sethi said

that the bank’s ATMs will also be strengthened and all the ATMs will be outsourced to a central hub. Earlier, Sethi inaugurated a door step banking service, under which, cash will collected from customers from their doorsteps and deposited to their accounts.

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

THE PREMIER GLOBAL PLATFORM FOR E-DEVELOPMENT Presents

1-3 August 2011 | The Ashok, New Delhi, India Event Highlights

EXPO

l Power packed thematic sessions on governance and health l Exposition on e-Governance and e-Health technologies l Platform for exploring new business avenues in government and health sectors l Awards for excellence in governance and health standards across the globe l Opportunities for networking with key international government influencers

eWorld Forum expo will feature an elaborate exhibition and demonstration area where leading international ICT4D players in eGovernment and eHealth sectors, manufacturers, suppliers and service providers will present their latest products and services.

Why participate?

Professional service providers, IT vendors, consulting firms, government agencies and national/ international development organisations involved in e-Government, e-Agriculture, Telecentre, Municipal IT and e-Health domains are encouraged to participate in the exhibition.

l Meet top level decision makers, experts, leaders and stakeholders in ICT arena on governance and health from across the world at one platform l Great networking opportunity with policymakers from different countries, analysts, experts, ICT entrepreneurs l A pla tform to engage with colleagues and experts handling similar ICT projects from all across the world l Expo to showcase cutting edge developments in ICT l Sharing of best practices and knowledge

Launch of the eWorld Forum 2011 by Shri Kapil Sibal, Honâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ble Minister of Communication and Information Technology on 20th April 2011 at The Claridges, New Delhi

delegate profile l Ministers of different countries from world over l Secretary/Chief Secretary level officials from various departments from India and abroad l Key Decision- Makers from governance and health institutions l Officials from bilateral and multilateral agencies l Representatives from NGOs and civil society organisations l ICT entrepreneurs, Industry representatives and experts

supporting partner

CO-Organisers

Department of InformationTechnology Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

Department of Science & Technology Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

Department of Telecommunications Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

Unique Identification Authority of India Government of India

Key Speakers at eworld forum 2011

Kapil Sibal Jyotiraditya Scindia Minister of State for Commerce Union Minister of Communication and Information Technology, and Industry, Government of India Government of India

Hon. Tassarajen Pillay Chedumbrum Minister of Information and Communication Technology, Mauritius

Walter Fust President of Globethics.net Geneva

Ranjith Siyambalapitiya Minister of Telecommunication and Information Technology, Sri Lanka

Agatha Sangma Minister of State for Rural Development, Government of India

Anil K Sinha Vice Chairman, Bihar State Disaster Management Authority Chairman & Co Founder, Global Forum for Disaster Reduction

R Chandrashekhar Secretary, Department of Telecom, Ministry of Communication & IT, Government of India

Dr Ajay Kumar Joint Secretary Department of Information Technology Government of India

Sharda Prasad Joint Secretary and Director General Employment and Training, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India

Dr Amirudin bin Abdul Wahab Head of ICT policy Cluster, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) Malaysia

Smt D Purandeswari Minister of State, Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India

Shankar Agarwal Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of India

R S Sharma Director General, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)

Aruna Sundararajan Joint Secretary, Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, Government of India (GoI)

Shambhu Singh Joint Secretary (North East), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India

Oleg Petrov Coordinator e-Development Thematic Group, The World Bank

Akhtar Badshah Senior director- Global Community Affairs, Microsoft Corporation

Kamolrat Intaratat (Ph.D.) Director, Thai telecentre.org

Purushottam Sharma IGP, Madhya Pradesh

Brendan Doyle Head of Institutional Relation Line, Centre for Information Technology and Communication

Dr Sudhanshu Rai Faculty, Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School

Naimur Rahman Director, OneWorld South Asia

James Clarke Strategic EU Liaison Manager, Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG)

B Bhamathi Additional Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India

For Programme Enquiry Contact: Shuchi Smita, Mobile: +91 8860651649, shuchi@elets.in For Business Enquiry Contact: Ragini Srivastava, Mobile: +91 8860651650, Jyoti Lekhi, Mobile: +91 8860651634, Email: sales@elets.in (for further details visit our website www.eworldforum.net)

www.eworldforum.net

cover story

Reaching the Bottom of Pyramid

Technology driven financial services are enabling those at the bottom of the pyramid to participate in the mainstream economic and social process By Dhirendra Pratap Singh, eGov Bureau

n a slum of Dharavi, Mumbai, leather belt maker Mohan Churi is excited about Indian Bank’s entry in the area. This slum stands right next to the Bandra Kurla complex, Mumbai’s new financial district, a celebration of money in glass and chrome. “A letter of guarantee from Indian Bank, a public sector bank would go a long way in establishing credibility in my business,” he says. Dharavi’s residents cannot open accounts in banks in adjacent boroughs for a variety of reasons: the inability to provide proof of identity or address or both, or provide a letter of guarantee from existing account holders at the branch. The people of Dharavi are cut off from the mainstream. Likewise in a remote village of Andhra Pradesh, a daily-wage worker no longer needs to travel to the distant bank branch. A business correspondent (BC), a bank-appointed agent who comes to the village with an electronic handheld device connected to the bank, facilitates withdrawal of his money, deposits and other transactions. Indeed, financial inclusion has become a major policy plank. Government of India has decided to provide essential financial services like savings, credit, micro-insurance and remittance, for all villages with population over 2,000 by March 2012.

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

Dial Up, Pay Up : Mobile banking providers offer low-cost banking on mobile

cover story

“Financial Inclusion is an opportunity for the Government to ensure equal prospects to the citizens to partake the fruits of economic development. It is one way of empowering vast masses of poor, illiterate, meek, suppressed, weak, vulnerable citizens with financial lifelines for savings, loans, investment, insurance and social security. It is a safety valve to diffuse potential social tensions arising out of vast disparity in distribution of wealth,” says R.K. Dubey, Executive Director, Central Bank of India. Sensing an opportunity, banks, technology providers and microfinance agencies are rushing into partnerships to roll out no-frills accounts, expand the network of Business Correspondents, and launch biometric smart cards, micro ATMs and mobile banking services to drive this mission. It’s not just a social or political objective; financial inclusion will also augment the topline growth of the banks. RBI studies show that only 54 percent adults in India have a bank account and of the 431

R K Dubey

Alok Agarwal Executive Director, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd.

“With robust growth transforming India into one of the leading economies of the world there is an urgent need to include more and more people into the ambit of insurance” districts targeted for achieving 100 percent financial inclusion in 2006, only 204 have been successful. Concerns on the front of income distribution and poverty alleviation cannot be met without full-scale expansion of banking and other financial services. Indian growth story as impressive, there were concerns on issues like income distribution and poverty alleviation, where lot remained to be done.

Executive Director, Central Bank of India

Social and economic inequalities

“Financial Inclusion is an opportunity for the Government to ensure equal prospects to the citizens to partake the fruits of economic development. It is a safety valve to diffuse potential social tensions arising out of vast disparity in distribution of wealth”

India ranks 119th among 169 countries on the 2010 Human Development Index published by the United Nations Development Programme. India has issues of water, sanitation, power, infrastructure and environmental degradation. More importantly, there are issues of social and economic inequalities and multiple deprivations. Inclusive growth is impossible without financial inclusion and successful implementation of government schemes in the Eleventh Five Year Plan would be impossible to achieve, without access to the banking sector. The rationale behind this is that access to finance, along with fair and transparent products and services, is a source of empowerment and allows people to participate more effectively in the economic and social process. “Currently, more than half of India’s population remains outside the economic mainstream with limited access to risk management solutions namely health and impact of weather in their lives. With robust growth transforming India into one of the leading economies of the world there is an urgent need to include more and more people into the ambit of insurance. ICICI Lombard is building financial inclusion on the bedrock of insurance by ensuring cost

effective access to relevant risk solutions across rural India”, says Alok Agarwal, Executive Director, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd. A number of schemes seek to address issues of livelihood and seek to act as social security nets. To make these schemes and policy interventions effective, it is important that the common person in general and beneficiaries in particular have access to the banking sector to receive and make payments on their own account. Technology and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act (MGNREGA) have combined to boost financial inclusion in rural areas. According to the Ministry of Rural Development, 69 per cent of over `75,000 crore released to the state governments under MGNREGA has been paid to workers through banks.

ICT Based Financial Services Conventional banking models of brick, mortar and men cannot reach out to more than six lakh villages owing to the humongous cost. Adoption of end to end Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) solution alone can make any such a model feasible and viable. Had it not been for the development of cost effective ICT, financial inclusion would have remained a distant dream for us. The MGNREGA scheme has resulted in the financial inclusion of more than 8.6 crore workers who have opened bank or post office accounts. This success has led banks like Central Bank of India to offer ‘Cent bachat khata’ which can be opened with zero amount. The number of villages covered through this bank’s ICT-based plan has jumped from 127 in 2009 to 598 in 2010. The number of BCs climbed July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

cover story

Inclusive growth is impossible without financial inclusion and successful implementation of government schemes in the Eleventh Five Year Plan would be impossible to achieve, without access to the banking sector from 31 to 180 and smart cards from 4,160 to 77,648. Central Bank of India is the Nodal Bank for implementing e-Shakti, the flagship project of Government of Bihar, in which ICT based Financial Inclusion solution is adopted to record attendance, calculate wages and make payments to the MGNREGA beneficiaries. The Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project (BRLP), also known as JEEVIKA, in which the bank’s initiatives have been recognised, strives to build vibrant and bankable women’s community institutions through self help groups (SHGs). Debit card usage in India has grown rapidly. According to the Reserve Bank of India, the outstanding number of debit cards rose 25 percent, while the volumes transacted jumped 46 percent in 2010-11 compared to the previous year.

UID & Financial Inclusion The government’s Unique Identification (UID) number can provide the identity infrastructure for ensuring financial inclusion across the country – banks can link the unique number to a bank account for every resident, and use

the online identity authentication to allow residents to access the account from anywhere in the country. Thus the project is a fundamental link for widespread financial inclusion in the country. “The Aadhaar number can be employed in multiple applications, including the PDS and MGNREGS and in banking for the poor. While Aadhaar cannot be a panacea for all the challenges which programmes such as the PDS or MGNREGS currently face. Aadhaar can be leveraged at various points in these programmes to improve the delivery system by making them more transparent, convenient and cost effective,” says R S Sharma, Director General and Mission Director, Unique Identification Authority of India. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has kicked-off field trials of its UID based financial inclusion transaction model in Jharkhand. Till date in the state, about 1.5 lakh bank accounts have been opened through UID and 9.5 lakh people have been included in the Aadhaar project, dedicated to issue UID numbers. This model allows customers in rural areas

Facts that count •

•

In India, 204 of 431 districts targeted have achieved 100 percent financial inclusion Only 54 percent adults in India have a bank account and less than 10 percent of villages benefit from a bank branch 45.9 million or 51.4 percent of farmer households in India do not have access to

Sources: RBI, Ministry of Rural Development

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

•

any kind of credit 69 percent of the ` 75,000 crore MGNREGA grant has reached workers via no-frills bank accounts Only 11 percent of the 25 million no-frills accounts opened between April 2007 and May 2009 are operational Out of the total 74 million no frill accounts opened

•

in the country last year, only 3 percent of them are operational Out of the 5,000 new branches that were opened in 2011, only 21 percent are in rural areas, and the number of urban households covered under the no frill accounts are double than that of rural households

to conduct banking transactions with business correspondents of any bank using UID authentication.

Direct Cash Transfer The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has suggested direct cash transfer through banks and ATMs to the targeted groups to ‘plug leakages’ in the implementation of direct cash subsidy — a move that is expected to revolutionise the subsidy payment mechanism for LPG cylinder and kerosene oil to the beneficiaries, especially poor sections, and change the fertiliser subsidy payment mechanism to the farmers. If all goes according to the plan, the government proposes to launch pilot projects for transfer of direct cash subsidy to the targeted groups in seven states – Tamil Nadu, Assam, Maharashtra, Delhi, Rajasthan and Orissa within the next six months. This is a commendable step towards spelling out the mechanics of the transition from today’s leaky subsidy regime to a system of direct cash subsidies. However, the success of direct cash transfers depends on proper identification of the beneficiaries; an issue that is beyond the jurisdiction of the task force and falls squarely in the government’s domain. The UIDAI report has suggested creation of an IT-drive ‘Core Subsidy Management System (CSMS)’, which will be able to detect fraud and diversions. Beneficiaries can report malpractices to the government directly, making it possible for the government to react in a timely manner.

RuPay National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has also started unique India CardRupay which would be domestic alternative to the global real-time payment processing firms like Visa and MasterCard.

cover story

interview

“ICT has a great role

to play in Implementing financial inclusion”

T.M. Bhasin, Chairman and Managing Director, India Bank

(BC) and so the process needs to be aligned as

information about money and benefits of having

per the requirement and operations need to be

a relationship with a formal banking institu-

carried out by Field BCs. Some of the improve-

tion. The aim should be to build the required

ments that need to be re –engineered in the

long-term trust and ultimately to enlarge the

ICT model are Improving efficiency of internal

‘bancarisation’ of the population.

operations - Improving productivity, quality, speed

used to spearhead the Financial Literacy efforts

precision. Also, by providing value added services

of the bank in rural areas. I strongly opine that,

and enhancements – apart from providing

financial literacy and awareness should be created

basic banking services, facility for making all

in the minds of the children and young population

Reasons contributing financial exclusion should

utility payments like electricity bill, telephone

who are the future potential customers of the

be first analysed and steps should be initiated to

rentals, mobile recharges, shall be offered to the

bank and financial education should be introduced

overcome the obstacles. The nature of exclusion

customers under the ICT model; and getting into

as a part of the school curriculum.

and the factors responsible for it are varied and

new competencies – new innovative projects shall

thus, no single factor could explain the phenom-

be designed based on the requirement of the

enon. Some of the factors are non-availability of

customer type with use of technology.

