eGov Magazine June 2014

egov.eletsonline.com

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-governance ` 75 / US $10 / ISSN 0973-161X

JUNE 2014 | VOLUME 10 n ISSUE 06 n ISSN 0973-161X

A new era of

e-Governance

Namo will make it happen

After Gujarat, It’s time for india to experience the e-Governance model of Prime Minister Narendra Modi

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Contents june 2014

volume 10 n issue 06

32 8 viewpoint

NaMo will make IT happen

40

Cloudburst Computing Solutions Rain from Skies

Rajesh AgGarwal Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Maharashtra

interview 10

È 44

È

12

Bipul Pathak Dr Ajay Kumar

Kiren Rijiju

Joint Secretary, DeitY, Government of India

Union Minister of State for Home

14

18

Dr Rajendra Kumar

Joint Secretary (NE), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India

20

Dr Neeraj Mittal

Joint Secretary (Marketing), Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / June 2014

48

È Shambhu Singh

Joint Secretary, DeitY, Government of India

4

Commissioner-cum-Secretary, IT and Science & Technology, Government of J&K

Hari Ranjan Rao Secretary to Chief Minister and Department of Information Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh

52

36

È Renu Budhiraja

Sr Director & HOD, State Data Centers, DeitY, Govt of India

Ravinath Raman

Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Uttarakhand

New Government New Hopes

T

he nation today is looking up to the newly-installed Narendra Modi Government with eyes full of hopes and aspirations. And, the new Prime Minister through his initial moves also seems to be suggesting that he is here with a purpose – that he is going to leave no stone unturned to realize his vision of good governance by ensuring a higher level of participation of the policy makers as well as the ones executing these policies.

The Modi-led party in power – BJP – has been underlining the importance of “maximum governance with minimum government” since even before it actually catapulted to the seat of power. This vision can be best given life through the system of e-Governance. That being the reason, in this issue, we have tried to find out the state of e-Governance in India as also the level of penetration in the various central ministries, and the road ahead for it from none other than the policy makers themselves.

The Government of India, in order to increase the penetration of e-Governance and facilitate better delivery of services, has been taking to new-age technologies such as Cloud in the recent past. The Government Cloud, called MeghRaj, is a proactive initiative of the central government for improving the technology ecosystem in the country and a landmark step in its journey towards the attainment of a much larger vision of good governance of the incumbent Prime Minister.

With an aim to emphasize the need for adopting updated technologies to strengthen the e-Governance ecosystem in the country, we are organising “Elets CloudGov 2014” conference.

The event is set to witness a rich participation by key government officials, Cloud experts and the industry, who will gather to discuss and deliberate upon the challenges and opportunities existing in the domain.

All through our journey, we have upheld the development of e-Governance in various regions of the country by means of state-level events. All these efforts combined together are sure to translate into the bigger picture on the national e-Governance canvas. The issue in your hand contains interviews of IT Secretaries of some of the leading states, who have undertaken proactive measures to develop and practise the concept of e-Governance over the years.

Here’s wishing PM Modi Good Luck! for his “struggle to bring ‘life’ in ‘file’,”.

Hope you have a pleasant read.

ravi guptA Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

Email at subscription@elets.in to get previous issues

March 2014

April 2014

May 2014

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-governance

june 2014 volume 10 n issue 06

Partner publications President: Dr M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief: Dr Ravi Gupta

I C E CO ECT Connecting Technologies,Trends & Business

Infrastructure Construction Engineering

Editorial Team governance Sr. Assistant Editor: Nirmal Anshu Ranjan Sr. Correspondent: Kartik Sharma, Nayana Singh, Souvik Goswami Research Associate: Sunil Kumar education Sr. Correspondent: Ankush Kumar, Mohd. Ujaley Correspondent: Seema Gupta Health Sr. Assistant Editor: Shahid Akhter Correspondent: Ekta Srivastava ICE Connect Assistant Editor: Rachita Jha Correspondent: Veena Kurup Sales & Marketing Team Manager: Ragini Shrivastav (+91-8860651650) Assistant Manager: Gaurav Srivastava (+91-8527697685) Subscription & Circulation Team Manager Subscriptions, +91-8860635832; subscription@elets.in

The

Design Team Sr. Graphic Designer: Om Prakash Thakur Sr. Web Designer: Shyam Kishore WEB DEVELOPMENT & IT INFRASTRUCTURE Team Lead - Web Development: Ishvinder Singh Executive-IT Infrastructure: Zuber Ahmed Finance & Operations Team Sr Manager – Finance: Ajit Sinha Legal Officer: Ramesh Prasad Verma

Editorial & Marketing Correspondence eGov – Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd Stellar IT Park, Office No: 7A/7B, 5th Floor, Annexe Tower, C-25, Sector 62, Noida, Uttar Pradesh - 201309, Phone: +91-120-4812600, Fax: +91-120-4812660, Email: info@egovonline.net eGov does not neccesarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors. The magazine is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided. eGov is published by Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd in technical collaboration with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS).

Owner, Publisher, Printer: Dr Ravi Gupta, Printed at Vinayak Print Media, A-29, Sec-8, Noida, U.P. and published from 710 Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50 Noida, UP Editor: Dr Ravi Gupta © All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic and mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage or retrieval system, without publisher’s permission.

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viewpoint

NaMo will

make IT happen He has done it in Gujarat, and now, it’s the turn of the nation to experience the new-age IT - led e-governance under the leadership of maverick Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asserts Souvik Goswami, Elets News Network (ENN)

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viewpoint

I

t wasn’t long ago that the Chief Minister Narendra Modi would talk about the potential of the Information Technology to facilitate better governance, and exploit IT to the fullest for all-round development of Gujarat. And now, with Prime Minister Modi moving to the national seat of power, observers feel, the story is going to be no different in the days to come; it’s just that the area and scope of experimentation would widen to encompass the whole nation. If track records are anything to go by, he is sure to take various services to the citizens, and in an effective way, using all the IT tools he can lay his hands on. Be it e-governance or m-governance (mobile governance), for that matter, he will leave no stone unturned to erect a comprehensive citizen-centric service delivery mechanism in the country.

“To me, e-governance is nothing but easy, economic and effective governance. e-governance is a key component of good governance, which is the key to sustainable development,” Narendra Modi had said as the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, at ‘eIndia’ event, organised by Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd, in Gandhinagar in 2011 (http:// egov.eletsonline.com/2012/01/indian-talentinformation-technology-india-tomorrow/) That he believed in what he said - and proved through numerous citizen-centric service deliveries that his belief was not illfounded - is there for everyone to see.

And, early signs are already there. Immediately after moving into the South Block, Modi insisted on making the PMO website more interactive. In the next few hours, India’s Prime Minister’s official website displayed a new section- “Interact with Hon’ble PM”.

Narendra Modi has always been known as a tech-savvy person and a social media enthusiast. He has been active in social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter since long.

Even as the Prime Minister of India, he is not only regularly tweeting but also active on Facebook. News reports suggest within four days of its launch, the official Facebook page of the Prime Minister’s Office has attracted over 1.1 million ‘Likes’. The PMO’s Twitter account also has about 1.4 million followers. Not just that, PMO’s website also has a section that gives details about PM’s social media updates.

The spruced-up PMO website amply reflects the quantum of importance Modi accords to e-governance, so as to bring in transparency and providing better governance.

Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, at the inauguration of eIndia, organised by Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd in 2011 in Gandhinagar

ModiSpeak I believe that IT+IT=IT. It means that Indian Talent and Information Technology is equivalent to India Tomorrow. It is my firm belief that our talent will build the future of India with the help of IT.

A section in the website - ‘Quest for Transparency’ – reads: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi firmly believes that transparency and accountability are the two cornerstones of any pro-people government. Transparency and accountability not only connect the people closer to the government but also make them equal and integral part of the decision making process. During his record four terms as Chief Minister, Narendra Modi demonstrated a strong commitment towards an open and transparent government. Rules and policies were not framed in AC Chambers but among the people. Draft policies were put online for people to give their feedback and suggestions.

At the same time, initiatives such as Garib Kalyan Melas ensured that fruits of development directly reach the poor without any red tape. Another example is model of ‘One Day Governance’ that focuses on providing time-

bound services to the citizens by leveraging the e-governance infrastructure. The main objective of this was to ensure provision of all Government-to-Citizen services covered under the Citizens’ Charter.”

Modi’s own believe about the Internet, IT at large or the resultant e-governance can be sensed from his own statement in the PMO website. In his message he says, “I envision this website as a very important medium of direct communication between us. I am a firm believer in the power of technology and social media to communicate with people across the world. I hope this platform creates opportunities to listen, learn and share one’s views.”

Narendra Modi, the man who lives, breathes and practises IT, had expressed his vision of a technologically vibrant India at the eIndia 2011 event in these words: “I believe that IT+IT=IT. It means that Indian Talent and Information Technology is equivalent to India Tomorrow. It is my firm belief that our talent will build the future of India with the help of IT.” And, the people of India have not even an iota of doubt that Narendra Modi will soon have us convinced about the truth of the IT+IT=IT formula through his live examples of service delivery.

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IN PERSON

Career Glimpse Kiren Rijiju, the incumbent Union Minister of State for Home, was born in Nafra region of West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh on November 19, 1971. He did his Graduation from Hansraj College, Delhi.

Rijiju, also a Law Graduate from the Campus Law Centre of Delhi, has earlier served as a Member of Khadi and Village Industries Commission from 2000 to 2005.

He was also a member of the 14th Lok Sabha.

He had initiated 91 debates in the 14th Lok Sabha, one of the highest by any MP from Arunachal Pradesh.

Rijiju also adorned the 2012 Commonwealth Games Organising Committee as its Member

The Home ministry is already in the process of deploying more and more ICT tools for an effective e-governance, and if need be, we will go for further enhancements, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju tells Gautam Debroy of Elets News Network (ENN)

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Kiren Rijiju

Union Minister of State for Home

‘We’ll Examine UPA Govt Policies’

IN PERSON

A

s the Minister of State for Home, what are your priority areas?

The Ministry of Home Affairs has a huge responsibility of maintaining peace and security in the country. I am here to assist my senior minister to ensure that the responsibility and mandate given to us is discharged with due sincerity and dedication.

We have prioritized some areas which call for urgent attention like internal security, security of women and older people, security of the people of northeastern region and securing the international borders to prevent infiltrations from the neighbouring countries. Besides, our priorities also include making maximum efforts with an aim to build confidence among the people, no matter which part of country they reside in.

Any plan to review the policies of your ministry formulized by the erstwhile UPA Government?

We are going to examine some of the policies introduced by the previous two successive UPA governments. We will find out if any policy is not effective or is in need of critical review. Of course, we will continue with some policies which are yielding positive in nature. However, we will take a call only after seeing presentations from various departments of the ministry on whether we need to continue with some of the policies of the previous government or not.

As honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid down some guidelines for all the ministries, my senior Rajnath Singhji has already made his intention clear on how to go ahead with the guidelines. So, in a very short period of time, we are going to have a very concrete action plan. And yes, we will also have a new chapter containing the possible road map for each plan, because suggestions without a well laid down course of action don’t take you anywhere. As we are targeting some of the critical areas, which have not been even looked at for a long time, like ongoing talks with insurgent outfits in J&K or for that matter, in Northeast. When talks begin with militants, we can’t continue with the talk process eternally… there needs to be an end. So, all in all, we have started the work on a very positive note and we are hopeful that we will definitely get some good results.

We need to sensitize people (on atrocities against NE citizens) across the country that northeastern people also need to be taken care of. Whenever an incident takes place against a person from the Northeast, our motto of “Unity in Diversity” is sent into tatters and the spirit of national integration is attacked’ Every now and then we hear about mishaps taking place with people from the North-East in different metro cities of the country. Have you given a thought to preparing an action plan to stop this kind of incidents?

I have already asked my officials for a detailed presentation on the issues relating to atrocities against the people from the northeast region. After going through the technicalities involved, we will issue directives shortly to all the state governments to ensure security of the northeasterners. We will also have some social awareness drives to sensitise the people across the country that northeastern people also need to be taken care of. Whenever an incident takes place against a person from the Northeast, our motto of “Unity in Diversity” is sent into tatters and the spirit of national integration comes under attack. So, we have to go for awareness campaigns through which we can influence the mindset of the people. We have other government apparatus like police, judiciary and others, but first of all, we have to create sensitivity amongst the people.

ICT is a powerful tool for governance. Do you think your ministry needs to come up with

a fresh set of norms for better utilization of ICT tools?

Yes, definitely! We need to do that. In fact, we have already started enhancing our capacity in the field of Information and Communications Technology. Our teams in coordination with other international agencies have already started on customized improvisation of the ICT gadgets. We have a homeland security agreement with the United States of America, which aims to improvise our various gadgets.

We are prepared to face any challenges related to the modern communications technology. Our ministry is already in the process of deploying more and more ICT tools for an effective e-governance, and if required, we will go for further enhancements.

Elets Technomedia is organising a national summit on Cloud Governance. Any message from you?

I wish the Elets Technomedia all success for CloudGov summit. I hope the summit will further explore the possibilities on the advanced use of Information and Communications Technology. And, given the participation of both public and private sector stakeholders, the summit is destined to reach the logical conclusion.

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IN PERSON

Dr Ajay Kumar

Joint Secretary, DeitY, Government of India

‘Imported e-goods are holes in armoury’ Career Glimpse Born: 02 - 10 - 1962 Service: IAS Cadre: Kerala Allotment Year: 1985 Experience Dr. Ajay Kumar is the Joint Secretary in the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Telecom and IT, Government of India. Prior to this, he served for almost three decades in the state government of Kerala, where he steered the industrial and technological initiatives in various departments. Dr Kumar has also served the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India

G

ive us an overview of the Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) sector in India.

In the electronic sector, the demand is growing in excess of 20 percent. For some products, it is also growing at the rate of 30, 40 or even 50 percent.

Most of these demands are met through imports as our domestic capacity for design and manufacturing is very low. We estimate that by 2020, our demand will be in excess of USD400 billion and the imports will exceed USD300 billion, making it the single-largest item of import in the country. The situation is alarming, as this size of imports will be unsustainable for our country.

Today, more and more sectors are going electronic; even traditional sectors like electrical and mechanical are becoming electronic.

