Egov july 2013

eGov Magazine

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second grid July 2013

Contents grid name

issue 7 n  volume 09

A Vision for e-Governance in J&K

14 Indian Railways

Information Technology initiatives in Indian Railways

20 IT-ITES Sector ICT for Inclusive Development

49 08 in person

K J Surya Prakash Reddy Union Minister of State for Railways, Government of India

12 in person

H K Jaggi

Secretary, Railway Board, Ministry of Railways

32 in person

Abhishek Pandit

Director-Business Services, All India Society for Electronics & Computer Technology (AISECT)

38 in person

Amar Babu

Managing Director, Lenovo India

22

special feature:AAI Airports Authority of India Serving the Nation with Pride

28 Data Analytics

Analytics for better governance

34 Digital Economy Policies

Compulsory Registration Order 2012

36 viewpoint

16 in person

Sunil Kumar

Managing Director, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS)

24 in person

Neeta Verma

Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC), Government of India

44 in person

Putting GIS at core of e-Gov Initiatives

Ambarish Deshpande

40 Telecom

66

42 Gov Cloud

Managing Director - India Sales, Blue Coat Systems

in person

Dr Akhilesh Gupta

Secretary, University Grants Commission

Bsnl: Supporting e-Governance Initiatives

MeghRaj Government’s GI Cloud initiative

46 Software Industry

30 in person

R K Upadhyay

Chairman & Managing Director Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL)

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / July 2013

70

Software Technology Parks of India

in person

Jeff Gould

CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research

48 eGov Knowledge Exchange 2013

event report

ICTs for Development

I

n terms of subscribers, India is the world’s largest mobile phone market. According to the latest data released by TRAI, till March 31, 2013, the country had a total of 898.02 million mobile phone connections. However, the number of broadband users continues to languish at a relatively low figure of 15.05 million till March 31, 2013. The yearly growth of broadband services is only 9.13 percent. e-Governance cannot really take off in the country, if we don’t have proper broadband connectivity. The TRAI report states that the top five ISPs in terms of market share (based on subscriber base) are: BSNL (9.93 million), Bharti Airtel (1.40 million), MTNL (1.08 million), Hathway (0.37 million) and You Broadband (0.31 million). It is a good thing that the public sector entity, BSNL is contributing its mite in the broadband space. In this issue of eGov we have covered the work being done by BSNL through interviews of its senior officials.

One major area where ICTs can play a large role is Indian Railways. The Indian Railways serves more than 23 million passengers daily. Majority of these passengers might not have access to Internet, so they cannot directly take advantage of the online ticket booking and other services that Indian Railways has launched. Recently Indian Railways has launched an SMS-based ticketing service through two dedicated numbers 139 and 5676714. No one should have any doubt that this service will become one of the most popular m-Governance services.

This issue of eGov is a Railway special, through a range of articles and interviews we have covered the innovative reforms that the government is bringing in this sector. Some interesting facts and figures have emerged out of this coverage of the railway sector. We get to know about the new initiatives that are being taken for implementation of new ICT technologies in the Indian Railways for not only bringing more convenience to the passengers, but also for ushering efficiency and transparency in the internal workings of the organisation.

Another interesting piece that I would like to recommend to you is the interview of Dr Akhilesh Gupta, the secretary at of UGC. Dr. Gupta provides us some interesting perspectives on the state of Higher Education in the country. I am sure you will enjoy reading it. Additionally, there is the article from R K Goyal, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, on the crucial subject of how ICT can be used for promoting inclusive development.

In July 23-24, we are having the eINDIA 2013 event at Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad. This would be the 9th edition of eINDIA and like every year we would be having four parallel tracks to the event. The tracks would focus on e-Governance, education, healthcare and PSUs. I would also like to tell you that the Government of Andhra Pradesh is co-hosting the 9th edition of eINDIA 2013 along with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. The event is being supported by large number of government organisations.

We look forward to having you in eINDIA 2013, where you can participate in the vibrant round of discussions with the stakeholders who are engaged in devising new ideas for development of the country. ravi guptA Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

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July 2013 issue 7 n volume 09

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Financial Inclusion & Payment Systems 23-25 October 2013, Eros Hilton, New Delhi

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In Person

Indian Railways

K J Surya Prakash Reddy Union Minister of State for Railways Government of India

Indian Railways connecting india on wheels

T

he Indian Railways are hailed as the lifeline of the nation.

Millions of people use the trains run by Indian Railways every day. Currently what are the main challenges before Indian Railways?

“Safety of 13 million passengers that Indian Railways serve every day is of paramount importance,� says K J Surya Prakash Reddy, in conversation with Nayana Singh

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The basic challenge that Indian Railways faces today is that of capacity constraint on High Density Network Routes. Indian Railways has identified seven HDN routes comprising of 212 sub-sections covering the length of 10509 km. These together constitute 16.4 percent of the total route carrying 58 percent of the entire railway traffic.

To enhance capacity building and strengthen HDN routes, we have started 47 doubling and 229 traffic facility projects with total cost of `15061 crore. We have prioritised capacity augmentation works by channelising flow of funds. These High Priority Works are of low cost, having relatively shorter gestation and positive bearings on the overall system by means of increasing capacity, operational flexibility and movement fluidity. They reduce congestion, de-bottleneck important routes and give immediate relief by helping in capacity enhancement.

Indian Railways

What steps are you taking to ensure that these projects get completed on time?

A priority list of railway project is drawn for comprehensive and continuous monitoring to avoid any slippage in their target of completion on account of fund and other matters. 238 High Priority Works were prioritised with requisite allocation of funds in 2012-13. These included 12 works of New Line, 25 works of Gauge Conversion, 27 works of doubling, 121 works of traffic facilities, 46 works of S&T and 7 works of Railway Electrification. Out of these, 100 works have been completed by 31.3.2013 .This is a major achievement and such prioritisation is proposed to be continued to enable optimal use of scarce financial resources. For the financial year, 2013-14, 402 works (including 125 works carried forward from 2012-13) have been identified as High Priority Works. These include 14 works of New Line, 21 works of Gauge Conversion, 47 works of Doubling, 196 works of Traffic Facilities, 115 works of S&T and 9 works of Railway Electrification.

Tell us about the initiatives that you are taking to ensure that there is easy availability of trains to people who need to travel. Some of the routes in the country tend to get very crowded during the festival seasons. Are you thinking of increasing the number of trains for such routes?

Indian Railways announces a number of trains every year in Railway Budget on the basis of demand pattern. Introduction of new train services in various parts of the country is a continuous ongoing process. In addition, every year for clearance of extra rush of passengers during peak season, festivals, special events, Indian Railways run special trains between various important destinations. We keep in view the pattern of traffic, commercial justification, operational feasibility and availability of resources.

What steps are you taking to ensure efficiency of Indian Railways through the incorporation of latest IT Technologies?

Indian Railways has been a pioneer in the use of IT applications for interaction with the customers. Various IT projects have been implemented which have impacted and

improved the efficiency of the Indian Railways.

We have launched Freight Operation Information System (FOIS) which involves Rake Management System (RMS) and Terminal Management System (TMS). RMS handles the train operations and TMS is responsible for commercial process. We have commissioned reporting and monitoring equipments at more than 2000 locations. TMS provides information about congested terminals and congested routes through which wagons can be diverted to non-congested destinations or moved through non-congested routes. We have also started Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) of wagons for accurate accountal of wagons. A pilot project on 500 wagons was successfully carried out. We have also expanded to cover 20,000 wagons. Integrated Coach Management System (ICMS) has been started which monitors the information of passenger trains and

In Person

planned for remaining 200 crew lobbies. Biometric verification of the crew is planned and is under testing at 5 locations namely - Shakurbasti, Tughlakabad, Delhi, Ambala and Moradabad. Various applications are under different stages of development and implementation for management of the workshops and loco sheds .Workshop Information System (WISE) has been launched at Raipur Wagon Repair Shop in August 2012.

Please tell us about Railway Energy Management Company (REMC).

Railway Energy Management Company (REMC) is a joint venture with the RITES and Indian Railways. It is entrusted to undertake projects for harnessing wind energy in a time bound manner and at a faster pace. It has already planned to set up 25 MW of windmill in the state

“Indian Railways has been a pioneer in the use of IT applications for interaction with the customers� coaches. Punctuality Analysis and Monitoring (PAM) and Coaching Operations Information System (COIS) modules are being used extensively.

Brief us on the internal e-governance systems that you are implementing in the Indian Railways?

Indian Railways had installed Control Office Application (COA) which is responsible to maintain the data entry of the running trains by section controllers. It enables better planning of trains by making the train movement on the adjacent sections of the adjoining divisions visible to the section controllers. It provides information to the other applications such as the National Train Enquiry System (NTES), ICMS and F.O.I.S. at all divisional control offices.

We have Crew Management System (CMS) which is an Application for management of the booking of train crew (Drivers and Guards). It enables better utilisation of crew, calculation of their mileage bills and provides information to the crew through information kiosks. It has been implemented at 352 crew lobbies and is

of Rajasthan for which a consultancy contract on Centre for Wind Energy Technology (C-WET) has been signed. These windmills are expected to be commissioned by July 2014. Further, it is planned to set up additional 127.5 MW of windmill plants for which the location, power evacuation arrangements etc. are being examined.

Please tell us about the steps taken to improve the hygienic conditions in Indian Railways?

Intensive mechanised cleaning of coaches in the coaching depots through professional agencies is being carried out. Heavy duty machines such as high pressure jet cleaners, floor scrubbers, vacuum suction cleaners etc. are deployed for the purpose. This has already been implemented in 95 coaching depots on different Zonal Railways.

This mechanised cleaning is continuously being expanded to cover more number of coaches and in the near future, 25 more coaching depots are planned for implementation of this scheme. On Board House Keeping Scheme (OBHS) has been prescribed in all Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto & other important long distance Mail/Express trains for frequent cleaning of coach toilets, July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

9

In Person

Indian Railways

doorways, aisles & passenger compartments during the run of the trains. This scheme has been implemented on about 385 pairs of trains.

Around 200 more trains are planned for coverage under this scheme.

One great area of concern is related to the sanitation and health related issue on our Railway platforms. What steps should be taken to ensure cleanliness in railway platforms and trains?

Cleanliness is always on high priority of Indian Railways. Considering the passengers who turn up in millions at the stations and on trains every day, maintaining an acceptable level of cleanliness is a never ending challenge. Indian Railways have taken several steps to improve cleanliness in stations.Indian Railway is decreasing manual efforts by deploying more and more mechanisation.

Around 350 stations have been brought under mechanised cleaning and progressively more stations will be taken for cleaning efforts. We are conducting intensive checking at all important stations at different levels for ensuring proper cleanliness. The senior management is responsible in maintaining a strict vigil in this endeavor to ensure that there is no slackness at any level.

Clean Train Stations (CTSs) have been nominated to ensure thorough cleaning of passing through trains between 6 am to 9 pm. So far, 29 stations have been nominated as CTSs on Indian Railways. Apart from this for ensuring better hygienic conditions in trains, On Board House Keeping Services (OBHS) have been deployed in important trains for proper upkeep of running trains.

There has been talk of having bio toilets in the trains. Please tell us about it.

We are planning to have bio toilets in train which will eliminate the direct discharge of human waste on the tracks. It has been devel-

oped jointly with the help of DRDO. Nine trains have already been provided with bio toilets service. Rag picking and garbage disposal contracts have been provided at important stations for ensuring cleanliness of areas in and around stations. So far around 400 stations have been awarded with rag picking and disposals contracts. We have also launched various awareness campaigns through print and electronic media. Sanitation work at most of the stations in different zones is maintained

by Commercial Department. The sanitation and cleanliness at railway stations is governed

by Sanitation Manual issued by Commercial Directorate. Special Inspection Groups (SIG) groups consisting of Senior Officers of Commercial, Engineering and Medical Depart-

India became the first developing country and the 5th country in the world to roll out the first indigenously built “state-of-the-art” high horse power three phase electric locomotive when the first such loco was flagged off from Chittranjan Locomotive Works (CLW).

CLW has been achieving progressive indigenisation and the cost of locomotives has come down to the level of `13.65 crore.

Diesel Locomotives Works, Varanasi has produced state-of-the-art 4000 HP AC/AC diesel locomotive in April this year. These locos are capable of hauling 4,800 tonne freight trains at a speed of 100 KMPH and can run continuously up to 90 days in one stretch without any major maintenance.

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ments regularly inspect the stations to monitor the cleanliness levels.

Are you developing systems to ensure that the food being served in the long distance trains is of good quality and healthy?

It is a continuous endeavor of the Indian Railways to provide good quality hygienic food to Railway passengers. Accordingly, a New Catering Policy, 2010 has been introduced on 21.07.2010 with a mandate for effective quality assurance programme. Feedback regarding quality of services is always taken from passengers through opinion cards. Emphasis has also been made in New Catering Policy 2010 for conducting surprise and periodical inspections by Zonal Railways at various levels. Periodical surprise inspections are carried out by Zonal Railways at various levels. About 34565 inspections have been carried out in the last one year.

With our honest and sincere efforts, I foresee a very bright future for the railway sector. The improvements in our railway system will make it more convenient and safe for people to travel and it will also lead to growth of the nation’s economy.

In Person

Indian Railways

H K Jaggi Secretary, Railway Board, Ministry of Railways

Modernisation of Indian Railways through IT

T

oday the scope of Information Technology has increased in all areas of our life. In your opinion, how important a role is Information Technology playing in the Indian Railways?

There is no doubt that Information Technology plays a very important role in modern railway system. In fact, the Indian Railways is one of the first organisations in the country to make large scale implementations of Information Technology. The best example of IT in railways is the Passenger Reservation System, which enables us to manage the reservation of millions of travellers in a seamless and efficient manner. The new TrainEnquiry.com site has been developed by Indian Railway’s National Train Enquiry System (NTES) and promises to the needs of modern-day Indian Railways passengers and their expectations of online user experience. All the information provided on the site is collected by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) in near real time (from all over the country) and the Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) of the trains is determined by using predictive algorithms. The computerisation of Railway Freight is being done through FOIS. The Indian Railways carries over one billion tonnes of freight in a year. This translates to about 700 freight trains daily. The Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) was the first project which CRIS embarked upon, today this system is working very well. There are many other instances where Information Technology has been successfully used to bring more efficiency and transparency in the working of Indian Railways.

What are the main challenges that the Indian Railways faces today?

“Indian Railways is one of the first organisations in the country to make large scale implementations of Information Technology,” says H K Jaggi, in conversation with Nayana Singh

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The main challenge that Indian Railway face today is related to capacity building.

It is essential to build a network of capacities across the country. At present Indian Railway has a network of 62,000 km. Indian Railways runs around 12,700 trains everyday, of which 12,000 are passenger trains. Golden quadrilateral which connects five important metro cities of India constitutes 60 percent of country’s traffic.

The scale of operations is very huge. People need to be trained in the usage of new Information Technology systems, so that these can be seamlessly implemented.

Then there are also the infrastructure related challenges. One major concern is related to the concept of passenger and freight lines management. There are separate lines for passenger and freight in most of the advanced railway systems in the world. But in India, we have to manage both the traffics in one single line. There is a need to develop dedicated lines separately for passengers and freight movement

Indian Railways

as they both runs on different speed and excel load. Now we have gone ahead and sanctioned two dedicated freight corridors, one from Delhi to Mumbai and other from Delhi to Kolkata. Delhi-Mumbai is in western corridor and Delhi-Kolkata is in eastern corridor. The entire project requires an investment of `60,000 crores. To undertake such projects, we have already created an organisation called Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd. Once the entire project gets implemented, we would be able to deliver goods between these two corridors within 24 hours.

National Rail Vikas Yojana With a view to complete strategically important projects within a stipulated period of time, a non-budgetary investment initiative for the development of Railways has been launched. Under the scheme all the capacity bottlenecks in the critical sections of the railway network will be removed at an investment of `15,000

crore over the next five years.

These projects include: • Strengthening of the golden Quadrilateral to run more long-distance mail/express and freight trains at a higher speed of 100 kmph • Strengthening of rail connectivity to ports and development of

Safety is an area of concern for many railway passengers, as we keep having accidents at different periods of time. What steps are you taking to ensure that the railway journeys are relatively accident free?

for Indian Railway. We are now planning to interconnect all the state capitals of North East India. We have launched 20 new line projects.

We have initiated Rs 41,000 crore projects in North East India. In North India, we have commissioned projects from Jammu to Udhampur and Udhampur to Katra.

Safety of 23 million passengers that Indian Railways serves on a daily basis is of paramount importance to us. Over the years, apart from the regular safety norms followed, the network has taken a number of steps through innovative use of technology.

We have stepped up training of our manpower to enhance safety standards. Extensive field trials of the Anti-Collision Devices (ACD) are being

The younger generation in the country is especially concerened about the environment. what steps is the Indian Railway taking to ensure that environment is safeguarded, even as people have access to best possible

“Indian Railways is the largest rail network in Asia and the world’s second largest under one management” conducted. This innovative technology will help railways reduce accidents, which happen due to collision between trains. We have sanctioned `1,760 crore for installing Train Protection and Warning System. We have planned to start it in eight major zonal railways. Our signalling Department is working very closely with European companies to install this system. We are also working on Train Collision Avoidance System which is a very important part of our safety measure system. Indian Railway is also planning to have Wi-Fi connectivity in trains and station premises. We have started world class lounge facility in New Delhi railway station.

What are the plans for improving connectivity to far-flung areas like the North Eastern region?

The North East is one of the important areas

In Person

transportation facilities?

Indian Railway has undertaken several environmental friendly initiatives. We have successfully commissioned 10.5 MW Wind Mill plant at Integral Coach Factory, Chennai. It produces 22 million units of electricity per annum through wind power, which is considered to be most environment friendly.