What are the prerequisites for greater and wider Financial Inclusion?

psychological and cultural barriers, bank charges,

Share your views about the future of e-Banking and mobile banking in India.

terms and conditions, level of income, type of

There are 600,000 unbanked villages in India and only 38 percent of the country’s bank branches are in rural areas. How can we mitigate the challenges?

In the fast moving environment, spending time

occupation and attractiveness of the product.

Certainly the task is challenging but not impossible.

to visit the bank branches for effecting banking

With the advancement of technology in banking

transactions has considerably come down. Alter-

banking stream is to reach them at their place of

and initiatives provided by RBI and Govt. of India,

natively, channels such as ATM, Internet, mobile

residence or work by providing doorstep banking

banks have started providing banking services in

banking services are picking up steadily apart

through cost effective technology driven model

the unbanked villages through various models. The

from the existing bank branches services. Further,

with suitable and innovative financial products

process has been taken up for more than 73,000

unmanned e-banking lounges are going to occupy

and by imparting financial literacy which will have

villages with population above 2,000 by all banks

a predominant place in future banking scenario.

and the same will be extended to villages having

bank branches nearby, gender issues, age factor, legal identity, limited literacy, lack of awareness among the public & banking habit, place of living,

The only way to include the left over segment to

desired result and can pave the way for greater

Mobile Banking is going to play a vital role in

and wider Financial Inclusion. Unbanked people in

financial development of all sectors in general

urban areas should also be brought under bank-

and poor rural masses in India in particular in the

ingambit for greater and wider Financial Inclusion

days to come without involving any middlemen or incurring transportation cost and man-power

According to you, what kind of re-engineering is needed for effective implementation of ICT in Financial Inclusion? Information Technology has played a key role in enabling and supporting banking sector’s business

wastage. Mobile Money transfer will certainly improve income level of agriculturists, labourers, small merchants and rural masses like Kenyan Mobile Money Service M-PESA which resulted in 5 to 30 per cent increase in their income level.

population 2,000 and below in a phased manner. Indian Bank has been allocated with 1512 villages with population more than 2,000 and we have planned to provide banking services in all those villages by March-2012. Besides this it is also planned to cover 40 villages with population 2000 and below by March-2013. Thus banking services will be provided in all the unbanked villages allotted to Indian Bank. Majority of the villages will be covered through the ICT based smartcard enabled Busi-

Inclusion and to achieve breakthrough results.

Financial illiteracy remains a major stumbling block for the Government’s efforts for inclusion of people. According to you which model should be adopted to avoid such stumbling blocks?

In ICT based Financial Inclusion, the activity

The primary focus of the Financial Inclusion

health insurance will make the Financial Inclusion

centre point is the field Business Correspondent

programme should be on provision of basic

Model further viable and bankable.

initiatives and service delivery and brought about a sea-change in its approach and attitude to challenges. Business process re-engineering is required for effective implementation of ICT based Financial

Programmes such as “Swabhimaan” should be

and customer service as well as better business

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

ness Correspondent model which will able to provide online banking facilities like withdrawals, deposits, remittances, credit linkage. Introduction of suitable credit and deposit products depending on the requirement of the rural clientele and providing social security coverage like life and

cover story

R S Sharma Director General & Mission Director, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)

“The Aadhaar number can be employed in banking for the poor. It can be leveraged to improve the delivery system by making them more transparent and cost effective” RuPay card will have two identification features. The cardholder will have to provide the UID number for biometric identification for using micro-ATMs, while the PIN will be required for transactions via ATMs. The card, which will be given to ‘no frills’ account holders, can be used to withdraw cash from ATMs as well as from micro-ATMs, the hand-held devices with the bank’s business correspondents. Bank of India will give the first batch of automated teller machines (ATM)-cum-debit cards to Unique Identification (UID) number holders in Pagdha village of Maharashtra’s Thane district. The bank plans to roll out these cards through each of its five sponsored regional rural banks by next month. Corporation Bank and Union Bank of India are next in line to issue the ATM-cum-debit RuPay cards.

field for access,” says Abhishek Sinha, CEO, Eko Financial Services. The Eko model works on the fundamental premise of giving everyone a bank account. Eko is building a low cost financial services infrastructure to increase the reach of financial institutions to the un-banked and to democratise financial services for the un-banked in urban as well as rural areas: powered by innovation and technology. Before 1990, the country’s financial industry was mainly one of ‘distributed banking’. Later,

Abhishek Sinha CEO, Eko Financial Services.

Mobile Banking According to a McKinsey report, in a country where more than 65 percent of the population has limited or no access to a bank, one out of two persons owns a mobile phone or a TV. Here, 10,000 people share one bank branch and ATM, but collectively own 5,100 mobile phones. The report says that the one billion number that today represents mobile phone owners in emerging markets without a bank account will grow to 1.7 billion by 2012. “The communication infrastructure can be utilised by Business Correspondent and Technology Service Providers to allow low cost last-mile access. MNOs have a responsibility to ensure that they extend their infrastructure (SMS/GPRS/ Voice/USSD) to other providers in a fair manner while also competing with them. Owing to a conflict of interest at the MNO, the members of this forum must work to ensure a level playing

“The communication infrastructure can be utilised by Business Correspondent and Technology Service Providers to allow low cost lastmile access”

during 1995-97, technology transformed that structure into a networked one under which branches located in a region were interconnected. The centralised environment appeared in 2000 that, from a single location, consolidated and rationalised everything from sales to products and processes. “Mobile banking in India has the unstinted support of RBI and its sister organisations. The “bank-led” model proposed has ample flexibility for vendors, merchants and stakeholders to meaningfully participate. With Interbank Mobile Payment System, users have the option to register for a 7-digit Mobile Money Identifier. Senders can remit money in real-time to any receiver with an MMID and a mobile number”, suggests Chandrashekar Rao Kuthyar, Sr Product Line Manager – Finacle Mobile Banking- universal banking solution from Infosys Technologies.

Future Standardisation of Person to Merchant payments will be the next growth phase with services such as Mobile Pre-Paid Top-up, DTH top-up, Cinema Ticketing, Airline/Train/Bus Ticketing and Toll Payment included within Mobile Banking. Virtual Wallets will be new instruments facilitating payments. Cardless ATM transactions would be another service. With smart phones, native phone capabilities can be leveraged to improve customer experience. For example, utility Bill Companies may introduce QR codes to facilitate reduced data entry on mobile phones. The industry is moving towards Relationship based, Personalised and Context-Aware banking. “Financial Inclusion ought to provide an opportunity to participate in the growth of economy and getting benefited from the growing money and capital markets and not merely having an access to banking services. The supply driven Business Correspondent model and the no frill bank accounts for the working poor fail to apprise its utility and potential to the target audience and hence the demand and ownership remains latent”, says Dr Kavim V Bhatnagar, Invest India Economic Foundation. As a nation India will have to decide its priorities and accordingly plan where the government should focus its energies. It should be on ensuring greater access to rudimentary financial products like a bank account, life insurance and pension to larger numbers of Indians. If inclusive growth is the leitmotif for sustainable development there is no doubt which must take precedence. It is financial inclusion. July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

PSU Focus

Special focus PSU focus

interview

PSUs waking up to the value that proper processes can add to businesses

RK Tandon Managing Director, IRCTC

I V Sharma, Director (R&D), BEL

PSUs: Performance Structures Unlimited The Public Sector Undertakings which were earlier plagued with the ‘sarkari’ tag of inefficiency are leveraging the new age technologies to redefine the work structure and thus re-engineering growth. By Sonam Gulati, eGov Bureau

e-engineering can be rightly called the mantra for big public sector enterprises these days. Public Sector Enterprises have long been overshadowed by their tendency to be more like a ‘sarkari’ office and thus often perceived as the inefficient sector which is less focused on innovation and productivity. But, all is changing

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

as we are seeing the new ‘avatars’ these PSUs are donning leaving no stone unturned to face the water-tight market when it comes to productivity and efficiency. As is widely known and accepted, PSUs are great contributors to the economy. In the Financial Year (FY) 2009, 18 major PSUs contributed 15 per cent of GDP and 47 per cent of total income. Over the years

PSU focus

though, they have been facing very stiff competition from the ever-growing and expanding private sectors. Also, due to being government enterprise at the end of the day, they are infamous for a lot of corruption and nepotism. The organisations are big enterprises but yet maligned with the ‘sarkari’ tag and thus plagued with poor work ethics and lack of efficiency. This fact is slowly being realised by the PSUs and things are being re-arranged to sync with the times. With the FDI the MNCs have come up with multiple offices in India and it has made the market watertight in terms of competition and deliverables and client expectations. PSUs, though still holding major portions in the country’s growth story needed to combat this competition with the right strategy. This is where the need for innovation came in. Technology in the form of innovative solutions is the order of the day today. Where a company like Cisco is holding its conferences via video conferences and screens its high-time our PSUs did away with those files for a start. The challenge was not to adopt high-tech IT solutions, the challenge was to align the existing infrastructure with the new deployments and even make the manpower migrate to the new systems in a hassle-free manner. “Technology for government sector or PSUs has a huge scope today. Though we can’t say that technology will bring will or accountability in people to work more efficiently, it can surely speed up the process and put it in order,” said Mathew Thomas, VP, Strategic Industries, SAP. SAP has been focusing on the Public Sector Undertakings for around three-four years and has been deploying customized integrated solutions for many PSUs. According to SAP, realisation is dawning rapidly on the PSUs to combat this competition posed by the private sector and now they are turning into demanding customers when it comes to deploying solutions. “The unique thing about working with PSUs is that they are one of the most aware customers. They know what they want. It then becomes more challenging for us as solution providers to come up to the expectations. They often ask us to show them demos of end-to-end solutions and integrated process that can be s to suit their enterprise. The PSUs are not anymore happy with just a power point and any packaged solution,” he added. “While many government organisations have been aggressive in the adoption of technology,

its usage particularly amongst some PSUs has been relatively slow over the years. That said, we do anticipate for the current levels of usage to increase over the next few years as these companies are slowly but surely realising its potential benefits of increased efficiencies and better economies of scale. We have seen some PSUs move to a transparent fair and secure e-bidding and e-evaluation process,” according Ramsunder Papineni, Director Sales, India, McAfee. Integration of systems is of utmost importance when it comes to managing such big enterpirses as the PSUs due to large operations and manpower. As told by Naveen Mishra, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, “As far as the PSUs are concerned, the leading enterprises are doing much better in terms of leveraging IT. Hey are looking at different technologies and trying to consolidate and compete with the global markets. However, several PSUs are relatively lagging in the IT adoption.” He also said that IT modernisation and consolidation is the mantra today.

Why Should They Revamp? The question is why should they restructure their processes? It is quite plain and simple. The fact that today, the market is highly competitive and vacuum tight because of the kind of opportunities and scope the various sectors give. For the PSUs it might not be so much as the question of retaining market share as it is of their own functioning as well as image. For instance, re-aligning their structures through ERP solutions only gives thema better picture of their own productivity and revenues. Where they are losing where there is profit. As rightly put bu RK Tandon, MD, IRCTC (detailed interview follows) “Through ERP we have been able to see at one glance which trains are running in losses and which ones making profit. What are the areas of improvement and the whole performance review can be viewed. Also, the whole os this data is integrated so all the offices across the country can see it without any hassle.” Similarly, leveraging the benefits of a technology like Unified Communication or Vitualisation increases the efficiency manifold while making the company ‘greener’.

Tech Trends There are various technologies that are now catching the fancy of the ‘top cops’ of PSUs. e-Procurement is one of them. “Business intelligence, mobile technology, ERP solutions and

e-Procurement are the top four technologies that are coming up in a big way,” said Mathew Thomas from SAP. e-Procurement is one of those technologies that are helping the PSUs in a big way since all the work is tender-based. It makes the process much more transparent and fair to all the competitors. According to Naveen Mishra of Gartner, Unified Communication, Virtualisation, Cloud Computing, Consolidation, Modernisation are the big focus areas. “Optimising their processes and application re-engineering are going to be the verticals to watch out for in PSUs. The way we see it, PSUs are trying to be more competitive for the market as a whole and that is one of the differentiation in global market.” . Ramsundar Papineni, McAfee also included virtualisation, mobility and the consolidation of networks in the major technological trends for PSUs. “From a security standpoint, the integrated and interlocked defence and depth security solutions and threat vectors are some innovations that will see immense adoption,” he added.