As electronic and digital systems and devices replace the traditional, India needs to boost domestic manufacturing of electronic items for reasons more than one, insists Dr Ajay Kumar, Joint Secretary, DeitY, talking to Nayana Singh of Elets News Network (ENN)

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IN PERSON

Yesteryear’s hydel and thermal power generation are making room for solar photovoltaics, incandescent bulbs have given passage to the new-age LEDs, and medical equipment, cars and their devices, etc, have all gone electronic.

However, the more electronics spreads to various areas of our life, the more it adds to its potential to disrupt normal life and safety. For example, everything in the railways is electronic today; so, if someone hacks the system, its ripple effect would reach far and wide.

It could be a potent threat to the security of our systems as well?

Very true. The security of systems is a major concern. We cannot trust that imported chips will ensure the level of security we need… that way we are vulnerable to attacks of very sophisticated, high-tech dimensions. But having an alien know your secrets is a hard fact today across the sectors, including Defence and Home ministries in the government. Reliable electronics manufacture within the country is imperative today. Earlier, we assumed that we will be importing, but now we have realised that it is a big problem; even though the import bills skyrocket, we are still left with mortgaged cyber security due to imported chips.

Today, the IT is a USD125 billion industry, and it has substantially changed the face of India. It created 2.5 million jobs…rather households. Electronics has an opportunity to create a USD400 billion and 28 million jobs.

That is, while on one hand we have a storehouse of opportunities, on the other, it’s the looming unknown danger. That, in short, is the electronics sector today.

But then how do you propose to address the problem?

We have taken several initiatives in that direction. The schemes that have been approved need to be implemented effectively. But more needs to be done and more policies need to be formulated to tackle the issue. Also, we need to market India. We do not have adequate implementation mechanism created to execute all the policies formulated so far. Electronics is not a departmental but a national issue; so, we need a national mechanism to handle these issues…

We need to create that brand for India.

What needs to be done for implementing the existing

Policy awaits Execution We have created policies, but there’s lack of execution mechanism. We talk of setting up an Electronics Development Fund, but there is no mechanism to execute it... We have a scheme to promote domestic manufacturers of electronics, but do not have a mechanism for that. We implemented a scheme for safety standards with inadequate supporting mechanism…

policies, and what must be kept in focus while formulating new policies?

There is a gap today. We have created many policies; some of them are modified incentive package where we have created 25 percent incentive and it is being welcomed by the industry. But there’s a need for a mechanism to mobilize and appraise proposals, sanction those and then disburse the money. We lack there, and instead created a scheme called Electronic Manufacturing Cluster Scheme, wherein it provides for setting up of state-of-the-art clusters. We have received several proposals, but again we need a mechanism to address those. We are talking of setting up an Electronics Development Fund, but there is no mechanism to execute it. We have a scheme to promote domestic manufacturers of electronics, but we do not have a mechanism for that. We have implemented a scheme for safety standards, with inadequate supporting mechanism.

Most of the safety standards have been mandated in the electronics sector, but we must create some institutional mechanism for monitoring as well. However, we have launched

eight to 10 major initiatives to bridge the gaps, like creation of vocational skills in electronics to empower people. About one lakh people are already getting trained. Actually, all these schemes have started in the last two years, so full-fledged support systems are yet to evolve.

Incidentally, we are also building two national centres of excellence to inform and educate people in the domain.

Shed some light on national electronics policy.

The national electronics policy says we need to make India a globally competitive destination for electronic design and manufacturing, so that it becomes a hub for electronics production to meet both domestic as well as global requirements. Global electronics is a USD2 trillion industry, and we are not producing even 1 percent of it domestically, in value terms. As I said, electronics has five times the opportunity in the IT sector…vision is to make India a globally competitive destination.

Of late, there’s been a heightened sense of awareness regarding ESDM. Share some of the key achievements.

Creation of semiconductor fab is the first landmark achievement. The total investment involved is about 63,000 crore. We have received about 40 proposals involving investment about 14,000 crore. Under the cluster scheme, we have received several proposals, out of which seven have been approved for greenfield electronic manufacturing projects in the country. Several others are in the pipeline...those would create small townships.

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IN PERSON

Dr Rajendra Kumar

Joint Secretary, DeitY, Government of India

‘eKranti will Push eGov to Next Level’

Career Glimpse Born: 03 - 01 - 1967 Service: IAS Cadre: Tamil Nadu Allotment Year: 1992 Experience Dr. Rajendra Kumar is currently serving Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India as the Joint Secretary. Earlier he has also served the Ministry of Shipping in the position of Private Secretary.

Apart from these, Kumar has managed various important portfolios in the state of Tamilnadu including the post of Joint Secretary in the Home department

Having bagged the UN Public Service Award 2014 for its ‘Mobile Seva’ initiative, DeitY is busy working on NeGP 2.0 to transform the way e-gov operates and is perceived now, says Dr Rajendra Kumar, Joint Secretary DeitY tells Nayana Singh of Elets News Network

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IN PERSON

H

ow do you perceive the development of e-Governance ecosystem in the country?

We have come a long way with regard to e-Governance development in India. Ever since the approval of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) in 2006, there have been numerous achievements in the domain of e-Governance.

A large number of Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) have become operational and are delivering services to the citizens and businesses. Currently, over 11 crore transactions are being delivered every month under these MMPs. So, in terms of reaching out to citizens and providing them with various services through e-Governance, very significant progress has been made.

However, there have been several important developments during this period in the e-Governance domain that need to be incorporated in the overall framework to ensure that we take full advantage of these developments. These include emergence of latest technologies such as Cloud and mobile platform, need for transformation of processes through e-Governance and not just translation, need for integration of services and emergence of newer models of service delivery and implementation.

The portfolio of MMPs under the NeGP also needs to be enhanced to include more citizencentric domains and services. These are the areas in which we should effectively exploit the potential of e-Governance to bring truly online and integrated services for the benefit of the citizens. So, I would say that there is tremendous scope for improvement. We are currently working on development of “e-Kranti” or NeGP 2.0 to bring this paradigm into the realm of e-Governance.

e-Revolution

“e-Kranti or NeGP 2.0 lays out the road map for e-governance in the country. It aims at transformation of e-governance in the country to transform governance’

In your opinion, what is the road map ahead for e-Governance?

The key goal of e-Governance is to enable all government services for electronic delivery to citizens and other stakeholders. So, in this domain, the key enablers are the government departments, which need to ensure provisioning of these services quickly through the electronic platform. As I mentioned, e-Kranti or NeGP 2.0 clearly lays out the road map for e-Governance in the country. It aims at transformation of e-Governance in the country to transform governance. The specific areas of focus include utilizing the cloud and mobile platforms for delivering services, transformation of the government processes, integration of services and providing the next-generation ICT infrastructure on demand to all government departments. Latest and more agile implementation models can enable the departments in faster and more efficient delivery of e-government services. Use of social media tools to involve the citizens and other stakeholders in e-Governance is also an important area of focus.

e-Game Changer “Use of mobile platform for delivering services can tremendously enhance the reach and access to these services in view of the much higher mobile phone penetration in the country compared to access to the Internet”

Use of mobile platform for delivering services can tremendously enhance the reach and access to these services in view of the much higher mobile phone penetration in the country compared to access to the Internet.

DeitY has already implemented the Mobile Seva initiative in this domain, which is currently being utilized by over 1,000 central and state government departments and agencies across the country to provide mobile-based services to the citizens and businesses. I have conceptualized and led the implementation of this initiative within DeitY from the beginning. This project has already won international laurels for the country. Very recently, it won the 2014 United Nations Public Service Award for promoting whole-of-government approach in the information age. This year, Mobile Seva is the only winner of this award from India.

Talking about the health sector, education or even BFSI sector, how e-Governance can play the role of a facilitator?

There is a huge scope for deploying ICT in these sectors to bring in more efficiency and improve service delivery to the citizens. In education, for example, we can put the entire course content in easy to read and interactive formats online on the Cloud platform, which students can access, download or read as per their convenience on their mobile devices. We can connect the schools in rural areas and put applications on the Cloud platform, so that students can access the content online through June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

15

IN PERSON

mobile devices. There are many ways and still more can be thought of for accelerating the delivery of services in the education sector.

Coming to the health sector, most of the interface with the citizens in the health delivery system in the country is manual at present. We can automate that interface to a large extent through applications on a Cloud platform and through mobile-based interface in the field. Today, the health workers move from house to house collecting data. Most of the field-level data collection can be done using mobile handheld devices with pre-loaded applications. The field level functionaries can gather more information and capture data in real time and the services can be majorly accelerated. Mobile apps, voice-based interface or SMS can be very helpful in informing mothers about immunization and other such services.

Similarly, the financial sector is also full of e-gov opportunities, as many people still do not have bank accounts. If we can have a good network of Business Correspondents (BCs) in rural areas, a huge difference can be effected. It can help in a big way towards achieving the goal of financial inclusion. And, if this is done on a mobile platform, more and more people can be brought into the realm of Financial Inclusion.

Mobile money transfer can be another game changer. We can have Aadhaar-based authentication for transactions at the village level.

At policy level, what initiatives are in pipeline?

DeitY is the nodal ministry for the purpose of e-Governance in the country. Our main role has been to formulate an e-gov plan for the country and bring all other ministries and states on board and provide them with support in the form of core ICT infrastructure, standards, policies, capacity building etc., so as to ensure delivery of electronic services to the citizens. We have created core ICT

e-Gov Integration “So far, e-gov services have been mostly delivered individually; there has not been any significant effort at integration. Utilizing the ICT infrastructure for delivering integrated services through web and mobile platforms will metamorphose e-governance”

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e-Service Giant

“DeitY has implemented the Mobile Seva initiative…currently being utilized by over 1,000 central and state government departments and agencies across the country to provide mobile-based services to the citizens and businesses”

What is your vision for the country as far as e-Governance is concerned?

infrastructure across the country to enable the departments roll out their services. For example, we have erected State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) and put in place the State Data Centres across the country. We have also rolled out Common Service Centres (CSC) in the rural areas and created a middleware, State Service Delivery Gateways (SSDGs), across the states. The Mobile Seva initiative has provided all the government departments in the country with a mobile platform to provide mobile-based services. We have also launched the Cloud platform.

The common ICT infrastructure mentioned above allows the departments to quickly roll out their services without creating their own infrastructure. We have also notified e-Governance standards to ensure that the applications are interoperable. We are now working on creating a platform for e-authentication, named “e-Pramaan”. This will allow government departments to electronically authenticate the identity of service seekers completely online without the need for any manual authentication.

Our goal is to fully implement the idea of e-Kranti or NeGP 2.0 to completely transform e-Governance in the country from the point of view of delivering electronic services to the citizens and other stakeholders. It envisages enhancement of the portfolio of projects under the NeGP, complete process transformation, integration of services, providing next generation ICT infrastructure to the government departments on demand, incorporating latest technologies like Cloud and mobile and delivery through more agile implementation models. This will bring about a paradigm shift in the e-Governance landscape.

So far, e-Governance services have been mostly delivered individually; there has not been any significant effort at integration.

Utilizing the common ICT infrastructure for delivering integrated services through web and mobile platforms will transform the way people perceive e-Governance now. This will also significantly reduce the time required by the departments to go live with their electronic services, as they would need to focus mainly on developing applications. We are also focusing on replication of applications through an e-Governance Appstore framework, so that the same applications need not be developed again and again.

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Career Glimpse Born: 28 - 12 - 1959 Service: IAS Cadre: Manipur Tripura

Wait & Watch

Allotment Year: 1986 Experience

“Since major part of the information we handle are classified, we may not be very comfortable with the Cloud technology…

There may be many security features already available in the Cloud technology, but…we need to wait and watch”

Shambhu Singh is currently posted as the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Prior to this, he held the position of the Resident Commissioner for Manipur Government in New Delhi. He also served the Ministry of Science & Technology as the Director.

Earlier Singh had served Industries, Home and Health departments in the state of Manipur. Apart from these, Shambhu Singh has also worked as the Manager in the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation

Shambhu Singh

Joint Secretary (NE), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India

MHA Guarded in Optimism on Cloud

T

ell us about the activities of the North-East Division in the Union Home

Ministry.

The North-East Division was created to focus on the security and developmental issues relating to the region. Unlike other parts of the country the North East holds an important position from strategic point of view as the states there share their borders with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. The terrain, the socio-economic

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development and factors like language, ethnicity, tribal rivalry, migration, issues of control over local resources, and a widespread feeling of exploitation and alienation have resulted in a fragile security situation in the north-eastern states.

The Ministry of Home Affairs is taking all possible steps to address the genuine demands of various ethnic groups for development and autonomy in managing their affairs. While the infrastructural developments like road, rail link, power supply, water supply etc. are dealt with by the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) and various other

Cloud and ICT technologies are very useful new-age tools, but when it comes to dealing with classified documents, caution is the key word for us, Shambhu Singh in an interview with Gautam Debroy of Elets News Network (ENN)

IN PERSON

ministries, the issues relating to strengthening of security, rehabilitation of people affected by militancy, bringing underground outfits to the mainstream through negotiations, confidence building measures etc. are looked after by the North East Division. Diplomatic initiatives pertaining to security issues with Bangladesh and Myanmar are also taken to strengthen the security situation there.

How do you think that the use of ICT by various departments of the ministry can help in better work flow?

There are lot of advantages. We get the first advantage when the parliament is in session. With the use of information and communication system, we can get the correct information about the previous session, or whether any reply was given to a particular query or not. Sometimes, similar questions come up. But with the use of technology, we can ward off that possibility. With the system becoming computerized, we can properly manage the staff, deal with leave issues and better monitor movement of documents, among others.

If there are any delays, we can pin-point it and fix the responsibilities. Since the ministry deals with security issues, delays could be fatal. So, we are generally very quick in the disposal of papers.

Many a time, forces inimical to India use social media platforms to fuel communal tension. Does ICT helps in countering those problems?

Basically, we don’t handle it directly; we have a separate department for that located in the Ministry of Information and Technology. However, we provide information to the authorities concerned about the malicious materials, if any, being circulated and get them blocked. We on our part, however, try to use social media to give the correct picture to the people and disseminate the right information using the technology.

Do you think the new-age tools like Cloud technology will come handy for the Home Ministry towards achieving its goals?