We have now developed plans for harnessing up to 200 MW of wind power generation in the coming years. We are also endeavouring to set up a 7MW solar power plant. We have installed various solar appliances in all our stations, institutions and schools. Railway Energy Management Company is a joint venture between Indian Railways and CRIS. This agency has been tasked with managing the entire spectrum of our power generation.

multi-modal corridors to hinterland • Construction of four mega bridges - two over River Ganga, one over River Brahmaputra, and one over River Kosi • Accelerated completion of those projects nearing completion and other important projects

Recently a committee had been set up under Sam Pitroda to give its recommendations for modernisation of Indian Railways. Tell us about the developments in this area.

An expert Group has been constituted under the Chairmanship of Mr. Sam Pitroda to recommend ways and means to modernise Indian Railways to meet the challenges of economic growth, the aspirations of the common man, the needs of changing technology and the expanding market while at the same time ensuring adequate focus on addressing social and strategic requirements of the country in consonance with Indian Railways’ national aspirations. The Committee identified that immediate challenge before Indian railway is to execute large scale Public Private Partnership (PPP). It estimated that the entire modernisation project would require `560,000 crore over the 12th and 13th five year plan. Today we are concerned about the funds which are needed to start these modernisation projects. We usually get a very small budgetary allowance as compared to the amount which we need to accomplish these projects. This year we just got `26,000 crore as budgetary allowance.

In China and Japan, now they are having bullet trains. In India also there has been talk of having High Speed Corridors for train movements. Tell us about these projects.

High speed corridors are those lines in which a train can cover a speed of 200 km per hour. At present, such corridor does not exist in India.

Various western countries have already installed such corridors. We have identified some key routes like Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Delhi-Amritsar, and Banagluru-Chennai.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Indian Railways

Information Technology initiatives in Indian Railways The formal inauguration ceremony was performed on 16th April 1853, when 14 railway carriages carrying about 400 guests left Bori Bunder at 3.30 pm “amidst the loud applause of a vast multitude and to the salute of 21 guns.” The first passenger train steamed out of Howrah station destined for Hooghly, a distance of 24 miles, on 15th August, 1854 Satya Prakash, Additional Member (Tourism & Catering); Additional Member (IT), Railway Board, Ministry of Railways

I

ndian Railways has been pioneer in use of Information Technology in India. Indian Railways adopted Information Technology during 1960s for Passenger and Freight revenue accounting, operating statistics and Pay-roll and inventory management using IBM 1401 computers placed in Zonal data centers.

Subsequently, Center for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) was established at Chanakyapuri, New Delhi in 1986, with the aim of developing computerized systems for Passenger and Freight traffic segments on Indian Railways. The Vision of Indian Railways for IT is to reach a stage where all information needs of organization can be met by comprehensive information highway available to both internal and external stake holders and Improve personal productivity at all levels by effective use of technology.

Some of the major initiatives undertaken by the Indian Railways in the area of Passenger traffic are listed below:

Passenger Reservation System Passenger Reservation System (PRS), introduced by the Indian Railways in Nov. 1985 at New Delhi station and then progressively expanded to cover all major stations of Indian Railways, was the first

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Ticketing on Internet and Mobile phones

Satya Prakash such initiative. It provided the passengers the convenience of reserving accommodation on trains from any station to any station. Five regional data centers namely at New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Secunderabad were established for this application. The geographical expansion of the system has resulted in this facility being provided at more than 3104 locations across the country, including 249 Post offices. The Passenger Reservation System is handling more than 3,000 trains involving on an average, 4.77 crore passengers/ month with average earning of `2320.45 crores/ month. SMS updates to all passengers regarding status of the waitlisted tickets is also planned.

The facility to book reserved tickets on internet (I-tickets i.e. tickets booked on website and delivered by couriers) was introduced in 2003 through IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation) website namely www. irctc.co.in. This was later extended for e-tickets (passengers book tickets on website and take a printout of the ticket) in 2005. Lately, the facility to book these tickets from Mobile phones has also been provided on this website. To make things further convenient for the traveling public the MRM (Mobile Reservation Message sent as SMS to the passenger) and the VRM(Virtual Reservation Message – sent as e-mail to the passengers) are now treated as valid travel authority and it is not necessary for the passengers to take a printout of their tickets booked at the website.

SMS updates are sent to all passengers holding e-tickets issued from IRCTC website at the time of booking/cancellation as well as whenever the status of the waitlisted ticket changes. The facility was started from 16th June 2011.

Mushkil Aasaan (Mobile Ticketing Vans) For taking ticketing to the doorsteps of the passengers, Mushkil Aasaan scheme was launched and two Mobile Ticketing Vans were intro-

Indian Railways

duced, initially one van each at New Delhi and Kolkata (from Jan. 2010). Further expansion of the scheme has been planned by introducing 25 Mobile ticketing Vans for issuing PRS tickets on various zonal railways. Three such Vans have started functioning in Vapi, Jaipur and Anand from September 11, November 11 and June 12 respectively.

Unreserved Ticketing System The Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) was introduced in 2002 as a pilot project in Delhi area and then further expanded. The system enables the passengers to purchase tickets for unreserved accommodation on trains, three days in advance.

These tickets could earlier be purchased only on the date of travel. The system has been expanded and is now available at 5690 stations across the country and is planned to cover all stations, except the smaller ‘Halt stations’. It serves approx.

60.45 crore passengers / month earning revenue of approx. `1359.56crores/ month.

Benefits of the IT initiatives •

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Automatic Ticket Vending Machines Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) have been introduced in the suburban sections of the Metro cities namely Mumbai, Chennai, Secunderabad, Kolkata and Delhi. These machines are connected to the UTS servers and enable quick disbursal of unreserved and platform tickets by eliminating cash handling. Smart cards are used for purchasing tickets through these ATVMs. The Smart cards can be purchased by passengers from counters in booking offices at the stations. 811 such machines have been procured in near future. Further expansion is also planned including installation of currency operated machines as well.

National Train Enquiry System (NTES) National Train Enquiry System has been commissioned at important stations across the country to provide accurate information about running of trains to the passengers through display boards etc. This information is also provided to the call centers of IRCTC which provide information telephonically/ through Interactive Voice Response System on a common no. 139. The information of NTES has been made available at www.trainenquiry.com. Integration of COA with NTES has been completed on all divisions.

This helps in providing real time information to NTES for onward transmission of passenger

•

Ticketing has been taken to the doorstep of the customers. E-ticketing has now provided relief from long queues at the reservation offices. Mobile ticketing vans are also an extension of taking ticketing to the doorstep of the customers.

Booking tickets on mobile phones has also been introduced.

The Mobile Reservation Message and the Virtual Reservation Message(e-mail etc.) are also treated as valid tickets and therefore there is no need to carry a printed out paper ticket.

Information regarding Seat availability, PNR status, Arrival and Departure timings and running of the trains can now be obtained through SMS and also through websites.

SMS is also sent to the customers at the time of change of status of tickets for e-tickets only at present however this facility is planned to be extended to all passengers.

Parcels and luggage can also be booked through a computerized system which enables track and trace facility for the customers to track their consignments on the internet.

In case of freight traffic also the Railway receipts are now computerised and epayment facility has been extended to a large number of siding owners. This has enabled continuous loading as loading does not stop for preparation of Demand drafts from Banks on Sundays and other holidays.

Tracking of freight consignments has been provided on internet as well as through SMS which enables the customers to plan unloading and further actions more efficiently.

Indian Railways now provides better and reliable information to customers thereby improving customer satisfaction.

train running information. The process of updating of train definition in NTES from PRS has also been automated.

Integrated Coach Management System It is a browser based application running on intranet. The application has two modules, namely Punctuality Analysis and Monitoring (PAM) and Coaching Operations Information System (COIS). These have been implemented all over Indian Railways. The application assists in planning and running of passenger carrying trains. Information is being updated from 221 locations. Coach Maintenance Module (CMM), which would provide information regarding maintenance aspects of coaches, is being developed.

Indian Railways Commercial Portal All 35 websites of Indian Railways have been migrated to a common platform (standardised and given uniform look and feel) and made online at www.indianrailways.gov.in. Website of IRT (Institute of Rail Transport) has also been made online recently. SMS based Complaint Management System has been made developed

and deployed on the portal. A common number 132 will be established for lodging complaints/ suggestions and connected to the Complaint Management System and Cloak Room module is being run, on pilot basis at New Delhi station.

Retiring room booking application is being run as a pilot project at 37 stations and further it is planned to provide the facility of booking retiring – rooms on the internet after a payment gateway of Indian Railways is established.

Parcel Management System A pilot project for computerisation of the Parcel traffic on Indian Railways has been successfully running at 10 stations of New Delhi – Howrah corridor. Four more stations have been covered.

Extension of the System to cover all major corridors involving 228 stations (Golden Quadrilateral and its diagonals) has been planned.

Similarly the Indian Railways has launched many IT initiatives for ensuring better management of freight traffic and improvement of its back-office systems. Many more such initiatives are in the pipeline and over a period of time these IT initiatives will lead to significant improvement in the functioning of the Indian Railways.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

15

In Person

Indian Railways

Sunil Kumar

Managing Director, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS)

CRIS: Defining the Dynamics of

Railway IT

P

lease tell us about your vision regarding Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS).

We want to make CRIS an organisation where all kinds of innovative ideas in IT are conceptualised.

Our vision is to generate resources and to turn CRIS into a technology provider for all types of information systems for Indian Railways. We want to become a one-stop centre for conceptualisation of systems, designing them, developing them, implementing them and maintaining them. For this we have to create the requisite capacity within the organisation. We already have a pool of competent IT professionals, complemented by domain specialists from the Railways. We have undertaken large projects in ticketing and train operations. The vision is to take up and implement information systems for all areas of Railways, such as maintenance of assets, material management, financial management, etc. We want to keep infrastructure ahead of demand, so creation of capacity is a very important part of the vision.

What new innovations can we expect from CRIS?

“CRIS works with Indian Railways to conceive prudent IT strategies through which better transportation related services can be provided to the country’s citizens,” says Sunil Kumar

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We are trying to launch a new generation of e-ticketing services with the help of IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation). We have also put on trial cash-based Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) that would accept cash instead of smart cards for payment. We are working to provide unreserved tickets on mobile phones. We have tried out a pilot system by which trains are tracked in real time using GPS. We already have the National Train Enquiry System through which a passenger can get information on passenger train movement. With real-time train tracking the passenger will be able to get more accurate information.

Other innovations are tracking of railway wagons using RFID (radio frequency identification), and setting up a geo-spatial database for the entire Indian Railways. We are also planning to introduce Aadhaar into our ticketing system, which would take the entire concept into a new level.

One of the important steps that I took is the creation of a unique id for Railway personnel. This Railway ID was created by collecting the salary details of each and every Railway staff. All information related to safety inspections is available in a central dashboard. It is now possible to immediately locate an accident site on a GIS map.

Indian Railways

Various committees have been formed to look into the issues of the overall modernisation of Indian Railways. What has been the impact on CRIS work?

All the committees have recommended different steps to modernise all aspects of Indian Railways.

But my area of concern is the funds needed to initiate those steps. We have to generate these funds from internal resources. In CRIS, we are in the process of simplifying our funding mechanism so that project execution becomes faster and more effective.

Recently Indian Railways signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Deutsche Bahn.

Please tell us about it.

The memorandum was signed during the second intergovernmental consultations between Germany and India. It was signed between CRIS and DB Systel, our counterpart organisation in the Deutsche Bahn (German Railways). We would be working closely with DB Systel to understand the technological aspects of IT on which we can cooperate and collaborate.

CRIS has been responsible for developing a lot of new infrastructure for Indian Railways. Please tell us about some of these initiatives.

Over the years, CRIS has helped Railways to build up many computing facilities. As far back as 1985, we had built datacentres for the Passenger Reservation System. I was myself responsible for the one in Chennai, that was built in a record time of three months. We have put in place along with Railways two large networks, one for ticketing systems (Passenger Reservation System and Unreserved Ticketing System) and the other for the operations related systems such as FOIS. Many large systems are hosted in CRIS. We would build a state-of-theart data centre in Secunderabad as well for Disaster Recovery (DR).

How do CRIS and IRCTC work in conjunction?

Reservation is facilitated by the Passenger Reservation System (PRS). PRS provides reservation services to 1.5 to 2.2 million passengers every day on over 2500 trains running throughout the country. It is the world’s largest online reservation application. PRS tickets are sold in two ways – one is through the ticket counters and the other

In Person

Major CRIS Initiatives Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) The Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) was the first project which CRIS embarked upon. In fact, the creation of CRIS is a by product of this effort in the mid eighties. FOIS began as an application to track and monitor the movement of wagons, locomotives and unit trains. Now it is a complete management module for freight trains handling the billing and revenue collections as well. It has played a major role in the improved wagon productivity on Indian Railways and the objective is to use the information to further improve productivity, customer service and thus meet the needs of a rapidly growing economy.

ICMS - Integrated Coach Management System By efficiently deploying the fleet, the Indian Railways is able to run more services for the benefit of their passengers, while minimising any chances of disruption and disappointment. IR also must ensure that these assets receive timely servicing and maintenance.

Depending upon the need, the system

is through the Web. Tickets sold directly through ticket counters are transacted on the CRIS servers. On the other hand, IRCTC is responsible for the sale of tickets through the Web. CRIS and IRCTC work very closely with each other. We are focused on the overall experience of the consumers and are analysing the problems related to Tatkal booking for example. We have categorised the entire process into two major components, i.e. journey planning and the payment gateway, apart from the ticket booking itself. We want to see if delinking the two can speed up the process for customers. We want to bring the main software and hardware to CRIS, while the web servers and sale of the tickets remains with IRCTC, which is something that they do very well. For the users, there would be no change, the website address would remain unchanged.

In implementing all these new ideas, there must have been some challenges that CRIS would be facing. Please tell us about them.

can deliver historical records from past years in printed reports, or up-to-theminute information on an official’s cell phone. The Integrated Coach Management System does exactly all this and more. There are three modules that give a comprehensive view to the managers and facilitate quick identification of available resources and their allocation as per the requirements.

SATSaNG – Software Aided Train Scheduling Creating a time table for trains on a busy network like the Indian Railways is an extremely challenging task. Planners on the Zonal Railways work independently and then collaboratively with other Zonal level planners to design the All India time table. Introducing new train services and augmenting older ones is an art. Indian Railways decided to provide software tools to aid the planning process. The Software Aided Train Scheduling and Network Governance (SATSaNG) project is entrusted with the task of building such a tool. The entire resource allocation process will be aided by the tool leading to more efficient allocations and robust time tables.

India is a country of vast geographical extents.

The size of the country and the Railways is a challenge for any IT application. The second challenge is sustainability. Even if an application is developed and implemented, it needs to be kept running. For this resources and funds are required. Training of our people to keep up with the rapid changes in technology is another challenge that has to be met with practical strategies.

Tell us about some cyber security initiatives undertaken

by CRIS. None of the systems developed by CRIS store any sensitive information about the citizens. We also have a dedicated IT Security group to monitor the external security environment and ensure that systems are regularly audited for security, and any IT security related incidents are corrected and prevented. Security requires continuous effort to maintain. We can never say that we are completely secure now, let us relax our efforts.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IT-ITES Sector

ICT for Inclusive Development India is well positioned to enhance and leverage its existing ICT capabilities for a leadership role. Technology has transformational power and it is a great leveller of opportunity within and across economies R K Goyal, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India

I

nformation and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play a crucial role in economic and social development efforts around the world. ICT has great potential for reducing poverty and fostering growth in developing countries.

By connecting people and places, ICTs play a vital role in the national, regional and global development. More importantly, ICT has immense potential in accelerating the growth momentum by enhancing efficiency, competitiveness and technological edge across other sectors, including strategic sectors. Equally significant is the contribution of ICTE in enabling inclusive growth and development and in ensuring that people across the length and breadth of the country have access to services as well as the opportunities generated by growth.

The Rise of IT-ITES This sector has been contributing significantly to the economic growth of the country and has further potential to script India’s future across the economy, society and governance and epitomize what modern, resurgent and young India is capable of accomplishing. The Indian IT-ITES sector has contributed significantly to the Indian Growth story. Not only has it weathered uncertainties in the global business

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R K Goyal environment, and generated aggregate revenue of USD 108 billion in 2013. India has a 52 per cent market share highlighting India’s continued competitiveness and the effectiveness in this sector.

The sector is contributing eight percent of India’s GDP, 23-25 percent of exports and seven percent of FDI. India has also become a major R&D centre for many global players and of late many start-ups have started creating many

innovative solutions. The industry continues to be a net employment generator thus providing direct employment to about three million, and indirectly employing nine million people. While the global macroeconomic scenario remained uncertain, the industry exhibited resilience and adaptability in continually reinventing itself to retain its appeal to clients. Embracing emerging technologies, increased customer-centricity, deepening focus on new markets and adopting new business models are some successful growth strategies followed by the industry.

India is now well positioned to enhance and leverage its existing ICT capabilities for a leadership role. Technology has transformational power and it is a great leveller of opportunity within and across economies. With the right policies and investment in infrastructure, we have the opportunity to strengthen and enhance our position as a global ICT power-house. On the domestic front, use of IT in all sectors can transform our economy, enhance equity and help the nation to rapidly improve its development indices. Also, Global Linkages can play a catalysing role in this sector for human upliftment and improving the quality of life.

Advent of new technologies The pace of technological advance is accelerating and ICT is increasingly becoming a ubiquitous and intrinsic part of people’s

IT-ITES Sector

behaviour and social networks as well as of business practices, government activities and service provision. These transformations will continue to move human progress forward by further leveraging ICT’s positive social, political, and economic impact on government, enterprise, and civil society alike. Services are becoming seamlessly linked through mobile, internet and other modes of delivery. Aadhaar will enable IDs to be authenticated online or via the mobile phone. A National Broadband Plan has been initiated that aims to provide Broadband Connectivity across the length and breadth of the country by 2014 through a combination of wireless and OFC/wire line. This will enable not only computers and mobile devices, but a whole range of other electronically enabled devices to be connected.

This can stimulate proliferation of relevant innovative applications using mobile devices.

Location based services, in any desired language, in either text or audio form have made possible by use of ICT for a new and exciting range of services.