Share in The Pie There is no doubt that PSUs are accelerating the growth of the economy and thus have a great share in the pie-chart of Indian economy. Nevertheless, there again is no second thoughts on the need of re-engineering and business transformation in the internal functioning of these enterprises as to be with the time and compete with today’s opposition they have to be as techno-savvy as them. “There is definitely a lot of untapped potential in terms of technology adoption among PSUs. Given the fact that most PSUs in India have their plants located in remote areas across India, technology can enable them to build a seamless and robust network. Technology and last mile productivity can facilitate PSUs to boost their infrastructure capabilities and increase their success rate for projects,” Ramsundar Papineni from McAfee stated on the importance of technological development and IT adoption in big enterprises, especially PSUs. The times also call for a clean, hassle-free and customer-friendly approach for which the right use of IT is indispensable. With these new developments and prediction by experts, one can easily say that the PSUs are all geared up to invade the market not only in terms of economic growth but also efficiency and modernisation. July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

PSU FOCUS

RK Tandon Managing Director, Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

PSU FOCUS in person

RK Tandon

Managing Director, Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation

“ICT helps

IRCTC book 3.5 lakh

e-Tickets in a day”

RCTC can be rightly called a pioneer when it comes to electronic G2C services. When and how did it all start, please share with us the journey.

e-Ticketing has been one of our major initiatives and it was started in 2002, IRCTC was also very new at that time. At that time internet was in its boom period in India for such services and thus was the idea born. More and more people had started using the internet then and we thought that this is the right time to utilse the growing potential of the service. Initially, there was another school of thought that it might not be a very dependable and successful way of issuing tickets as there would no proper tickets and thus it was decided that the booking will be done on the internet but the tickets will be home delivered. On the first day that e-ticketing was started, just about 27 tickets were booked online and today 3.5 lakhs of tickets are booked on a daily basis. Such has been the journey.

Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is a Miniratna PSU under the Indian Railways and looks after the whole travel experience of a passenger from booking tickets to platform maintenance, food, and trains interalia. In a candid conversation with Sonam Gulati and Rajeshree Dutta Kumar of eGov Bureau RK Tandon,

First e-Booking, then electronic ticketing and now sms alerts and PNR status. How difficult it is to manage technology when the end-users’ number spans to billions? It is a big challenge. To think of it, every day we are leaving a set of 30,000-40,000 people successfully getting their tickets booked it gives us some inspiration to keep going the last mile. Firstly, I would say that there is a huge gap between the demand and supply. The demand exceeds supply at most times and in that area we as IRCTC can’t do much. If there was adequate supply of berths and seats then it would have been a different situation. Another big challenge is to manage the entire system on the cloud. If we look at figures, every hour around 10,000 people are getting their tickets reserved on IRCTC. But, in the peak hours in the morning around 35,000-40,000 people book their tickets. I will give you one example, when CBSE board results or any National exam results are declared there is a point when most of students are trying to check their results and thus the site gets jammed at that point of time, the IRCTC website experiences the same crunch daily. A lot of factors are involved in this, we have to have a secure payment system, people too need to have a proper speed internet connection and at the end we need a proper

MD, IRCTC reveals the journey IRCTC has undertaken what role did technology play in their covetable journey

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

PSU FOCUS

fact file • •

On first day of e-Ticketing

35,000 tickets are booked

just 27 tickets were booked

per hour

Today 3.5 tickets are being

•

booked daily •

morning

peak

time,

•

TCS designed the ERP for

printed ticket soon, just the

IRCTC in 2006-07

PNR number in your phone

IRCTC got its Miniratna tag

and Identity Proof would do

when it comes to managing such a large organisation with so many verticals to look after. Say if we have 500 trains, so to manage each and every train’s contracts, maintenance information, bills, pending dues, when are the contracts due, when are the payments due and much more has become much easier with the integrated solutions of ERP. Another management report that we have

“In 2002 the number of

tickets getting booked was 27,000 per day and in 2008 it went up to 40,000. After 2008 it took a big leap towards lakhs” interface. To manage all of this is a big challenge. The site has to run 23 hours and yet 60,000 people are not being able to book their tickets. In 2002 the number of tickets getting booked was 27,000 and in 2008 it went up to 40,000. After 2008 it took a big leap towards lakhs. These are the major challenges and we are fighting them every day.

Please share with us the IT solutions that you have deployed for the internal management of the organisation. Were there any ERP management solutions deployed or re-engineering done so as to improve internal work structure? We already have an ERP system in place in the organisation. It was done in association with TCS in the year 2006-07. The ERP has been very helpful in managing the organisation’s financial transactions. All our regional, zonal offices and the service centres are linked and integrated through ERP. In fact, ERP has been a boon

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

in 2008 • You won’t have to carry a

been able to maintain through ERP is the profit and loss accounts of different trains. So, we have each train or routes profit and loss data integrated in one software which makes it easy for us to monitor also.

In all your endeavors with prominent use of ICT, how has it impacted the efficiency, revenues and time taken for completion of projects? Well, yes the IT adoption has definitely helped in the performance of IRCTC. We can monitor the whole profit and loss statements of all stations, as mentioned earlier too. There are both real-time data as well as monthly reports being generated for different stations. Comparisons of expenditure also can be done for a set period of say 3 years or 5 years. Obviously it is helping the organisation. All that management of resources, payments, expenditures, doing analysis and comparisons it all is being done through ERP. This is helping the organisation highly in monitoring.

How do you rate IRCTC as a PSU and what is your take on the activities that have been undertaken by the organisation? IRCTC got its Miniratna tag in 2008 and is a schedule ‘B’ company and it started with a small capital base about Rs 20 crore. In terms of its performance, we have these performance MoUs between Minsitries and the organisation, IRCTC has been getting the rating as ‘Excellent’ for the past 2 years. When you look at the other PSUs, particularly the other Railway PSUs, they do not deal with the citizen directly unlike IRCTC. IRCTC’s whole agenda is to enhance the citizen experience and that is the unique feature of this organisation. We take care of the needs of the passengers. There were two objectives envisaged for the Indian railways, first was to provide hospitality and catering services and the second was to use it tourism development. So, IRCTC has been doing a unique job and is excelling, the fact that we can constantly improve and learn is also not neglected.

What would your words be for your customers? My idea has always been that the passenger is my monitor and we have these constant surveys and public opinion polls for their feedback. Be it complaints or praise, I should be accessible. We recently got a toll-free number so that people don’t have to spend money to talk to us. We have always tried to have as many channels possible for feedback. Quality of services is the focus. We even have the SLA revised on the basis of public opinion polls. In fact a new service which we are looking to introduce for our citizens, we have thought of using Mobile Technology. There will be no need to carry printouts of tickets; you can just carry your tickets or PNR on your mobile along with your identity proof you can travel. Our focus will always be the total experience of the citizens and that is what we constantly work on.

To learn more, visit hidglobal.com/fargo-dtc-eGov or Contact: hidindia@hidglobal.com | +91 9899116054

PSU FOCUS

I V Sharma Director (R&D) Bharat Electronics (BEL)

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

in person PSU FOCUS

I V Sharma

Director (R&D), Bharat Electronics (BEL)

“ImplemeNting

erp solutions is indeed

a milestone for an organisation”

hat are the various products and services in which BEL deals.

Giving the country some of the best defence

We are in the business of defence electronics. Primarily, we supply electronic systems to Army, Air Force, Navy and para-military. We have a large in-house R&D set-up; we develop products, manufacture, supply and support them. Our critical feature is the long-term support that we provide. We provide long-term support of 15-20 years our products and it is an important requirement in our business. Communication is one of the main segments in which we operate. Radars, Sonars, C4I systems, Electronic Warfare systems, and Electro-optics which includes night vision products are the other main segments of our product portfolio. The in-house R&D is a major strength of the organisation. Close to 60 percent of the turnover comes from inhouse R&D and 75-80 per cent of products are indigenously developed.

products and various

How has IT helped a large organisation such as BEL? What are the IT solutions deployed in your organisation?

IV Sharma, Director

An organisation of such a magnitude cannot really function without IT support and we have been using it for more than 20 years. Five years back, before 2005, different units and locations used to have independent IT solutions and in some cases functions like Marketing, Finance and Manufacturing also were not integrated. From 2005 onwards we started working on an integrated ERP through SAP. A lot of customisation was needed to suit our requirements. Currently, all our Units and offices including the ones in Singapore and New York are networked and integrated. Technology has changed the way we work; it is all the more efficient and easy now. All data is now integrated through ERP. These deployments have made a huge difference in the productivity and accountability.

Chawla, Sonam Gulati of

IT solutions, Bharat Electronics (BEL) is rightly of the greatest Public Sector Enterprise of the country. When it came the time to move on an upgrade they invested a good amount in deploying new-age solutions, (R&D), BEL talks to Divya eGov Bureau about the challenge to retain the original quality infusing it with the technological enhancement

How expensive were these new technological solutions and how has it impacted the efficiency? It has been a big investment employing these new solutions. We have spent around Rs 40 Crore on the ERP deployment, for hardware, software, integrating and customising.

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

PSU FOCUS

Please share your views, advantages and disadvantages of using e-Procurement. Earlier we have been using e-tendering in civil contracts and e-Procurement has just been initiated at BEL recently. No doubt it has been a good step as we will be saving a lot of time on the procurement and the cost of procurement also will come down. There could be certain reluctance in some of the areas for different reasons and difficulties in adopting this process. However, we have started working on it and I am sure that we will derive benefits. Also one major positive of this system is that it increases transparency between the suppliers and BEL. We handle more

our operations based on technology but as we see it now, we have done it with verve. Now we are at a stage where we have implemented all major modules related to Design, Manufacture, Finance and HR. We have also completed setting up of an integrated data base and a disaster recovery station. Now all major operations are with the ERP system and thus we see it as a time to move to the next level. On the future road map are Processes like Knowledge Management, Customer Relations Management and Supplier Relations Management. CRM will include complaint management systems for our customers. We have an order book of Rs 23,000 crore and Rs 10,000 crore worth of orders are in the pipeline.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Every 5-6 years new

technology comes and the old one becomes obsolete thus it is

important for organisation like ours to keep evolvingâ&#x20AC;?

As a result we have saved around Rs 11-15 crore per year in terms of manpower reduction. Operational efficiency and the speed with which a product can be manufactured, our speed and accuracy with which we can quote, and our ability to take better decisions based on database availability all has been enhanced with the help of ERP. Customer satisfaction has improved through better delivery and support; Business acquisition has improved due to more accurate data based decision making. These things benefit the organisation in long-term.

How did you train your manpower for the transition to the new technology so as to maximise the utilisation and effectiveness? Wipro partnered for the implementation of SAP in our organisation. Together they have handled implementation and training. There were workshops held at the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premises where the manpower was trained and briefed in batches on how to use the new systems most efficiently and also how the new systems and technologies will help them.

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

than 2-3 lakh components which are sourced from a large number of suppliers, and a number of them from abroad. For that, e-Procurement is an advantageous method to maintain a healthy competition and streamline the process. However, integrating the systems in all units and divisions could be a challenge.

As far as new projects are concerned, in Electronics, new technology comes in every 5 to 6 years, thus it is important for an organisation like ours to keep evolving new products constantly. We are looking at a business of approximately Rs.2 lakh crore in this decade. Before the end of this decade, the company can become a Rs.25,000 crore entity.

Please share with us the challenges you faced in your journey and future plans of BEL.

What are your major IT contributions to the country?

Looking back we can say that implementing ERP solutions was a big task for the organisation and indeed an important milestone. It took few years to fully settle the systems and also implement various modules. But now it is successfully integrated into the working of the organisation. A unique requirement in implementation of ERP in our organisation came up due to a number of components common to our products in defence, civilian and export segments. There were challenges due to the diversity and complexity of our products, systems and processes. Then, training of the employees was a big task. Employees initially found the migration from legacy infrastructure and methods to the new system, slightly difficult. But now everything is streamlined. To sum up, it was all a big exercise to transform

Though we have predominantly contributed to empowering the defence forces of the nation, we are proud about two products that touch the lives of the common man. They are the Electronic Voting Machines and the Tablet PC. The Electronic Voting Machines are a phenomenal success in ensuring speedy and accurate election results. In the 2009 elections, 71 crore voters in 8 lakh polling booths, used the Electronic Voting Machines. The Tablet PC is a touch screen, 7 inch PC for rural applications and for education centres. The Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Human Resources Development have asked us to develop these Tablet PCs at a low cost. We have successfully developed it and presently we are working on manufacturing 6 lakh Tablet PCs for the socio-economic census. These cost approximately Rs 3500 per unit.

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policy watch

Bringing Accountability for e-Governance Once the new legislation on e-Services for public is passed, all government departments will have to issue a framework within six months on services to be digitised and formats to be adopted, along with a cut-off date for completing the exercise

By Pragya Gupta, eGOV Bureau

ndia, in last few years, has seen a rapid expansion of IT and telecom at domestic as well as global level, which has resulted in a huge demand for e-Services. With the increasing penetration of computers in urban areas, adoption of e-Services is huge. Looking at the growth of the mobile telephony in the country it is apparent that technology is not a barrier even in rural areas if it is simple to use and has value. As far as public services are concerned, in the last five years, the core ICT infrastructure in the form of State Wide Area Networks (SWAN), State Data Centres (SDC) and front ends in the form of Common Services Centers (CSC) are largely in place. Implementation of Mission Mode Projects (MMP) has ensured availability of considerable services electronically. And now, with the focus on implementation of e-District project, the high volume services at district and sub-district level will be delivered electronically. There is huge demand of efficient, reliable and transparent public services and the experience of e-District services in pilot districts of Kerala, UP, Assam and other States shows that the Indian citizen is ready for these services. In Kerala, in just 180 days, there have been more than 1,00,000 transactions in the two Pilot districts. In Jharkhand, there have been nine lakh transactions on the e-Nagrik through CSCs. In order to penetrate e-Services vertically and horizontally Union Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has proposed the draft of the Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) Bill, 2011. Once enacted, the bill will make it mandatory for every government organisation to deliver public services only in electronic mode. Presently, according to the Information Technology Act 2000, delivery of e-Services is left to the discretion of individual departments and citizens do not have the right to demand these services. However, the ESD Bill 2011 will supersede other related legislations and with this bill, citizens shall have the right to e-Services. Once the new legislation is passed, all government departments will have to issue a framework within six months on the services to be digitised and the formats to be adopted, along with a cut-off date for completing the exercise. Ministry of Communication & Information Technology (MCIT) has invited various stakeholders like state governments, citizens and various departments and released next

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

draft of the bill. The draft Bill was put in the public domain for consultations and it is expected that the same will be finalised within this year.