There is, of course, a serious concern about security, and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) itself is getting into the Cloud technology. Maybe, we also give it a try...we will have

Delay Fixer “As the ministry deals with security issues, delays could be fatal. So, generally speaking, we are very quick in the disposal of papers… With the system becoming computerized, we can even pin-point delays, if any, and fix the responsibilities”

to take a call on it as to what extent we will make use of this technology. Since major part of the information we handle are classified, we may not be very comfortable with the Cloud technology. Let us see how the technology evolves… who knows what might happen tomorrow! There may be many security features already available in the Cloud technology, but it is still in evolution stage… We will have to wait and watch.

Talking about the issue of illegal infiltration from across the border, how do you think ICT can be used to plug the holes?

ICT can play a crucial role here. If we apprehend a person who is not an Indian, we can maintain his details in the relevant database using a computer. And, with the help of ICT, we can approach the authorities concerned in his/her country to take up his case even electronically, if immediate trans-border movement of the person is not possible.

We have undertaken an ambitious project to collect fingerprints, palm prints, faces and iris samples of all the arrested and convicted persons

in the country and store these in a central database. This biometric data will be accessible to all the police units across the country for getting real-time results on the identity of a suspect.

Under implementation by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the Automated Multimodal Biometric Identification System (AMBIS), will rival the much-acclaimed FBI Biometric Center of Excellence in the US, which has the biometric records of over 94 lakh offenders.

Any special initiative from your division on the development and security of NE? As I said we mainly deal with the internal security issues…the developmental projects are being handled by other ministries. We only monitor the projects and keep them informed about their status as to whether a specific project was implemented or not.

What is your message for the CloudGov summit?

The event should highlight and bring to the notice of the government the kind of security tools available with this technology at this stage, so that we can take a call on whether to use the technology even in cases where the security aspect is involved. We maintain extreme caution in our day-to-day functioning, so much so that we never use computers connected to the Internet…we use standalone computers.

I wish the ClodGov summit the best!

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IN PERSON

Dr Neeraj Mittal

Joint Secretary (Marketing), Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India

Hi-tech Check on LPG Pilferage

Career Glimpse Born: 17 - 12 - 1967 Service: IAS Cadre: Tamil Nadu Allotment Year: 1992 Experience Dr Neeraj Mittal is currently serving as the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India. Earlier he has served in the various departments in Tamil Nadu including Land & Revenue, Mines and Minerals, Transport, Telecommunication & Commerce. He also held the important position of Commissioner in the Communications and Information Technology department in the state of Tamil Nadu

A number of pro-customer steps were initiated to set things right on the LPG distribution front, and most of them paid off well, says Dr Neeraj Mittal, Joint Secretary (Marketing), Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India, in conversation with Nayana Singh, Elets News Network (ENN)

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IN PERSON

Y

ou have taken several proactive measures in enabling various online facilities for the management and distribution of LPG cylinders. Please brief us on these initiatives.

We have taken several steps for management and distribution of LPG cylinder. To start with, we started a de-duplication exercise to eliminate ghost/duplicate LPG connections. As per the rule, every domestic LPG consumer is entitled for one subsidized connection only, but it was observed that in reality there are multiple connections registered either in the same name or in a different name in the same household. To detect such multiple connections, MoPNG prescribed a Know Your Customer (KYC) Process for new connections and has asked oil marketing companies to undertake a de-duplication exercise. This exercise has resulted in massive savings of subsidy. The multiple connection detection initiative has led to subsidy savings of the order of Rs 5,764 crore per annum by detecting one crore such ineligible connections.

Secondly, in line with the recommendation of Task Force on Direct Subsidy, the government launched the Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG consumers in their Aadhaar enabled bank accounts. The first phase of Scheme was launched in 18 districts on in June 2013. Later, the DBTL scheme was expanded to 291 districts in six phases. So far Rs 5,391 crore has been transferred directly into the bank accounts of 2.8 crore LPG consumers.

Then, we did rating of LPG distributors based on their delivery performance giving them 5 stars to 1 star (***** to *). The aim was to measure, increase and improve the delivery performance of each distributor. Rating of distributor helps a consumer in deciding the change of distributor. It also motivates distributors to improve delivery times, so as to retain consumers. There has been a quantum jump in the number of 5 and 4 star distributors after the launch of the system.

We also did consumer relationship management through mobile platform. Over 50 percent LPG customers have registered their mobile numbers with OMCs. An Androidbased application has been launched for LPG functions such as refill booking, new connection booking, booking for second cylinder,

The government has initiated a 5kg LPG scheme to empower the LPG consumers‌ The scheme was launched to cater to a new category of consumers, who are mobile and do not want a permanent LPG connection, but may still require LPG for their needs complaints, history of supplies, hotplate repair, surrendering connections and rating of distributors.

These consumer-empowering e-initiatives in LPG marketing were recognised and the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas won the CSI Nihilent e-Governance (2012-13) Award of excellence for its entry titled “Empowering Consumers: Transparent Supply Chain and Efficient Subsidy Administration� during 48th Annual Convention of the Computer Society of India (CSI-2013) at Vishakhapatnam.

How have these initiatives helped in ushering efficiency and transparency in the system?

The initiative of de-duplication has led to a substantial reduction in subsidy burden. Similarly, on introduction of uniform pricing under the DBTL scheme, the incentive of diversion of subsidized cylinders to commercial sector reduced drastically. According to analysis of the sales data from the DBTL districts, it was found to have reduced by 10-18 percent post implementation of capping and DBTL. This

amounts to a subsidy reduction of Rs 4,644 crore (10 percent of the total subsidy on LPG in 2013-14) had the scheme been rolled out in the entire country. The Star rating distribution based on time taken for refill delivery has improved substantially towards higher Star ratings since its launch, as can be seen from the fact that between December 2012 and October 2013, the proportion of 5 and 4 star distributors has increased from 43 percent to 68 percent, signifying a jump in LPG cylinder delivery service quality. On the same lines, consumer relationship management through mobile platform resulted in easy access to information and access to services. The application proved an effective means of communication channel to educate customers on the safety, new initiatives and various schemes.

How has technology helped in solving the issues such as duplication and on-time delivery of LPG cylinders in rural areas?

The sheer scale and size of the database and legacy nature of the records was a daunting June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IN PERSON

challenge. The huge volume of data prevented visual inspection or door-to-door inspections, while legacy data prevented easy software detection on account of poor data quality. Technology helped in identifying a suspect list of the multiple connections in categories, namely Same-Name-Same-Address (SNSA) Near and Far, and Different-Name-Different-Address (DNSA) Near and Far. These are then verified, and if necessary, blocked.

What are your views on Cloud technology and other new related technologies in strengthening e-Governance?

An effective e-Governance system should be efficient, reliable, economical and easily maintainable. Technologies such as Cloud and Big Data can play vital role in increasing collaboration between Ministry, OMCs and other government organizations to achieve greater transparency and accountability of stakeholders, empower citizens to access relevant information from single window and allow government to effectively track and monitor progress of government schemes. This system will take necessary raw data from all stakeholders’ databases and present it to them as information that is meaningful. In terms of OMCs, this could lead to advantages such as de-duplication verification across OMC for new consumers,

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Cleaner, safer LPG “Household air pollution is one of the most important risk factors for chronic respiratory diseases, cardio and circulatory diseases, diarrhea and other infections. As LPG is a clean fuel, it will improve the overall health of the household. Therefore, there is a need to expand the coverage of LPG in the country, especially in underserved rural areas” central registration of LPG consumers, centralized grievance redressal system etc.

What are the new steps you are undertaking to empower the LPG consumers?

The ministry has initiated a 5kg LPG COCO Scheme to empower the LPG consumers. The LPG sold under the scheme is called Free Trade LPG (FTL). At the time of first sale, cost of equipment (DPR plus cylinder), cost of product at prevailing non-domestic 5kg cylinders price and administrative charges will be payable. At the time of subsequent refill only the cost of product is payable. Any proof of ID is acceptable and no proof of address is required.

This was launched to cater to a new category of consumers, who are mobile and do not want a permanent LPG connection, but may still require LPG for their needs. Initially, the scheme was launched at Company Owned Retail Outlets in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore.

The scheme has now been extended to 33 cities and to outlets other than CO-CO ROs, and retail shops as well.

More than 5000 LPG cylinders have been sold in these cities and more than 8,000 queries have been made at different ROs. BPCL has also introduced dial a

cylinder scheme as an extension to this scheme in some cities. Under this scheme, a person can dial a specified number to book the cylinder which will be supplied to consumer with two hours time by a special van.

What is your vision regarding this sector?

Household air pollution is one of the most important risk factors for chronic respiratory diseases, cardio and circulatory diseases and diarrhea and other infections. Household air pollution also contributes to outdoor air pollutions. It is estimated that nearly one million premature deaths in India happens on account of household air pollution. As LPG is a clean fuel, it will improve the overall health of the household. It is also more environment-friendly, as the emission of Green House Gases from the LPG is substantially less than the emission from fuels presently being used. Therefore, there is a need to expand the coverage of LPG in the country, especially in underserved rural areas.

But there are significant issues in expanding the coverage of LPG among the rural households such as affordability, higher under-recoveries, augmentation of LPG handling infrastructure and increasing the distribution network. We would like to work on a strategy to expand LPG to rural areas while addressing the challenges in the times ahead.

company profile

Cisco Systems India Pvt Ltd Company Profile

Dinesh Malkani President - Sales contact Year of Inception : Cisco commenced India operations in 1995 President - Sales: Dinesh Malkani Number of Employees : 11200+ in India Head Office: East Tower, 7th floor 25, Barakhamba Road New Delhi 110001 Tel: +91 11 4261 1000 Web: www.cisco.com/in

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. An integral part of our DNA is creating long-lasting customer partnerships and working with them to identify their needs and provide solutions that support their success. John T. Chambers is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the $48.6 billion company which has over 73,000 employees globally.

Cisco India: Cisco commenced India operations in 1995. There are seven Sales Offices in the region - New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata and Hyderabad. The Cisco Global Development Center is in Bangalore and is the largest outside the US. It houses Cisco’s Research and Development (R&D), IT, Services and customer support teams and develops disruptive business models for Cisco to create new go-to-market channels, markets, processes and technologies for emerging markets. The Advanced Global Briefing Center located here showcases Cisco’s latest technology solutions and proof-of-concepts.

Products and Services Cisco engineers have been leaders in the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking technologies since the company’s inception. This tradition of innovation continues with industryleading products in the core areas of routing and switching, as well as advanced technologies in areas such as Unified Communications, Network Security, Video, Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

Digital Edge/Power of Brand Brand Vision: Cisco is known to build the intelligent network. The intelligent network listens, learns and responds with open interfaces for greater security, simplicity, reliability and innovation at a scale like never before. As a global brand, Cisco can relate to people across the world and builds an emotional connect with its audience. It tries to communicate in a language that relates to its customers.

Brand Loyalty: Cisco’s ability to imagine and invent the future has established it as one of the most valuable brands in the world. It is on the brink of major market transitions, entering the next wave of Internet Revolution and the Internet of Everything (IOE) – an intelligent connection of people, process, data and things. Internet of Everything is a global industry phenomenon that is driving prime business opportunities for Cisco and its customers. Today, 99% of the things in the physical world are unconnected. Amazing experiences will be created as information turns to action on the Internet of Everything. An integral part of Cisco’s DNA is creating long-lasting customer partnerships and working with them to identify their needs and provide solutions that support their success in the marketplace.

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IN PERSON

Muktesh Pardeshi

Joint Secretary and Chief Passport Officer, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India

‘Improved Police Verification System Coming Soon’

‘P

assport Seva Diwas’ is coming up on 24th June. Can you highlight the key achievements of your department?

Well, the Govt of India has decided to commemorate 24th June as ‘Passport Seva Diwas’ because the Passport Act, 1967 was enacted on this day. Before this act, issuance of passport was an administrative decision, but this act laid the foundation for the legal issuance of passport. Passports are issued in line with this act, so citizens can take legal recourse if they are deprived of this facility. This was a landmark act, so we decided to commemorate it every year to make people aware about the Seva.

What have been the achievements with regard to the issuance of passports?

In the last one year, there have been many such achievements. In 2013, 8.5 million passports were issued. This is a record. We saw some 15 percent growth in passport applications this year alone. This trend is likely to continue this year.

We are expecting to touch the magical figure of one crore passports by the end of 2014-15. That’s a big target and we are prepared to take that challenge. In the world, there are only two countries which are ahead of us - China and the US have about 40 percent of their population possessing passports. Since the year 2000, India has witnessed about three-fold increase in the number of passports issued. And, as I said, in the year 2013 we have witnessed 15 percent growth.

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In 2013, record 8.5 million passports were issued, and we expect to touch the magical figure of one crore in 2014-15, reveals Muktesh Pardeshi, the Joint Secretary and Chief Passport Officer of India, talking to Nayana Singh of Elets News Network (ENN)

IN PERSON

Since now we are dealing with huge numbers, we have to ensure that the service provided is top class and citizens do not face any inconvenience, and in this e-Governance has helped us. You know that through Passport Seva Project (PSP), we are using IT to enable us to give citizens services in far more efficient manner. We already have 77 PSKs running. We also have some ‘Laghu Seva Kendras’ (small service centres) operational. In the last two years, we have taken some citizen-centric measures in the country, like launch of mobile app for Passport Seva, through which citizens can check the status of their application. They can find out the location of the PSK, find out about passport fees, etc.

Besides, we are also integrating Common Service Centres (CSC) with the passport services.

Sometime ago, the Ministry of External Affairs, CSC and DeitY jointly decided to channelize about 1 lakh CSCs for passport services. So, in the rural hinterland, where there is a digital divide, people can go to the CSC and file application at a nominal charge of Rs 100 rupees. In the coming months, we are going to take maximum advantage of the CSC for the purpose.

These are good moves. What more features are you planning to add to the Passport Seva initiative?

This year we are working on CSC and on how to integrate them in a better manner. We are also examining whether the post offices can also be integrated for the purpose. We are working in a big way on how to improve the police verification system. The PSP envisages that there will be online integration with the

Since the year 2000, India has witnessed about three-fold increase in the number of passports issued. Globally, there are only two countries ahead of us - China and the US, which have about 40 percent of their population possessing passports police department. There are some 725 police districts and now about 400 of them have been integrated with the Passport Seva. So, online forms travel to the police department and their verification is also received online. That cuts down delays and brings efficiency and transparency. Our target is to cover all the 725 police districts; every month we are adding more police districts online.