The advent of emerging technologies like cloud computing technology has thrown up another wide range of possibilities. Industry have already begun creating new products and services leveraging the benefits of these technologies. However, these technologies because of their ubiquitous nature have again thrown new challenges for economies to synergistically work to take benefit from them particularly in e-commerce. The stage is now set for a quantum jump in this emerging sector. Another positive aspect is that there is a growing trend of entrepreneurship and product/ service innovation. Therefore, it is necessary to provide an enabling environment to nurture this evolution. Software Technology Parks of India, with a significant role in emergence of the Indian IT-ITES industry, are now working towards creating an enabling infrastructure for technology innovators and incubators.

Changing Dynamics in IT-ITES Looking into the changing dynamics of the IT-ITES sector, Government of India has recently come up with a National IT Policy, 2012. The principal policy objectives of the IT Policy is to optimally leverage our existing and evolving ICT infrastructure and capabilities to meet the growing need for high quality social sector services like education, health, skill development, welfare or benefit programmes, e-government services, eco-

nomic services like banking, insurance, transportation and logistics, and other societal needs like entertainment, communications, social media, information dissemination, etc. Another major objective is to use ICT capabilities to enhance competitiveness and efficiency in manufacturing across the board and in key infrastructure sectors like power.

Other policy objectives include leveraging the mushrooming demand for products and services in these and other areas to foster innovation, catalyze manufacturing, encourage relevant R&D through academic institutions and industry and create a range of products and services that not only meet domestic needs but also address global demand as a logical extension of the IT and IT- Enabled Services (ITES) industry. Under

The increased development and manufacturing in the sector will lead to greater economic growth through more manufacturing and consequently greater employment in the sector. The Policy envisages that a turnover of USD 400 billion will create an employment for more than twenty eight million people.

In the present knowledge era innovation is a vital force of economic growth and therefore a high priority area in government policy making.

Innovation-based competitive advantage requires changing and aligning processes, work culture and management. Information technologies can help in at least two of these dimensions: the processes and management of innovation. In short, ICT centric innovation is now key to any innovation paradigm and needs special focus.

In the present knowledge era, innovation is a vital force of economic growth and therefore a high priority area in government policy making the National IT Policy, 2012, IT-ITES market is targeted to grow to 300 bn USD by 2020. The IT/ ITES sector is mainly focused towards exports, which generate around 80% of the total revenues.

The current slowdown in major countries throws up new challenges for this sector and can be a significant detrimental factor for continued growth of exports. There is an urgent need for a focused effort on geographical diversification to mitigate the risk of a regional downturn.

India is one of the fastest growing markets of electronics in the world and expected to be 400 bn USD by 2020. There is potential to develop the Electronic System and Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) sector to meet our domestic demand as well as to use the capabilities so created to successfully export ESDM products from the country. The National Policy on Electronics aims to address the issue with the explicit goal of transforming India into a premier ESDM hub.

The policy is expected to create an indigenous manufacturing eco-system for electronics in the country. It will foster the manufacturing of indigenously designed and manufactured chips creating a more cyber secure ecosystem in the country. It will enable India to tap the great economic potential that this knowledge sector offers.

Conclusion The Indian ICT industry has not only transformed India’s image on the global platform, but also fuelled economic growth by energising higher education sector (especially in engineering and computer science). The industry has employed almost 10 million Indians and hence, has contributed significantly, to social transformation in the country. The Indian IT industry has continued to perform its role as the most consistent growth driver for the economy. Service, software exports and business process outsourcing (BPO) remain the mainstay of the sector.

Over the past five years, the ICT industry has grown at a remarkable pace. A majority of the Fortune 500 and Global 2000 corporations are sourcing ICT from India and it is the premier destination for the global sourcing of IT, accounting for 55 per cent of the global market in offshore IT services and garnering 35 per cent of the ITES/BPO market. However, the changing dynamics of the market and recent slowdown in the West points to the need to rework the strategy for maintaining the growth momentum, keeping in view the recent Policy initiatives.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

21

special feature

AAI

Airports Authority of India

Serving the Nation with Pride

Airports Authority of India (AAI) was constituted by an Act of Parliament and came into being on 1st April 1995 by merging erstwhile National Airports Authority and International Airports Authority of India Secure Air Navigation Services In order to modernise Air Navigation infrastructure for seamless navigation across state and regional boundaries, Airports Authority of India has developed plans for transition to satellite based Communication, Navigation, Surveillance and Air Traffic Management.

A number of co-operation agreements and memoranda of co-operation have been signed with US Federal Aviation Administration, US Trade & Development Agency, European Union, Air Services Australia and the French Government Co-operative Projects and Studies initiated to gain from their experience.

V P Agrawal, Chairman, AAI Through these activities more and more executives of AAI are being exposed to the latest technology, modern practices & procedures being adopted to improve the overall performance of

Airports and Air Navigation Services.

Induction of latest stateof-the-art equipment, both as replacement and old equipments and also as new facilities to improve standards of safety of airports in the air is a continuous process. Adoptions of new and improved procedure go hand in hand with induction of new equipment.

Some of the major initiatives in this direction are introduction of Reduced Vertical Separation Minima (RVSM) in India air space to increase airspace capacity and reduce congestion in the air; implementation of GPS And Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) jointly with ISRO which when put

Airports Authority of India (AAI) manages a total of 125 Airports, which include 20 International Airports, 06 Customs Airports, 80 Domestic Airports and 19 Civil Enclaves at Defence Airfields. AAI also provides Air Traffic Management Services (ATMS) over entire Indian Air Space and adjoining oceanic areas with ground installations at all Airports and 25 other locations to ensure safety of Aircraft operations.

The Airports at Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Calicut, Guwahati, Jaipur, Trivandrum, Kolkata & Chennai, are established as International Airports, and are open to operations even by Foreign International Airlines.

Besides, the International flights, National Flag Carriers operate from Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli, Varanasi, and Gaya Airports. Tourist Charters now also touch Agra, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Patna Airports etc.

To provide airports of international standards in India, AAI has entered into a Joint Venture at Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Nagpur Airports.

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to operation would be one of the four such systems in the world.

In order to enhance security at our airports a number of steps have been taken by AAI. These include deployment of CISF for airport security, CCTV surveillance system at sensitive airports, latest and state-of-the-art X-ray baggage inspection systems, premier security & surveillance systems. Smart Cards for access control to vital installations at airports are also being considered to supplement the efforts of security personnel at sensitive airports.

All major air-routes over Indian landmass are Radar covered (35 Radar installations at 11 locations) along with VOR/DVOR coverage (93 installations) co-located with Distance Measuring Equipment 66 runways are provided with ILS installations with Night Landing Facilities at most of these Airports and ATS message handling system Gateway at Mumbai.

AAI

special feature

“With the aim of making Air connectivity affordable and accessible to the people residing in remote/ unconnected area, AAI is making a roadmap for development of low cost regional airports. Plans are on anvil to provide air connectivity in tier II and tier III cities of India by development of low cost airports. In the first phase places having some basic airport infrastructure will be developed and operationalised, subsequently Greenfield airports will be developed.�

New technological innovations AAI has successfully used indigenous technology to implement Automatic Dependence Surveillance System (ADSS) at Calcutta and Chennai Air Traffic Control Centres.

Thus India now enjoys the distinction of being the first country to use this advanced technology in the South East Asian region. The technology enables effective Air Traffic Control over oceanic

areas using satellite mode of communication.

ADS-B Systems which support RADAR like Services have been installed at 14 airports to further support RADAR coverage and provide Surveillance and direct routing at Medium density airports where RADAR is not available.

Advanced ATM automation system have been implemented at 38 airports in addition to METRO airports providing advanced Safety nets, tools and safety features for enhancing safety and effciency.

PBN procedures have been implemented exploiting avionics & ground infrastructure at all major airports to provide optimized and accurate flight paths enhancing safety and effciency of operation.

AAI has undertaken GAGAN project in technological collaboration with Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO), where the satellite based system will be used for navigation.

The navigation signals thus received from the GPS will be augmented to achieve the critical navigational requirement of aircrafts.

GAGAN has started transmitting signal-in-space and is expected to be operationalised in July-August 2013.

GAGAN service will provide

improved lateral and vertical guidance to aircrafts and thus improving safety of approach operations, improved operations in low visibility and reduced divesion in adverse weather conditions.

AAI has also planned to provide Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) at Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai Airports. This GBAS equipment will be capable of providing Category-II (curved approach) landing signals to the aircrafts thus replacing the existing instrument landing system in the long run, which is required at each end of the runway.

The Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (ASMGCS), has been installed at all major airports to monitor and control aircraft operations on ground even in poor visibility conditions. Five more systems are planned at Amritsar, Lucknow, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Varanasi and Delhi, operation of runway 28 has been upgraded from CAT-IIIA level to CAT-IIIB level. CAT-IIIA system permits landing of aircrafts up to visibility of 200mtrs. However, CAT-IIIB will permit safe landing at the Airports at a visibility below 200mtrs but above 50mtrs.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

23

In Person

open data

Neeta Verma

Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC), Government of India

Open Data for

Better Governance

P

lease provide us with an overview of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy. What kind of benefits can this policy bring to the common citizens of the country?

The Government of India notified the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) in March 2012. As per this policy, all Government Ministries and Departments are supposed to proactively release their data in open format.

The policy was initiated by DST while NIC, DeitY have been assigned the responsibility of implementing this policy in India. The main objective of this policy is to allow access to government owned shareable data in machine readable form through a network, across the country in a proactive and periodically updatable manner, within the framework of various related policies, acts and rules of Government of India.

Government Ministries & Departments have already nominated Data Controllers to lead their Open Data initiative. NIC has set up an open government data platform.

What are the main benefits of the Open Data Platform that NIC has developed?

Open Data Platform set up by NIC can be accessed at data.gov.in. This platform enables all government departments to contribute their datasets in open format. Datasets thus contributed are processed through a predefined

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Data Portal India has been set up at http://data.gov.in to provide single point access to all the datasets published by different government departments in open format. It also provides a ‘Search & Discovery’ mechanism for instant access to desired datasets. Data Portal has a rich component of citizen engagement. Besides enabling citizens to express their need for specific datasets, it also allows them to rate the quality of datasets and seek clarification or information from respective Data Controllers. Neeta Verma, in conversation with Nayana Singh & Kartik Sharma

open data

workflow system for approval for publishing on the data portal. Citizens can access open data platform to browse, and search for the data that is relevant to their needs and can also download the datasets. Not only citizens, civil society, academia, research organisations, journalists and many others who need data for variety of purposes are the potential users of this platform. Community Module is another important dimension of this open data platform. It enables potential users of datasets to explore & discuss datasets online. Essentially the platform has been designed to facilitate a lot of citizen engagement as well as participation.

What steps are being taken to ensure that the data that is being made available will be properly used?

First of all, you need to understand the concept of open data. When the data is machine readable, and is free to use, reuse and redistribute, it is called open data. If the open data is coming from government departments, then it is called open government data.

This data is free from licensing, so anyone can reuse or redistribute it. In every government department, senior level executive has been nominated as data managers. Data managers identify, publish and manage the data sets from respective department.

At NIC, we are engaging with various departments and help them understand potential of Open Data. We are regularly organising workshops, seminars to sensitise, the departments about open data as well as processes to publish their datasets in Open format. We also handhold departments in their endeavour to publish data in open wherever necessary.

What are you doing to ensure that there is good usage of the datasets by the government and the citizens?

As already mentioned we are engaging with various departments to help them understand potential of Open Data. We are regularly organising workshops, seminars to sensitise the departments about open data as well as processes to publish their datasets in Open format. We are also engaging with various stakeholders of open data viz. civil society, academic and research community, developers, journalists, and other groups to explore innovative applications of Open Data in Indian Context.

Besides organising periodic in person meetings, conferences with community we have also opened up number of channels on our open data platform to engage with community online. The

Data Portal India The Data Portal India is an Open Source platform using Drupal. It has 4 (four) major modules, as detailed below, implemented on a single Drupal instance – an Open Source based Content Framework Solution: • Data Management System (DMS) – Backend Module for contributing datasets/apps by authorised users from Ministry/Departments/Organisations of the Government through a predefined workflow in the standard metadata format.

• Content Management System (CMS) – Module for managing and updating various functionalities and content of the Data Portal India by the System Administrator of the Portal.

• Visitor Relationship Management (VRM) – Module for collating and disseminating the feedback/suggestions from the stake holders on datasets and applications. Feedbacks/suggestions could be shared through feedback form, suggest datasets/apps and contact us.

• Communities – Module which brings together different sets of people sharing the same interest, belonging to the same sector or having interest for the same datasets. This module facilitates a platform for interaction and knowledge sharing.

beneficiaries of this open government data is not just the public, it is also the various government departments. It is quite often for one government department to require the data that has been collected by some other government department for planning, policy formulation purposes. The open data policy makes it easier for government departments to share data with each other.

Tell us about the technology that you are using in data.gov.in website.

The website, data.gov.in, is built using Open Source Technologies. In fact complete project of development of open data platform is managed using open source technology. Complete Source code of Open Government Platform (OGPL) is available in open for anyone to download.

Over and above the basic modules for dataset management, catalogues as well as public portal, it has exclusive modules for dataset format conversion. We have also built Visualisation Engine over the open data Platform to enable users to explore the data sets through its visual representation in charts, graphs & maps for easy comprehension. OGPL also has a dashboard module to facilitate programme management and reporting on different dimensions of Open data initiative. State of the art Open Source Technologies are being used to develop as well as host and manage such a platform.

According to you, what are the potential benefits of the Open Government data initiative?

One of the most quoted benefits of OGD is increase in transparency of governmental July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

25

In Person

open data

Community Engagement A We constantly engage with community through online & offline events. Some of the events were subject specifc while others are generic as open data community building efforts.

12 Plan Hackathon In association with Planning Commission & National Innovation Council, a two days hackathon was organised for 12th Five year Plan. The event was spread across 11 different premier institutions across the country. We had an overwhelming response with around 1000 participants and 217 submissions, in different categories of Apps, Short films and visualisations. Winners of this hackathon can be accessed on data portal.

In Pursuit of an ‘Idea’ University of Delhi and National informatics Centre (NIC) are collaborating to create an ecosystem, where in Government, Students and Citizens at large are participating. In Pursuit of an ‘Idea’, is an event where DU students are working with idea owner and mentors to create applications and visualisations based on datasets available from data. gov.in as part of the their Summer training programme. Broadly the themes under which the applications are getting developed are Trade, Agriculture, Post, Environment, Water, Sanitation and Health.

Community Meetings Conducting and participating community meetings are important part of the community building exercise. NDSAP PMU team regularly participate in such meetings. We also conduct open house meetings with developer community, civil society members, open data enthusiasts in order to get first hand input on different dimensions of open government data.

Online collaboration Data.gov.in has forums and links to twitter and facebook links which helps us interact with the portal users. With the next release of OGPL, Developers will be able to use API provided by us to consume data in their applications.

This will help them not to download the datasets and use it from our website itself. Also we will be having a signup campaign to the beta release of platform.

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functioning. Citizen Engagement is another important dimension of open government data. Citizens are now able to access the raw government data behind the pre-packaged reports from various e-Governance applications.

Rather than being merely “read-only” users, citizens can now participate in collaborative access to government data, including “mashing up” distributed government data from different departments and organisations, discovering interesting patterns, customising applications, and providing feedback to enhance the quality of published government data. For governments, the costs of providing information is reduced when the data is released through these OGD portals as opposed to rendered into reports or applications.

What is your vision for creating datasets that are easily usable by the general public?

One can create variety of visualisations across government datasets for better understanding by various stakeholders such as citizens, civil societies, interest groups etc. Datasets could be integrated with geo spatial data to create mashups to help government departments in better planning and decision making. Mashups could be further combined with live pictures for better understanding of development schemes, social audit of welfare schemes. Lot of innovative apps could be developed around these mashups to facilitate effective planning and implementation of government programme. These apps could be made available for simple mobile phones for

wider reach across all strata of citizens. This would also help citizen engagement & community collaboration in the process of governance. One can also combine the datasets released from different govt departments to develop innovative and new set of services for the citizens. There is huge component of innovation here. Existing services can be customised or localised with to local content to increase their usability by citizens, enhance user experience.

Once all departments start contributing their datasets in open format, the Data Repository will become huge. How will you manage to save this data? Will you be using technologies like cloud computing?

Through in our framework of open government data, departments have the choice of uploading datasets to data portal repository or simply hyper linking to a location on their website.

However, by uploading datasets in data portal repository, they get special services such as permanent URL, online visualisation etc. In either case we do not foresee any challenge of storing these datasets. We at NIC have large number of datasets across country. Almost all government websites portals are hosted out of NIC data centres. Further open data platform is built on highly scalable architecture at all layers of IT. Cloud Computing services are being made available in our data centres. They shall be utilised as and when necessary.

Data Analytics

Analytics for better governance Sudipta K Sen, Regional Director, South East Asia, CEO & MD – SAS Institute (India)

G

overnment authorities across the globe constantly aim at creating better frameworks to improve the lives of citizens. In an attempt to do so, government at all levels are facing similar challenges: declining tax revenues; requirements for maintaining high levels of service; and unprecedented demands for increased efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability. These challenges have existed since a long time and government bodies have been constantly trying to overcome them.

However, in today’s connected age these challenges are becoming exponentially complex.

For instance, social media has become an integral part of the social, cultural, business and political process in most parts of the world, affecting almost every facet of life – including criminality. Never before has so much sharing occurred between people of every walk of life. This requires government authorities to listen to conversations and derive meaningful insights in order to prevent threat, maximise benefits and deliver value to the citizens. This clearly indicates that today decisions cannot be made on gut-feel or instincts; they need to be based on facts and in near real-time. Driving a culture of data-driven decision making is the need of the hour.

Leveraging Analytics to Improve Efficiency Most government organisations have mountains of data, thousands of metrics and hundreds of KPIs however, a major emphasis

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Sudipta K Sen needs to be laid on tracking indicators that are meaningful. It is important to filter out noise and gain insights on understanding about how, why or if those metrics support strategic outcomes. As a first step, it is mandatory to create a single-view of data which essentially arrives from multiple sources such as income tax department, elections, universities, regulators, etc. This helps government organisations in

reducing duplicate entries, eliminating bogus/ ghost entries and leveraging all relevant attributes of a citizen’s activity in a holistic manner.