ESD Bill 2011 After consultations on the first draft, inputs and suggestions were received from government departments, State Governments, Industry, Academia, Civil Society and Citizens. MCIT has finalised second draft after examining, analysing and incorporating the suggestions received.

policy watch

Salient Features 1. It shall be applicable to both Central and State Governments, and all Central and State Government departments and organisations except Jammu and Kashmir. 2. The Head of every Department of the Central or State Government as notified by the Central or State Government including all the Secretaries to the appropriate Government, have been designated as competent authority under the act. These competent authorities shall publish as prescribed within one hundred and eighty days:– a. the public services of the department, agency or body which are to be delivered through electronic mode;. b. the date by which each such service shall be made available through electronic mode. c . the manner of delivery of such services and their service levels; d . the grievance redressal mechanism available to any person aggrieved about the outcome of any request made by him for such service; 3. Each competent authority as mentioned above will, thereafter, review and update these publications every year comprising of details mentioned in 2 (a) to (d). 4. All public services of each department, agency or body shall be delivered in electronic mode within five years from the enactment of this bill and this period may be extended for a further period not exceeding three years by the Central or State Government. 5. An oversight mechanism has been provided for implementation and monitoring of this act in the form of Central Electronic Service Delivery Commission (CESDC) at the Central Government level and State Electronic Service Delivery Commission (SESDC) at the State Government level. 6. The competent authority will submit details regarding implementation of this bill to the CESDC in case of Central Government department or the SESDC case in of State Government Departments 7. Non-compliance in submission of timely information as per requirements to the CESDC or SESDC as the case may be shall attract penal provisions of the Bill.

“Cloud offerings and mobility present a tremendous opportunity to enable e-Services. India being a large country with expanding mobile penetration

The draft Act seeks to mandate within a period of five years from the date of the Act coming into force, provisioning of all public services of the Central and State Government and the field formations and subordinate units of these Ministries compulsorily through electronic mode. There are some services like filing income tax, electricity bill, e-Tickets, online property registration, and banking, which are available online but accessible in the limited cities. With the ESD bill, delivery of all public services like issuing of forms and applications, licenses, permits , certificates, sanction or approval and receipt or payment of money, must be made available with online in all the states. However, the bill excludes the state Jammu and Kashmir. The bill will also address the grievance of citizens like multiple visits to the government office as services will be online and can be availed by the citizen directly or through CSCs. Interestingly, CSC project is running behind its target timeline. But once it is done, it will work in the direction of transparency in government–citizen interface and faster service delivery.

Technological Backbone The bill demands robust infrastructure in terms of technology and service. The services will utilise the ready infrastructure of National e-Governance Action Plan (NeGP). The State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), State Data Centers (SDCs) and Common Service Centers (CSCs) have been commissioned across the country and it will be utilised. These, in association with the State Service Delivery Gateways form the main pillars of e-Governance architecture. Moreover, government is strengthening the ecosystem, which would make the delivery secure, accountable and available. The Unique Identification project, incorporation of Digital Signatures through the

Controller of Certifying Authorities, the proliferation of mobility in the telecommunications space and availability of wider bandwidth for Internet services have contributed steadily to arriving at a critical mass necessary for delivery of Electronic Services. Government is working on enabling cloud model seeing the potential in substantial delivery. “Cloud offerings and mobility present a tremendous opportunity to enable eServices. India being a large country with expanding mobile penetration, the opportunity for governments and business are immense, if tapped well,” highlights Tirthankar Banerjee, Director - Emerging Services and Solutions, Technology Services, HP Enterprise Business, India.

Challenges NeGP has provisioned necessary infrastructure, creating organisational structures and to some extent in delivery of services, the pace of implementation in enabling electronic delivery of public services has not been commensurate with citizen aspiration and expectations. Technology changes faster than anything and matching the pace for sustainable delivery is a challenge. “e-Governance originated in India during the seventies with a focus on in-house government applications in the areas of defence, economic monitoring, planning and the deployment of ICT to manage data intensive functions related. Today, as various technologies matures the adoption levels increase, with government looking for technology that is robust, stable and secure to support a vast number of citizens,” highlights Tirthankar Banerjee Integration of services both existing and new, to give the user a seamless experience is another challenge. Resistance to change, lack of transparency, power and connectivity issues could also be some possible challenges. July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

policy watch

Governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective We de-risk ourselves from technology changes and obsolescence by focusing primarily on Service Delivery requirements and it is upto the Private Partners to ensure that they deploy State of the Art technological solutions to ensure that the systems run efficiently, deliver services and ultimately result in returns on investments Technology changes faster than anything? What are your plans to match the pace for efficient delivery of services? The National e-Governance Plan recommends large projects to be taken up on a Public private Partnership model with well-defined Service Levels for ensuring reliability and efficiency of services. Thus the focus is not really on technology but on processes and Service Levels. Today, technology is not a challenge. We de-risk ourselves from technology changes and obsolescence by focusing primarily on Service Delivery requirements and it is upto the Private Abhishek Singh, Director, e-Governance Project Group, Ministry of Communication & Information Technology

Partner to ensure that he deploys State of the Art technological solutions to ensure that the systems run efficiently, deliver services and ultimately result in returns on investments. We also have mechanisms to leverage new technologies,

Please shed some light on the Technology utilisation in this project?

whether it is in the field of Virtualisation, Mobiles or Cloud in order to ensure that citizens are able

The way services are envisaged to be delivered under NeGP is that all departments and state governments share the common core IT infrastructure in the form of State Wide Area Networks, State Data Centers, Service Delivery Gateways and Common Services Centers. The applications for various services are owned by the respective domain ministries. Thus the basic infrastructure is common and shareable. The UID project (Aaadhaar) is going to provide a common authentication framework for all services that are electronically delivered. Similarly the Service Delivery Gateway will provide a Payment Gateway and a Mobile Service Delivery Gateway also which will serve as the Payment Platform and Mobile Services Integration platform for all services that are being offered electronically. We are also working on enabling â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Cloud Modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; on our data centers so that it will be possible to offer services, infrastructure and platforms on a service model.

to access services seamlessly and in the most efficient manner.

What should be the delivery channel and interface for rural and urban citizen? The delivery channel envisaged in the rural areas are the Common Services Centers and already more than 95,000 centers are operational. Already Government has decided to reposition the scheme of Common Services Centers to be a network of Bharat Nirman Common Services Centers to be set up in all Panchayats. Accordingly, 1,50,000 additional Common Services Centers are planned to be set up in all uncovered Panchayats. These centers will deliver all services relating to Bharat Nirman Programmes and will also deliver business services including financial services. In urban areas, many municipalities are setting up Citizen Facilitation Centers which serve as front

2011

FORUM 1-3 Aug u st 20 1 1 the Ashok, New Delhi, India

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

ends for citizens to access services. In any case, all services are being web enabled and can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. As a long term measure, it is planned to integrate delivery of services with the mobile platform to ensure the large number of mobile phone users in the country. This would also ensure ubiquitous access to services on an anytime anywhere basis in both rural and urban areas.

When can we see the service reaching across India? Maharashtra has proposed a public service delivery bill which is being considered actively by the Government. Government of Delhi has enacted the e SLA Act which gives a Right to Citizens for time bound delivery of public services. Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab have also taken measures to ensure mandatory time bound delivery of public services. In view of the fact that significant ground has been covered under NeGP in terms of provisioning necessary infrastructure, creating institutional / organisational structures and to some extent in delivery of services, the pace of implementation in enabling electronic delivery of public services has not been commensurate with citizen aspirations and expectations. The most critical challenge has been to speed up the process of enabling electronic delivery of public services to the citizens. In view of this and for issues like resistance to change, systemic inertia, procedural hurdles, lack of transparency and legal impediments experienced in electronic delivery of services Government of India has proposed to enact the Electronic Service Delivery Act which would mandate provisioning of all public services compulsorily through electronic means from a specified date. The draft Bill has been put in the public domain for consultations and it is expected that the same will be finalised within this year.

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policy watch

Industry perspective Developed countries of the world typically have moved from basic services to a more evolved set. This has necessitated a critical look at their existing service delivery architecture.Systems are being re-architectured, workload balancing and service provisioning are being virtualized with the objective of providing a 24X7, Online Citizen self-service. complex tax return processes. Integrated case management solutions which enable Governance entities to consolidate, manage and process information on complex issues across various governmental case processes, from social welfare services, to taxpayer services, to homeland security. Public security solutions designed to support the specific processes necessary for homeland security, including border security, emergency preparedness and response, countermeasures, information analysis and external coordination.

Mathew Thomas, Vice President, Strategic Industries, SAP India

What is your view on India’s readiness for Electronic Delivery of services? The Government has been steadily strengthening the ecosystem which would make this service delivery secure, accountable and available. The Unique Identification project, incorporation of Digital Signatures through the Controller of Certifying Authorities, the proliferation of mobility in the telecommunications space and availability of wider bandwidth for Internet services have contributed steadily to arriving at a critical mass necessary for delivery of Electronic Services.

Please share your solution offering which can deliver e-Services efficiently? SAP for Public Sector harnesses the latest technology to meet e-Governance Service Delivery requirements. These solutions enable end-to-end government processes, connecting citizen-facing applications, such as Web sites and portals, to back office functions. So you can automate processes, free resources, and create more value and satisfaction among constituents. The various solutions offered by SAP in this domain are: Constituent services solutions that allow government to offer citizens and businesses a wide range of services including requests for licenses and permits, simple informational responses and

Technology changes faster than anything? Do you think Government is matching pace with that? The Government of India, through its Interoperability Framework for e-Governance in India and the various technology advisory committees is fast evolving a procurement, commissioning and delivery strategy that takes care of technological obsolescence, technology interoperability, technology standards and service delivery agreements. The evolution of shared services and Public Private Partnership models in the last few years have effectively addressed some of the burning issues with regard to technological obsolescence, but there is still a lot that is desired around interdepartmental cooperation. This area typically affects the collaborative outcomes and hinders the efficacy of the electronic delivery of Services.

Please shed some light on Indian vs. global scenario related to EDS? Developed countries of the world typically have moved from basic services to a more evolved set. This has necessitated a critical look at their existing service delivery architecture.

Overseas Consular services, Disaster Mitigation, Crisis Management, Rapid Evacuation, National Help-line and Call-Center services are being integrated at a process level to provide better quality of service. Innovative technologies in the area of Optical Recognition, Geo-positioning and Secure tagging are being integrated to increase situational awareness and crisis response.

What policy and technology hurdles can retard the progress of e-Services’ process? The challenge lies in identifying the right basket of citizen services to be delivered. While many Central and State level agencies have identified the delivery scope – many are grappling with services that require process and data integration across the 27 mission mode projects.

What are the challenges upfront? Typically, citizen interaction and processes often span over many agencies /departments, resulting in cross-related cases and cross-related data. There’s a perceptible lack of holistic view of services and citizens. Data or processes of siloed applications are not cross referenced. Single view on citizen (interaction history, data such as payments, address, documents) is not always available, resulting in a poor knowledge about the citizen resulting in poor quality of services. This is in spite of the progresses we have made in the area of deploying e-governance applications at major departments. Therefore a unified, cross-departmental visibility is essential to move forward. The other aspects that are very critical in the overall delivery of services are that of Data privacy and compliance.

security are key issues that are being addressed.

What should be the delivery channel and interface for rural and urban citizens?

Enhanced Mobility, Quality of Service, Archival,

We need to consider two things, the rural popula-

Remote Data Acquisition and Fine-grained

tion and the last mile connectivity. The administra-

Auditing have become imperative. Linkages to

tors have been grappling with the enormity of

external applications and process flexibility that

these problems for long. But the manifold increase

can incorporate rapid changes in legislations and

in tele-density in rural India in the wake of the

demand-side governance are some of the key

mobile revolution has given the cause of Mobile

areas that are being revisited.

governance in India, a shot in the arm.