We have also conceived an idea called Passport Seva Camp. For doorstep services, we organize these camps for people in very interiors, particularly in the North East. We had such camps in Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim. Besides, wherever we feel this is required, we go, maybe every three months, and collect applications.

What is people’s response to the services?

The people are very responsive. Though the number may be small but the feedback is positive, as the people from Manipur had to travel to Guwahati for these services until now. We have a proposal to set up a Laghu Kendra in Manipur. We publicized through newspapers about the camp.

What exactly are the Laghu Seva Kendras?

These are regular Passport Seva Kendras. Since

the Cabinet mandate was only for 77 PSKs, we realized that some areas went unattended; so we started the Laghu Kendras and PSK projects.

The Laghu Kendras are government owned and do the same things but on a smaller scale.

What is your vision of an efficient passport service, given the aspirations and needs of the people?

Well, the vision is to expand the network and improve the system, so that people are served better in terms of passport issuance. Secondly, we would like to create multiple channels for online submission of applications; they can do it from home or avail the services of CSC or they can visit post offices for online submission of the applications. And, when they actually visit a PSK, we give them the world class facilities. Once the application is there, they do not have to run around. The citizens can track the status on their mobiles, smart phones, Internet or through call centres. The whole idea is to make the process easy and convenient, and dependence on the government for getting any information should not be there at all.

We are improving the passport book itself. In the year 2014-15, we may have some concrete stuff in this regard to show off.

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IN PERSON

Sanjeev Shriya

Managing Director Smart Chip & Syscom Corporation

Democratization

of Biometrics

W

hat is the relevance of Biometric Technology in India and how do you think it can lead to a transformational change?

Biometrics technology, which essentially uses parts of the human body – iris, fingerprints, voice, etc. - for uses like identification, authentication and access, is one of the securest technologies for authentication. This is because things like iris and fingerprints are unique to every individual, which therefore helps in ensuring that individual profiles can be maintained without risk of duplication.

In other words, Biometrics technology is the lowest common multiple that everybody acknowledges, and today we should take advantage of this deduplicated data.

India has been an aggressive user of biometric technologies, and in fact The Aadhaar program is one of the largest Biometrics Technology implementations in the world. The Aadhaar Program has created a central identity platform and in the process is setting up the foundations of an ecosystem around which a whole set of applications and technology driven solutions will be created.

I, therefore, believe that India will lead the way for democratization of biometrics or civilian biometrics. And, if implemented properly, can lead to multiple benefits. As in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which now boasts of 22 percent saving of Public Distribution System (PDS), only because duplication has been removed.

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Today even in the developed world, there is a whole debate between privacy, security and empowerment. I feel that any technology which empowers people and improves their lives is going to stay.” says Sanjeev Shriya, Managing Director- Smart Chip & Syscom Corporation in conversation with Kartik Sharma

‘Aadhaar’ as foundation “Aadhaar programme is one of the largest implementations of biometric technology in the world. It has created a central identity platform and in the process is laying the foundation of an ecosystem around which a whole set of applications and technology-driven solutions would be created”

With the new Government what shall be the future of Biometrics?

To my mind, the future of any technological advancement must enhance convenience, and

it must improve the lot of beneficiaries. It is too soon to predict the policies of the new Government; and I hope they continue on the path of technological enhancement as it brings a posi-

IN PERSON

tive change in the lives of the people.

During a recent session with a group of close entrepreneurial friends, I chanced upon the idea of creating a “Collaborative Biometric AppNet” – serving two purposes – on one hand to accelerate the adoption of biometric technology and on the other, creating an angel support platform for young technology startups to build a plethora of business applications with biometrics as a fundamental layer.

What are the other emerging areas where biometrics may be of great use?

Today, technology permits secure transactions.

There are password-generating softwares, and despite making so many permutations and combinations, passwords are still breached.

However, by using biometrics, the system of generating multiples and duplicates are ruled out. Biometrics can be sent through the Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel so it becomes more secure. In this way one is certainly enriching the user experience, and multiple logins are done away with.

Actually, by using biometrics one can create a robust ecosystem. Any way, we are accustomed to using biometrics because the face value of a person is in fact also a biometrical detail. However, now it needs to have a trusted identity system.

This will be used in every part of the environment, whether banks or insurance, to make the transaction secure.

The whole idea of customer relationship management framework in the context of biometric technology will change across sectors. Kindly elaborate.

In India, our biggest enemy is geography; I mean distance because of the vastness. Say, we have about 6 lakh villages with approximately 65 percent of population living in them. Here, all the people will aspire to have access to all the services that are available to the people of say, any metro city.

The difference is in the economies of scale.

So which model will work? The model will be that of shared services. So when I go to a village, I set up some entity. I position myself as a white labeled delivery agent of everything. We do not represent anyone. We are just delivery agents. I need security of transaction for the customers.

So what is my lowest common denominator? It is the biometrics. So once I enter the market place with my identity, we can consider transforming

the customer service model worldwide, as we are segregating the whole context of delivery from what I am delivering or for whom I am delivering?

I am creating a platform for delivery, for exchange.

Nevertheless, all transactions shall remain trustworthy because they are online and secondly because they are biometrically secured.

Additionally, prevention of frauds can positively impact the bottom lines of companies.

Biometrics makes identification and tracking possible in real-time, and much more efficient.

How do you see Biometrics as a helping hand for internet security?

The Internet has made its foray into virtually every segment of our lives, and many of our

For me, if the common man’s life improves, it is a win for technology. With this in mind, we began with driving license in Gujarat. After that, we went to the Government of India and asked for the standardization of this technology. Thereafter, National Informatics Centre and the industry sat together and created a new standard- Smart Card Operating System Standard for Transport Application (SCOSTA). These days, all smart cards are having SCOSTA standards.

Here, I want to highlight the efficacy of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) eco-system. The scheme, built on Smartcard technology, provides complete interoperability. The scheme has beneficiaries enrolled all over the country by various technology providers, their policies underwritten by different insurers and the ben-

Online stores bring shopping through Internet. But we have to enter username, password and another PIN to complete a transaction. The experience can be improved if the biometric authentication is created from order to delivery stage… transactions and interactions are online. With fraudsters finding ever more creative ways to circumvent traditional online security steps, the market for biometric systems is growing.

Passwords - even when used correctly - can be easily forgotten by users, or bypassed by fraudsters with a few personal details and a phone call to the relevant company. A biometric system ensures that only the genuine account holder can access their private information. Biometric technology will improve security for online consumer transaction activity, and equally promote a higher degree of consumer trust and integrity.

We know you have been a great proponent of open standards and interoperability. How has the adoption of this been in e-Governance projects?

I believe that the market is big enough for multiple people. One person cannot do everything.

So I suggest an open framework, leading to more participation thereby bringing down the cost and prices. This will eliminate lock-ins. It will also allow a transparent roadmap for development, leading to competition and therefore a better and efficient product.

eficiaries themselves availing health care services from about 10000 hospitals operating in various parts of the country. The scheme is run on a standardised interoperable technology platform that ensures that a beneficiary enrolled by this system can avail of healthcare services anywhere in India.

Despite the understanding of the need for interoperability, we still see major initiatives like financial inclusions failing. Your comments on what could be done?

Financial Inclusions failed for two reasons.

Firstly, lack of standardization. Banks did not have standard programs. Secondly, there was no good business model for the Business Correspondents (BCs) sitting in the villages. At the FI level, we did an interesting survey of about 50 villages where we went up to the point of creating money inflow or outflow of that village. So here, classic banking service cannot be afforded. Empirical thinking is needed to service a village to sustain its ecosystem. It has to be cross-pollinated with other services, if you want to sell the services. You need to create a pipe which has to be viable and trustworthy and that brings us to biometrics.

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IN PERSON

Vishwanath Alluri

Founder and Executive Chairman, IMImobile

‘SoCloMo is way to Future Governance’

A

new wave of social media, Cloud and mobile technology is sweeping the world. How should governments use these new technologies to engage with their citizens?

The future rests with the Cloud-mobile-social media. Those will have a seismic effect on technology usage for governance, too. The content created is being accessed on mobile devices and the governments are being forced to have their presence on social media, as the popularity of such sites is immense. Adoption of the new-wave technologies enables easier, faster and deeper engagement with the citizens and enhances productivity of public service personnel.

With over 100 million social network users and over 900 million mobile subscribers in India, the governments today have no option but to harness the ubiquity of mobile to engage with its citizens and deliver services to them.

They must deliver various services in domains like Government to Citizen, Government to Government and Citizen to Government across various channels such as SMS, Voice, Mobile Web, USSD, IVR and Mobile Apps.

Who should the government partner with to benefit from the new technologies and why?

The governments and their departments should partner with the technology companies born in the new age and designed for the future. IT service companies that were born and flourished in the previous technology era, who have tra-

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Service maximization through an integrated platform must be the focus of technology for governments, says Vishwanath Alluri, the Founder and Executive Chairman of IMImobile, in an interview with the Elete News Network (ENN). Excerpts:

ditionally been vendors of IT to governments, are not the right vendors. They try to force-fit the requirements of the new age into irrelevant legacy technology, and waste customers time and money as their delivery models are not fit for today. They are normally tuned to provide CAPEX-intensive model for hardware and licensing model for software, which is wasteful.

Service maximization through integrated platform, CAPEX elimination and the capability to respond with great flexibility to changing technologies must be key capabilities of a technology partner. Moreover, it is advisable to choose a vendor whose core model is built on SoCloMo – thus ensuring full commitment and understanding. Customers should select

IN PERSON

a vendor that offers comprehensive mobility solutions, as solutions provided in bits and pieces can result in unnecessary duplication, complications and loss of focus.

IMImobile, born in the new technology era, has grown its technology platform organically and offers services through Cloud that are also integrated with social media platforms.

The need of the hour is a self-service model for clients to define, configure and deploy their services with minimum effort. IMImobile’s unique platform approach eliminates CAPEX, and harnesses the power of Cloud to commercialize its own unified mobile platform through a Cloud-based services model hosted and managed by it.

Could you tell us about a few key Cloud-based mobility deployments that IMImobile has implemented in India and across the globe? What was special about these projects?

We have a number of engagements with government departments, PSUs and other bodies to whom IMImobile offers SoCloMo solutions

that really are unique. We have IMImobile OPENHOUSE, a secure Cloud-based mobile engagement platform that makes it simple to set up multi-channel customer engagement services and integrate with the existing IT systems of the government departments.

There are several instances where we have done breakthrough work in Cloud-based mobility deployments. For one of India’s largest state governments, IMImobile has enabled a unified Mobile Service Delivery platform (MSDP) where all departments are able to deliver services through a common platform.

This platform can deliver various G2C, G2G and C2G services across various channels like SMS, Voice, Mobile, Web, USSD, IVR and Mobile Apps. Key services offered include women and child-related services such as Anganwadi services, malnourished child monitoring services, ration-card verification, revenue department services, etc. The platform is India’s first unified citizen services delivery platform for over 50 million mobile subscribers in the state and can conduct a record over 3,00,000 lakh citizen interactions across different channels per day.

These are significant and hitherto unprecedented numbers that no vendor in India can hope to match at this time.

An integrated platform benefits not only the common man but also the overall system by synchronizing processes of different departments. It can eliminate the silo approach and help in easily creating and managing services for citizens as well as cross-departmental service functions. This is the first time in India where a government has taken a holistic approach for leveraging mobile technology for delivering citizen services of all departments on a single platform and we are proud to be a part of it.

your daily cup of hot tea with hot

e-Governance News!

log on to egov.eletsonline.com

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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cover story

Cloudburst

Computing Solutions Rain from Skies

Organizations of all shades – no matter public or private – are fast getting drenched in the incessant shower of cost-effective, convenient computing solutions from the Cloud technology, analyses Sunil Kumar of Elets News Network (ENN)

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cover story

Real-time e-Governance Puneet Gupta

Director, Public Sector, Cisco India & SAARC

By adopting a Cloud-based IT strategy, governments can fundamentally change the way IT services are delivered and consumed while at the same time realize tangible operational and financial benefits like reduced costs, improved organizational agility and transformation in service delivery. Cloud Computing can be used to facilitate ‘real-time e-governance’ across the length and breadth of the country. For cities or towns lacking technological infrastructure, this technology can be a major boon because it enables quick project execution. Also, because of its ability to handle large number of transactions, citizens can look forward to better response times for service delivery.

• Removes computing/storage infrastructure as a limiting factor in meeting unanticipated demands; • Eliminates the need to build IT infrastructures that can handle spikes in activity only to sit idle most of the time; and • Reduces the risk of upfront investment and improves cash flow through pay-as-yougo model, charging only for the utilized resources.

No losers here As Cloud Computing continues to mature, a growing number of enterprises are building efficient and agile Cloud environments, and Cloud providers continue to expand service

offerings. On the other hand, organizations are increasingly looking at Cloud Computing as the structure to support their big data projects; more so, because big data environments require clusters of servers to support the tools that process the large volumes, high-velocity, and varied formats of big data. In fact, Clouds are deployed on pools of servers, storage and networking resources, and can scale up or down as needed.

Cloud computing offers a cost-effective way to support big data technologies and the advanced analytics applications that can drive business value. This technology is one of the most hyped topics in the last few years — not surprising though after seeing its benefits and

T

he new-age wave of Cloud Computing technology seems to have left one and all awestruck.

The wave is fast turning into a rage today. Today, it holds tremendous promises of unlimited, on-demand, elastic computing and data storage resources, unlike the large upfront investments required while deploying traditional data centres.

From a business perspective, the Cloud offers three key advantages:

June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

33

cover story

business acceleration. This means we can certainly expect to see the Cloud services increase massively in the coming years, given the widereaching benefits they can provide to businesses of all shapes and sizes. The technology becomes all the more inviting given its feature of improving the elasticity of IT applications and their usage.

(In)security issue For the government, it is preferable to go for the private Cloud option, since it will allow the government ownership and control of the infrastructure. However, the Cloud adoption in the government is still at the proof-ofconcept level to a large extent. The concerns that have come up relating to the security and reliability issues with the Cloud are partly due to a lack of awareness and proper understanding. A safe approach would be to put non-mission critical applications first on the Cloud.

Money in Cloud The public Cloud services market in India is on pace to grow 32.2 percent in 2014 to $556.8 million, an increase from 2013 revenue of $421 million, according to Gartner Inc. It projects Software as a Service (SaaS) - the largest overall cloud market segment - to see the maximum growth to hit $220 million in 2014, growing 33.2 percent from the last year.