Clean and reliable data is an essential building block for running an effective analytics operation. To quote a relevant example, Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES) - the nodal statistical body of the Government of Maharashtra, India uses SAS Business Analytics to generate and analyse key statistical reports through data integration, reporting and analysis.SAS saves DES’ time, which was formerly spent on data management, allowing for more focus on critical research and analysis of data for effective socioeconomic decision making.

While we speak of data, it is essential to consider one of the most important and major chunk of data – the user-generated data or unstructured data. It is the era of the connected citizen, people are texting, tweeting, logging, sharing and commenting. Accessible to millions of people both as consumers and, increasingly, as contributors, social networking and media websites provide a means of contact and communication between groups, some of which may have a serious impact on public safety. A piece of bad news has the potential to spread at unimaginable speeds. The sheer volume of the data, the speed of events and the relative anonymity of cyberspace presents huge challenges for public safety agencies.

Lately, we have been witnessing such incidents in the Indian context too. It is therefore essential to correlate the structured citizen data from internal government activities with the unstructured data generated via social and digital interactions. Authorities need to anticipate the use of social media to fuel unrest and incidents, especially around major events–

Data Analytics

SAS - Providing software solutions since 1976 Through its innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 60,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know. SAS has been in India since 1997. SAS India operations are headquartered in Mumbai with regional offices in Bangalore, New Delhi and Pune

concerts and sporting events, major political or economic summits, and elections. In addition to supplementing investigations and crime prevention, online and unstructured data can help public safety with a third objective: improved public relations. Just as private corporations monitor the sentiments of their customers’ online, government authorities can also keep a check on its citizen’s sentiments to track its own perceived value. By monitoring constituent inquiries and the overall public pulse, law enforcement can make better informed policy decisions.

Securing the homeland is one of the most complex challenges faced by nations today.

Sharing and exchanging information and intelligence between security partners – at central, state and local government level – and providing a common operating picture of the challenges and threats is at the heart of strengthening disaster prevention and response capabilities.

Government agencies are constantly challenged to derive actionable intelligence out of raw data, predict trends, trace eccentricities and forecast patterns. In an attempt to do so, government organisations need to move from a reactive to a proactive approach. Big data analytics empowers government organisations to leverage mission-critical data in its totality, derive insights, forecast patterns and predict potential threats. Insights extracted from data is a strategic asset and proactive analytics can help government organisations to make better decisions, reduce uncertainty, predict with precision, prevent cyber-attacks and select the best alternatives.

Bridging the revenue, risk and benefit gap While ensuring public security and citizen safety, it is sacrosanct for government bodies to keep a check on their revenue framework.

Consider, for instance – Tax. Across all levels of government, the tax gap represents billions of dollars of uncollected revenue that could support vital public services and help reduce budget deficits. Revenue agencies are under increasing pressure to reduce fraud and noncompliance, increase revenues and maintain service levels – all while managing the impact of legislative changes. At municipal, state or central levels, stronger audit and collection capabilities are essential for closing the tax gap. Analytics solutions can bring dramatic improvements by better identifying where to focus resources and how to take the appropriate action to produce desired results.SAS also works with tax agencies across the globe. To quote a real-life example, consider The Philippines Bureau of Internal Revenue. The department aimed at managing VAT declarations more efficiently; enhancing tax assessment and collection; improving compliance and imple-

in the state, so more patients and diseases can be treated. The Aarogyasri Health Care Trust relies on predictive analytics to measure performance and keep expenses down. Claims, financial and clinical data are used in forecasts that ultimately root out fraud, spot disease trends, and lead to preventive health measures.

Smarter Decisions, Better Outcomes Big data from both structured and unstructured sources can significantly hinder government’s efforts to get to relevant data quickly and increase the chance that critical information may be missed. It is therefore essential to leverage data in its entirety rather than looking at subsets of data. Additionally, the insights derived from such data needs to quick, easy to understand and forward-looking. Such progressive insights can empower the policy makers to take data-driven decisions in almost real-time.

SAS High-Performance Analytics empowers law enforcement, government agencies and regulators to gain accurate insights from big data in shorter reporting windows, thus enabling greater collaboration and more efficient, effec-

While ensuring public security and citizen safety, it is sacrosanct for government bodies to keep check on their revenue framework

menting more transparent processes. With SAS’ advanced analytics expertise, within one year, they identified approximately USD 1.4 billion in under-declarations.

It is vital for government authorities to plug revenue leakages, mitigate risks and deliver value to desired citizens. To do so, it is essential to empower users at government offices with tools that gives the user a single version of truth in real-time, quickly and easily. Advanced analytics and business intelligence tools does exactly that. It enables the user to detect potential fraud, identify revenue leakages, manage risk and allocate resources for the right cause.

To put this into perspective, consider another vital area for any government body – Public Healthcare. With the help of SAS’ predictive analytics expertise, The Aarogyasri Health Care Trust (an initiative by the government of Andhra Pradesh) lowers health expenses

tive investigations. With advanced analytics, government organisations can monitor more transactions and more risks in less time with a system that is powerful enough to run multiple scenarios and risk factors simultaneously without any performance degradation.

To summarise, government authorities across the globe, including India, have huge amounts of data and in different formats. It is sacrosanct to create a standardised single-view of data, analyse social networks, forecast trends and derive meaningful insights in near real-time. This will further help government authorities in taking proactive decisions based on facts. Use of predictive analytics and self-service business intelligence tools has certainly become a strategic imperative to empower the users and policy makers. This approach can empower government at all levels to further increase efficiency, reduce costs, mitigate risk and constantly deliver citizen benefits.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

29

In Person

R K Upadhyay

Chairman & Managing Director Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL)

BSNL Connecting

Rural India

C

onnectivity is today being regarded as the key element for bringing social inclusiveness and all round economic development.

Please share with us the details of the most important initiatives that BSNL is doing for creating a socially inclusive telecom network?

“BSNL has already installed quality telecom network in the country. We are now focusing on improving the network and introducing new telecom services,” says R K Upadhyay

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BSNL has about 38,000 electronic telephone exchanges out of which 28,000 are located in rural areas. In fact, there is no telecom operator in the country that can beat BSNL when it comes to reach in different parts of our country.

We are present in every part of the country, even the most inaccessible areas. Only place where we don’t have our network is the top two cities - Delhi and Mumbai. Our country has 6000 blocks which accounts to an average of four telephone exchanges in each block. All these telephone exchanges are connected through optical fibre. We have virtually connected every village panchayat through these telephone exchanges. All these digital telephone exchanges are broadband enabled, which means that we are in a position to provide broadband connectivity to a very large section of the rural population.

In the urban areas, we are providing broadband connections through various technological platforms like DSL connection, optical fibre to the home, 3G Data Card and CDMA network.

In Person

BSNL is the only service provider, which is making focused efforts to bridge the rural-urban digital divide in ICT sector.

While it is understood that BSNL is doing a great job in connecting the entire nation and reaching out to rural India, how profitable are these ventures?

You see, you can’t analyse every initiative of a Public Sector organisation like BSNL from the perspective of profits. Our rural landline operations are not commercially viable, but they are very essential for inclusive social development. BSNL gets it viability fund through government. We also provide connections in the remote areas of North Eastern India, J&K, and Andaman islands. These connections are being provided through satellite bandwidth. But revenue which BSNL generates through these services is far below the operational expenses. So BSNL is requesting government to provide viability fund to conduct connectivity operations through satellite medium.

Telecom is turning out to be a very dynamic sector, technologies change at a fast pace. What steps are you taking to ensure that you are always in a position to offer latest and best technologies to your consumers?

BSNL – Helping India Grow Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

one of the largest & leading

confidence. Today, it has

was incorporated on 15th

public sector units providing

about 43.74 million line basic

September 2000. It took over

comprehensive range of

telephone capacity, 8.83

the business of providing of

telecom services in India.

million WLL capacity, 72.60

BSNL has installed

million GSM capacity, 37,885

management from the

Quality Telecom Network in

fixed exchanges, 68,162 GSM

erstwhile Central Government

the country & now focusing

BTSs, 12,071 CDMA Towers, 197

Departments of Telecom

on improving it, expanding

Satellite Stations, 6,86,644

Services (DTS) and Telecom

the network, introducing

RKm. of OFC, 50,430 RKm. of

Operations (DTO), with effect

new telecom services with

microwave network connecting

from 1st October 2000 on

ICT applications in villages

623 districts, 7330 cities/towns

going concern basis. It is

& winning customer’s

& 5.8 lakhs villages.

telecom services and network

tems. BSNL has developed plans to convert complete landline telephone exchange into NGN (New Generation Network) based on IMS. It will enable us to launch prepaid services in landline.

It will facilitate convergence into our mobile and landline connections. We have optimised our mobile for data network. Currently all the three verticals of BSNL which are CFA (Consumer Fixed Access), Consumer mobility and Enterprise business have different IT systems. We are planning to converge our IT system.

“BSNL is the only service provider in the country that is totally focussed on bringing the fruits of the connectivity to the rural areas” BSNL has always been in the forefront of implementing new technology. We have a long history of bringing new technologies to the country. We want to offer our customers the benefits of new technologies. We were the first company in the country to introduce systems like high speed internet, fibre to home, and CDMA network.

We are market leader in landline connections throughout the country. BSNL has undertaken several steps to modernise its electronic telephone exchanges across the nation. We have introduced CDR (Call Data Record) billing system, which will replace traditional billing sys-

Do you feel PPP mode is profitable, result oriented and fruitful in telecom and IT space?

A well designed public private partnership (PPP) system would be as useful in communication and IT domain, as it is useful in other infrastructure sector. That is my point of view.

What are the ways by which you are using ICT to bring transparency and efficiency within the organisation?

We have moved completely towards e- tendering

in our procurement system. It has brought much more transparency in the system. We are implementing countrywide ERP, which will bring even more efficiency and transparency in the system.

I would like to tell you that BSNL is also one of the first companies in the country to introduce modern billing system. The new billing system has made it easier for the consumers to follow the charges that they are paying.

Can you please share with us your vision with respect to the future of telecom sector in India?

You see, the population of this country is more than a billion. A large section of the country continues to reside in rural areas. So the New Telecom Policy of 2012 has placed great emphasis on bridging the gap between urban and rural areas. There are still 60,000 villages in the country which do not have any mode of connectivity. The first priority of BSNL is to provide connectivity to all areas, whether it is inaccessible areas of Siachen glacier or the North-Eastern regions of the country.

We take pride in the fact that BSNL serves its customers with a wide bouquet of telecom services, namely Wireline, CDMA mobile, GSM mobile, Internet, Broadband, Carrier service, MPLS-VPN, etc. However, in price sensitive market like India, telecom operators have to strive to a very low cost model. Government has taken various effective steps which have further encouraged telecom operators.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

31

In Person

Abhishek Pandit

Director-Business Services, All India Society for Electronics & Computer Technology (AISECT)

Inclusive Banking in Rural India be connected with banking facilities. Villages will also have the facility of inter-bank transfers under kiosk or correspondence banking system.

This will be coupled with Aadhar enabled services which will bring a massive change in the way services and banking works in rural India. With this revolution, insurance companies, PFRDA and other financial service providers will ride on this channel to reach the masses at a very low unit cost of transaction.

In your opinion what are the broad challenges to financial inclusion?

“Coupled with Aadhar enabled services this system will bring in a massive change in the way services and banking works in rural India,� says Abhishek Pandit, In conversation with Sunil Kumar

W

ith microfinance and inclusive banking, are you seeing a silent revolution happening in rural India?

At present major villages in India are witnessing a revolution in inclusive banking. We are hopeful that in coming future every village will

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / July 2013

The major challenge is the lack of financial awareness of the products in the excluded segment of the society. The availability of a viable and sustainable distribution model to reach out to the unreached, availability of specialised products for this segment ie (simple single insurance policy which is a combination of life health and non life) remains the other challenges to the financial inclusion.

What kind of growth are you expecting from rural and semiurban areas?

The number of kiosk that will be opened will continue to grow exponentially in the near future. And once it is in place, the number of financial transactions apart from banking will also increase multifold.

As you are working as Business Correspondent, how does it help the underprivileged and unbanked people where the literacy is also very minimal?

The beauty of working as a Business Correspondent is that the customers need not to be literate. The banking accounts can be opened without signatures and only with biometric

authentication. The customer only needs to know the reason that why they need to open an account and the advantages of dealing with financial solutions and services.

What kind of response do you expect from mobile banking solutions and Kiosks from rural areas?

Kiosk banking has picked up leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. Moreover it is a fixed asset and consumer can see it every day.

It is easily accessible for the consumers as they can go and avail the services everyday. Mobile banking has provided easy banking solution to the consumer as they can carry the device with them on daily basis.

Are you worried by the quality of loans being given to the rural areas?

We are not at all worried about it. The underwriting is done by the bank and the Business Correspondent merely collects the application form. On the other hand the default ratio in villages is lower as compared to the urban areas.

How will IT help to expand the services to rural India, given the country’s poor technology infrastructure?

A mobile phone is also an IT product and has penetrated well into rural India. There is no reason why financial inclusion cannot go there.

What are the other services you are providing in financial inclusion and in which other states?

We provide PFRDA products, Business Correspondence services, PAN card, insurance services, financial consulting etc. across the country.

Digital Economy Policies

An Initiative of Centre for Digital Economy Policy

Compulsory Registration Order 2012 Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya, President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research; Director, South Asia, Hewlett Packard Parminder Singh, Manager South Asia, Public Policy, Hewlett Packard

A

round the world information and communication technology (ICT) is enabling governments and businesses to improve productivity, quality of life, and communication. In a world driven byinnovative technologies, it is the growing consumption of electronic products that isenhancing the reach of ICT.India alone is expected to consume USD 400 billion worth of ICT products annually by 2020 with three-quarters of this demand expected to be met by imports.

While electronic products help take technology to the masses, their increasing presence in our lives has caught the attention of governments and think-tanks that are initiating discussions and pushing for appropriate policy ecosystem to ensure that consumers get access to safe and good quality technology products.

The Indian government too has been taking positive steps in the interest of the safety of consumers. Government of India has notified the Electronics and Information Technology Goods (Requirements for Compulsory Registration) Order in October, 2012. The Order, which is applicable to manufactured as well as imported IT goods, mandates safety testing and certification of 15 categories of information technology(IT) products by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) accredited labs. TheBIS registration scheme is also expected to strengthen electronics testing and certification infrastructure in India.

However, given the vast scopeof products covered under the scheme, the implementation of the Order faces several challenges. The biggest challenge facing the immediate implementation of the Order is the inadequate in-country testing infrastructure. At the moment there are

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only six BIS accredited labs with a monthly capacity to test fewer than 400 products, while there is a demand for more than 8000 products to be tested each month.

Government of India has acknowledged the enormity of the registration exercise and in a welcome move extended the compliance deadline of April 3, 2013 by three months.The extension of the deadline is an opportunity for the government and industry in Indiato come together for smoother implementation ofthe Order. To comply with the Order, several aspects of it need to be clarified, and in this respect IT manufacturers and importers need further support from the government.

Another major challenge is the coverage of “Highly Specialised Equipment� (HSE), including large industrial printers, servers, and storage in the scope of the Order. Destructively testing millions of dollar worth of equipment that have annual sales of a few units will make them economically infeasible to be sold in the Indian market. This will deprive the commercial consumers theaccess to the latest technology with a serious possibility that the manufacturers will altogether withdraw these products from the Indian market.

The testing of specialised products under this Order is not a practical option also because they are used in controlled environment by trained professionals who are well-versed with procedures to manage and mitigate security risks of the equipment. Such commercial equipment that is not a threat to mass consumer safety could be covered under separate standards such as the Machinery Directive of the European Union, which considers such equipment as industrial machinery.

Yet another implementation related concern is the inclusion of warranty replacement units in the scope of the Order. In this respect the

manufacturers’ inability to safety-test discontinued units will severely impact their ability to fulfill warranty obligations, leading to significant consumer dissatisfaction.

There are also various other implementation issues ranging from series formulation, and product coverage, to labeling that require further clarification and consultations with the industry. In the absenceof a well drafted process, compliance with the regulation will be irregular and chaotic.

The Indian regulatory environment needs to ensure the safety of the electronic and IT products while facilitating business growth and investment into the country. It can be clearly foreseen that if the industry and government do not work together to resolve some of the large implementation bottlenecks, the `70,000 Cr IT and electronics industry in India willbe negatively impacted in the coming months.

To ensure hassle free implementation with the Order, as well as to work towards the establishment of mechanisms that guarantee safe IT and electronic products, government and industry need to increasingly collaborate. An increased industry consultation through regular technical committee meetings is necessary toovercome the prevailing challenges in the implementation of the Order. We hope that the government and industry willwork together tomake this transition a success for the growing number of Indian ICT consumers.

the author is President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research; Director, South Asia, Hewlett Packard

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viewpoint

Putting GIS at core of e-Gov Initiatives

I

t is important to appreciate that most of the interactions between government and citizens can be interpreted geographically. In a way, most of the government data is geographic in character. Geographical Information System (GIS) software processes data related to real geographic locations available in maps containing spatial data, through common databases to produce various inferences based on statistics, visualisation and graphic analysis.

On the other hand, e-Governance, expected to use technology abundantly to meet the governance objectives more efficiently, is actually a synthesis of information with communication technologies (ICT), supporting and transforming the governance by processing and communicating data. e-Governance mainly involves accepting, storing, processing, outputting or transmitting data/information, supporting current processes of decision-making and implementation. Database Management, Data Warehousing and Data Mining, are the core implements of decision-making in e-Governance, widely applied for computer based Decision Support System (DSS) in various application areas. GIS technology is the most effective tool which would meet nearly all abovementioned promises of e-Government. Among all types of data processed in e-government, spatial data are perhaps the most important information, revealing geographical relations with various attributes of development and overall governance e.g. planning, preparation and approval of megaplans, management of existing infrastructure and restructuring of facilities, citizen services etc. This new discipline of Geomatics has helped evolving a shift from ‘conventional’ Decision Support System (DSS) to the ‘spatial’ DSS (S-DSS).