Service Orientedness, Identity Management & Biometrics, enhanced electronic document

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

policy watch

Global Perspective Singapore is among those countries, which has been successfully delivering e-service. Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), Singapore Government’s spokesperson shared their experience on electronic delivery of service The delivery of electronic services (e-services) in Singapore ever since 2000 has been guided by various e-Government master plans, developed in tandem with the national infocomm master plans. This began with the e-Government Action Plan in 2000 and has evolved into the current iGov2010. Over the years, the Master plans have sought to integrate both backend and frontend systems and processes to facilitate a seamless experience for users. To date, the Singapore government has rolled out some 1,600 online services and 300 mobile services. One such example is the eCitizen Portal (www.eCitizen.gov.sg) which provides a single access point to allow Singapore citizens and business owners to access all the government information and services online, so as to deliver convenience and benefits to all individuals who live, work and play in Singapore. Through the eCitizen portal, citizens can interact online with the government on a vast range of matters 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The portal is organised into seven broad “eTowns” that cover various aspects of their lives and link back to the respective government agencies that provide the required services. The development and deployment of government e-services has transformed the way the Singapore government delivers public services, offering a 24x7 service model and allowing the seamless integration of some services. Internally within the public sector, this has reaped benefits in terms of greater efficiency through integration. The government’s investment in such services has also led to greater innovation in the industry. While individual government agencies are responsible for offering their respective e-services, there are some common

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

enablers that could facilitate easier and faster e-service development. Common enablers, such as a national authentication system (SingPass) and shared infrastructure and services (Government Data Centre and shared hosting platform) allow government agencies to quickly and effectively deploy their e-services. In implementing e-services, particularly integrated multi-agency services, strong leadership and buy-in from agencies are important. Agencies will need to look beyond agency-specific interest and adopt a whole-of-government approach and perspective, with the end goal of benefitting end-users. The Online Business Licensing Service (OBLS) project that was led by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and

Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), was exemplar of such multiagency cooperation, where more than 250 business licences of more than 30 agencies were reviewed. Internal approval processes were streamlined to reduce the average processing time. Today, the OBLS offers more than 80 licences across 17 agencies for online integrated application and allowed more than 80 percent of all start-ups, or close to 30,000 businesses annually, to apply for licences with ease. Data security in any online service is of utmost importance. Singapore e-services are typically designed and implemented with the necessary security measures and processes to ensure appropriate protection.

dell

Special Feature

The challenge in managing storage Joseph Kremer, Dell, President, Public-Large Enterprise, APJ, Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand talks about the critical challenges in managing storage. He stated that today’s dynamic business landscape has no place for complex and inefficient storage systems and talks about how Dell Compellent and fluid data management is a game changer

hat do you think are the storage pain points in emerging markets, India in particular? In the virtual era, how we consume information has changed, its changing organizations too. Having said that, in storage, I know for sure that cost reduction is the key priority. Data integrity, availability and security continue to be of paramount importance. Security will be the focus especially as cloud computing gains momentum. Consolidation still remains a challenge. Of course, storage systems should also interact well with heterogeneous hosts and applications.

How is Dell helping customers address these pain points? Our open, capable and affordable Intelligent Data Management (IDM) solutions ensure enterprises achieve enormous storage efficiencies. IDM actually helps to prioritize and classify stored content and direct it more securely and efficiently to the right storage asset. IDM is now delivered with Dell Compellent’s Fluid Data architecture

and as most customers would know that fluid changed the way you experienced storage. We ensured a very strong foundation when building the IDM architecture with strategic acquisitions like EqualLogic, Exanet, Ocarina Networks and notably Compellent. Today, our storage focus is well recognized. In fact, we feature in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant.

What is unique about Dell Compellent? Compellent is one big step in our efficient enterprise storage strategy. Fluid Data redefines the Data Center, optimizing efficiency, agility and resilience for Enterprises and cloud. Being a leader in storage innovation, Compellent comes with a rich feature set that saves both Capex and Opex. It is just one model with no forced end life. Let me tell you that the advantages are huge. Compellent offers 8 must have technologies for the IT Director. • A Fluid Data Architecture Enables the Flow of Enterprise Data • Storage Virtualization Creates a Flexible Pool of Storage for All Servers

Joseph Kremer, Dell, President, Public-Large Enterprise, APJ Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand • Thin Provisioning Fully Optimizes the Utilization of Disk Capacity • Automated Tiered Storage Dynamically Classifies and Migrates Data • Snapshots Provide Data Protection and Quick Recovery • Thin Replication Protects Multi-Site Data with Configuration Flexibility • A Unified User Interface

Simplifies Storage Resource Management • An Open, Agile Hardware Platform Scales On Demand

Any specific customers in India? We have made significant inroads into Communication, IT & ITES industries. We foresee great momentum in manufacturing, Govt. and BFSI as well.

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

Special Feature

dell

Fluid Data Storage: Driving Flexibility in the Data Center Eight Must-Have Technologies for the IT Director

oday’s dynamic business landscape is no place for complex, inefficient storage systems with dead-end growth paths. The demand for data continues to explode, and ready access to that data is more critical than ever. Yet most enterprise storage solutions fall short, underutilizing data center resources, wasting IT staff time and leaving organizations at risk of unnecessary downtime. All of these factors quickly eat into the bottom line. IT departments are forced to purchase, house, power and cool more hardware than needed. Administrators waste considerable time and effort managing complicated storage systems. And backup and recovery is slow and unreliable, leading to gaps in productivity and backlogs in business transactions. Quickly the costs associated with managing enterprise data can become overwhelming. To compound matters, organizations continue to find themselves locked into proprietary storage platforms that can’t be easily expanded or upgraded. This lack of flexibility and scalability leads to early obsolescence and costly forklift upgrades. Ultimately, administrators are left to coerce rigid

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

storage systems to address core business needs, only to repeat the cycle with each inevitable system overhaul. With Dell Compellent, enterprise data is actively, intelligently managed throughout its lifecycle so you can constantly adapt to changing business conditions. Together, a Fluid Data architecture, storage virtualization, intelligent software and modular hardware bring unprecedented efficiency, simplicity and security to enterprise storage. Data center resources are utilized to their full potential. Built-in intelligence and automation ensure data is available when and where it’s needed. And an open, persistent hardware platform scales in line with business needs to protect storage investments over thelong term. There are eight must have Dell Compellent technologies that combine to create new levels of efficiency and flexibility while cutting cost now and in the future. 1. Fluid Data Architecture The underlying problem with most storage systems is that they manage data in complete volumes, restricting system

flexibility and performance from the outset. To realise storage efficiencies and reduce data center costs, you need to manage data at a more granular level – within the volume itself. Dell Compellent storage is enabled by a dynamic Fluid Data architecture that actively, intelligently manages data at the block level. Specific information about each block is captured in flight throughout the day to provide real-time intelligence for dynamically storing, migrating and recovering data. These use characteristics are gathered using minimal system overhead but can be extensive. Examples include the type of data stored, disk drive used, RAID level, time written, frequency of access and more.

Empowered by this intelligence, built-in storage automation optimises the provisioning, placement and protection of data throughout its lifecycle. Business applications are implemented faster, information to make decisions is always available, new technologies are instantly deployed and data is continuously protected. 2. Storage Virtualization With Dell Compellent, virtual storage volumes can be provisioned and mapped to servers in seconds. The system even expands volumes automatically when an application requires more storage. Administrators don’t need to waste time with complicated capacity planning, or even take the system offline

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for modifications. This ability to change, shift or dynamically scale storage on demand minimizes disk expenditures, saves staff time and ensures continuous availability. Since read/write operations are spread across all drives, multiple I/O requests can be processed in parallel. This eliminates the “hot spots” associated with conventional storage systems while expediting data access and boosting application and OS performance. As more capacity is added to the pool, data is automatically restriped across all available drives for hands-free load balancing and performance tuning. Storage virtualization amplifies the benefits of server virtualization. In fact, users can quickly create hundreds of virtual volumes to support any virtual server platform and optimize the placement of virtual applications without wasting time, money or disk space. 3. Thin Provisioning With other storage systems, physical disk capacity is preallocated when the volume is created. Administrators estimate how much capacity may be required for a given application and allocate “extra” space to accommodate growth. If the

volume created is 500 GB, all 500 GB are set aside for that application. No other applications can use any of the preallocated disk space, and none of it can be reclaimed later if actual utilisation doesn’t coincide with staff estimates. Such inefficient disk utilisation inflates capital expenditures, operating expenditures and, ultimately, your total cost of ownership (TCO). Administrators are forced to buy more capacity than needed upfront, when the price per GB is sure to fall. Dell Compellent Thin Provisioning software, called Dynamic Capacity, completely separates allocation from utilisation, eliminating preallocated but unused capacity. Administrators can provision any size virtual volume upfront yet only consume physical capacity when data is actually written to disk. That means you purchase the data you need to store your data today, then continue saving by expanding the system on demand, adding the right capacity at the right time as your business needs change. In most cases, organizations can regain 40 to 60 percent of disk space that would have been lost to preallocation. You can even reclaim capacity from volumes provisioned with legacy systems using Thin Import.

4. Automated Tiered Storage To continue containing costs throughout the lifecycle of enterprise data, Dell Compellent leverages an innovative data movement engine that integrates intelligent tiering with advanced virtualisation. Traditionally, information lifecycle management has been a tedious and manual process with no end. Data is continually classified and reclassified based on its “importance” to the organization, an approach rife with political implications. Manually moving data between high-performance drives and more cost-effective, capacity-oriented drives is complicated and time consuming. Add-on migration engines can help, but increase overall software costs and waste valuable staff time for systems integration. Either way, each volume must be moved in its entirety, although some of that data is probably more frequently accessed. With Dell Compellent, since data is actively, intelligently managed at the block level, manually moving data between tiers is a thing of the past. Using unique Automated Tiered Storage software, known as Data Progression, Dell Compellent dynamically classifies and migrates data to the optimum tier based on actual usage. The “importance” of data becomes a matter of fact according to actual usage, and data placement organically remains in tune with changing business needs. Data is written to highperformance Solid State (SDD) or Fibre Channel (FC) drives on Tier 1 storage. Then, as the frequency of access declines, the less active blocks of data migrate to FC or SAS drives on Tier 2 storage. Over time,

Special Feature

completely inactive data moves to high-capacity SAS or SATA drives on Tier 3 storage. To further free up high-performance drives for missioncritical applications, snapshots automatically flow to costeffective, energy-saving drives. Meanwhile, the most active data is dynamically placed on the outer tracks of each drive for increased performance. Since most enterprise data is inactive, on average organizations can reduce disk expenditures by as much as 80 percent with Automated Tiered Storage. 5. Space-efficient Snapshots Protecting enterprise data from server failures, viruses, power outages, human error and other inevitable circumstances is critical to continued business success. Today’s organizations simply can’t remain competitive without the ability to quickly and accurately recover “lost” or inadvertently deleted data. Using conventional backup technologies is slow, unreliable and consumes excess storage space. Creating continuous snapshots protects data more effectively, but most snapshots still require full mirror images and subsequent full-volume clones. RAID overhead only adds to the problem. Such a heavy burden on disk resources significantly hinders system performance, and full-volume clones delay recovery. Also, because most systems provision disk space so inefficiently, the number of snapshots that can be taken is limited – usually 10 per volume. Limited snapshots mean fewer timeinterval recovery points, putting mission-critical applications at risk of extended downtime. With Dell Compellent, snapshots are space efficient because Data

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

Speacial Feature

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Instant Replay software doesn’t require a full mirror image or subsequent full-volume clones. In fact, only changes in data since the last snapshot, or Replay, need to be captured, dramatically reducing the amount of disk space required. The integrity of enterprise application data spanning multiple virtual volumes is protected using Consistency Groups. And Dell Compellent storage doesn’t restrict the number of Replays that can be taken. That means changes in data can be captured continuously in short intervals for the utmost level of security using minimal capacity. 6. Thin Replication Dell Compellent Thin Replication technology, Remote Instant Replay, provides affordable, verifiable and simplified multisite data protection leveraging space-efficient Replays. Following initial site synchronisation, only incremental changes in data need to be replicated. This cuts hardware costs, reduces bandwidth requirements and significantly expedites recovery. Dell Compellent storage can maintain unlimited high number of Replays without affecting system performance, and the Replays can easily be mapped to any server for near instant recovery to any point in time. Since Dell Compellent storage intelligently transfers only changed blocks of data, bandwidth utilization is optimized, reducing the need for highspeed connections. Built-in bandwidth simulation and shaping further streamline the process. Transfer rates can be customized based on link speed, time of day and replication priority. Another advantage of Thin Replication is that it doesn’t require identical system

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

configurations at each site. That gives you the flexibility to choose lower-cost SAS or SATA drives for remote sites. To further maximize efficiencies, Dell Compellent storage features a built-in Fibre Channel-to-iSCSI converter, enabling administrators to replicate data natively over existing IP networks. Users can also expedite initial replication synchronization using Portable Volume, secure enterprise-class external hard drives preconfigured for use with Dell Compellent storage.

tasks are fully automated, users can focus on other important projects. Storage consumption and usage trends are automatically monitored and displayed, eliminating the need for manual capacity planning. And a unique Phone Home feature provides automated real-time alerts and notifications for remote diagnostics and monitoring. Dell Compellent storage even generates executive summaries, cost-savings calculations and utilization chargeback reports with just a few clicks.

7. Unified Storage Resource Management Managing conventional storage systems is complex and time-consuming. In fact, IT staff expenditures often exceed the cost of the storage platform itself. Administrators need to monitor always-changing capacity requirements, manually migrate data from tier to tier, configure backup sequences and more. And in most cases, all these tasks must be performed using multiple, standalone user interfaces. Dell Compellent storage is designed to help administrators manage more data in less time. This is largely because of the built-in efficiency and intelligent automation of Dell Compellent storage. It is also because Dell Compellent storage features an intuitive, point-and-click interface that provides a complete view of the entire storage environment through a single pane of glass. With Dell Compellent, there is no need for specialized skill sets or ongoing systems training. Wizards guide users through system setup and application configuration, making even advanced operations simple and straightforward. Since common, repetitive (and often time-consuming)

8. Open, Agile Hardware Platform Unlike systems that require you to rip and replace hardware as your business needs change, Dell Compellent supports the continual adoption of new technologies on a single, modular platform. This is a major departure from the status quo, which imposes artificial restrictions on everything from drive type to server interconnect. Simply put, most storage systems are designed for early obsolescence, forcing organizations into costly forklift upgrades. Dell Compellent storage is designed for persistence. Administrators can scale from entry-level to enterprise on the same platform (from 2 TB to 1,000 TB in the same system) incrementally in line with business needs. They can also deploy any combination of FC and iSCSI server interfaces, as well as mix and match SSD, FC, SAS and SATA drives in the same system. Even SAS drives with varying capacities and rotational speeds can be used in the same enclosures. You can seamlessly adopt new and emerging technologies on the fly as they become available. And upgrades, port modifications and other changes in configuration can

be implemented on demand without disruption. Dell Compellent storage also features fully redundant hardware and advanced failover capabilities. Clustered controllers, each with redundant fans and power supplies, operate in unison for optimum system performance. Yet each controller connects to enclosures and drives independently to ensure no single point of failure. Controller port virtualization and dual paths from servers to disk drives also enhance availability, with built-in multi-path I/O failover eliminating the need for custom software. With Dell Compellent, you have the freedom to choose the technologies that support your IT infrastructure today and readily adapt to change tomorrow – all without disruption.