Next comes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), totaling $78 million, and Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) coming third with its

More for less Mathew Thomas

Vice President – Strategic Industries, SAP India

Cloud is the key to expedite governance transformation. It has the potential to address some of the critical challenges like simplification of the systems landscape, capacity building, in-house IT skills availability, sustainability and quality of service. It enables government agencies address data sovereignty requirements and offers the ability to take a standard process out of the box, thereby reducing the pressure on skilled workforce. Budget pressures and service level demands are attracting the public sector to move to the Cloud. Many PSUs are opting for ‘Hybrid Cloud’ model where part will be in Public Cloud and a significant portion in Private Cloud, to address data security requirements better and also take advantage of Cloud benefits. projected $75million market share.

“Growth of Cloud services in India reflects the demand for new sourcing models,” said Ed Anderson, Research VP at Gartner. “We expect high growth rates across all Cloud services market segments in India.”

The total Cloud market in India in 2013, according to the research firm, stood at $421 million, and the total market for public Cloud services in India is expected to reach $1.7 billion in 2018.

According to other industry forecasts, the market size of the domestic Cloud Computing is expected to grow up to $4.5 billion by 2015 at

Focussed to future Yolynd Lobo Director, BSA India

India should look beyond mere consumption of Cloud services to improve e-governance delivery and access, so as to create a future-focussed policy framework that will help her derive long-term developmental impact and economic benefits from the technology of the day. To ensure this, the new government needs to specify policy actions on enabling cross-border data transfers, preventing regulatory obstacles for the Cloud providers and protecting the intellectual property rights to prevent misappropriation and infringement of the technological developments that underlie the Cloud.

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a CAGR of 40 percent. It will push the Indian ICT market (software, services and hardware) and businesses to generously spend on various IT and Cloud technologies.

On similar lines, another research firm IDC projects the overall IT spending in India will reach $44.8 billion in 2014. This growth is on the sidelines of the worldwide IT spending projected at $3.8 trillion in 2014. The estimated worldwide IT spending is said to register an increase of 3.1 percent from 2013 figures ($3.7 trillion).

Cloud formation The Cloud technology has been around for some time now. However, it seems that its true potential is yet to be harnessed. Over the years, it has changed the ownership model, providing flexibility to manage, host and execute. Several industries have adopted the technology to leverage the benefits of Cloud.

In short, be it cost reduction, hassle-free maintenance, unlimited storage capacity (literally), automatic software integration, flexibility, quick deployment, etc. or the fact that the entire world is embracing it, the Cloud technology is unquestionably the way forward.

So, it is no wonder that over 60 percent of the CIOs today trust Cloud, up from 33 percent barely couple of years ago.

Chinks in the chik However, while Cloud technologies offer

cover story

significant benefits, they also pose challenges of customization, data security and integrity.

In fact, as data storage, retrieval, processing and analysis are all moving to the Cloud, data security and privacy are going to be the key concerns for providers to address on the Cloud in the days ahead.

According to Gartner, “Cloud services in India will be strong across all Cloud services market segments through 2017.”

Enterprises today have realized the potential of Cloud computing and started to take advantage of its mobility and storage capabilities. However, a major hurdle for an absolute Cloud infrastructure is the real and perceived lack of security. There is a raging debate over how to make Cloud safe for enterprise data, and it is time for organizations to understand that there is no such thing as absolute security, and probably, never will be. Hence, one of the key areas Cloud Computing should be moving towards is not how to make it safer, but how to make it difficult to crack — the dynamics change when the perspective towards a problem changes.

While the motive of security continues to gather momentum in 2014, there will always be a ‘balance point’ from an enterprise perspective, which will be the ‘best’ mix of local computing and storage, on-site data centers and networking and Cloud. This balance point will also continue to evolve in the near future as companies would keep on trying to experiment between different proportions of the business processes that exist

Public Cloud In public Cloud, services and

services immediately via an

customers pay for these as

infrastructure are provided

online portal. Advantages

they use them. Also, it offers

off-site, over the Internet.

of the public Cloud include

a scalable and adaptable

A company can sign up for

the flexibility and pricing

solution at costs generally

and start using storage,

of shared IT infrastructure-

lower than building one’s

processing and other

storage, power, etc, and

own private Cloud.

Private Cloud Private Cloud offers

resources and virtual

Cloud in that all the Cloud

businesses the opportunity

applications provided by the

resources and applica-

to operate all their IT

Cloud vendor are pooled

tions are managed by the

infrastructure and services

together and available for

organization itself, similar to

within firewalled limits. In

Cloud users to share and

Intranet functionality.

the private Cloud, scalable

use. It differs from the public

Hybrid Cloud Hybrid Cloud addresses most

is a major challenge while

with. Hybrid models enable

of the issues relating to the

combining aspects of the two

organizations to maximize

other two types of Clouds. It’s

Clouds in a single offering.

their existing infrastructure

a flexible model, where com-

Potential differences in

and retain internal control

panies can pick and choose as

interface, security, processing

while also being able to use

per their requirements. How-

and reporting platforms arise

public cloud resources where

ever, integration of services

with this and need to be dealt

required.

in the ‘Cloud’ and on the ‘Ground’. These will be relative to cost optimization, processing power, storage capabilities and data communication changes that take place ahead.

Agility with flexibility Prashant Chaudhary

Director, Sales – Government, CA Technologies

It’s an era of ‘virtualization’, ‘any time anywhere services’ and ‘delivery on demand network’. As a new paradigm of service delivery, Cloud Computing model can enable dynamically scalable and virtualized information delivery on-demand over the network through pay-per-use model. While we all agree that enterprises are already on way to reaping financial advantages and operational benefits of agility and flexibility of the technology, the road map for Cloud adoption by our government is also showing positive signs and gaining momentum. Cloud Computing is undergoing a seismic shift and is fundamentally changing the economics of IT, of businesses and of delivery of governance in India.

Future perfect The industry has the largest range of possible outcomes, depending on the aggressive embrace by enterprises and the suite of services on offer by vendors. Like the previous year, the next generation of Cloud infrastructure and services will have a major impact on the industry beyond its forecast. On the vendor side, companies will have to keep pace with enterprise evolution, keeping up with the pace to meet the ever-growing capacity and operational management needs, while trying to tackle possible roadblocks in terms of system integration, diverse web of users, multiple applications, platform and overall infrastructure harmony. Hence, it will be essential for vendors to work out their solutions from the ground-up to be better in tune with forthcoming market dynamics.

The future for Cloud Computing, therefore, looks predominant. It is likely to be at a stronger position if factors like security and the overall stability of cloud infrastructure are addressed successfully.

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IN PERSON

Renu Budhiraja

Sr Director & HOD, State Data Centers, DeitY, Govt of India

‘MeghRaj will Shower

Services Faster’

‘GI Cloud’ initiative of the Government of India—nick-named ‘MeghRaj’—is aimed at accelerating the pace of service delivery in the government ecosystem, says DeitY’s Senior Director and HoD for State Data Centres, Renu Budhiraja, talking to Kartik Sharma & Nayana Singh of Elets News Network (ENN)

T

ell us about the cloud in government initiative, also known as ‘GI Cloud’?

The Government of India has undertaken a major initiative to accelerate the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) procurement process in the country through a cloud initiative, which we call ‘GI Cloud’ or ‘MeghRaj’, wherein ‘Megh’ stands for the cloud and ‘Raj’ means the government. Given the fact that procurement processes are quite lengthy in the government ecosystem, MeghRaj is primarily meant to accelerate the system. If you really want to deliver services fast, it’s extremely important

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IN PERSON

What is GI Cloud?

Career Glimpse

The GI Cloud is a set of discrete Cloud computing environments — National and State Clouds — 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 are published through a single GI Cloud Services Directory.

we are also trying to have clouds which could be setup by the private sectors, dedicated for the government. It could be a cloud setup up for specific government department by a private sector or it could be cloud setup for multiple departments, where we will be liberazing the public clouds that you are in a position to buy the services, just as we do online shopping now-a-days.

It should be like I go and buy a server…I go and buy an application. So, we are looking at a paradigm shift in the way the government can procure the services fast. We want to move from the current procurement model to a utility-based one, like you pay the electricity bill depending upon the consumption… It is like moving from the Capex to the Opex model.

Similarly, through the cloud technology, we are trying to move from the Capex to the Opex.

Based on the demand, it will be easier to consume the IT resources. And, it will have a great benefit even in terms of cost saving.

In e-governance, every state is a country unto itself. It’s so huge. It has its own administrative setup and own requirements. Here, a cloud-

enabled application could come in handy as it is highly configurable. They can be liberalized as per the specifics of various states. We have lots of state- and national-level data centres and what we have realized is that in a State not even 50-60 percent of the departments are on board and the data centres are 60 to 80 percent utilised, as because primarily the model is collocation model. In a collocation model you are having your own license, your own AMCs that is power consumption, whole lot of maintenance issues. Here I give the whole thing in a cloud and in an optimized manner, it is going to save the date centers operation, power, cooling, licenses, AMCs. So with a technology like cloud we are in a position to optimally use the infrastructure and expedite the procurement in the government sector.

Ms Renu Budhiraja is Senior Director & HoD, State Data Centres, e-Governance Division, DeitY. Having done her Engineering in Electronics and Communications from Delhi College of Engineering, she started her career with HCL in their R&D division. Subsequently, she moved in to DeitY and worked on setting up the first Education & Research N/W in the country (ERNET) and was responsible for introduction of Internet in Schools in India and first to set up and successfully run the messaging, directory and file transfer services across ERNET. Thereafter, she shifted to e-Gov group and contributed to Design and implementation of Standards-based Messaging middleware (NSDG), National Policy on Open Standards, Standards on Interoperability, Metadata, Biometrics, e-Readiness, etc.

Currently, she is heading the State Data Centres and Cloud in the Country, and driving the Government of India’s National Cloud initiative - MeghRaj, Citizen Contact Centre initiative, Rapid replication of e-Governance applications, National App Store, etc.

What all are you doing for enabling the ground technologies?

In fact we came up with two reports last year.

One of them is strategy direction paper, and another, the implementation road map. Both reports talks about the cloud architecture that we are setting up in India. Now we are going to have clouds on our existing data centers that are the national data centres of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) or the State data centres.

These are fully owned government clouds.

Apart from that we are also trying to have clouds which could be setup by the private sectors, dedicated for the government. It could be a cloud setup up for specific government department by a private sector or it could be cloud setup for multiple departments, where we will be liberazing the public clouds. So we are trying to have different category of clouds. But all of these will have to adhere to the government initiated policies, standards and frameworks, in respect of security; contractual agreements as well as privacy so that some of the concerns that people have could be taken care of. We are going to have a complete accreditation process.

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IN PERSON

And all the cloud office providers which are accredited under the MeghRaj, will only be allowed to provide services to the government departments. So any user department that wants to see are the cloud service providers could go to one place, where all the servicelevel agreements (SLAs) and necessary security will be made available to them. The government is going to setup a huge system in itself.

Do you see any role for the cloud auditors in the process?

Yes, we do. In fact, we are going to empanel cloud auditors, who will be auditing the service providers. And based on the sensitivity of the data and demand requirement, there will be a guideline for them as to what kind of a cloud they should use for an application. We have already started working on a risk based cloud assessment framework, which will be made available to the departments in identifying which is the suitable cloud for them.

We are going to setup a cloud management office in the country which will have three different groups. One will be an architecture management group. This group is primarily going to evolve and draft the necessary guidelines, frameworks, standard, and policies on behalf of the government. Then it will be going though necessary process and consultations and the various cloud service providers and the departments will have to adhere to that.

The second one will be the empanelment and accreditation group, which will prepare the entire system for the cloud service providers,

Need of the hour Optimum utilization of Infrastructure • Speeding up the IT procurement cycle for eGov applications – Moving from Capex to Opex model • Infrastructure elasticity – Scale up and scale down based on the load • Easy replication of successful applications across States to avoid duplication of effort and cost in development of similar applications – Configurable and multi-tenant applications • Availability of certified applications following common standards at one place – Creation of an e-Gov AppStore • Providing a secure, unified cyber space for shared government services and infrastructure on demand

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GI Cloud Architecture

State Cloud/Data Centers

State Cloud/Data Centers

AapStore National Cloud (AppStore - Iaas - Pass)

NDC1 NDC2

NDC3

CloudServices Services GIGI Cloud Directory11 Directory

Dadlcated Government Cloud

National Cloud (AppStore-Iaas-Pass)

National Cloud (AppStore-Iaas-Pass)

AapStore

AapStore

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

their accreditation process, etc. And, the third will be the capacity building and advisory group, because there are lots of concerns over cloud.

What have been the benefits of MeghRaj? We are doing a demand assessment in the country. We are also going to have a workshop to understand what are the requirements and concerns, so that we can have trust building programme accordingly. We can actually bring up more national clouds.

As far as benefits are concerned, there are two-way benefits: one is monetary and the second one non-tangible. We have done a study for one of the departments to see if they are following the cloud standards.

Any Public Private Partnership (PPP) business proposals on this?

At present, this is under consultation process.

We had a task force where private parties are also working along with the government departments for preparing the reports. The report talks about cloud utility. We have different categories where we are evolving business categories, too.

In terms of business models with partnerships, various drafts have been worked out for implementation methodologies, payment methodologies, SLAs, etc. We are working on it and our cloud management office will be operational within the next three months.

You said your vision is to accelerate public services through cloud and optimize the cost. How much progress you have been able to make as of now?

We had a report on cloud in June 2013 highlighting the important strategies and implementation road map. Subsequently, we also launched a national apps store. Initially, it had an NIC application. We are now making the cloud productization guidelines. We will set up an open zone where the private application providers for the government will also be coming in. This is going to change the whole scenario in terms of procurement of application.

We have a national cloud system, which was launched on February 4 by the NIC. In fact, there are lots of demands now and several departments are requesting for cloud services. As far as the cloud management office is concerned, necessary approvals have been done, and now we are in the process of its implementation. Within another three months it will be operational. That is a major step in term of putting the whole thing into the system. Apart from this, we have come up with an entire framework, questionnaire and a tool though which online assessment will be done. So, in less than a year’s time we have gone ahead with major initiatives.