In the past decade usefulness of GIS in governance has been appreciated, although in an islanded manner, in many government entities.

State of Chhattisgarh, through its agency Chips, has been a forerunner in this regard and executed a state-wide project. In West Bengal, with the funding from World Bank, DFID, GIS is being deployed for better and holistic planning of the Urban Local Bodies. GIS-enabled Land Management System was developed for Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), Mumbai, using RDBMS and Geomatics, which would include

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planning layouts of industrial sites, attracting entrepreneurs for investment, leasing of industrial plot, construction and maintenance of infrastructure and amenities such as roads, drainage systems, providing streetlights, water supply and other utility amenities such as built-up accommodation for banks, post offices, telecom facilities, police station, fire station, medical and tourism facilities, canteens, shops etc. in the industrial areas in the State.

Such is the over-encompassing potential of deployment of GIS in governance matters which would empower a citizen or the government to mutually interact for services, planning, decision-making for development and implementation of government programmes. Report generation, research related to planning, demand forecasting, demographic analysis, distribution logistics, all would be made available so easily by use of appropriate GIS tools.

However, as governmental roles are multi-sectored and complex, any GIS system has to manage the different data formats and operate in various environments, in order to meet data sharing and exchange requirements between different sources.

Therefore, interoperability of spatial databases, the unification of multi-department application systems and integration of GIS into management information systems (MIS) and other non-spatial systems are critical issues in GIS applications in governance.

Potential of GIS as a tool in development planning, implementation of various welfare schemes, facilitating citizen services and good governance, has been well appreciated by the government for quite some time and in 2011 Planning Commission constituted the National GIS Interim Core Group (ICG) which had very wide level of stakeholders consultations, in order to formulate a national vision and implementation strategy for deployment of GIS as an essential tool for government businesses. Having noted the prevalent activities of the existing institutions and the initiatives in this area, like, National Resources Information System (NRIS) and National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS) of the Indian Space Research Organization, National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and National Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) of Department of Science and Technology, GIS platform established in National Informatics Centre (NIC),

the ICG submitted its final Vision Document on October 2011 and suggested many actions, including establishing Indian National GIS Organisation (INGO) that would be responsible for the National GIS system, maintaining and operating a comprehensive GIS Platform. In the Section 5.1.3 of this Vision Document GISbased Decision Support System and specifically in the Sub-section 5.3.1.1, GIS-based governance applications in different application areas as a service for different ministries/departments in government, target groups in private enterprises and also for citizens, have been identified.

These are the important sectors of governance on which the Report identified some core GIS Applications like, Plan-GIS, Rural-GIS, CityGIS, Roads-GIS, Health-GIS, Water ResourcesGIS, Agri-GIS, GIS for Disaster Management, GIS for Infrastructure sector, Environment-GIS, GIS for Aadhaar, Census-GIS, Weather-GIS, Earth Sciences-GIS, GIS for Security, CoalGIS, Heavy Industry-GIS, New Energy-GIS, Tourism-GIS, Panchayati Raj-GIS, Power-GIS, Defence-GIS, Steel-GIS, GIS for private sector applications, GIS for citizen services applications and integrated e-services and so on.

Getting an Expert Report on comprehensive GIS deployment in government in order to work out a strategy in this regard, including establishment of a National GIS Organisation, is another timely testimony of our government going in the right direction. The report prepared by the ICG, under the stewardship of Secretary Earth Sciences, is one of the most comprehensive and directional packages of activity-laden information between two covers. Some years back, at the World GIS Summit held in Hyderabad, this columnist had the unique privilege of having a brief interaction with the Management Guru late CK Prahlad who insisted on essentiality of abundant use of GIS in governance. Let us implement it now in letter and spirit…let the proposed INGO become another crucial tool for inclusive growth for our country.

Ashis Sanyal Consulting Editor, egov

technology & Devices

Amar Babu

Managing Director, Lenovo India

PC + Evolution

P

lease tell us about Lenovo’s plans for Indian market. What is the next milestone for Lenovo as far as the Indian operations are concerned?

According to the latest IDC figures (Asia Pacific PC shipment tracker for Q4, CY 2012- OND), Lenovo occupies 13.2 percent market share in India’s PC market and is a strong second, almost neck to neck with the leader.Successful implementation of the ‘Protect and Attack’ strategy –a 360 degrees approach, has resulted in tremendous growth in all business segments for us. We will continue to drive growth through the effective execution of our Protect and Attack strategy, where Lenovo will continue to protect its strength in the Enterprise business (current market share at 16.4 percent as per IDC) and attack the Consumer business (current market share at 13.5 percent) and SMB Business (market share at 7.5 percent).

Our main goal of ‘Unstoppable India’ will be our focus as we aim to become one of the leaders of the PC+ Era, which will be dominated by four screens (PCs, Tablets, Smart phones and Smart TVs). While we continue to provide next generation solutions in smart devices, we will drive a balanced growth across all geographic regions, customer segments, and product categories. With innovation, we not only aim to differentiate ourselves from the market and continue to be a leading PC+ brand, but also get recognised as one of the most respected technology companies in the world.

“We at Lenovo see a “PC + Evolution,” not a “Post PC Revolution,” in which the PC remains at the heart of an ecosystem of tablets, smart phones and smart TVs,” says Amar Babu

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There is rapid rate of obsolesce in the personal computer industry. What are you doing to ensure that your devices are always up to date?

We at Lenovo see a “PC+ Evolution” not a “Post PC Revolution” in which the PC remains at the heart of an ecosystem of tablets, smart phones and smart TVs. Our focus is to keep innovating, while building on our existing competitive strengths, which will set us apart in the PC+ era.

We have a balanced product portfolio which includes a range of desktops and laptops at every price level for the consumers and the enterprise users. Besides that, we consistently bring in new form factors such as Ultraportables, Hybrids, Business convertibles, which give us an edge over our competitors. We have seen demand for ultraportables and hybrids from our enterprise customers. Keeping this in mind, with the introduction of new form factors, and adding advanced and award winning product features, we constantly strengthen our offering through innovation. Our leadership in Innovation was recognized at CES where we won a record of 50 awards. Our strong portfolio, filled with innovative products (e.g. Horizon, Helix, K900) is what sets Lenovoapart and continuously ensures the next stage of profitable growth

Tell us about your best-selling laptops in the Indian market.

Recognised as the number one commercial notebook vendor worldwide, Lenovo’s flagship enterprise offering is the ThinkPad - the most reliable brand of laptop, computers and tablets for enterprise users. ThinkPad X1 Carbon is

These days many State governments and also the government at the Centre are coming up with policies to distribute free laptops or tablets to students from below poverty line families. Is Lenovo participating in social sector schemes such as these?

The state governments that are coming up with the projects for distribution of free laptops to students issue RFPs to the industry. Post the RFP issuance, Lenovo evaluates the RFPs and responds appropriately.

Many vendors are launching cheaper handheld tablets that

“To boost the prospects of the Indian IT industry, there is a pressing need for driving IT penetration in the country” one of the bestselling ultrabooks owing to the increasing demand for the ultra-portable devices in the enterprise segment. It is an Ultra-light, durable, secure, and stylish Ultrabook, which weighs only 1.36Kg. Introduced at CES earlier this year, Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga has become a best-selling hybrid convertible in the consumer segment. It is a touch-screen ultraportable which turns upto 360 degrees and can be operated as a tablet as well. Lenovo also offers a range of award winning convertible Ultraportables like ThinkPad Twist and ThinkPad Helix which offer SMB owners the mobility of a tablet coupled with the processing power of laptops.

are mainly meant for students.

Is Lenovo planning to enter the Indian educational space through its devices?

The scope for growth in the education sector is great and Lenovo is geared to meet the demands.Lenovo focused on participating in key government projects related to e-Governance and government sponsored education projects. Lenovo provided customised laptops to about 365,000 students across the state as a part of the deal with Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT).

The projects where tablets shall be distributed to students will also be through the RFP issued

by Government organisations and Lenovo shall evaluate these RFPs and respond appropriately.

What is your view of the devices market in India? What kind of policies should the government come up with to further increase the size and scope of the Indian computing market? Tell us about your expectations from the government.

To boost the prospects of the Indian IT industry, there is a pressing need for driving IT penetration in the country. The Government has failed to rectify the anomaly in the tax structure by not addressing the inverted duty structure.

The industry was hopeful of the inverted duty structure, by way of effectively making the direct import by end-customers or trading of computers advantageous, in comparison to manufacturing of computers in India.

What is the future of personal computing? What kind of personal computing devices will we have, let’s say, 10 years from today?

The future of PCs is in The PC+ era, which is in full swing right now. While there is still opportunity in PCs, most of the new growth in the coming years will be in PC+ devices (convertibles, tablets, smart phones, smart TVs). There will be a dominance of new form factors and device categories – like smartphones, convertibles, tablets and smart TVs. We are proud to share that Lenovo is one of the companies which is driving innovation through the creation of new product categories, such as convertibles (notebook/tablet hybrid) and a multi-user table PCs (such as the Horizon) that enhance the customer experience and differentiate us from the competition.

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Telecom

Bsnl: Supporting e-Governance Initiatives “BSNL is the only service provider, making focused efforts and planned initiatives to bridge the rural-urban digital divide in ICT sector,� says M S S Rao, Chief General Manager, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Kerala Telecom Circle

B

SNL has installed an extensive telecom network in the state of Kerala. Now it is focusing on improving it, introducing new telecom services with ICT applications in villages and remote areas. Today it has more than one crore customers in Kerala out of which 70 percent are mobile customers. It has about 1230 wire line Telephone Exchanges, spanning the entire Kerala.

BSNL is the only service provider, making focused efforts and planned initiatives to bridge the Rural-Urban digital divide in ICT sector. It has a wide reach giving services in every nook and corner of the state. BSNL offers wide ranging and most transparent tariff schemes designed to suite every customer.

BSNL has setup a world class Multi Giga Bit Multi-Protocol convergent IP infrastructure that provides convergent services like voice, data & video through the same backbone. Also it has an world class broadband access network spanning the state of Kerala.

e-Governance Support BSNL has extended the maximum support for the e-governance initiatives of Government of Kerala. State Wide Area Network (SWAN)

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M S S Rao has been established in Kerala using BSNL leased circuits which act as a backbone of the e-Governance initiatives in the state of Kerala.

Also BSNL has been extending the connectivity support for various initiatives of Govt. of Kerala like e-District project, Traffic Monitoring, Akshaya centers, etc. Also it has connected the Local Self Government Institutions throughout the state of Kerala providing them a reliable network for their activities. Through e-district project all the village

offices in Kerala are connected so that many of the citizen services can be made on line immensely benefiting the common citizen of Kerala. Also we are helping Motor Vehicles department in connecting surveillance systems to monitor traffic and enforce traffic rules.

BSNL has also successfully implemented NME-ICT (National Mission for Education through ICT) project in Kerala, in order to provide connectivity to all colleges in Kerala.

Through this students of all these educational institutions can have access to various educational contents for enriching their knowledge.

Another major project under progress is CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems) for the Police Department.

The goals of the system are to facilitate collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, transfer and sharing of data and information at the police station and between the police station and the State Headquarters and the Central Police Organisations.

New Initiatives Wimax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) BSNL has enhanced its efforts to provide better services for Internet connectivity. As the needs of internet users vary because of necessities for the faster and more reliable communication, BSNL continues to strive for superior services. For instance internet service, pro-

Telecom

• Instant one-to-one secure video call from your own office table or home.

• Free incoming video call • Ability to connect to LCD/Projector.

BSNL Data Services BSNL has wide spectrum of data services catering for each and every segment of the users and applications. Some of the services are listed below:

For fixed services the following options are available t Multi Protocol Label Switched (MPLS)

Network. MPLS based VPNs reduce customer networking complexity, costs and totally do away with the requirement of in-house technical work force. Rather than setting up and managing individual point-to-point circuits between each office using pair of Leased Lines, MPLS VPN customers need to provide only one connection from their office router to a service provider edge router. t Managed Leased Line Service

(MLLN): The MLLN is a Managed Leased Line Network system to provide Leased line connectivity. The State-of-the-art technology equipment MLLN is designed mainly for having effective control & monitoring on the leased lines so that the down time is very much minimized. t VSAT Network: The network consists of a hub located at Bangalore and VSATs located throughout the country. All VSATs are connected in STAR topology and VSAT to VSAT communication is

vided through Wimax technology remains the most cutting-edge method for faster service in the Wireless segment. BSNL has already deployed a WIMAX network in Kerala.

Video Telephony (Vfone) Videotelephony comprises the technologies for the reception and transmission of audio & Video signals by users at different locations, for communication between people in real-time.

Broadband Internet solutions such as VVoBB (Voice & Video over Broadband) make it possible to transmit and receive video data at higher resolutions and at more rapid refresh rates than

Fibre To The Home (FTTH)

through the hub at Bangalore. Ku band VSAT network of BSNL is capable of providing high speed data transfer and voice communication service covering the entire country. t Internet Leased Line Services: It is a dedicated Leased line connected to Internet backbone network. Customers access high speed Internet with speeds ranging up to 100Mbps or more.

For Mobile Data Connectivity the following options are available. t 3G data Services: BSNL has rolled

out a 3G GSM network in Kerala covering all the major towns. It is supporting peak data speeds of 14.4Mbps and we have plans to upgrade it up to 21.2Mbps.BSNL is the only service provider having 3G licenses in all the circles except Delhi/ Mumbai where MTNL is supporting us. t CDMA 2001x & EvDO: The data card (EVDO/CDMA 1X) allows to access the high speed internet without need of landline. You can use the services while on move. CDMA 1X data service with internet surfing peak speed up to 144 kbps and EVDO data service with internet surfing peak speed up to 3.1 Mbps are available.

is the case with the ordinary telephone system.

Besides, capabilities like video conferencing, desk to desk video calling , instant meetings, reviews, helps to conduct business without hassle. Superior quality video calling is available on existing BSNL Broadband network.

BSNLs Video Telephony Features • Video calling with the simplicity of voice calling.

• Ideal for less tech-savvy.

• Always on , no need to logon using a computer.

As part of its constant endeavor to serve its corporate customers better, BSNL has newly introduced a comprehensive suite of products and solutions for its esteemed customers.

Recently we have launched new services such as Fibre to the Home (FTTH) in Kerala.

FTTH is a unique technology being deployed by BSNL for the first time in India.

It is possible to give internet bandwidths at speeds up to 100Mbps at very attractive rates, with high reliability through optical fibre using this technology. The following are the salient features: • It works on fibre laid up to customer premises.

• FTTH can provide triple play services through fiber optic cable from central office to an individual customer.

• BSNL FTTH service is offered on state of the art GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network Technology).

• Supports voice, video and ultra high speed internet Digital Television on same fiber.

• Internet Bandwidth for Corporate, Institutions, Govt Bodies, retail users and individual customers.

Internet Data Center (IDC) We are also providing Data centre Services at Tier III Certified Data Centres in Kerala.

The following services are being offered from these data centres: • Co-location services • Hosted and Managed Services such as Hosted Computer Service, Dedicated hosting Service, Hosted Exchange Service, Dedicated Hosted Exchange Service, Microsoft Lync Communication service etc.

It will be an ideal solution for customers who want to host their data and websites in Kerala. BSNL is always in the forefront for bringing latest communication technologies for the service of Common man. Being a Government organisation its operations and billing is transparent. We hope that BSNL will be contributing immensely to the citizens of Kerala in improve the level of services delivered to them.

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Gov Cloud

MeghRaj Government’s GI Cloud initiative India, with its vibrant IT Industry and accelerated IT adoption in government, is uniquely positioned to benefit from cloud computing Renu Budhiraja, Sr Director & HOD State Data Centers, Department of Electronics & IT (DeitY), Government of India

C

loud computing has been identified as one of the thrust areas in the proposed National IT Policy from Government of India. This is likely to unleash new growth opportunities for Indian IT Industry and also bring innovation in the way IT solutions and services are delivered.

To utilise and harness the benefits of Cloud, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) of Government of India has embarked upon an ambitious programme – ‘GI Cloud’, also coined as ‘MeghRaj’. In order to drive this initiative, a Task Force was constituted by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) with the objective to bring out the strategic direction and implementation roadmap of GI Cloud leveraging the existing or new infrastructure.

The GI Cloud vision, policy and the respective policy principles are as mentioned below:

GI Cloud Policy Principles

Renu Budhiraja

The GI Cloud policy principles as defined in the report are: • All government clouds to follow the standards and guidelines set by Government of India • At the time of conceptualisation of any new Mission Mode Project (MMP) or other government project the existing services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) of GI Cloud to be evaluated first for usage • All new applications to be cloud ready

GI Cloud Vision

The GI Cloud vision is ‘To accelerate delivery of e-services provided by the government and to optimise ICT spending of the government’.

GI Cloud Policy

The GI Cloud policy states, Government departments at the centre and states to first evaluate the option of using the GI Cloud for implementation of all new projects funded by the government. Existing applications, services and projects be evaluated to assess whether they should migrate to the GI Cloud’.

Overview of GI Cloud Implementation and Adoption Roadmap The ‘GI Cloud Adoption and Implementation Roadmap’ provides details of GI Cloud implementation aspects. It defines the architectural vision, various components, eco-system and the institutional mechanism of GI Cloud. It also introduces the business and self-sustaining model and covers the capacity and capability building aspects required for GI Cloud. Finally it provides the steps for implementation of GI Cloud.