CONCLUSION Organizations no longer have to be confined by the rigid boundaries and perpetual expense of conventional storage systems. By actively managing data at a more granular level, Dell Compellent provides dynamic, virtualized storage that readily adapts to constant change. The utilization of storage resources is optimized to cut storage costs now and in the future. Advanced, spaceefficient snapshot technology protects against downtime for continuous availability without squandering storage resources. And an open, agile hardware platform safeguards storage investments over the long term by remaining technology independent and scaling without disruption. By leveraging Fluid Data technology in the data center, organizations can significantly lower the cost of managing enterprise data throughout its lifecycle.

in person

Anurag Jain

Principal Secretary – Department of Information Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh

“MP has been the the pioneer in developing and conceptualising IT to deliver e-Services”

W Madhya Pradesh is one of the proactive states as far as IT adoption and e-Governance is concerned. In a freewheeling interview with Shally Makin of eGov Bureau he reveals the nuances of adopting IT for governance and what the future holds.

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

hat is your vision and strategy for enabling e-Government in your state?

There are various projects, which we perceive will be fruitful in the near future. So far our eDistrict pilot project has benefitted people to a large extent in the trial period. Looking on to the success of the project we will be implementing eDistrict in a year to further 45 districts of the state. eDistrict has been envisaged by Government of Madhya Pradesh (GoMP) as automation of workflow and internal processes of district administration with the possibility of seamless integration of various departments for providing services to the citizens. The Government of India (GoI) intends to provide a facility for people to put applications online with a ‘Front Desk Interface’ of the grievances and proposals. To enable eGov, MP has been the pioneer in developing and conceptualising IT to deliver services. The recently implemented Madhya Pradesh Public Services Guarantee Act, 2010 is first-of-its-kind in India. No other state has come up with such a ground breaking legislation to facilitate public services to common man. At present National Informatics Centre (NIC) is slowly being engaged by the Department of Information Technology to provide network backbone and e-Governance support to our Government centrally. It offers a wide range of ICT services including Nationwide Communication Network for decentralised planning, improvement in government services and wider transparency of national and local Governments.

Can you elaborate on ICT projects being implemented across departments in the state? Majorly, Madhya Pradesh Agency for Promotion of Information Technology (MAP_IT) takes care of the ICT projects. The state is finalising the tenders and the process of approval for various projects. The state data centers, NIC data center and MP online data centers are gradually being established to facilitate the process. The whole of MP is being comput-

in person

erised gradually with a constant process of upgradation centrally. The e-District project has been enabled by creating an efficient IT enabled delivery mechanism for citizen services/information being delivered from District Administration and its subordinate offices. The electronic security and control of confidential data has made public cases/appeals/grievances dissemination of information processes faster. Transport department has developed an online payment gateway in collaboration with State Bank of India. MAP_IT has initiated project of e-Tendering to be implemented across all the Government Departments and Statue PSUs in MP. The contract has been awarded to a consortium of Wipro Ltd and NexTenders (I) Pvt Ltd (Wipro-NT).

Has the state been able to set up MAP_IT as per promised in the state policy? How has it contributed in the development? MAP_IT has been set up and has contributed a lot to the state infrastructure by streamlining the processes. The whole state is networked and involves the contribution of two centers. State e-Governance Mission Team (SeMT) is providing support to the State Apex Committee and PeMT, as an advisory body for providing an overall direction, standardization and consistency for undertaking the ground work.

Do you have policy on standardisation and plans for having legislation on cyber security and information security? Yes, we do have certain policies to follow and maintain cyber security. GIS is very well implemented in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Content Service Provider has been very well identified. The IT department is working on Unicode policies to be followed strictly in all districts. All the websites of the state will be e-Initiative

in Unicode Fonts, common look and feel and with content relevant to the user group the site is intended for. MP online is providing services

exam forms available online for PSC, and other professional entrances exams. These websites are doing good business. e-District project has

“MAP_IT has been set up and has contributed a lot to the state infrastructure by streamlining the processes”

to urban people with special focus on providing facility to the rural users with a project implemented by the Cyber Security Division. MP is the first state to implement Cyber Treasury with increasing literacy; citizens demand better services from the government, in the shortest time, at the place of their choice and in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner.

Your website states ‘The government has also initiated changes in labour laws to make them more favourable to IT industries.’ Please Comment. IT policy states investment promotion and concessions for labour. The state also leverages exemption from factories act, maternity act, contract labour act, payment of wages act, minimum wages act, ESI act. Ladies are allowed to work in shifts and thus various industries attract labour with such flexibility in their acts.

CSCs have been struggling for viability and sustainability in all states in the country. How are you proposing to fix these issues in your state? Fortunately, the status of MP is marginally better as the state provides almost 130 services. In the department of education we have all

Description

also made few services viable to the citizens and expanded their work towards CSC. The state has provided best to improve financial health and attracted good business. We have also realised that the use of such websites is higher in urban areas, therefore initiated in the rural areas too in order to help easy processing. The registration fees is renewed as per the business made by the user. ICT has contributed in the financial inclusion of the state. SBI is in the process of becoming a correspondent to NREGA. This has brought a good income to PSUs. As of now, there have been 600 new business correspondents in the state. This has further helped in improving the financial state of the region and given a boost to the economy.

Please shed some light on the state’s IT policy. MP government had announced its IT policy in the year 1999. The policy was revitalised in 2006 and new IT policy was launched with fresh willingness to bring e-governance and IT investments in the state. State’s IT policy emphasises induction of IT in all walks of government functioning with focus on masses and aims to leverage IT for transparency and better governance. It is one of the leading states in terms of adoption of IT and works aggressively towards passing on the benefits to citizens.

Update

Commercial Tax Department Instant information access of the dealers and also offers major processes of the department ‘on-line’

Internal functions such as payroll, pension related activities, personal information processing made online

Treasury and Accounts

Integrated Treasuries Computerisation Project (ITCP) through 53 district treasuries, 159 sub-treasuries, serving 8000 officers

Project won Golden Icon Award for the exemplary Horizontal Transfer of ICT based Best Practice for the year 2007

Land Records

Textual data of land records are 100 percent converted into electronic form

35 million Khasra (Plot/Survey) numbers comprising of 11 million Landowners have been computerised

Transport Department

Computerising transport department’s activities by issuing Smart Cards for Driving Licenses and Vehicle Registration

All activities of RTO offices are computerised. Information of vehicles registered in MP available via SMS & Internet

e-Tendering

The State Government decided to implement an Electronic Tendering solution for use by all its departments/PSUs

Madhya Pradesh Agency for Information Technology (MAP_IT) to selects suitable service providers for the implementation

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

in person

Ajay Singh

CEO Forbes Technosys

“eGov version 3.0 On the way”

ell us about the major changes that you have witnessed in last few years in e-Governance in India?

The last six years in e-Governance has seen the transformation of a lot of intent and objectives into action. And these were then, translated into projects grounded in technology. This could be said a version 1.0 of projects in e-governance in India. These were the first few projects on e-Governance that made impact on the citizens and users. This version brought-in a lot of learning for the corporate, government and citizens at large. This was followed by the second wave of projects under version 2.0 that was realised through more of pubic private partnerships - and the learning from 1.0 were put to use for more significant impact on the end users. Currently, we are the doorstep of e-Governance 3.0 wherein we are witnessing latest forms of technology or I would call them ‘new building blocks’ that are taking centre-stage in the citizen-centric service delivery systems of the government. Today, even the difficult states in the North-East are techno- hungry and very techno-willing to have technology-based service delivery models for their denizens. We ourselves have made some significant success in our low-cost ATMs in these states and have been extremely successful in catering to the diverse terrain conditions that are geographically dispersed areas.

Where do you see e-Governance initiatives moving in the coming years? Forbes Technosys has long been an innovation lab for simple, smart, sturdy and economical technology-based solutions designed for government and financial services sector. Ajay Singh, CEO, Forbes Technosys shares his journey and future predictions on the technologies that will drive the e-Governance growth engine in the coming years with Rachita Jha of eGov Bureau

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

These citizen identification-based technology and systems are bound to have colossal effect and will see arrival of numerous citizen-centric services built around them in the coming years with long and sustainable impact on ground. There are exciting times ahead as the impact on the end user and end consumers would be far more significant in the coming years of e-governance ecosystems than in the earlier versions. Therefore if we assess the impact of e-Governance in the past projects it has shown consistent increase in its reach, efficiency and technology advancement.

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Another key transformation that has taken pace is in that of changes in business processes in e-Governance.

The importance of innovation with the view of product design has been very integral to Forbes Technosys. Please comment. In the past, most of the technologies come from west to east, even in basic banking – the requirements are common across and hence there have been technology solutions from the developed countries that have worked very well in India. However, now we are reaching a situation particularly in India where technologies are very specific to the Indian context and offer a very large market. UID project for example, is the first-of-its-kind project across the world and no other country has done a similar project of this magnitude until now. The context of innovation for UID project has to be very Indian- to design technologies that are suited for Indian conditions. e-governance today, has most of its requirements coming out of India - the innovations and technology development too is now being done for India and many of the products are made in India by Indian companies. So there is a wave of democracy in technology innovation. This has come about because, the Indian companies today are closer to the target audience and have complete understanding of the ground conditions, and are able to respond to changes in the ecosystem much faster. And for us, we feel that with new building blocks of e-governance gaining ground, there is a huge opportunity for an Indian company to launch innovative products for the e-governance market. Taking cue, we have also over the years strengthened our expertise in multi-functional, energy efficient, low cost, low maintenance, easy to use products – that are ideal for the Indian conditions.

Tell us your views on the viability of financial inclusion schemes in the current BFSI landscape and readiness of banks to execute these schemes successfully? Financial inclusion is driven by both - the government and the banks. The government has a strong mandate for financial inclusion as there are agencies within the government which want the flow of money from the government to the citizen – and this transfer of money they want to be done via the banking channel. These

would include the NREGA payments and similar schemes. The other side is the aspiration of the rural population, to become part of

and financial inclusion where the government is primarily pushing the banking industry to enhance their reach of these projects across the

“now we are reaching a

situation particularly in India where technologies are very specific to the Indian context and offer a very large market” the banking system. This is increasing more so, with technology and mobile phones reaching to hinterland. in addition, the aspiration to have a bank account is very high. Thus, we see that there is a demand and supply readiness in the banks and technology providers alike. However, the bottleneck is viability of the financial inclusion schemes for the stakeholders. And this viability will come through a combination of two factors; firstly technology- that will play a crucial is cutting down the price of the delivery model. Secondly, the willingness of the bank and the consumer to pay. Also, subsidies from the government for financial inclusion can add to the feasibility quotient of these schemes. It is a combination of these that will ensure the success of financial inclusion programmes in the rural areas. If one were to analyse the financial inclusion schemes as of today, then they basically run into two problems - one is the high cost of delivery of services and secondly there is a very low return per customer this a highly challenging environment for the banks to make such schemes sustainable in the long run. Therefore, to rely on banks alone for success of these schemes is not feasible and banks today are slightly reluctant to take these forward on war-footing. We need to find innovative solutions to fill this feasibility gap and the entire ecosystem will have to leverage on financial services to achieve the last mile reach and benefits of banking services.

Tell us more about BFSI as fast moving sector in IT? There are many changes in the financial ecosystem that are making technology-based services and solutions an imperative for BFSI in India. One of them is the aspect of - the influence of government and government transactions on the banking system. In this vertical, we would have technology influence of UID

country. This has been one of the factors ushering the growth of technology and automation integration in the BFSI matrix of operations. The second growth driver is, the end consumers themselves, as he is today far more knowledgeable to get quality services thus pushing banks to increase their level of automation. The need is also felt from the internal banking operations to cater to the problems of attrition, skills, time and reach as these have become very important management areas within the bank itself. And lastly, the availability of connectivity and technologies today that can be married with the present context of requirements of BFSI segment has led the arrival of technologies in the banking sector today that can make many of these services automated. Therefore, the impact of technology on the banking industry has been profound in the recent past.

What are your views on the UID project? How has the landscape change in the way services are delivered with UID? The landscape for technology-based services has not yet changed, but it will change post-UID. The project in its current avatar has already brought-in certain technology requirements which are offered to various enrollment agencies. But the real impact of UID will come once implemented after each citizen gets the smart card. Every transaction will then be done by biometric and will spin-off to all the systems done by government agencies that will need to biometric-enabled. Thus sparking a huge demand for such devices to be installed across government functionaries geographically and for every discipline. In this context, I foresee innovations to come in these front-end and back-end devices so that the overall ecosystem works as a system seamlessly across departJuly 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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conflicting schools of thought on the project. UID is such a project that you have to have unanimity and there is no room for skeptics and dissent to promise its nationwide success. There is a strong need to get everyone aligned on the project – to ensure that such huge government investment to do away with any discord or confusion. Implementation of the project in its current stage has also been slow-paced as to its targets. I am also skeptical on the larger benefits of the UID project being realized by the stakeholders’ today-going beyond being merely identification solution. The development of the post-UID d ecosystem should begin now, to create a UID-ready service delivery models then the benefits will come to the citizens much quicker. Also, multiple systems such as smart cards etc might

the benefits of new and latest technologies. So going forward, front-end devices are going to be contextual devices for example our ATMlike devices are today designed to deliver more than 25 services from a single machine.