Organisers

presents

The Green Cities Forum 2014 by Elets Technomedia

GREEN

aims to track the evolving pace of Green Construction Revolution being witnessed in India. The platform

CITIES FORUM

aims to engage distinct array of experts involved in the Green Building Movement who are reforming the construction outlook of our country.

20 June 2014, Pune, Maharashtra

Key Focus Emerging Trends in Green Construction

Renewable Energy for Sustainable Constructions

GRIHA Ratings & LEED Certification

Indoor Quality for Sustainable Green Structures – HVAC

Need for Development of a Green Policy

Redevelopment and transformation of existing structures to Green Buildings

Architecture & Aesthetics for Green Construction

Affordability and Prospects Ahead for Green Buildings

Eco-friendly Building Materials

Sector Beneficiaries Architects, Builders & Developers, Corporate, Government Representatives, Educational Institutions, Engineers, Energy Modelers, Electrical Consultants, Green Building Facilitators, Contractors, Green Product / Equipment Manufacturers, HVAC Consultants, Landscape Consultants, Plumbing Consultants, Town Planners etc

For General enquiry Rachita Jha Mobile: +91-9819641110, rachita@elets.in For programme details Veena Kurup Mobile: +91-7506365758, veena@elets.co.in For sponsorship & exhibition details Sudeep P. Gaonkar, Mobile: +91-9833719329 sudeep@elets.in

iceconnect.eletsonline.com

IN PERSON

Rajesh Aggarwal

Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Maharashtra

e-Transactions with a difference Career Glimpse Born: 12 - 11 - 1966 Service: IAS Cadre: Maharashtra Allotment Year: 1989 Experience At present, Rajesh Aggarwal is working as the Principal Secretary in the Department of Information Technology in the state of Maharashtra. He has held various positions in the Maharashtra Government including the post of Secretary in the Finance Department. Apart from this, he has also held the position of Director in the Election Commission of India and also worked as the Private Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development in the Government of India

There is a need to look beyond normal electronic transactions, which involve the un/necessary cost of computerization, says Rajesh Aggarwal, Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Maharashtra. Excerpts from an interview with Dr Ravi Gupta, Editor-in-Chief, eGov

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IN PERSON

Y

ou often talk about the concept of ‘Eliminated Transactions’. Theoretically it sounds a great idea, but in the absence of adequate backend support and data sharing mechanism in the governmental setup, will it work?

There is a need to look beyond normal electronic transactions, which involve the cost of computerization. We need to see if certain transactions can actually be eliminated instead of being computerized. We can do away with it through ‘Eliminated Transactions’ process.

Many departments that exist in India do not exist in European or even the US. With changes in time, thinking and technology, lots of departments need to close down. In some places we have Octroi system. It needs to be replaced with better forms of taxation. Rather than computerizing your Octroi nakas, we need to actually abolish Octroi in system with business process re-engineering.

Let us look at an example in the context of Education. Every year, students taking admission in the junior college would have to furnish Domicile Certificate. This leads to a mad scramble among lakhs of students for getting the certificates before the admission process.

Normally, you have to go to tehsil office, where

added just one sheet in all the application forms, Swa Ghoshna Patra (self declaration sheet), for replacing the affidavit. Now savings from an affidavit come to about Rs 1,000 crore per annum to citizens. Punjab was the first, and we are the second state to introduce this. Simplification of the process is there.

Then it comes to the methodology of paying fees. Earlier, bank challans were needed which required lots of time. As credit and debit cards are used, so simplified the process. As the CSC has an electronic wallet with MahaOnline, as soon as a transaction is made, it reaches the government treasury. We have also standardized the photo quality.

Another example is of MAHADA housing lottery. On its lines, we did an auto rickshaw and taxi permits lottery online and it was a huge success. Online applications and online payments were made. Our focus is simplification and standardization of payments. the whole process is so complicated. So, the only option left for you is to catch up touts and pay him Rs 500-1,000 for getting your job done.

But in Maharashtra, we have started a government-at-your-doorstep scheme, under which collectors and ministers camp in a ground close to you, and at the end of the day you will get documents stamped. Another option is that you approach the nearest CSC and gets the work done at an agreeable fee. The next evolution is the e-District projects, under which the village CSC scans your documents and gets signed digitally.

How are e-payments helping the citizens of Maharashtra?

Since 1st July, 2013 we have banned cheque books across treasuries and DDOs; treasuries are doing only RTGS and NEFT. Now we are experimenting with a single law. For example, the students have to get scholarship. The college prepares the list and gives to social justice officers in districts who submit it to treasuries. Earlier, treasury issued cheques to social justice offices to make the payments. Obviously, there were delays and leakages. But now treasuries give NEFT or RTGs to the DDO, which gives it to students’

Affidavits are a passé “We have done away with the need for affidavits in Maharashtra and replaced it with one-page self declaration sheet… Even 65 years after our Independence, we don’t trust our own citizen and keep asking for affidavits signed by a gazetted officer or notary!”

In which other domains the concept of e-transactions or ‘Eliminated Transactions’ has been introduced in the state?

Several, I should say. We very often need affidavits for court of government-related work.

But we said affidavits will not be required. Even 65 years after our Independence, we don’t trust our own citizen and they are asked to get the letters signed by a gazetted officer or notary. So, we consulted law departments, and we have

accounts directly bypassing the college system structures. The student receives an SMS without running around the college clerks. In the next step, treasury directly transfers money into students’ accounts as money flows through a single electronic branch.

Currently, 97 percent of the money transfers happen electronically. Last year Rs 62,000 crore worth of sales tax came through net banking, as cheques, DDs and cash payments are not allowed. We have another analysis which says June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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IN PERSON

that we have extra Rs 200 crore collections because of net banking in sales tax. Similarly excise duty and IGR registration brought Rs 16,000 crore, and car registration Rs 8,000 crore through net banking.

It is almost a decade that NeGP was brought into service. When you look back, what have been the achievements and failures?

It is a mixed bag. There have been individual champions and individual projects which have been successful, some have seen fullscale success and others not. If you compare the situation some 10 years back, it is much better now. But when you compare it with the world scenario or even in the private sector in India, we have not matched them at all.

Obviously, technology has also changed, particularly the band width. In case of SDC 2.0 or NEGP 2.0 or SWAN 2.0 rather than fine tuning, total reboot is required. Hiring these things through private sector would be much better and economical.

You always talk of need for ‘massive changes’ in the e-governance mechanism. What exactly do you mean by that?

Unfortunately, mindset at the national level as well as at the state level remains in favour of infrastructure creation. We buy servers, purchase desktops, bandwidth etc, though the world has moved on; you create content and throw it on any kind of device or format.

projects and software creation took a backseat. Now-a-days even young kids develop fantastic software sitting at home. I have got four-five mobile apps developed for android phone from small private startups.

There is a programme called data.gov.in to share data across ministries, so that data is used and reused. Has the effort paid off?

Very few people follow the eGov standards.

But in the last two years we have taken lots of measures to ensure this. Even in national level projects, there is blatant violation of eGov standards. People are still afraid of sharing databases. Sometimes they are afraid of exposing themselves to the public, because internally

Our mindset is still in the favour of infrastructure creation. We buy servers, purchase desktops, bandwidth etc, though the world has moved on…you create content and throw it on any kind of device or format. We should focus more on easy and simple software creation mechanism, instead…

We should focus more on easy and simple software creation mechanism, more so in the government. Currently, the whole RFP mechanism consumes much more time than the actual writing of the code. For example, e-challan takes practically four days. Lots of things were purchased through the e-District

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everybody knows that data quality is absolutely pathetic. People should be agreeable to the idea to putting it in the public domain. There may be some criticism initially but transparency will be there. So data transparency is to be brought in. Attitude reboot is needed. Policies are still taking time to flow.

How do you find the trend in times when political leaders also use social media and even SMS services for their election campaigns?

The new breed of politicians is computer savvy. The recent elections were also fought on social media. In fact, even the power Whatsapp was put into play. This was a direct interaction with the people where the organization takes a backseat. In bureaucracy, too, they put new regulations on Facebook to elicit opinion of the people. For reforms in the examination system, we were putting all the minutes of the meeting for public opinion on our FB page.

Students, teachers and parents were responding to us. In fact, in tribal villages earlier they demanded electricity and roads, but now they want network and connectivity. They need network not for Facebook or Twitter but for knowing the commodity rates in their neighboring villages. With changing times, people’s demands are also undergoing a sea change.

What are the big hopes vis-a-vis e-Governance for the country?

For last seven to eight years, wherever new recruitment is done, young boys and girls were found computer savvy. Now, employees even in the age group of 50-55 are working happily on computers.

And, the new generation is doing lot of transactions on the net. The new generation of government employees themselves want more efficient services through the net. So, it seems, the new generation will drive the government to deliver services online. Moreover, after the recently-concluded general elections, political parties are aware of the real power of the Internet.

IN PERSON

Bipul Pathak

Commissioner-cum-Secretary, IT and Science & Technology, Government of J&K

‘J&K Steady on IT Path’ Career Glimpse Born: 23 - 02 - 1969 Service: IAS Cadre: Jammu & Kashmir Allotment Year: 1992 Experience Bipul Pathak currently holds the position of Commissioner Secretary (IT) in the Government of Jammu & Kashmir.

Earlier he has served the state government in the capacity of Additional Secretary in the Home Department and as the Deputy Commissioner in Srinagar. He also held the position of Managing Director in the Jammu & Kashmir Power Development Corporation. Pathak has served Government of India in the capacity of the Director in the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and also as the Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

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hat all is happening in the field of ICT in your state?

There are two-three things currently happening here. One is the expansion of the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project, which BSNL is doing in J&K, to improve telecom connectivity penetration in rural areas. That is going to be a major boost on the connectivity front in future.

In J&K, we are in the process of reformulating the industrial IT policy to stay attuned to the current market trends and contemporary requirements of the country. We have undertaken an initiative in which the Government of India is supporting us in imparting training in electronic systems design and manufacturing segment (ESDM). Although we don’t have much of electronic manufacturing in J&K, we are working in the area of solar photovoltaic technology, where we plan to trigger manufacturing in the coming years. But for that we

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The PPP model fails when officers in public departments treat the private partners as contractors, says Bipul Pathak, Commissionercum-Secretary, IT and Science & Technology, Government of J&K

IN PERSON

would require lots of people in maintenance and manufacturing field. We are starting this with the training of our engineers, and the people who are in polytechnic and ITI in the field of solar photovoltaic technology besides industrial electronics.

We have also initiated several projects for improving governance via e-governance systems in J&K. Under e-Assembly project, where the assembly proceedings, question-answers, interactions between officers, departments and citizens will be mostly online, and lots of paperwork will be reduced. This will also enhance efficiency and public information.

We are also in the process of e-enablement of all the prisons, so that over a period of time it is integrated with the e-court system.This will be a huge improvement in the criminal justice system, and lots of money, time and resources - which can be mostly handled through electronic mode – will be saved. We will cover all the prisons under the plan in a phased manner.

Also, there are small projects which are going on. In 2012 we launched mobile-based project monitoring system. It is being rolled out now in departments like Public Health Engineering Department, Public Works Department and Power Development Department. It is also successful in the existing border area development programmes, and the J&K Government is keen for rolling it out in all the departments for online monitoring of projects.

Employment in IT field can be generated in the state by setting up companies, attracting outside firms, or expanding the existing ones. Any thoughts there?

We have initiated setting up of an IT Park and we are in the process of discussing it with couple of private sector partners to bring in investment and develop it, so that it is available to the IT entrepreneurs to set up small- and mid-size companies. Also, it will be available to the existing IT companies to expand their entities. This process is ongoing. Although the progress is a little slow, it is happening, and let’s see whether in the current year we will be in a position to attract some investment to help boost both development and investment by local entrepreneurs into the sector.

Any move there to encourage them or bring them in the national IT main stream?

We have initiated some steps with the Government of India and a taskforce for setting up small, medium and micro enterprises in the IT sector is in place. Some initial steps have been taken by the taskforce to take local industry people to bigger industry partners, so that they are in regular touch with all the players in the industry, whether domestic or multinational or even foreign companies. They can exchange and build their capacity to do bigger projects. I am sure in couple of months’ time this will be rolled out fully.

financial inclusion part also they have been playing a key role in the rural areas. The state government has already framed the electronic service delivery rules. Through these rules, we have been able to bring transparency in the functioning of these centres. In the last parliamentary elections, we rolled out many services of the Election Department through the Khidmat Centers that also fetched them some revenue. Many other state government services under various other departments are also available through these centres.

There is a big talk at the level of DeitY about the government Cloud - ‘MeghRaj’- for e-governance and it’s also being talked about outside India. Any thinking in the state government on how to use the Cloud?

Has the e-District project taken off in J&K?

Cloud is going to be the future; no doubts there.

But much will depend on connectivity. The

J&K doesn’t have the Statewide Area Network (SWAN) as yet, and e-District project is fully dependent on this, as it depends upon connectivity. We are in the process of finalizing partners for the JKSWAN project, and simultaneously, we will also initiate the e-District project so that both happen in tandem.

NeGP 2.0 should not have any schemes attached to it, rather NeGP 2.0 itself should be the scheme, with funding from the Government of India. It should invite projects of IT enablement and e-gov from states and allot them funds, and then leave it to the state government to implement’ Government of India and all stakeholders must understand that connectivity is a huge problem in most of the states, barring a few where big cities are very well connected. They have very good Internet speed and other requisites, while many areas of the country are moving at the snail’s pace in terms of connectivity as well as speed. Cloud will, of course, help in the future, and we are also trying to utilize the power of this platform for ICT enablement, but it will take time for states like J&K where connectivity is still a challenge to actually reap the benefits of Cloud fully.

How has been the implementation of CSC plan in the state?

CSC is a project which we have been able to reenergize, and around 1,000 ‘Khidmat Centres’ have been set up in J&K. They are doing lots of business-to-business activities, and for the

A lot has been talked about the Right to Services Act.Some of the states have already implemented it, while some are trying to link it with the IT CSC’s e-governance. What’s the scene like in J&K? Most of the people are not aware that J&K was probably the first state which implemented the Public Service Guarantee Act. Under this Act, most of the services like land records are already guaranteed to the citizens within particular time frames. But to make them more and more efficient, the IT and e-governance practices have to be introduced in these departments.