GI Cloud Architecture

Features of e-Gov App Store • • • •

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Downloadable and runnable versions of applications Authenticated users will be allowed to publish and download User feedback, rating of applications and demo versions available Users can view, sort, search and filter the list of applications, components and web services and provide feedback and rate an application

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / July 2013

The architectural vision of GI Cloud centres on a set of discrete cloud computing environments spread across multiple locations, built on existing or new (augmented) infrastructure, following a set of common protocols, guidelines and standards issued by the Government of India. The GI Cloud services will be published

Gov Cloud

Road Map • • • •

State Cloud/Data Centers

Focus on product development / productisation Inclusion of applications / components developed by industry Establishment of complete ecosystem of eGov Appstore Evolve a Policy on access and usage, uploading hosting etc

through a GI Cloud Services Directory.

One of the major considerations made while developing the architecture vision has been consideration for the investments that have already been made by the government on building infrastructure both at the national as well as state levels, for example, data centres at the national and state levels, the network backbones available through SWAN, NKN, NICNET and the middleware gateways e.g. NSDG, SSDG. The GI Cloud environment has been depicted in the figure below.

GI Cloud Services The GI Cloud will be equipped to provide cloud services, i.e. IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. However, the services provided by GI Cloud are different from the end-user services like services delivered through various MMPs like e-District, Passport, eSeva Project, MCA21 and Income Tax, and other national or state projects like UIDAI. An indicative list of cloud-based services include:

State Cloud/Data Centers

National Cloud AppStore (AppStore laaS PaaS)

NDC 1 NDC 2

NDC 3

AppStore National Cloud (AppStore laaS PaaS)

GI Cloud Services Directory1

AppStore

Dedicated Government Cloud2

National Cloud (AppStore laaS PaaS)

1. Single Portal for Service Delivery 2. Built by private cloud providers

E Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS):

n

Compute as a service n Storage as a service n Network as a service n Disaster recovery as a service n Backup as a service n Virtual desktop solutions n Infrastructure for application development and testing E Platform-as-a-service (PaaS): n Platform for application, portal development and testing

n

Platform for application or portal hosting Database as a service n Collaboration platforms E Software-as-a-service (SaaS): n Email as a service n Productivity suites (as a service) n ERP as a service n BI and analytics as a service n Security as a service n Common central services like payment gateway, mobile gateway, PKI, etc as a service n

National eGov AppStore One of the major components of GI Cloud includes establishing National eGov AppStores at the National Clouds. The eGov AppStore aims to be a National level common repository and market place of productized applications and components that can be used by various government agencies/departments at Centre and States, with the vision to accelerate delivery of e-services.

The pilot launch was held on 31st May 2013 by MOC&IT with 20 applications (apps.gov.in).

GI Cloud Eco-System The figure below depicts GI Cloud eco-system

Conclusion Formulation of the GI Cloud Strategy and adoption roadmap are one of the primary steps that will facilitate large scale adoption of cloud by government. DeitY will now focus on the implementation aspects of GI Cloud.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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in person

Ambarish Deshpande

Managing Director - India Sales, Blue Coat Systems

Empowering Governance through better security

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oday there are lots of concerns being expressed by government departments when it comes to security related issues. Tell us about the initiatives that Blue Coat is taking in the area of cyber security.

Government of India and the State governments have taken various e-Governance initiatives like the setting up of State Wide Area Networks, execution of UIDAI project and other Mission Mode Projects. There is always a security related concern when such a large infrastructure is created. It becomes essential for a country like India to set up systems to protect IT infrastructures from malicious cyber attacks. Blue Coat has developed expertise for safeguarding government data. We work with various governments around the world to set up safety infrastructures.

We are the largest web security company in the world. On a daily basis we keep track of every malware that emerges. The concept of threat has been changed in the recent times. Earlier threats used to come through emails, but now they target social media platforms to breach security. The kind of security that we offer is not at all intrusive. We believe in creating a flawless security system that is most secure and is practically invisible.

“Blue Coat empowers enterprises to safely and securely choose the best applications, services, devices, data sources, and content the world has to offer, so they can create, communicate, collaborate, innovate, execute, compete and win in their markets,” Ambarish Deshpande

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How do you look at the safety infrastructure that we currently have in India? Is the nation’s data secure enough considering

in person

the magnitude of cyber threats that we face?

Earlier in India, building infrastructure was given more importance than the creation of adequate security mechanisms. It was almost as if security was being regarded as an afterthought. Today everyone is concerned about security, and I must say lot of good security related systems are being created by the government departments. It is being recognised that the security must be at the backend and it must be powerful enough to counter any attack on the system. However, I would say that there is ample scope for the security in government projects to be further enhanced. The government needs to focus on various consumer centric applications to ensure their safety. Even the defence establishment in India has realised the need of creating a separate force on cyber security. Mobile server safety is also an important area of concern. Today it is a fact that even in government departments people are using multiple mobile devices to do their work. They are downloading apps from consumer websites. At times, they are storing data on cloud. So we need to develop a model of security that takes into account the new devices and solutions that have become part and parcel of our lives.

Please provide us with a picture of the solutions that Blue Coat can provide to the government departments in India for enhancing their cyber security.

We are in a position to provide complete endto-end security solutions to the government. We are working with the Government of India and trying to pitch in the platform through which we can provide highly advanced security options.

We can install firewall technology which acts like a blade for countering a phishing attack.

Performance and scalability are two important factors in defining security. We also conduct SSL inspection in which we decrypt all the encrypted servers. We first analyse the content before passing it to the consumer. At Blue Coat we believe that security is not just about what you prevent.

It’s also about what you make possible. Our approach to security is that it should be something that empowers the normal functioning of the department. It should make it more convenient for the departments to conduct their work.

What kind of infrastructures are you having in India?

We recently acquired three companies to enhance our expertise. One of the most important acquisi-

tions is that of Solera Networks. The Solera DeepSee platform will add industry-leading security analytics and forensic capabilities to the Blue Coat product portfolio, delivering an end-to-end security solution that includes protection, remediation and governance and gives enterprises complete visibility into the content and context of advanced targeted attacks. Solera provides real-time visibility of advanced threats and zero-day attacks, it can also facilitate post-event ‘look back’ to easily identify the root cause and material impact of security breaches. We are currently working with many government departments in the country. We are also working with some of the leading private sector companies. We are also providing security solutions to nuclear power plants.

What kind of systems has Blue Coat developed to identify the root cause of threats? How do you tackle these threats?

You see, every threat that the hackers develop is based on a massive infrastructure. The hackers

ous top consultants like PWC and EY that are in constant touch with the government. We always try to interact with government officials on regular basis to give them the idea of latest cyber safety developments in the country. We work very closely with our partners and global governments. We share the experience on how the servers could be made more secure with the help of information technology. Government becomes a very key vertical in terms of security. India is at the right timeframe in the current scenario.

What kind of growth rates is Blue Coat seeing in India?

I feel that there are five countries in the world that are today focusing on security at a very large scale. These five countries include USA, Japan, India, Germany and Mexico. These countries will see huge investments in terms of security establishment. We are soon going to launch cloud based security solutions in India. We are geared up for the next level of cloud safety in India. We are bidding for projects that are of

“Our approach to security is that it should be something that empowers the normal functioning of the department” have to build servers and networks, which must become functional up to six months before the launch of attack. Once the attack is launched, it might go on for many days, before it will subside.

The antivirus companies operate by writing the signature to identify the attack. However, we at Blue Coat also focus on the infrastructure and we try to block the malicious servers to prevent future attacks from happening through the same resource. This system of blocking the infrastructure, rather than just identifying the type of attack, is more effective in the long run.

Working with government is a challenge by itself. The decision making is slow and there are lot of approvals to be taken. So how do you manage the challenge of making government departments accept your solutions?

We work and interact with the top officials in the government. We create awareness among the government officials. We also take help of vari-

more than a million dollars. Our idea of development is to have better coordination. We are working to get feedbacks from Indian companies and government on the ways by which we can contribute towards enhancement of security.

What kind of policies should the government come up with to make it easier for Blue Coat to provide security? Tell us about your expectations from the government.

Indian government is already taking various steps for enabling better security systems. NIC is doing very good work in this area, and now there has been the appointment of a Cyber Security In-charge who reports directly to the Prime Minister. So lot of awareness is already there and we now see India as a very good business opportunity. We would like to make our contributions in enabling India bring its security infrastructure at par with what we have in the developed countries.

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Software e-Gov initiatives Industry

Software Technology Parks of India Dr Omkar Rai, Director General, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI)

S

oftware Technology Parks of India (STPI) was established and registered as an Autonomous Society under the Societies Registration Act 1860, under the then Department of Electronics, Government of India on 5th June 1991 with an objective to implement the STP / EHTP Scheme, set-up and manage infrastructure facilities and provide other services like technology assessment and professional training.

Contributions to software industry Software Technology Park of India (STPI) had made a major contribution towards the country carving a niche for itself in the global IT arena. STPI, through administration of STP or the Electronic Hardware Technology Park (EHTP) scheme and provisioning of High Speed Data Communication to the software exporters, has played a seminal role in the phenomenal growth of IT & ITES sector in India. When STPI was established in 1991, the sector’s export was a mere `52 Crore in 1992-93 but it is around `231285 Crore in 2012-13.

In 2012-13, IT software and services added about 1,88,310 jobs, taking the direct employment number to three million, whereas the indirect employment attributed to the sector is nearly 9.5 million. The spectacular growth performance in the IT-BPO industry in the last decade has helped the industry contribute substantially to India’s GDP. In 2012-13, the IT-BPO industry’s contribution to GDP was eight percent as compared to 7.5 percent in 2011-12.

After supporting development of IT/ITES and ESDM industry in major cities, STPI centres have been established in Tier II and Tier III locations. For achieving a balanced growth of the IT Sector, STPI with 53 centres has now reached to every part of the country. Out of these centres, 46 centres fall in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Apart from the statutory, promotional and datacom services, STPI has been providing incubation facilities to SMEs and start-up units. STPI has created incubation space in most of the centres with Plug & Play facilities for start-up companies. These incubation services enable small and medium enterprises to set up

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Dr Omkar Rai

Software e-Gov initiatives Industry

Functions of STPI Infrastructure & Support Services STPI establishes and manages infrastructural resources such as communication facilities, core computers, buildings and amenities etc. in the Software Technology Parks and provides various services (data link, statutory services etc.) to users who undertake software development for export purposes. Similar services are also extended to users who cater to the domestic market.

Promotional Activities STPI promotes secondary and tertiary locations in the country by establishing STP facilities in such places in order to extend the coverage of the STP / EHTP Scheme. STPI undertakes other promotional activities such as technology assessments, market analysis, market segmentation, organization of IT events/ conferences etc. It works closely with various State Governments and acts as an interface between Industries and the Government.

Training & Entrepreneurship Development The activities of STPI in the above regard include the following: (a) To organise advanced training in the field of software technology for skill development; (b) To encourage entrepreneurship, by regularly organising Entrepreneur Development Programs; (c) To assist State Governments in formulating IT policies and liaison for promoting IT industries in the respective states to achieve higher cumulative growth of exports from all parts of the country; (d) To enhance quality and security standards in the IT industries; and STPI also intends to create incubation with plug and play facilities with low operation cost in order to promote small and medium entrepreneurs.

operations at minimal fixed costs with low start-up investment, thereby encouraging entrepreneurship and creating jobs. STPI has also helped in proliferation of private IT parks across the country which in turn has contributed to the growth of the IT industry.

IT/ITES and ESDM Sector is Critical Information Technology sector has been one of the key drivers for faster and inclusive growth in the Eleventh Five Year Plan period. It has contributed immensely to the development of Indian economy. India has become a global power house in Information Technology sector. Over the years various initiatives have been taken in the Information Technology sector to foster innovation, improve delivery of e-Services to citizens and bring about profound change in the way business is conducted and the way Government works.

Information Technology has tremendous potential for the future of India.

In view of the overall priorities of the Government in the 12th Five Year Plan, a focused and coordinated push of the IT sector during 12th Plan period will help India achieve faster, sustainable and more inclusive growth. Since, the IT industry in the country has matured enough to venture into R&D and IPR development. A need is also being felt to disperse the IT industry to smaller towns for balance regional growth and also to create huge employment opportunity in the country. In this regard, Government of India, Ministry of Communications and IT has come up with Triad of policies for IT, Electronics and Telecom which envisage accelerating the pace of the growth in these sectors.

The IT / ITES sector is critical for India not only because it has become one of the key segments for the Indian economy but the sector has a multiplier effect on many sectors in the country. The sector is responsible for creating significant employment opportunities

in the economy. IT services exports [including Engineering Research and Design (ER&D) and software products] continue to be the largest employer within the industry The sector is responsible for enabling employment to an additional 8.9 million people in various associated sectors – catering, security, transportation, housekeeping, etc. Many of the persons thus employed belong to rural areas/ small towns of India.

The growth of the IT/ITES and ESDM sector in India has positively contributed to the social growth of the country, empowering women professionals, improving employment prospects of educated youth and serving as a role model to the youth, who might have become frustrated otherwise. IT/ITES and ESDM units have contributed to the growth of several cities of the country. Its capabilities have helped the delivery of public services in sectors like health, education, literacy, water supply and sanitation etc. The growth of the IT/ITES and ESDM units has boosted India’s image in the global arena. Above all, it has served to help the inclusive socio-economic growth of the country.

This sector especially MSMEs has been facing multiple challenges, ranging from macro to micro and with the withdrawal of the Income Tax benefit available under section 10A of the Income Tax Act for the STP units, IT/ ITeS Sector have to pay higher taxes and surcharge, which may adversely impact their growth. In order to mitigate the impact of withdrawal of the fiscal benefit of Income Tax exemption (10A) and to support IT/ITeS industry in effectively meeting the above challenges, DeitY, in consultation with STPI, is formulating a new set of incentive schemes for the sector.

STPI services in J&K Since its inception in J&K, STPI has been playing a great role in promoting the SMEs in the state in the field of IT and ITeS. STPI has been providing single window facility to IT/ITeS industry, High Speed Internet Connectivity and Incubation facilities to start-up units in J&K. To nurture and promote MSMEs/Start-ups, STPI has conducted various training programs at STPI Srinagar throughout the year. STPI has also been providing consultancy services to state government for various e-governance projects.

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event

eGov Knowledge Exchange

Knowledge Exchange

SRINAGAR 2013

A vision for e-Governance in J&K

The eGov Knowledge Exchange-Srinagar transpired at The Lalit Grand Palace, Srinagar, from May 23-25, 2013. The three day residential conference on e-Governance was attended by several key ministers and officials from Centre and State Governments. The representatives of several private companies that are engaged in providing ICT solutions to the government departments were also there. The Forum provided a friendly and supportive environment for the key decision makers to interact with each other and exchange knowledge on the crucial area of e-Governance. In the pages that follow we provide a succinct coverage of the eGov Knowledge Exchange-Srinagar

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Knowledge Exchange

eGov Knowledge Exchange

event

SRINAGAR 2013

L to R: Prakash Kumar, Bipul Pathak, Dr Killi Kruparani, Omar Abdullah, Feroz Ahmad Khan, J Satyanarayana, Dr Ravi Gupta

Today e-Governance has taken root in India. The world is talking about the success that India has achieved in the area of e-Governance. This success is the result of the seeds sown by our leader Shri Rajiv Gandhi during 1980s.

Now it is the responsibility of each one of us to take Rajiv Gandhi’s vision forward and create even better systems for e-Governance

The Government of Jammu & Kashmir is now focusing on developing IT industry in the state and implementing several e-Governance solutions. I had the honour of inaugurating our State Data Centre only last month, in April. The SWAN is also in the offing

Dr Killi Kruparani, Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India

Feroz Ahmad Khan, Minister of State (Independent Charge) Information Technology, Science& Technology, Government of J&K

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event

eGov Knowledge Exchange 2013

Knowledge Exchange

SRINAGAR 2013

Improving

Lives

through e-Governance e-Governance is today recognised as an important system for bringing transparency and efficiency into governance Bipul Pathak, Commissioner/Secretary, Science & Technology/Information Technology Department Government of Jammu & Kashmir

I Bipul Pathak

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“I believe that e-Governance will multiply our ability to deliver all kinds of necessary services to the public, it will enhance the speed with which those services can be delivered, it will bring the much needed transparency. In matters of e-Governance, we have many miles to travel, but with the enterprise and dedication of our people we will be able to make a mark in the crucial area of Information Technology” Shri Omar Abdullah, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir

would like begin by dwelling on my reasons for conducting this Knowledge Exchange Forum in Srinagar. I had a chance to attend few such forums in places like Udaipur, Hyderabad and Bangalore and the realization dawned on me that there exists a huge gap between the IT industry that we have in the state and the IT industry that is there in places like Bangalore and Hyderabad. It was then that I decided that we should hold an IT event in Srinagar to enable the local IT companies to come in contact with the larger IT players in other parts of the country.

So the first reason for holding the Knowledge Exchange Forum in Srinagar is to provide a new launch pad for the local IT companies. We would like do all we can to enable the local IT players to grow in size and create new job opportunities in IT sector for the state’s youth. The second reason behind holding the Knowledge Exchange Forum in Srinagar is promotion of e-Governance in the state. The Knowledge Exchange Forum is also about exchange of knowledge on the critical area of e-Governance.

Key stakeholders in e-Governance have arrived from all parts of the country and they are going to contribute to the exchange of knowledge. We will learn about many new ideas in e-Governance that have already been implemented in other states. These can be replicated in J&K. The third purpose behind holding the Forum is to facilitate a healthy interaction between the government departments and the private companies. After all,

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The greatest good of greatest number of people can only be achieved when the government organisations join hands with private companies for development of new initiatives for improving the general quality of life the greatest good of greatest number of people can only be achieved when the government organisations join hands with private companies for development of new initiatives for improving the general quality of life. e-Governance is today recognised as an important system for bringing transparency and efficiency into governance.

The common citizens are responding very well to e-Governance initiatives that have already been launched. In fact, people are now asking for even better e-Governance initiatives to be launched.

The private companies have to understand that the e-Governance is not only for public

good, it is also a viable business opportunity.

While working on e-Governance projects, the private companies can make money and generate lot of new employment opportunities for the nation’s youth. I would also like to shed light on the initiatives that are part of the national e-Governance plan and are now being implemented efficiently in the state of J&K. We already have the CSCs, which go by the name of Khidmat Service Centres in J&K. As of now we have around 810 Khidmat Centres in the state, and our plan is to take the number to 1200 so that all parts of the state are covered.