Please tell some upcoming technologies, must haves for the government to adopt today. The first must-have techno-capability in the government departments (in the view of the UID roadmap) would be the ability to carry out financial transactions either in cash/money transfer or mobile phones. Second, there is a need to build the ability to forecast and deliver financial transaction electronically-and this is possible today as there are many technologies available designed for data storage and delivery - this will be a key requirement for all

“As we arrive at the

threshold of 3G technologies and as data gets more complex

in nature the enhancement of

bandwidth will be much required” end-up duplication of technology-based services across states and there is a need for departments to build readiness for UID-based delivery of services to ensure uniformity.

How do you view the mobile technology viability for use in financial inclusion?

ments. So, when we talk of impact of UID – much of it will come probably in next 3-5 years from a rapid growth of UID-based solutions in India.

What is your critical analysis of the UID project? Skeptical view of UID has been the lack of consensus on the political front that UID is the way to go. The projects of this size and scale demands political harmony – and I feel that this area has not yet been taken care of and there are

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

India will ride on e-governance using a hybrid mode of service delivery and no single technology will prove viable for service delivery. Every device has its advantages and disadvantage and hence trade-offs will have to made from a variety of options available today. Currently, we have a large range of spectrum of devices that effectively deliver the same set of solutions. There will no single device that will prevail and what we would see a mix of all the front-end devices will be at play. The mobile phone is definitely a front-runner on this. With back-end computerization a reality in many government, departments and connectivity/bandwidth available – all the action is all at the front-end devices. Hence, there is a need for flexibility the hardware prescriptions by the government to ensure the users avail

departments to join the e-governance space. The third area, revolves around the connectivity technologies. As we arrive at the threshold of 3G technologies and as data gets more complex in nature the enhancement of bandwidth will be much required.

Please share your future plans for Forbes Technosys? Other than banking and financial services which is our biggest vertical, we are into power and telecom. Government is one of the most promising areas for us; we believe that all that is happening today will get into implementation mode in the next few years. Therefore, all the pre and post-UID solutions, solutions related to financial inclusion will be our focus area. We are investing substantially and our growth expectation is for more than 100 percent year-on-year. And with government solutions being an important vertical for us we are looking forward to a busy year ahead as all state governments now have a commitment to have a certain portion of their revenues that will be spent on e-governance.

analysis

sanjay sahay

IGP, Police Computer Wing, karnataka police

Integrating your Way to Success ERP solutions provide a mechanism for implementing systems, which require a high degree of integration between applications

n simplistic terms Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) can be defined as a multi-module application software that integrates activities across functional departments, from product planning, parts purchasing, inventory control, product distribution, to order tracking. ERP software may include application modules for the finance, accounting and human resources aspects of a business. Historically, companies created â&#x20AC;&#x2122;islands of automationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of various systems that operated or managed various divergent business processes. Desperate attempts are made to technically and functionally integrate these systems. Quite a few times they were loosely interfaced and on a few occasions they were tightly interfaced providing better service. To integrate all these systems better, ERP comes handy. ERP has a certain set of characteristics which tilt the scale in favour of the system. Seamless integration of all information flowing through a companyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;financial/accounting, human resource, supply chain information and customer information is very crucial. Generally, enterprise systems are not developed in-house. Organisations that purchase enterprise systems enter into long-term relationship with vendors and are not in a position to disassociate

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

with the vendors providing the ERP and maintenance. These organisations have no control over their own destiny. Only the software is to be integrated and not the computing platform on which it runs. Most companies have great difficulty integrating their enterprise software with a package of hardware/software, database management system software and telecommunications suited to their specific needs. Enterprise systems are changing rapidly, both architecturally and functionally. Architecturally, there are changes in mainframe, client/server, web-enabled, object-oriented, among others. Functionally, it pertains to front office, supply chain, data warehousing, specialised vertical industry solutions. An important question that arises is why implement an ERP system? This is done to support business goals i.e. company being integrated, online, secure and having self service processes for business and eliminate costly mainframe/fragmented technologies. Improved integration of systems and processes leads to lower cost which helps maximise profits. There is no denying of the fact that such systems empower employees and enable partners, customers and suppliers into a better workable system, which is more effective, productive and at the end of it more profit generating. The

objective is to obtain the right mix of people, processes and technology. People broadly mean they should be a part of project structure and should be appropriately aligned to the processes. The process means the detailed outlining of an implementation process and adapting the process of the company to that of the ERP. Technology as a part of implementation means the appropriate hardware and software and finally the creation of integrated systems. The process implementation broadly deals with design, build, transition and production. First and foremost, discussions have to be held with various functional personnel to establish the actual number of systems operating at client side, what are they used for, why and how often. Next is the creation of a project scoping document outlining the current situation, proposed solution and budgeted time. ERP today is a final hallmark of software creation. It can be safely concluded that ERP solutions provide a mechanism for implementing systems, which require a high degree of integration between applications and there is always a requirement of the Business Case or Value Proposition for the implementation to be outlined with clarity. In short, to successfully implement an ERP solution, a proper mix of people, process and technology should be maintained.

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CASE STUDY

Sanchar Shakti: ICT to Empower Rural India Indian women suffer from life long subjugation, discrimination and exploitation. ICT can create new types of economic activity, employment opportunities and improvements in delivery of healthcare and other services and thus improve their status

omen represent 48 percent of India’s population and the sustainability of our nation’s developmental efforts hinges on their equal participation in social, political and economic fabric of the nation. Yet in spite of various Government policies and programmes to this end, Indian women continue to lag behind men in education, employment, health and political empowerment. Statistics such as a sex ratio of 933, female literacy levels of 54.16 percent, maternal mortality of 450 per 1000 live births, adolescent fertility rate of 68 births per 1000 live births and low level of representation of women in legislature at below 10% substantiate this assertion. Indian women suffer from life long subjugation, discrimination and exploitation. In fact, as per UNDP’s Human Development Report 2010, India ranks 122 out of 138 countries and is placed below even Pakistan when it comes to gender equality. The plight of rural women is particularly dismal. Indian women suffer from life long subjugation, discrimination and exploitation. In fact, as per UNDP’s Human Development Report 2010, India ranks 122 out of 138 countries and is placed below even Pakistan when it comes to gender equality. The plight of rural women is particularly dismal. The importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in stimulating socio-economic development is widely recognized. ICT can create new types of economic activity, employment opportunities and improvements in delivery of healthcare and other services. Universal access to ICT can lead to a more capable work force and increase economic efficiency. It can also enhance networking, participation and advocacy within society, improve Government-Citizen interface and foster transparency and accountability in governance. The digital divide constitutes a major barrier to equitable and sustainable development and bridging it can promote a nation’s growth. Another debilitating gap found especially in developing countries is the gender equity gap. In a situation where gender equity is absent we have an ethically untenable and development impeding gender gap or divide. Even when corrective laws and policies are put in place to address it, the gender divide tends to persist, as it is a deep rooted complex socio-cultural cum economic phenomenon. It is well recognized that ICT facilities can help to bridge the gender divide. In fact,

women represent an important part of the ‘have-nots’ within the digital divide which bears a mutually reinforcing or chicken and egg relationship with the gender divide. Access to ICT can empower rural women by promoting basic literacy and education, providing access to knowledge, employment opportunities, banking services, government services and markets and by facilitating their health and safety. ICT is an especially powerful tool as it can achieve these desirable outcomes in a culturally acceptable manner, making pertinent information, services and assistance available to women within their homes/villages. ICT can impart distance education and create a variety of locally available jobs for rural women as is the case of women run rural BPOs which are flourishing even in conservative states like Rajasthan and Haryana. Enabling women to access ICT entails a gender sensitive approach wherein apart from just ensuring women’s access to ICT in terms of availability, affordability, convenient location, language and timing etc, the tailoring of content to address their concerns, reflect their local knowledge and needs and to be of value in their daily lives, business enterprises and family responsibilities is crucial.

Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in India SHGs are formed and supported by government agencies or NGOs and benefit their members economically and socially. The SHG movement is credit linked; it is primarily aimed at addressing the needs for capacity building of rural women by organizing them into homogenous support groups that pool their resources to engage in July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

CASE STUDY

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micro-entrepreneurship activities and share the income thus generated. In India, women who are members of SHGs derive access to low-cost financial services with a process of self management and development. SHGs enable women to grow their savings and to access the credit which banks are increasingly willing to lend. SHGs can also be community platforms from which women become active in village affairs, stand for local elections or take action to address social or community issues (the abuse of women, alcohol, the dowry system, schools, and water supply). Thus, SHGs help mobilize women to take social action, accumulate social capital, display better economic viability and demonstrate a greater suitability and sustainability than individual based models for women’s empowerment initiatives.

The Universal Service Obligation Fund of India The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) of India came into being with retrospective effect from 1.4.02 with the passing of the Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Act 2003, in December 2003. The Fund which is headed by the USOF Administrator has a mandate of providing access to Telegraph (Telecommunications) Services to people in rural and remote areas at reasonable and affordable prices. The Fund has already rolled out a large number of schemes aimed at promoting public and individual access to telephony and broadband services in rural India. In recognition of the requirements of Gender Responsive Budget (GRB), USOF has also undertaken gender specific initiatives; for instance, preferential allocation of broadband connections to women’s SHGs has been incorporated in the USOF Wire Line Broadband Scheme. Further, a special scheme for provisions of broadband enabled Rural Public Service Terminals to SHGs has been incorporated in the Fund’s activities. These terminals will enable SHGs to provide banking, financial services and other broadband enabled Value Added Services (VAS) to the rural population.

Sanchar Shakti -A USOF Scheme to Bridge the Gender Divide In recognition of the special needs of rural women, it was decided to initiate a USOF pilot project scheme aimed at facilitating SHGs’ access to ICT and ICT enabled livelihood skills. Four project categories were formulated

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

under the aegis of Sanchar Shakti: Provision of a mobile connectivity and Value Added Services (VAS) subscription to SHGs with a service validity/warranty of at least one year, setting up of SHG run mobile repair centres in rural areas, setting up of SHG run modem repair centres in rural areas and setting up of SHG run solar based mobile/ fixed wireless phone charging centres in rural areas. Accordingly, in June 2010, USOF held a stakeholders conference and called for applications for pilot projects which aim to bring together CSR initiatives of Mobile service providers, Mobile VAS (mVAS) providers, Handset and Modem manufacturers and efforts of NGOs and to encourage them to partner with NABARD and USOF subsidy to provide a subsidised bundle of services, training and related facilities to women’s SHGs in rural India. Desired outcomes, challenges and risks were identified at the outset and shared with stakeholders so as to serve as a tool for preparing and evaluating project proposals. A detailed framework was worked out for monitoring and evaluation with U.N Women providing gender expertise for this purpose. U.N Women has also assisted USOF in evaluating project applications from the gender sensitivity perspective. It is envisaged that the mVAS services would provide rural SHGs with education, information & training, access to occupational opportunities, markets, financial services, Government programmes, health agencies/workers, social agencies/workers, feedback mechanisms, support systems and networking etc.

There are some salient features of the mobile VAS projects are. Focus on SHGs: The project will be implemented with selected SHGs in the specific service areas. It has been stressed that preferably SHGs who have understood importance of financial discipline and have established access to credit should be selected. Focus on Livelihood: For each project, SHGs have been selected such that the members are already engaged in income generation activities. The projects will inter alia focus on enhancing skills and providing market related information so that women can make better decisions and thereby enhance their incomes. Focus on ICT: The mobile phone will be the major platform for communication in themobile VAS projects. Taking into consideration women’s literacy level, text and voice based messages shall be available to women. The combination of push based and pull based messages will increase women’s access to ICT enabled information. This is expected to contribute to increase in women’s awareness, confidence, well being and improve their skills while also enabling them to negotiate better in the market. Relevant VAS messages: The assessed requirements of women are varied due to the multiple roles they play. They contribute to productive work and community management work along with management of home and child care., Through the mobile VAS the project aims to provide multiple inputs on themes such as women’s health, well-being and education, banking and financial services, market information, skill and

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Through the successful implementation of the mVAS projects; it gives an impetus to the development and commercialisation of meaningful mobile VAS applications knowledge enhancement, information about various government schemes. Training of SHGs: Service providers and NGOs will provide technical as well as subject focused training to the members involved. The training aims at skill enhancement and is an integral part of the projects.