Incidentally, the J&K Government has already adopted e-gov practices in one of the departments - we are distributing the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension totally electronically into the accounts of the beneficiaries for the last five months, and it is nonJune 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Aadhaar based. We have not yet used Aadhaar numbers, as the department’s backend is totally electronic.

Large number of services in many states are done manually by the department and delivered electronically through the CSC centres. But we are not going that way. We think, if the service has to be delivered, it has to be managed at the backend fully electronically to bring in total transparency. This initiative of the IT Department, along with the Social Welfare Department in J&K has been very successful and we are now going ahead with many other similar applications.

It’s almost a decade since NeGP was rolled out and people are now talking about NeGP2.0. In such a scenario, you have lower tools and technologies. Even SWAN was formulated long back.

Don’t you think it’s time to jump straight to SWAN 2.0 rather than SWAN 1.0?

JKSWAN, which we are going to implement, is more or less 2.0 in the sense that it will have the latest industry standards and it will not be old standards besides many other things, which happened on account of technology up-gradation in the last five-six years. It will be near-SWAN2.0 also because there is no alternate technology available in J&K that could make us leapfrog into an entirely new domain of wide area network creation due to connectivity issues. However, although we will be using the old methodology to a large extent, the standards will be the latest.

What do you think about SWAN and NOFN? How do they converge?

They will converge in the sense that SWAN is a dedicated gateway, whereas NOFN will be sort of backbone available to everybody, including government as well as private people. Even the Panchayati Raj institutions can use the end point for getting connected to the web or to the wide area networks. Wherever we will face difficulties with our SWAN, we will be utilizing the services of NOFN, if available and reliable.

In the end the reliable connectivity will work as the wide area network.

Digitisation of data has to happen in the government

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departments first.In fact, G2G has to happen before it’s over to G2C. Then why it is not emphasized to the required extent?

I think this is a major problem as the Government of India measures the performance of projects in terms of delivery to citizens and transaction counts…but what about the way it’s done? Are these transactions fully electronic? The current system is doing good service no doubt but the real benefit of e-governance is not flowing due to weak or partial electronic backend.

Why pvt telcos left out?

The Government of India thinks it is a consortium of three public sector companies - PGCIL, Railtel and BSNL. If the public sector companies are regulated and licensed as telecom companies, then why not private companies?

Similar level of funding can be given to the private sector companies as well to penetrate up to the panchayat level

In J&K Government, we are focusing on the government process re-engineering. Once you are in mode of managing your department electronically, then delivery of e-governance services will be easy. Front-end can be developed and built any time, if your backend is fully electronic.

If equipped with a fully electronic backend, manipulations in individual application can be kept away. That is how it is happening in J&K, though it may seem way behind others in terms of transactions. We may be slow but then whatever has happened will stay forever…that is our motto.

If you had to make some suggestions for NeGP2.0, what would you say?

I would say NeGP2.0 should not have any schemes attached to it; rather NeGP2.0 itself should be the scheme. It should have funding from the Government of India, and it should invite projects for IT enablement and e-governance from states and allot them funds. It should also force the state governments to send a minimum number of projects and look at the type of projects in terms of diversity across the board. Once the projects are sanctioned, it should be left to the state governments to implement. Confining the projects to a particu-

lar type of scheme has not been very beneficial except in the State Data Centre scheme.

The classification of states for funding by DeitY is also a limiting factor in rapid penetration of e-governance system. For example, they have formulated e-District with multiple services. But all the state governments are different from one another in terms of delivery of services… I may be able to deliver certain services in a particular department with more efficiency, while other state governments may have their strong areas of action. So, I think it would be desirable to have a generic scheme of NeGP2.0 with broad guidelines and broad structures sanctioning projects from the states, and allowing them to develop their own systems and process. There should also be no limit on the project cost if the project is good.

Do you feel private companies should be targeted better for higher telecom penetration?

The Government of India created a consortium of three public sector companies - PGCIL, Railtel and BSNL – for NOFN. If the public sector companies are regulated and licensed as private telecom companies, then why not private companies! You have private telecom operators who have a huge operation in several parts across the country. Similar level of funding can be given to the private sector companies as well to ensure penetration up to the panchayat level. It would create much rapid NOFN rollout. Moreover, this will also allow the government to compare the performance of public sector companies and private companies in terms of rollout.

How would you react to the present state of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model in India. Is it headed for failure?

What does the PPP model says? If government behaves like an owner and you treat the private partners as contractors, then it will never work.

That is why the PPP model is failing. Until and unless the government representatives change their mindset, the PPP model is never going to succeed. While selecting the Private Partner, proper due diligence should be done. But once the partner has been selected, then it should be treated like a partner, and any legitimate help extended by the government to the selected partner in the interest of the project should not be seen with unnecessary suspicion.

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IN PERSON

Hari Ranjan Rao

Secretary to Chief Minister and Department of Information Technology Government of Madhya Pradesh

Career Glimpse Born: 27 - 05 - 1969 Service: IAS Cadre: Madhya Pradesh Allotment Year: 1994 Experience

Hari Ranjan Rao is currently serving the Chief Minister’s Office and the Information Technology Department in the state of Madhya Pradesh as the Secretary. Earlier he has held important positions like the Commissioner of the State Tourism Department and the Managing Director, State Tourism Development Corporation. Rao also had his stints in the state Urban Development and Rural Development departments in the state

‘Legal status to email will curtail

workload in depts’

The MP Government employees keep tabs on the happenings in their departments through social media accounts, of each department, Hari Ranjan Rao, Secretary to Chief Minister and Department of Information Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh, tells Dr Ravi Gupta, Editor-in-Chief, eGov

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ith the introduction of ‘e-mail policy 2014’, Madhya Pradesh Government becomes the first state in the country to accord legal sanctity to emailed correspondences within the departments and with the people.

What was the thought behind the step adopting this policy?

In my opinion, the email is not something that we didn’t know about. All of us are using email for personal purposes and even in government we have been using email IDs regularly for all kinds of correspondence – it’s just that it didn’t have the legal validity, we really didn’t think so. It all started when the NIC under the Government of India circulated the draft email policy to states for their comments. So, Madhya Pradesh not only consented but also acted actively by itself to have a similar norm for the state, too. I had been approached to enforce email policies in the other organizations I had been posted at in the past. Now, I got an opportunity to come out with the policy for the entire state, and I am happy that the Madhya Pradesh Government has accepted the policy and the email with the feel of authenticity in it.

Do you see this policy as the file eliminator?

First of all, I don’t think email was ever substitute to files, but it can certainly reduce the workload of departments, especially

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IN PERSON

lower functionaries, who have to always backup everything with written correspondence. The government can accept email as a valid electronic document and then that repetition will be reduced. It would lead to substantial saving in time and energy.

will be inadequate in couple of years and one may have to go for better technologies. We are now bringing high-end virtualized environment for our servers. We are also implementing GI Cloud that was mandatory. We are ready to tap any opportunities that comes our way from the Government of India or any other technology provider.

Tell us something about the state’s social media policy.

The Government of India has already issued detailed guidelines on the social media framework, thereby giving the dos and don’ts, and sort of advisory to various departments on how to use the social media proactively for the benefit of the masses. In Madhya Pradesh, the Hon’ble Chief Minister has used the social media very effectively for communicating his ideas and his priorities for the government. The state government has taken an official stand on the policy decision to have official social media account of each department, and all the government employees have been asked to follow it and keep track of the happenings in the department. For the time being, we have Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts and the Youtube page of the Chief Minister.

Talking about various schemes of DeitY over the years, we have seen a similar wave of implementation of schemes here.

But some of the technologies, like SWAN, are now said to be obsolete. Any plan for a newer version of such schemes?

All the components of NeGP were quite relevant and useful for state governments,

How has been the implementation of CSC in the state?

so if somebody says that SWAN is outdated and SDCs are no more in fashion, I think it is slightly statement in arrogance. If you had the setup of data centre of your own, you would not know the meaning of latest version of data centre and latest version of Cloud. I find so many people talking about latest technological

Madhya Pradesh was actually one of the first states which had already thought of task-based service delivery model, and therefore, we went ahead with setting up of company called MPOnline, which is a joint venture between TCS and the state government. Today, all the functional CSCs in the state are linked through MPOnline, and we are able to deliver lot many services through the portal. The original CSC model of the central government had certain

MP adopted emails as official documents, as all of us had been using the mail for personal purposes, and even within the government we have been using email IDs regularly for all kinds of correspondence – it’s just that it didn’t have the legal validity trends without having done anything in existing technology. It is true that technology is something which keeps changing and nobody is denying that the present setup of data centre

limitations. One of them was that SCAs had the jurisdiction in a division, not in the entire state.

We came it over successfully by having MPOnline as the common platform which is a single point of delivery. However, I still feel that there is long way to go and lot more services can be integrated with CSC and MPOnline, for which we require backend integration. So, process reengineering and backend automation of the department is already underway.

You had talked about the conceptualization of Virtual IT Cadre plan? What is the idea all about?

The idea is that Madhya Pradesh will, for the first time in the country, set up a dedicated IT project. We came up with a concept called “Project e-Mission Team” to use IT, and deployed it in various departments. MAP-IT being a society in the state was interested in recruiting professionals, pay them at the market rate and send June 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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them to various departments to manage their IT projects. We have already hired over 40 professionals and placed in various departments.

This was at the level of the department, and at the level of district, we decided to approach district e-Governance managers at the block and tehsil level assistant e-governance managers, again hired from the market, and place at the level of district e-governance society on contractual basis and train properly, so that they can handle the needs of e-governance at district and tehsil level. Having done this, we realized that this alone may not give the desired results unless and until we also involve the departments with their domain expertise. So, now in Virtual IT Cadre plan, we are involving each and every department, officers and employees who are interested and contributing to the e-Governance challenges of the department.

We will train them, and then they will go to the respective departments and become part of the core IT team of the department. So, ultimately we are only trying to be facilitator.

NIC also has a similar role.

Won’t you be repeating their role that way?

No, we are actually complementing what NIC is doing. For example, NIC doesn’t put manpower in the districts and in the departments, as it has its own dedicated manpower who are very good in development work of software and provide solutions. In Madhya Pradesh, in fact majority of applications are developed by NIC. But when it comes to maintenance of those applications and further rationalizing them for

We are aggressively pushing for bringing other companies as well, and we already have IT parks in four cities - Gwalior, Bhopal, Indore and Jabalpur. We are coming up with built-up spaces and also developing plots, along with putting in place the basic infrastructure. There are lots of incentives for the IT companies. In fact, our IT investment policy is one of the most progressive in the country.

How are you moving ahead in encouraging the SMEs in the state?

Calling out IT companies

For SMEs, we have lots of interesting investment policies in terms of concession, like interest subsidies, capital subsidies and subsidized land given at one-fourth the market rate. We are also ready to provide built-up space to those companies that do not want to invest in brick and mortar in the beginning.

“Madhya Pradesh is trying to push investments in IT, BPO, ITeS sector and ESDM now in a big way. We have requested TCS and Infosys to have their larger development centers in Indore… There are lots of incentives for IT companies. In fact, our IT investment policy is one of the most progressive in the country”

Is there any strategy to increase the spending in IT itself which could lure companies to the state?

deeper use, you need to have the capability in the department also. So it’s not duplication, it is actually complementation.

What is your view on project management skills in government?

Actually, in course of implementation of so many IT projects, we discovered that there are

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lots of departments in government who do not have basic skills to understand the concepts and nuances of project management. Therefore, now we have entered into a strategic MoU with PMI India in MAP-IT to provide support to the state government Madhya Pradesh on a long-term basis to develop the skills of project management. In this MoU we are going to set up a core project monitoring group at the level of Chief Secretary where all the mega projects of the states will be monitored. We will hire professionals from the market, certified project managers and PMPs, and we also going to have training modules in academy of administration where department seniors as well as lower level functionaries will be trained on basic project management skills.

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / June 2014

What are factors at play in the state that can attract IT industry?

Madhya Pradesh is a state which is now in a big way trying to push investments in IT, BPO, ITeS sector and ESDM. We recently convinced and managed to bring TCS and Infosys to have their larger development centers in Indore. They have already started working on the ground.

Well, unlike the Government of India, we do not have a policy for local manufacturing Preferential Market Access (PMA). However, we intend to give a lot of work to companies who want to come and work for us and settle down in Madhya Pradesh. Especially in terms of BPOs, we are planning to come up with new rural BPO policy for Madhya Pradesh, in which companies that will set up their centres in the state will get preference in outsourcing work of the government.

IN PERSON

Ravinath Raman

Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Uttarakhand

‘IT’s Making Strides in Uttarakhand’

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ell us about the IT scenario in the state of Uttarakhand.

The Government of Uttarakhand intends to harness full potential of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for improving the quality of life of its citizens by accelerating social and economic development, and ensuring transparency in the government decisions. State also wants to accelerate IT adoption among various user segments – all leading to an ideal e-society model through efficient, service-oriented, cost-effective, information networked, eco-conscious and with year-on-year growth approach.

However, we have also to keep in mind the fact that as a hilly state, Uttarakhand has its own problems. Last year we faced a huge disaster.

Uttarakhand is yet to recover fully to get back to its normal development mode. The disaster had also affected the IT performance of the state. However, we are now almost back to the normal operations.

ever since I have taken over, our endeavor has been to position Uttarakhand as one of the top states in terms of NeGP implementation.

We have already implemented State Wide Area Network (SWAN) successfully up to block and tehsil levels. Now all our blocks and tehsils are connected with both district and state headquarters… All the 13 districts are connected with the state headquarters through a 4 mbps line and a 2 mbps line links the districts with the 121 blocks and tehsils. Besides, we are also focusing

Career Glimpse Born: 29-11-1973 Service: IAS Cadre: Uttaranchal Allotment Year: 2004 Experience Prior to his current assignment with the IT Department as the Additional Secretary, Ravinath Raman has also served Energy, Food and Civil Supplies and various other departments in the Government of Uttarakhand. He was also the Chief Development Officer in Haridwar during 2007- 2011

What are the major IT initiatives undertaken in the state?

Immediately after the formation of the state, we had some problems. But now we are focussed to the development of IT sector in the state.