The state datacenter, which can be considered as the core infrastructure for e-Governance in any state, is already there in J&K. It has now gone online and many state government departments have now started migrating their applications to the state datacenter. There has been the perception that perhaps the state of J&K has been lagging behind when it comes to e-Governance. But now we are ready to take a big leap into the world of ICT. We are now on verge of launching new services under the e-District project.

The State Wide Area Network (SWAN), which is the backbone of all NeGP projects is also about to be rolled out. We are currently in the process of finalising the vendors for our SWAN project.

I would also like to tell you that besides the NeGP programmes, the Government of J&K and the Department of IT has undertaken many other initiatives where IT has been used to usher in a more transparent system of governance. We have rolled out the mobile governance for monitoring Border Area Development Scheme. We have taken many new initiatives for capacity building in our government departments to enable them to effectively implement e-Governance projects.

One thing that I would like to highlight is the knowledge management portal concept that the department of IT in J&K is developing. It is a well known fact that the myriad government departments tend to work in isolation. At times they are completely cut off from one another with the result that one department does not have an inkling of the kind of solutions that it can get from some other department. The knowledge management portal will allow various government departments in the state to share their ideas and knowledge and thereby there will be more efficiency.

We are also implementing in the higher education department the e-office concept.

Currently this project is in pilot stage and once it is successful, we will roll it out across the government. In the Jammu District we are rolling out a project for totally automatic and electronic delivery of permanent resident certificate. We will monitor the effectiveness of this project here and once it is found to be successful it will be rolled out across the state.

Under the e-PDS scheme we have completed the digitization of ration cards. This will lead to much needed transparency in the distribution of food in the state.

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e-Governance Initiatives for Safety, Security & Surveillance I am not expert of ICT so I will not be able to tell you about the technology. Similarly I am also not a expert of defense, so I will not be able to tell you that what we are doing in defense to make the country secure. But I must tell you that you are hundred percent secure. Despite the mechanisms of our cross-border enemies, we, as a nation, are fully secure

Shankar Agarwal, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Government of India

The cyber space has now expanded just like an ocean, many individuals are online, and while vast majorities of the people are working for positive outcomes, there are also a few whose intentions are malicious.

We need a strict monitoring system to keep the cyber space safe for all the law abiding citizens

CCTV can play a very important rule in ensuring safety and security of citizens. We are trying to set up state wide network of CCTVs in Maharashtra. In Mumbai, we are trying to install 6,000 cameras each of which will be interconnected with each other

We have found that most departments are neither aware nor sensitive towards the issues pertaining to cyber security. We need to reconcile the requirements of national security and the sensitivities associated with the privacies of individuals. Once we strike a balance between the two, all security paradigms shall be addressed correctly

Suresh Kumar Principal Secretary, Department of Home, Govt. of Jammu & Kashmir

Rajesh Aggarwal Secretary IT, Government of Maharashtra

Dr B Srinavas Inspector General of Police, CID, Jammu & Kashmir

The main aim of the CCTNS is to modernise core policing functions and provide information sharing for better detection and investigation of crime. It envisages that all police stations of a state are connected to a State Data Centre (SDC) and SDCs of all states are connected to each other. This offers a platform where police personnel can share information with their peers and citizens can access the police for verifications and complaints through an online portal.

Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gilani Inspector General of Police Crime, Jammu & Kashmir

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SRINAGAR 2013 How do we ensure that the data lying centrally within the data centre is secure to the fullest? There are various ways of securing the data. One of the ways is virtualisation, which has a good track record of bringing significant benefits.

Balaji Rao Director-Sales, VMware

Speakers at the session on “e-Governance Initiatives for Safety, Security & Surveillance�

We are offering an integrated safety and security solution on a platform that offers a robust response mechanism. Through our solutions, we are able to bring all communication and edge devices, which create alerts, on one common platform through virtual groups. This enables exchange of information and decision-making in real-time

There are various levels in IT security. The first level is controlling the cyber crime rates before crime occurs. Second is CCTV surveillance, which ensures that critical installations are manned automatically and seamlessly. Third level is digital forensics, which offers speedy and timely retrieval of data, evidence and various other aspects

Lokesh Lohiya Business Development ManagerPhysical Safety and Security, Cisco

Bhupesh Bhan Director Sales, Dell

ICT for Good Governance According to United Nations, e-Governance is a process of bringing effectiveness, efficiency, transparency, responsiveness, accountability, credibility, and inclusiveness into the governance systems. We can achieve the ideal of e-Governance only if we are working with proper goals in mind. We need to have the necessary infrastructure in place and we also need to have the trained man power J Satyanarayana Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India

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L to R: Bipul Pathak, Bhupesh Bhan, Shankar Agarwal

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SRINAGAR 2013 Human resource is as important as ICT infrastructure when it comes to the implementation of effective e-Governance, so we have to pay more attention to capacity building in various government departments

Yudhvir Malik Financial Commissioner & Principal Secretary, Electronics & Information Technology, Government of Haryana

The creation of a vibrant IT infrastructure is the prerequisite for improvements in governance.

There are basically two prominent aspects of governance, the first is the citizen centricity and the other is the internal functioning of the government Jiwesh Nandan Principal Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Mining & Additional Sources of Energy, Government of Uttar Pradesh

Today it is widely recognised that good governance is only possible through e-Governance. But it is also true that the ICT component in governance cannot be more than 15-20 percent. Governance is the major part. Ultimately it is the people in any department who are responsible for implementing the e-Governance systems Dr Ashwini Kumar Sharma Managing Director, National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology

There is a trend now across for most government states to take the help of the outside consultants. There is a good and bad angle to it. In my opinion this exercise has to be done by a team where majority of the people should be the experts who have done the similar projects in the past

Pradeep Kumar CEO – Government Business, Vakarangee Softwares Ltd

It’s not a question of IT in governance; it is also a question of how we utilise the infrastructure that is already there. We have to strive to use the IT systems effectively for providing maximum benefits to the common citizens

Venugopal Ramanathan Head of Sales, Trimax IT Infrastructure & Services Ltd

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SRINAGAR 2013 Good governance primarily includes three ideals - the first is that all the actions of the government should be in accordance with the rules and regulations and the law of the land; second is that no action of the government should be arbitrary; the third is that the government action should not be discriminatory on lines of caste, color or social status.

Shankar Agarwal Additional Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Government of India

Speakers at session on “ICT for Good Governance�

One big challenge in implementing IT in the governance structure is that some departments think that their power or privilege can be compromised if there is a transparent IT system in place. Such views need to be refuted and curbed, as maximum benefit to the people can only be there when there is IT implementation in a big way Suresh Kumar Principal Secretary, Department of Home, Government of Jammu & Kashmir

L to R: Shankar Agarwal, Yudhvir Malik, Dr. Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Pradeep Kumar

ICT Infrastructure in Government Sector Unlike other states, in J&K we use electoral rolls, which are mostly in Urdu language, but we also have areas where the rolls are in Hindi. Of course, the general feature is also to have the rolls in English. So actually we have to prepare the rolls in three languages and while the numbers in J&K may not be so large we do have to manage a electoral data base of about 68 lacs citizens Umang Narula Chief Electoral Officer, Jammu & Kashmir

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SRINAGAR 2013 In order to improve the scope of the State Data Centres, we have already issued the Cloud RFP. We are currently enabling all the State Data Centres, as they are going to be part of this cloud vision. This step can also lead to some sort of consolidation happening in the data centre space

Renu Budhiraja Sr Director and Head of SDC, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India

To address the challenges, the department has initiated the process of computerisation of its core functions. The initiatives are focusing on providing e-enabled M2M services and opening up multiple channels of communication via website, call centre, SMS, etc Satpal Gulati Additional Director – Systems, Department of Income Tax, Government of India

We are at the tipping point in the IT landscape, consumerisation of IT is happening in a big way and there is shift from traditional model to the electronic service delivery model.

We are moving towards cloud and more cloud based applications are coming up, but this is leading to the rise of a complex array of new threats Anubhav Tyagi Senior Solution Specialist – India & SAARC, Safenet

Much of the revenues of CA Technologies comes from the government sector. In India, our solutions are running in SWANS, in the data centers in the power sector, and in the CCTNS project

Vibha Agarwal VP – e-Governance, CA Technologies

The State Data Centres, the State Wide Area Networks, and the Common Service Centres are the essential pre-requisite of IT infrastructure. There is wide difference in the IT infrastructure that has come up in South India and that is in North India. The most prominent difference is due to the fact that the Southern states started building their IT infrastructure very early.

For instance, we started the State Wide Area Network project in Andhra Pradesh in the year 2000.

Sanjay Jaju Secretary IT, Government of Andhra Pradesh

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SRINAGAR 2013 Three important of pillars of IT infrastructure are the Data Centre, Connectivity systems, and the CSCs. Of these the CSCs are the most important as they serve as an important interface between the government departments and the citizens. At first some of the CSCs were finding it difficult to survive, but that will change in times to come as we are now engaged in developing a viable business model for the CSCs Yudhvir Malik Financial Commissioner & Principal Secretary, Electronics & Information Technology,Government of Haryana

Renu Budhiraja receiving momento from Umang Narula

Human resource is a major challenge that our government faces when it comes to creation and management of IT infrastructure.

Uttar Pradesh faces major constraint of IT professionals in government departments and PSEs

Jiwesh Nandan Principal Secretary, Information Technology & Electronics, Government of Uttar Pradesh

There is a lot of promise that cloud brings in, especially in context of the government sector. Now we are witnessing considerable rise in demand for e-Governance services, and hence we need to use the cloud based model for service delivery, but this model should have good security system built into it.

Balaji Rao Director-Sales, VMware

Speakers at the session on “ICT Infrastructure in Government Sector�

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Umang Narula receiving momento from Yudhvir Malik

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ICT for Effective Healthcare & Education K B Agarwal, Principal Secretary, Higher Education, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, Rajesh Aggarwal, Secretary IT, Government of Maharashtra, Shaleen Kabra, Commissioner/Secretary, Technical Education; Health and Medical Education, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, Dr Rajesh Kumar, Principal Secretary IT, Government of Manipur & R K Goyal, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India

e-Governance – Issues, Challenges & Opportunities

e-Governance in India has steadily evolved from computerisation of Government Departments to initiatives that encapsulate the finer points of governance, such as citizen centricity, service orientation and transparency. We have standardised processes to replicate human efforts involved in disposing of a particular applications Sanjay Jaju Secretary IT, Government of Andhra Pradesh

Government of India has given enough support to all the states to move ahead with e-Governance.

I think no state would have been able to create State Data Centres or State Wide Area Network without the encouragement of the Central Government Yudhvir Malik Financial Commissioner & Principal Secretary, Electronics & Information Technology, Government of Haryana

e-Governance is not merely a technological project, it is also a project for improvement of capacity in government departments. We need to incentivize the government servants so that they become enthusiastic participants in the technological revolution

Abhay Kumar State Informatics Officer, National Informatics Centre, Jammu & Kashmir

Connectivity is the major challenge not only in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, but all across the country. There are thousands of villages in the country that are not connected by broadband. The good thing is that the Government is now taking many steps to insure that maximum number of villages get connectivity as early as possible

Vimal Wakhlu Chairman and Managing Director, Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd

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SRINAGAR 2013 e-Governance is a tool for transforming governance. The success of e-Governance in India must ultimately depend on success of various state projects like SWAN, SDC, CSE, e-district, CCTNS, APDRP etc

J P Pandey Senior VP, Presto Infosolutions Pvt Ltd

Speakers at the session on “e-Governance – Issues, Challenges & Opportunities”

The Government has developed so many applications for the G2C, G2G, G2B areas. Most of these applications are being hosted in State Data Centres or NIC Data Centres. But the problem is that the accessibility of many of these applications is not wide enough

Vikas Utreja Business Manager, Juniper Networks

L to R: Sheikh Imtiaz Ahmad, Iftikar Karkoo

e-Governance Implementations – Opportunities for Private Sector Today ICTs have tremendous potential. They can be used to bring efficiency into almost every human endeavour. For instance, these days they are using e-Governance ideas for having a better system of managing garbage in our urban areas. In case of NREGA, ICTs are helping to revolutionise the system of payments and worker attendance. Event the work being done can be monitored Dr Rajesh Kumar Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Manipur

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SRINAGAR 2013 The Board was set up in August 1986 under the provisions of the Jammu and Kashmir Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Act 1988.The mandate for constituting Shrine Board was better management, effective administration, and good governance of the shrine and the pilgrimage.

The most prominent IT initiative which we have taken is Computerisation of Yatra Registration System Dr Mandeep Bhandari Add. Chief Executive Officer, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board

Technology has transformational power and it is a great leveller of opportunity within and across economies. With the right policies and investment in infrastructure, we have the opportunity to strengthen and enhance our position as a global ICT power-house

We have started a very important project of digitisation of data records in which we have digitised 30 lakhs urban records and 90 lakhs rural records. The integration of National Knowledge Network will help in establishing an effective service delivery system

R K Goyal Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics and IT, Ministry of Communications & IT, Govt of India

A H Moon Director, National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology, Srinagar

We have accomplished various e-governance projects in the country. We have successfully installed 18 State Wide Area Network (SWAN) in major states around the country. Teleeducation and Tele-medicine are two most important opportunities which private sector needs to explore Vishal Mehra Head – Cloud & Telecom Business, Polycom

We aim to create world class IT infrastructure in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. There is ample scope for IT industry to flourish in the state; we only need to create a conducive climate for entrepreneurs and investors to start investing

M Muazzam Managing Director, J & K SIDCO

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SRINAGAR 2013 Private sector can play a very important role in ensuring proper utilisation of IT infrastructure. In Mumbai, we have enacted several policies that enable companies to take advantage of IT infrastructure that is there and create new solutions and services for the people.

Rajesh Aggarwal Secretary IT, Government of Maharashtra

Dr Rajesh Kumar receiving the speaker’s momento from Rajesh Aggarwal

We started as IT infrastructure provider and then we offered Managed Network Services. We also built data centres but now we are offering sector specific solutions. We have developed and implemented online reservation system and electronic ticket issuing machine based ticketing system in various states Venugopal Ramanathan Head of Sales, Trimax IT Infrastructure & Services Ltd

Speakers at the session on “e-Governance Implementations – Opportunities for Private Sector”

Speakers at the session on “e-Governance Implementations – Opportunities for Private Sector”

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ICT for Urban & Rural Management: Emerging Trends & Innovations When we talk about innovation, the first thing we ask that how much innovation do we need? Do we need innovation just for the sake of innovation, or are we genuinely concerned about helping the poor. So when we pick up IT solutions or systems for e-Governance, we have to look at things from the perspective of the user. Will the solution be useful for the user? The most innovative is not necessarily the most productive Arun Mehta Principal Secretary, Power, Government of Jammu & Kashmir

Today ICTs have tremendous potential. They can be used to bring efficiency into almost every human endeavour. For instance, these days they are using e-Governance ideas for having a better system of managing garbage in our urban areas. In case of NREGA, ICTs are helping to revolutionise the system of payments and worker attendance Dr Rajesh Kumar Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Manipur

ICT has brought innumerable benefits, one of which is the mobile telephone. Mobiles are now owned by majority of the people in the country. ICTs have also led to the creation of several e-Governance apps through which a plethora of services have been created for people in rural and urban areas Dr Govind CEO, NIXI; Senior Director, Department of Electronics & IT, Ministry of Communications & IT, Govt of India

J&K Pulse is the latest mobile based application introduced by the J&K government. It is available on the Android operating system.

The main benefit of the project is that it can capture the details of any project that is being executed.

The captured image is geo tagged in real time and is uploaded on to a secure central server

Ajit Sahu Deputy Commissioner, Jammu

Gujarat Info Petro Ltd. (GIPL) is a state owned PSU under the Government of Gujarat. We are laying pipeline for Jammu & Kashmir government from Bhatinda to Jammu. The entire project is about `850 crore. GIPL has 12 years of experience in the industry V K Sharma Chief Executive Officer, Gujarat Info Petro Ltd

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SRINAGAR 2013 IT has made many significant contributions to urban management and rural management. With holistic management through ICT, we can plan water supply, proper road connectivity, electricity supply and bring about improvements in the general quality of life

Iftikar Kakroo Deputy General Manager, Jammu & Kashmir State Power Development Corporation Ltd

Arun Mehta and Dr Rajesh Kumar

Comtech has successfully accomplished two urban projects in the state of J&K. One of the projects we executed with the assistance of NIC; in this we digitised ten lakh birth and death certificates in 45 days of time. Second was the digitisation of electoral rolls during municipal elections Sheikh Imtiaz Ahmad Managing Director, Comtech Info Solutions Pvt Ltd

Speakers at the session on “ICT for Urban & Rural Management: Emerging Trends & Innovations”

Arun Mehta addressing the session on “ICT for Urban & Rural Management: Emerging Trends & Innovations”

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ICT for Inclusive Education Inclusive education means educating every section of the society.

But the education has to be imparted in such a way that people in all sections in society are able to develop the skills that will make them employable in modern industry. ICT can play a major role in imparting latest skills to our students

Shaleen Kabra Commissioner/Secretary, Technical Education; Health and Medical Education, Government of Jammu & Kashmir

Intel has a strong focus on the education sector, we have been endeavouring to train teachers across India in the use of ICT in classrooms, so that the educational outcomes in the country can be improved. ICT can be a big enabler in the area of education, it can bring down the overall costs and facilitate long distance education Ranjeet Koul Industry Head Government & Enterprise; Enterprise Solution Group South Asia, Intel

The level of IT penetration in J&K is low, but the state has a huge potential in IT. IT can not only be a job generator for the state, it can also be used for monitoring the projects

Indrapal Singh CEO, Aman Technologies

The purpose of SAMS student education management system is to ensure that there is a common entry point, so that the admission takes place through a transparent online mechanism. All the colleges in the state are following the SAMS system Dr Chandra Shekhar Kumar Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Employment & Technical Education & Training Department, Government of Odisha

The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) was a major initiative to provide formal education to those who cannot afford it. ICT serves as a major enabler for projects such as these. TCIL understands the benefits of using ICT and we are in the forefront of developing solutions that can improve the quality of our education and healthcare

Vimal Wakhlu Chairman and Managing Director, Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd

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Dr Akhilesh Gupta

Secretary, University Grants Commission

Shaping the

Concept of Higher Education Dr Akhilesh Gupta obtained his M.Sc. degree in Physics from Lucknow University and PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from IIT, Delhi.