Objectives and Anticipated Outcomes Through this initiative it is primarily hoped to enrich the lives of the women who have been with provided with ICT connectivity, information, skills and livelihoods under the programme. It is also envisaged that the success of these pilots will effectively demonstrate the viability of mobile Value Added Services or mVAS to both the rural populace (consumers) and to the various service providers involved (suppliers). Given the saturation in urban markets with urban teledensities crossing 100 percent, telecom operators are looking to rural markets for growth. According to a KGPM report, rural India contributes close to 45 percent of India’s GDP and with increasing saturation of urban markets; the next round of growth will have to be generated from rural markets. In the form of increased uptake of voice and database services. Most operators have already begun to cater to regional needs through vernacular content like weather forecasts and market prices for crops to improve the uptake of mobile phones in regional areas. Through the successful implementation of the mVAS projects; this programme is expected to give an impetus to the development and commercialisation of meaningful mobile VAS applications for rural markets, especially those targeted at rural women. It is expected that the SHG run repair/ charging centres will adequately address some of the common impediments to the take up of rural ICT by providing local repair facilities

for mobiles and modems and by overcoming power shortages. It is envisaged that these projects will encourage the setting up of such centres by service providers/manufacturers and also impart the necessary confidence amongst all stakeholders about the practicality of the running of these centres by SHGs. Finally, it is anticipated that the success of these projects will lead to the scaling up of such initiatives to the national level under both commercial and CSR agendas of service providers/telecom manufacturers.

Achievements There has been an excellent response to this programme with proposals coming in from many major service providers who have tied up with VAS providers to provide the handset, connectivity and VAS bundles. Several rounds of meetings were held with project applicants and shortlisted proposals were honed till we felt that they would deliver the desired results. This included ensuring that the mVAS projects truly address needs of targeted SHGs and deliver relevant content in the local language. Also that the projects are designed in a gender sensitive and culturally appropriate manner keeping in mind the literacy levels of targeted women. Finally Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) were signed for seven projects and the scheme was formally launched by the Honourable Minister of Communication &IT in the august presence of the president of India on the eve of international women’s day i.e. 7th March 2011. Service delivery to establish proof of concept has begun in a number of cases. Some of these projects focus on breaking the dependence on intermediaries when it comes to access to input and final product markets for SHGs engaged in cottage industries. One of the projects infact links producer SHGs in the South with seller SHGs in the North who will

CASE STUDY

market the former’s products. Others include air time retailing as an activity to supplement SHG incomes. All the projects attempt to provide highly customised VAS bundle ideally suited to the local conditions and the activities of the targeted SHGs. The SHGs themselves are engaged in multifarious activities ranging from textiles, bee-keeping, handicrafts to agricultural/livestock rearing. Information on weather, crop/livestock diseases, markets ad market prices, training courses, raw material / input related information etc are covered in these VAS bundles. Also covered are inputs on literacy, child and maternal health, government programmes, social issues such as domestic violence, child marriage, dowry etc. The present projects cover about 15,000 SHG members in the states of Maharashtra, U.P, A.P, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttarkhand and the UT of Puducherry. More MoUs for additional districts and states are likely to be signed in coming months.

Conclusion In spite of a decade of healthy economic growth, India fares very poorly on the metric of gender equity. ICT is a potent tool which can help bridge the gender divide. Ensuring equitable access to ICT for women is also important to prevent their further marginalization. Tackling the issue of women’s access to ICT entails interalia encouraging the design, development and delivery of gender sensitive content and enabling women to use this content to enrich their lives. ICT related/enabled services such as mobile handset repair centres, air time retailing and BPOs are especially amenable to women’s participation and can play a key role in their empowerment. The Department of Telecommunications and the USO Fund of India have in rightful recognition of this potential of ICT, initiated Sanchar Shakti, a gender based pilot project scheme to enable rural women to access ICT and ICT related livelihood skills. The Sanchar Shakti projects aim to empower women through a simple, ubiquitous mobile phone connection by using it to provide them with information, knowledge and livelihood opportunities thereby building their self confidence and leading them towards self reliance and gender equity.

AUTHOR: Archana G Gulati, Joint Administrator (Finance) USOF, DOT HQ, New Delhi

July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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G2C

Jhansi Jan Suvidha Kendra (JJSK) A telephone (Mobile/Basic) based G2C m-Governance initiative which provides round the clock, easily accessible, user friendly, responsive, time-cost-labour effective platform for redressing public grievances

he JJSK is basically an attempt to provide an efficient, responsive, platform for handling public grievances. It is based on service oriented architecture and seeks to increase transparency in grievance redressal procedures, increases the efficiency of existing office staff, accelerates the response time and facilitates services anywhere-anytime services to the common citizen. JJSK aims to ensure a secured platform for contact less, quick, responsive, cost-time-labour saving, made for all, easily accessible 24*7 service for speedy and qualitative disposal of public grievances and to ensure that the public services are delivered at the customer/aggrieved personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s door step, thus restoring pubic faith in government delivery system and also simultaneously encouraging the paperless communication and bridging the digital divide prevailing among urban/rural mass, rich and poor, have and have-nots.

Background Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh has suffered several years of drought recently and it is a backward region with agriculture as main activity of livelihood. The majority population lives Below Poverty Line (BPL). Industrial development is minimal. There is a substantial presence of families belonging to deprived section of society. Jhansi District offers vast opportunities to people from other regions of Bundelkhand in terms of employment

egov / www.egovonline.net / July 2011

and settlement. The district comprises of 5 tehsils, 8 blocks and 437 gram panchayats covering a vast area of 5024 sq.kilometers. The estimated population of Jhansi district is about 2.5 million. Due to constant increase in population, lack of sufficient staff to handle huge number of grievances, insufficient funds and lesser reach, the number of grievances has increased tremendously in recent past. On the other hand expectation of people from Government and administrative setup has grown up at higher side, thus bringing in a large scale mismatch between expectation and deliverables. All existing systems of registering, disposing and monitoring of grievances like Tehsil Divas (twice a

G2C

month officers assemble at Tehsil for hearing public grievances), Thana Divas (twice a month officers assemble at police station for hearing public grievances), LOKVANI (people register their complaints through internet kiosk), daily 10.00A.M.-12.00A.M. Availability of officers for public grievance hearing is very much in place and they are giving results but not up to the satisfaction of the aggrieved person in terms of availability, reach, response, scientific recording and monitoring, quality disposal, cost and labour effectiveness. The above mentioned schemes are either personal meeting based or internet based varying by nature in accessibility, availability and response. An aggrieved person has to travel from his location either to Block headquarters, Tehsil headquarters, District headquarters to meet the concerned officer/staff to register his grievance or to give his application for disposal. This is a time consuming, costly, cumbersome process and the monitoring and disposal is also very tedious and less effective and also the concerned person is hardly intimated regarding the disposal status of his grievance. A study conducted by the District Administration, Jhansi on a sample of 400 persons revealed that on an average an aggrieved person has to spend about `350-400 just to reach to these offices. The calculated cost included travel expenses, expenditure towards food, printing of application and the loss of income/wages of a common man for the time he had to be away from his work place. An innovation was very much needed in the present scenario. Effective public grievance redressal is the top most priority of Government of Uttar Pradesh. The District administration Jhansi keeping all the above in mind has developed a platform known as Jhansi Jan Suvidha Kendra (JJSK) with the technical consultation of National Informatics Centre (NIC), Jhansi which is telephone/mobile based. It was launched in the public interest on 10thJune, 2009 in the Collectorate campus, Jhansi. Any person, from any place and at any time can call and register his grievance and a warm welcome is extended to the caller. The grievance is registered online and details of the grievance are also recorded automatically (as an audio file). Every complaint is assigned a unique complaint number and category depending upon the severity of the complaint : “A” category complaints are to be disposed within 24 hours, “B” category complaints are to be disposed within 3 days, “C”

CASE STUDY

“A” category complaints are to be disposed within 24 hours, “B” category complaints are to be disposed within 3 days, “C” category complaints are to be disposed within 7 days category complaints are to be disposed within 7 days. The grievance is immediately marked to the concerned officer. As soon as grievance is ‘saved’ in the database, automatically one SMS is triggered on the mobile number of the aggrieved person bearing details of his complaint number, category, officer to whom the complaint is marked and target date for disposal. Simultaneously, one SMS is sent to the concerned officer bearing details of the mobile number of complainant, complaint number, category and target date for disposal. Concerned officer is also intimated telephonically for immediate action. A printout of this complaint bearing scanned signature of the District Magistrate is also sent to him through fax/post/special messenger, thus relieving the person from the pain of journey to the concerned office. It saves the precious time, money, labour and also at the same time provides required attention in terms of responsiveness (while registering the grievance, investigating the grievance and while conveying the details of disposal to the aggrieved person). Thus fulfilling the objectives of JJSK which is to provide round the clock, free of cost, easily accessible, responsive, user friendly, cost effective and time saving platform for public grievance redressal.

Strategies adopted for JJSK This project has effectively used the best features of telephone like call features, SMS based feature, internet browsing feature etc. for effective redressing the grievances of common man and to empower public delivery system. JJSK is equipped with three computer systems, three laser printers, one voice logger system, SMS gateway, internet connection, web server for online processing, Web application, three telephone lines with caller-ID, one fax machine, one television and various news papers and

journals are subscribed. Every day one district level officer, two clerks, two computer operators and one class-IV employee are assigned duties in JJSK to run and monitor the project in shifts of eight hours each on voluntary basis. In JJSK each and every incoming call and outgoing call is automatically recorded by the voice logger software which saves the complete call conversation with telephone number, date, time and file name. The complete data (complainant’s personal detail, complainants contact number, brief summary of complaint, the department/ officer responsible for disposal, disposal details etc) is available on the website of Jhansi Jan Suvidha Kendra for Administrative purpose and for information to all stake holders. Various tailormade reports are being generated for administrators and other useful details are available on net for common man thus making the system more accountable, responsible and transparent. Throughout the whole process of receiving, registering, intimating, monitoring, disposing complaints and cross verification of disposed complaints JJSK staff constantly keeps itself personally in touch both with the aggrieved person and concerned officer through active call and SMS. Each and every disposal detail is cross verified by the officers and staff deployed at JJSK by calling the aggrieved person, intimating him regarding the disposal details and also taking his feedback for the same. Thus ensuring time bound effective and qualitative disposal of complaint. In case of dissatisfaction of the complainant the concerned officer is asked to look into it again accordingly. Pending status, defaults status of complaints, disposal quality of grievances registered is being monitored on daily and weekly basis by the Chairman and the Administrators of JJSK. District Magistrate/Chairman, JJSK, Jhansi on regular basis personally talks to the complainants on his July 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

CASE STUDY

G2C

phone and enquires about the quality of disposal. There is an inbuilt system of sending the SMS at predefined time daily and also there is a regular monitoring, meeting by Chairman Jhansi Jan Suvidha Kendra. He himself reviews all the default and pending complaints on weekly basis and also personally crosschecks the quality of the disposal in the concerned meeting. JJSK is being successfully replicated in UP Housing Development Board, Lucknow and Jhansi Cantonment Board, Jhansi. JJSK has been seen, appreciated, commented and supported by many dignitaries and senior officers of Government of India and UP Government. In the state level review meeting held in June 2010 at Lucknow, Government of Uttar Pradesh has appreciated the initiative and asked other districts of Uttar Pradesh to follow the JJSK model for effective redressal of public grievances. Government of UP with its decision on 18th August 2010 has ordered for replication of this model in all 71 districts of UP and already 18 districts have implemented the project. JJSK was selected and recommended by the UP Govt for the Prime Minister Award for excellence in the Public Administration for the year 2010.

Impact The system has resulted in improvement in service delivery of various departments both in measures of quality and time such as electricity, water supply, municipal corporation, public distribution systems, police, revenue, development. Before feeding each disposal in the software the complainant is asked about his satisfaction which has sensitized both the administration and the public. This brings administration more close

to public and gives birth to a new value system. This system has strengthened and facilitated the poor common men, women, elders, physically challenged, deprived sections (Schedule Caste, Schedule Tribes) by providing them a powerful tool in their hands so that they can reach out to the Government and receive the benefit of all Government schemes and become a part in the development process without any kind of impediment. The fact that more than 36,000 families are vesting their faith in JJSK within one year of implementation itself speaks about Total Complaint received Total disposed Total pending Total default

38086 36205 (95.06%) 451 (1.18%) 1364 (3.58%)

Detailed status of registration and disposal of complaint as on May 30th, 2011

the impact it has made in the lives of common man. There has been a drastic drop in the count of people coming to district headquarter to meet senior officers to get their problems solved. When compared to other e-governance initiatives already in place in various institutions JJSK stands out distinctly for its unique, innovative and citizen friendly approach in terms of reach, cost-time-labour effectiveness, inbuilt fool proof mechanism of quality cross check and monitoring leading to efficient administration and corruption free society. Above all it ensures the satisfaction of aggrieved person making it distinct from other projects, thus strengthening the concept of e-accountability and e-democracy. Time bound qualitative disposal of complaints taking the aggrieved person’s satisfaction into consideration and

ensuring constant communication between aggrieved person and concerned officer with transparency and accountability has not only simplified life of the common man but has also ushered in a new work culture which has been the backbone of SMART (Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive, Transparent) governance.

Future Plans JJSK is a step towards SMART Collectorate. It is the beginning of a long journey. It can be understood as an evolving process wherein more and more services will be added to benefit the citizens as the project goes on further. As of now the immediate future plans include: Using ‘voice SMS’ based services for system monitoring and disposal of the grievances, Intimating the citizen regarding the disposal status and its summary through the ‘pre recorded voice call’, Going in for ‘conference call facility’ (Government officer-JJSK-citizen) for effective monitoring and disposal, using SMS based platform for ensuring effective running of PDS system ( two way SMS platform), using SMS platform for collecting teachers attendance detail, students attendance detail MDM details on daily basis. ( two way SMS platform), using call based and SMS based platform for effective running of NRHM project and Using call based and SMS based platform for effective running of MGNREG’s.

AUTHOR: Raj Shekhar, District Magistrate, Moradabad Deepak Saxena, Scientist “E”/Technical Director, NIC, Jhansi

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