He joined India Meteorological Department in 1985 and worked there as Meteorologist until 1994.

He then joined National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting where he worked in the field of location specific weather forecasting and numerical weather modelling and coordinated All India Agroadvisory Service until 2006.

Dr Gupta worked in the Disaster Management Cell of Department of Science & Technology during 2006-07.

He worked as Advisor to the Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences during 2007-09.

Before joining UGC, Dr Gupta was working as Head, Climate Change Programme Division of Department of Science & Technology, Government of India wherein he was coordinating two National Missions on Climate Change under National Action Plan on Climate Change launched by the Government.

W

hat steps is the UGC taking to bring about improvement in overall quality of education?

The University Grants Commission (UGC) is an apex regulatory body on higher education in the country. It came into existence on 28th December, 1953 and became a statutory body of Government of India by an Act of Parliament in 1956. The main objective of UGC is to work for the coordination, determination, and maintenance of standards of university education in the country. There are three broad goals of the higher education system in the country. These are: to ensure access or expansion (that aims to increase student enrolment), to impart quality or excellence in education and to provide equity to underprivileged sections of the society.

What steps is UGC taking to monitor the educational institutions?

UGC constantly monitors the educational institutions to ensure that there is no compromise in terms of quality of education. UGC is committed to maintain the standard of education in the country. In a renewed effort to accelerate the pace of several reforms in higher education, the University Grants Commission has taken a number of significant initiatives in the recent past with a view of bringing about improvements in higher education. These include -UGC (Prevention of Caste-based Discrimination/ Harassment/Victimisation and Promotion of Equality in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2012; UGC (Establishment of Mechanism for Grievances Redressal) Regulations, 2012; UGC (Mandatory Assessment and Accreditation of higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2012; UGC (Promotion and Maintenance of Standards on Academic Collaboration between Indian

and Foreign Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2012; UGC Guidelines on Students’ Entitlements and Obligations, 2012; Introduction of Bachelor Degree in Vocational Course under the National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF); Development of e-content in 77 Postgraduate programmes under National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT); Restoration of the autonomy of Universities for seeking timely allocation of grants during the 12th Five-Year Plan; Innovation Universities; Joint Appointments; Anti Ragging Helpline and Web portal; Innovations and Reforms in the National Eligibility Test (NET); Introduction of Alternative modes of Experimentation on Animals in Life-Sciences; Introduction of Electronic Repository of Research Thesis and Synopses; Inputs for the National Mission on Teachers and Teacher Education.

Tell us about the interventions that UGC has made for the 12th Five Year Plan.

Some of the major interventions for the 12th Five Year Plan include, enhancing autonomy of universities through a mechanism of block grants for academic, research and innovations activities, differential funding provisions for under-graduate, post-graduate and Ph.D. students in an attempt to improve GER for higher education; performance linked funding based on designing appropriable ranking system for the universities; enhanced emphasis for support to state universities; on the excellence front, constituting empowered committees to create new schemes for knowledge generation through research; creation of expert subject panels to clear major and minor projects and for Quality Control Mechanism; overcoming near absence of good text books in Indian Languages and strengthening internationalisation of higher education including mobility of faculty and students. In discharge of its cardinal function of coordinating and maintaining standards of higher education, July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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over the years, UGC has evolved a wide variety of programmes for realisation of the goals of higher education. Some of these have assumed ‘FlagShip’ status as they focus on individual students, teachers, researchers, socially vulnerable groups, thematic priorities in teaching and research and institutions of higher learning ranging from Departments and Colleges to Universities.

Several compensatory interventions for marginalised sections of the society for enhancing their participation in higher education have been a special concern of these initiatives with a view to promote social equity. Establishment of Inter-University Centres has provided a fillip to make high-end research facilities and support to the Indian higher education system. Recently, the UGC has decided to launch an inspirational intervention through the establishment of Chairs in honour of Nobel Laureates who have done our country proud. The UGC would endeavour to harness the indentified strength, channelise its resources and direct its efforts towards overcoming the perceived inadequacies.

The Government of India has been taking a number of steps to bring improvement in the Gross Enrolment Ratio. Please provide us your views on this.

Higher education in India has reported an impressive growth since independence. However, the last decade has witnessed an unprecedented expansion of higher education sector. This decade was marked by an exponential increase in the number of students enrolling into higher education; a quantum jump in the number of institutions including universities; and a substantive increase in public funding. The University Grants Commission has been contributing immensely to this growth in the higher education through various policies, programmes, academic reforms and administrative and financial support to the institutions. UGC has been working ceaselessly with the challenge of providing equal opportunity for quality higher education to ever-growing number of students while maintaining equity with the societal and sectoral diversity of the country. The other challenges include; reinvigorating institutions, achieving excellence of international benchmarks and extending frontiers of knowledge. Keeping these challenges in mind, the UGC aims at achieving rapid expansion for deepening excellence and providing equal access to quality higher education during the 12th Five Year Plan. There has been an unprecedented growth in the number of institu-

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tions in recent years. From nearly 250 Universities in 2000-01, today we have as many as 700 degree awarding institutions in the country. Similarly there has been a three-fold increase in number of colleges in the country from about 12,000 in 2000-01 to over 36,000 now. The number of students enrolling to higher education has also witnessed exponential growth during last decade.

This increase was also nearly three-fold from nearly eight million in 2000-01 to over 20 million now. There has been substantial progress in terms of overall Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in the country during past 5-6 years. GER has increased from about 11 percent in 2005-06 to about 19 percent in 2012-13. Considering the present trend both in terms of increase in number of institutions and students, country is likely to touch a GER of 30 percent by the year 2020. There have been some concerns about lower student enrolment in certain fields of higher education as compared to others.

These fields include Veterinary Science (0.14 percent), Agriculture (0.48 percent) and law (1.84 percent). The UGC is endeavouring to promote students opting for such areas to achieve higher

centres, off-shore campuses and study centres after five years of its coming into existence. All the private universities are expected to conform to the relevant provisions of the UGC Act, 1956, as amended from time to time. However since these private universities are established through state act, it is the state governments concerned that also need to ensure that the quality of education being offered in their universities is up to the mark. UGC is in the process of bringing a new Regulation on Private Universities.

What initiatives UGC is taking to ensure equity in higher education in the country?

India is a young country, as 50 percent of the population is less than 25 year old; nearly 65 percent population is below 35. The true potential of the youths who dominate Indian population can be harnessed only through access to higher education. However, this effort will remain futile unless the social equity is nurtured adequately. Despite considerable efforts that are put in, the real potential of our youth belonging to the vulnerable sec-

“Ragging is a menace; it must be addressed immediately by the education fraternity” enrolment in such fields. There has also been considerable increase in number of teachers in higher education in the country. There has been over two-fold increase in the number of teachers from nearly four lakh in 2000-01 to over nine lakh now.

In your opinion what are the specific steps that can be taken to ensure that quality of education being offered in private institutions is up to the mark?

We have UGC (Establishment and maintenance of Standards in Private Universities) Regulations, 2003, which helps in regulating educational standards in private universities. Private universities are generally established by a separate State Act. A private university is a unitary university having adequate facilities for teaching, research, examination and extension services. A private university established under a State Act is expected to operate ordinarily within the boundary of the State concerned. However, after the development of main campus, in exceptional circumstances, the university may be permitted to open off-campus

tions of the society remains untapped. The UGC has always been giving considerable emphasis to greater participation of Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Minorities, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Persons with Disabilities and Women in higher education. Some of the notable schemes of the UGC for nurturing societal equity for various beneficiary categories include Indira Gandhi PG Scholarship for Single Girl child, Residential Coaching Academics for Minorities, Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowships for SCs and STs, and Maulana Azad National Fellowship for Minorities, Post-doctoral fellowships for SCs, STs, and Women, etc. Through these schemes, the UGC has supported nearly 19 lakh students from as many as over 6500 institutions involving an expenditure of `4684 Crores in the recent past.

We are currently having lot of discussion on allowing foreign universities. What is your view on allowing foreign universities to function in the country?

Since there is a bill pending with parliament

In Person

on this issue, no decision has been taken by the government on allowing foreign universities to open their campuses in India. However, we have UGC (Promotion and Maintenance of Standards on Academic Collaboration between Indian and Foreign Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2012. Under this regulation, foreign institutions can have collaboration, partnership or twinning arrangement with any Indian educational institutions. For this only those foreign institutions which are accredited with the highest grade in their homeland will be allowed to have twinning arrangement with those Indian Institutions which are accredited by the nationally recognised accrediting agencies with a grade not less than B or its equivalent in respect of institutional accreditation or a threshold level of accreditation in respect of program accreditation, as the case may be.

In 1952, the Union Government decided that all cases pertaining to the allocation of grants-in-aid from public funds to the Central Universities and other Universities and Institutions of higher learning might be referred to the University Grants Commission.

Consequently, the University Grants Commission (UGC) was formally inaugurated by late Shri Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the then Minister of

Ragging is a big problem that continues to be there in our higher education sector. What steps is UGC taking to stop ragging in universities and colleges?

In fact, the CEC has been setup to serve as a nodal agency to coordinate, guide and facilitate such educational programme production through its Media Centres.

India is a country with diversified culture and people. Ragging is a phenomenon that must be curbed at every place of learning. We have framed UGC Regulations on curbing the menace of ragging in Higher Educational Institutions, 2009, in order to prohibit, prevent and eliminate the scourge of ragging in Indian Universities/Colleges/Institutions. The above regulations are mandatory and all Institutions should take necessary steps for its implementation under intimation to the UGC. Students in distress owing to ragging related incidents can access the Toll Free Helpline set up by UGC.

How UGC is planning to facilitate use of National Knowledge Network which connected the Institutes supported by UGC? UGC has set up an Inter University Centre called the Consortium for Educational Communication, popularly known as CEC. The CEC has been established with the goal of addressing the needs of Higher Education through the use of powerful medium of Television along with the appropriate use of emerging Information Communication Technology (ICT). Realising the potential and power of television to act as means of educational knowledge dissemination, UGC started the Countrywide Classroom Programmes in the year 1984. Media centres were set up at various universities for production of educational programmes.

University Grants Commission (UGC) Education, Natural Resources and Scientific Research on 28 December 1953.

The UGC, however, was formally established only in November 1956 as a statutory body of the Government of India through an Act of Parliament for the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of university education in India. In order to ensure effective region-

Climate is an area of interest for you. During the course of your career you have contributed a lot in climate related research. Please tell us about the climate change in perspective of India?

The climate change that we are referring to in today’s context is the one caused by man-made activities in terms of uncontrolled industrialisation, modern transport systems and advanced house-hold appliances which led to unprecedented increase in the emission level of green house gases. This increase in green house gas concentration in the atmosphere during past a century has resulted in increase in temperature of the order of 0.74 deg C. The Government of India has launched a National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) in 2008 which outlined as many as eight National Missions on Climate Change. The NAPCC has been built around India’s civilisation legacy and also keeping in mind India’s development agenda. India’s climate change programme aims at achieving sustainable development through appropriate adaptation and mitigation measures without compromising on sustained economic growth. Unlike developed countries which are expected to introduce capping to their emission level, India’s mitigation policy aims at achieving reduction of

wise coverage throughout the country, the UGC has decentralised its operations by setting up six regional centres at Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Guwahati and Bangalore. The head office of the UGC is located at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in New Delhi, with two additional bureaus operating from 35, Feroze Shah Road and the South Campus of University of Delhi as well.

emission through the process of avoidance.

There are four main components of India mitigation initiatives. These are: promotion of energy efficiency in all sectors, introduction of mass transport system, greater use of renewable sources of energy and focussed R&D on clean energy areas. Climate change research in India needs to be focussed in S&T Capacity building in the key areas. The country needs to build strategic knowledge system so that new knowledge generated could be used for policy formulation both at national level and also for the purpose of international negotiations.

What role can universities play in environment conservation?

Environmental conservation is not just a subject of education alone. It is linked to India’s civilisation ethos. India is one of the few countries in the world which has been traditionally following the path of environmental conservation and preservation. There is need to build the subject of environmental conservation in the curriculum so that students are made sensitive to these concerns.

There are already a number of universities in India which have departments or Centres focusing on earth and environmental sciences. It is expected that more and more universities and institutions may start setting up such centres in future when the climate change may become more relevant in the time to come especially when its impact would be felt in terms of increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather events and on socio-economic sectors like agriculture, water and human health.

July 2013 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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eGov Cloud

Jeff Gould

CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research

Safe, Secure and

Responsible Cloud Computing line of mid 2012 for federal agencies to have their applications registered on Cloud.

What kind of response is the idea of putting governance systems on the Cloud receiving in USA?

“Our aim is to make cloud safe and secure for governments and other public sector units,� says Jeff Gould

T

oday cloud computing is being used by all sections of society. Please tell us how SafeGov came into being? What is the genesis of the idea?

SafeGov was initiated by Office Management and Budget (OMB) in the year 2009. We were created as a response for an initiative known as Cloud First. The President of USA, Mr Obama, directed Vivek Kundra (The Then Federal Chief Information Officer) to come up with something dynamic and cost effective. In the year 2010, Kundra issued a white paper constituting of 25 initiative points for reforming federal IT. Cloud First was one of those initiatives. Cloud First made it mandatory for any federal agency that was considering any new IT investment to consider Cloud as its first choice. It fixed dead-

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / July 2013

Cloud is developing very quickly in USA. Cloud is now being used by various global companies, schools and government agencies. The basic idea behind cloud is that you are putting your applications and software in somebody else’s datacenters. You can rent those software and applications instead of buying them from those servers. The principal benefit of the cloud is that it saves money and makes it more cost effective.

It is not just about saving money on your existing application, it also makes it much easier to switch to a new application.

Some security related concerns are being expressed about cloud.

What steps are you taking to address those challenges?

I agree that various government agencies, private companies and schools are concerned about privacy and security. But privacy and security are two different issues. Security really means that your data is not going to be stolen by somebody else, and it will not be leaked or destroyed. Privacy is different idea, as it is concerned with the personal data of an individual.

We have identified two important aspects, technology and human which can breach into the security system. We have concluded that the single greatest weakness in the security of United States Government is not technological but human. Every organisation in this world faces the challenges of human failure. The most common source of hacking of US government data are email phishing attacks. Two years ago, Gmail users in White House were hacked by Chinese attackers through phishing attack. The solution of these privacy issues is not technology, it is policy. The area where the issue of

privacy arises is mostly with internet advertising companies like Facebook and Google. Their business model suggests that they target you with the advertisements after identifying your interest areas through accessing your personal information.

Today large numbers of internet users are from Asia. Most of these users could be unaware of privacy or security related issues. What can be done to safeguard their interests?

We know that in the coming future, most of the internet users will be from Asia. People here are usually not aware of privacy and security issues.

The reason probably is that people are only recently discovering internet in these regions.

But I am sure that soon people here will also become aware about privacy and security. They will demand from their government stringent laws which for safeguarding their personal information.

Have you developed any specific roadmap for India?

I think it is too early to speak about roadmap for India. But we know that Indian government has very ambitious projects for cloud computing. The first step which Indian government has taken is to introduce cloud computing in government owned data centres. Government can switch over to cloud instead of building services in their own data centres. We are aware that government has launched a tremendous initiative called UID. It requires large server in data centres. In long run it will create a revolution when these resources would be outsourced through private companies. We are very hopeful to increase our services in India as the number of smart phones users are increasing at a rapid phase. It will make people understand the need of privacy laws which will keep their personal data protected.

9th india’s premier ICT Event

The 9th eINDIA (www.eINDIA.net.in), will be convened with the theme of ‘Building a Knowledge Society’. The two-day event will be held on July 23 — 24, 2013 at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), Hyderabad, India. Government of Andhra Pradesh is co-hosting eINDIA 2013, along with Elets Technomedia Private Limited. The eINDIA 2013 summit will serve as a platform for knowledge exchange between the key stakeholders who are active in the fields of Governance, Education, Health and PSUs

programme chair of eINDIA 2013

Leaders at eINDIA 2013

N Kiran Kumar Reddy Chief Minister Government of Andhra Pradesh

Ponnala Lakshmaiah IT Minister, Andhra Pradesh

O P Rawat Secretary, Department of Public Enterprises, Govt Of India

Rajesh Aggarwal Secretary IT, Government of Maharashtra

P K Mohanthy Chief Secretary, Govt of Andhra Pradesh

Bipul Pathak Commissioner/ Secretary, IT Govt Jammu & Kashmir and more ...

Host Partners

State Partner

Sanjay Jaju Secretary, IT & Communications Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh It gives me immense pleasure to announce and welcome the 9th eINDIA Conference, Exhibition & awards. I am happy about the consistent and synergised endeavors of the organiser in engaging the government as well as the private sector in the development activities of the information and communication technology in conjunction with sectors like Education, Healthcare and Governance.

We have taken good learning experiences from all the past eight chapters of eINDIA conference, orgainsed at dfifferent locations of the country. I am happy that Andhra Pradesh is hosting the 9th edition of eINDIA Conference, Exhibition and Awards

Supporting Partners Department of Public Enterprises Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Government of India

Organisers NATIONAL INFORMATICS CENTRE

Jammu and Kashmir e-Governance Agency

For Registration Details: Gaurav Srivastava, gaurav@elets.co.in For Programme Deatils: Anoop Verma, +91-8860651647, anoop@elets.in For Sponsorship & Exhibition Details: Ragini Srivastava, ragini@elets.in, +91-8860651650

eIndia.eletsonline.com

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