The Chief Minister himself is in charge of the IT Department. At present, our major area of focus is implementation of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), as we are lagging in its implementation. In the last one year and a half,

The state is planning a dedicated IT cadre for better service delivery by the government, says Ravinath Raman in conversation with Souvik Goswami of Elets News Network (ENN)

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IN PERSON

National Knowledge Network (NKN). In keeping with the Supreme Court order, we are also trying to connect all the district courts in Uttarakhand. We are also working on digitization of the Public Distribution System (PDS), for which we have already completed the tender process. Our focus is also on development of IT infrastructure in the election department.

on providing horizontal connectivity to the various departments of the state government.

Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS) project is another focal area.

It is more or less complete. 44 police stations and posts have been connected using IT. One of the major areas of focus for us is establishment of a State Data Centre (SDC).

We will have our own individual specific data centre in the IT Park in Sahastradhara by March 2015.

Throw some light on the state’s IT policy and the IT Park in Uttarakhand.

Any plans for up-grading the state IT Department?

We have an IT Park in Sahastradhara. Incidentally, establishment of IT Parks and allied issues fall under the Industry Department in the state.

So far, we have not been successful in attracting big multinational IT or ITeS companies to the state. Although a few call centres are there, we are now focussing on attracting the multinationals. So, we will have an IT policy in place

by July next year. The new IT policy will focus on bringing investment in the IT sector in the state by offering tax incentives to the investors.

We are coming up with a new structure for the IT Department. Actually, our department is structured as per the old e-governance projects initiated in 2005 under the aegis of the World Bank. Ever since, the structure has not been revised, though the times have changed a lot.

The work of the IT Department has increased heavily. So, we are now working on a revised, new structure and planning to get it approved by the state cabinet soon.

Uttarakhand intends to harness full potential of ICT for improving the quality of life of its citizens by accelerating social and economic development, and ensuring transparency in government decisions’ Not just that, we are even contemplating to have a dedicated IT cadre in the state. We face issues in finding officers in various departments who are good at using IT. I think IT Department should have dedicated IT cadres in various departments to lead the progress of IT and e-governance initiatives at the respective places (of deployment). This is in the concept stage and we are working on it. We also plan to restructure the IT directorate also.

Tell us something about e-District and State Service Delivery Gateway projects in Uttarakhand. e-District pilot project was launched in Pauri district. We have completed the pilot project for 13 services, which will be rolled out from June. The remaining 19 services will be launched by 2015 as per the Government of India mandate. Initially,

we had some problems with SSDG, as we were planning to tie up with System Integrators (SIs).

But now a conscious decision has been taken to initiate SSDG with NIC. In last one year, we have conducted four training programmes for our government officials keeping in mind capacity building in the IT domain.

What are the state’s initiatives in the field of ICT and e-governance?

We are doing really well as far as IT applications are concerned in the various departments like finance, commercial taxes, etc. All our treasuries are e-enabled. We have also moved into e-procurement. The entire process of payment and assessment of commercial taxes is e-enabled. Besides, we are also implementing various Government of India projects like the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) and

According to you, what are the hurdles in developing the IT sector in the state?

The biggest challenge is connectivity. We are actually facing a lot of connectivity-related problems in a hilly state like Uttarakhand. Also, 65 percent of the state has got forest land, where the Forest Conservation Act applies. In this scenario, laying optical cables and building wifi towers is a big challenge. We have to go for mix technologies, as we cannot have any particular technology for connectivity. Our last experience in the state, when the disaster happened, showed us that OFC cable is an unreliable technology.

That is why, we are proposing to have a basket of technologies together, so that connectivity is not lost in times of natural disasters.

What is your vision for IT development in Uttarakhand?

I want to see the entire governmental work being performed in a completely paperless manner. We have been hearing about going paperless for many years, but we haven’t moved ahead. I believe once the departments start adapting to the IT environment, it will be easier to make the government operations completely paperless. I am hopeful of seeing paperless governance in the next five years in Uttarakhand.

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IN PERSON

Given the vast expanse and diversity of the land that India is, the goal of achieving financial inclusion looks an uphill task, but not for CSC Chief Executive Dr Dinesh Tyagi, who knows how to go about it. Excerpts from an interview with Nayana Singh of Elets News Network (ENN)

Dr Dinesh Tyagi Chief Executive Officer, CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd

Taking Financial Services to Grassroots

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ive us an overview of the work done

by CSC for empowering the rural masses.

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / June 2014

The Common Service Centres or CSC has been set up to enable delivery of services in the space of both government and private businesses. The objective of the scheme is to make accessible these services to the people in their neighbourhood. Across the country,

there are about 1,30,000 Centres and they are vibrant enough to deliver a large number of services in both government and private businesses space. So, the mandate that was assigned to us by the government to empower citizens in terms of information and skills by

IN PERSON

availing these services has been achieved to a great extent.

What kind of activities is CSC involved in?

The CSC has a complete framework ready now to work towards attaining the goal of Financial Inclusion. That is, now the Centres can be engaged as business correspondents (BCs) for banks, and we have already signed agreements with all the 26 PSU banks.

Across the country we have a CSC network... In all, there are about 12,000 such Centers that act as BCs, and we are in the process of having around 25,000 such Centres by the end of this year. They will facilitate account opening, deposits and remittances. In addition to these activities, some of the banks are also allowing business facilitation. We find that the general acceptance of BCs in the CSC framework has been fairly high.

This has been a foolproof arrangement, as since its inception, no case of fraud has been reported from any part of India. It is a very low-cost model and people have, by and large, shown faith in this system. And the only cost input is that of `4,000 for buying a biometric machine, and it becomes operational.

Is the CSC also working towards insurance facilitation?

Although insurance facilitation is a crucial aspect of financial inclusion, its penetration in India is very low...especially in the rural areas where it is only about 3 percent. So, there was a need for a framework in the rural areas.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has issued some guidelines, following which the CSC could act as brokers.

Soon our Centres will be authorized to act as brokers. We will deliver services of various insurance companies, both in life and nonlife segments. We are in the process of signing agreement with various companies and enabling the process to be put in place. This will be a unique system, revolutionary in terms of both time and delivery, as the insurance products would become accessible in the rural neighbourhood.

It will be a completely paperless mechanism wherein a citizen’s data would be captured, and once the payment is made, the papers

would be immediately handed back to him. It will also help in overall saving and promoting the reach of services to the communities in far-flung areas. At present, we are collecting premiums for both SBI and LIC products. In the days to come, we might become one-stop shop for people’s insurance needs. For collecting premiums for LIC, the footfalls are fairly high. For the insurance part, we are asking candidates to appear for an examination and then they would be selected. All of them shall be approved by the IRDA and then deliver services and sell the products of insurance companies, which will help take insurance

CSC has been involved in many educational activities like e-literacy and others.

Brief us on the nature of these programmes.

The other focal point of CSC is to impart education to empower people‌empowering them to learn. We have signed agreements with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), and the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT). Our centers can do facilitation work for the NIOS students appearing for various examinations and extend help at various levels. This will also be a kind

CSC mechanism has been a foolproof arrangement, as since its inception, no case of fraud has been reported from any part of India. It is a very low-cost model and people have, by and large, reposed faith in this system to rural India. Although the LIC commission structure is not very good, it raises the footfalls.

Similarly, the third part of FI is pension.

In India, we do not have a system to provide pension in rural areas. That being the reason, now CSC has become an aggregator of rural pensions, and we have started the PFRDA initiative with an initial pension scheme. So far, we have 10,000 of these beneficiaries, but we want to cover about a lakh or half-a-million by the end of the year. We are strenuously trying to have a structure for them, so that they can avail pensions more easily.

In short, the CSC is on way to becoming the fulcrum for real financial inclusion in rural India. We shall cater to the needs of people both in terms of banking & insurance and pension.

of social service to make people aware of the importance of attending schools and minimizing dropout rates. NIOS is a powerful tool that can drive rural India towards full literacy. NIELIT is associated with IT education. We have also signed agreements with some other universities.

You have also tied up with NABARD for promoting financial inclusion. Can you elaborate it?

NABARD has assigned to us the states of MP and Chhattisgarh for financial inclusion promotion-related activities, which gels well with the mandate of financial literacy. This could be a game changer for us, because it will increase footfalls. We have also tied up with the Department of Company Affairs, SEBI and SIDBI for similar activities.

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IN PERSON

Rajeev Agrawal

Senior Dy Director General, Deptt of Telecommunications, Government of India

‘DoT Taking eGov to the Last Man’ With Cloud technology fast becoming a pre-requisite for efficient service delivery, the DoT is making an all-out effort to facilitate e-Governance in the farflung areas of the country, says Rajeev Agrawal, Senior DDG, DoT talking to Nayana Singh of Elets News Network (ENN)

W

hat is the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) doing to promote Cloud-based services and e-Governance?

DoT plays an important role by ensuring reach and facilitating necessary connectivity between different elements of the Cloud. It also processes policies and regulations for telecommunications and looks at keeping networks suitably upgraded. It facilitates interworking with necessary security and ensures network support for required legal and commercial frameworks.

NTP-2012 (strategies) recognizes that Cloud Computing will significantly speed up design and rollout of services, enable social networking, participative governance and e-commerce on a scale which was not possible with the traditional technology solutions.

Besides, it facilitates new policy initiatives to ensure rapid expansion of new services and technologies at globally competitive prices by

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addressing the concerns of Cloud users and other stakeholders including specific steps that need to be taken for lowering the cost of service delivery. It also calls for identifying areas where existing regulations may impose unnecessary burden and take consequential remedial steps in line with the international best practices for propelling the nation to emerge as a global leader in development and provision of Cloud services to benefit enterprises, consumers and central and state governments.

It is of utmost importance to have inclusive development which supports equality of opportunities and reduces the digital divide.

DoT is working towards extending the reach by taking broadband and cellular services to rural and remote areas using Universal

Services Obligation Fund (USOF). This will facilitate access to services by all and help expand the market.

What are the issues in rural areas for Cloud-based e-Governance services?

As per 2011 census, 68.7 percent population in India lives in rural areas. This may be viewed against global distribution of 3.42 billion/3.41 billion of urban/rural population in 2009.

Urban/rural tele-density in India in March 2014 is 145.78 million/43.96 million (TRAI).

There are about 56,000 villages which are still to have cellular coverage. Similarly, broadband penetration in rural areas is extremely poor. Stupendous efforts are required for

IN PERSON

thrust was to promote public as well as individual access to Telecom services. After 2006, its scope was extended to include shared infrastructure for mobile services, broadband connectivity and augmentation in general infrastructure like OFC.

Please elaborate about funding arrangements for USOF?

Lack of availability of suitable power supply in many rural areas is a major impediment (to expansion of Cloud-based e-governance services)‌ Renewable Energy Technologies can serve these areas best. With DoT’s pilot projects and about 3,800 RET projects by the industry, adoption of these technologies is picking up affordable broadband and cellular penetration and capacity building for maintenance and usage in rural areas. In view of growing affordability and use of smart phones, mobility has to be provided in broadband through 3G/4G rollout to promote its use. Lack of availability of proper power supply in many rural areas is a major impediment. Access to information, e-governance, tele-medicine and tele-education enhances the empowerment, health, education and employability/competitiveness of the rural population. The contribution of rural Telecom services to enhance and

promote evenness in national growth can be enormous.

What are the objectives and areas of activity of USOF? There are viability issues in development and operation of rural Telecom services. Universal Service Obligation Fund was created w.e.f. 1st April 2002 under the Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Act 2003. It was created with an objective of providing access to Telecom services to people in rural and remote areas at affordable and reasonable prices through viability gap funding. Its

India-centric application developments, capacity building, development of hotspots, spread of broadband facilities to schools, hospitals and gram panchayats, and enabling regulations to promote use of mobiles for banking, financial inclusion, etc. will enhance the usage of broadband and other Telecom facilities

A universal Access Levy of 5 percent of adjusted gross revenue of all the Telecom Service Providers provides the funding for USOF. The amount of levy is credited to the Consolidated Fund of India and made available to USOF after due appropriation by parliament. In 2012-13, `6,735.46 crore was collected taking total collection till then to `50,682.95 crore. Till the end of 2012-13, `15,784.4 crore had been disbursed.

In addition, `6,948.84 crore was disbursed till 2005-06-end to BSNL against the reimbursement of licence fee and spectrum charges.

What is being done by USOF for improving cellular services in rural India?

To facilitate mobile services in uncovered rural areas, a scheme to support shared infrastructure having support of three telecom service providers (TSPs) was taken up (June 2007-Nov 2013). In all, 7,317 towers and 16,254 BTSs were installed with viability gap funding by USOF. The schemes-in-pipeline include schemes to provide financial support for mobile coverage in 56,000 uncovered villages.

What efforts are being made by USOF to increase broadband proliferation in rural areas?

Wireline Broadband Scheme (Jan 2009 to Jan 2014 for >=512 kbps always on broadband) provided subsidy for broadband connections, customer premises equipment, computer/ computing devices and setting up of kiosks for public access. Over 5 Lac broadband connections and over 12,000 kiosks were provided under the scheme. Schemes to provide backhaul capacity to integrate voice and data traffic from the access network in the rural areas to their core network by use of OFC connectivity has been taken up for the NE region. A project called National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) to connect 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats (GPs) using OFC is being implemented as a first step to facilitate availability of affordable high bandwidth in the villages.

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IN PERSON

Please elaborate on NOFN. Optical fibre connectivity is generally available up to district and block headquarters.

NOFN intends to connect 2,50,000 villages having gram panchayats to the block headquarters using the OFC with 100Mbps bandwidth. The project cost of around `20,000 crore is being funded by USOF. It is being implemented by a SPV namely Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL). The state governments are also contributing by way of free right of way for laying the cable.

It intends to provide access to bandwidth between block headquarters and gram panchayat to all the TSPs and others on a nondiscriminatory basis. Using this bandwidth, any service provider can have broadband reach to a large number of rural customers. Pilot projects have been launched in three blocks with the help of BSNL, Railtel and PGCIL with the user support from the Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY).

How can the power issues be resolved for Telecom facilities in rural areas?

In rural/remote areas, the hassles of and expenses on energy are significant and form an important part of the operating costs. Local power generation, though less efficient, is to be resorted to in view of transmission losses, low load factor and non-availability/ poor quality electricity board (EB) supply in several rural areas. The rural/ remote sites with no or inadequate EB supply are best served using Renewable Energy Technologies (RET). With DoT’s pilot projects and about 3,800 RET projects by the industry, the adoption of RET is gradually picking up. USOF is pursu-

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Aiding Telephony The USOF spending goes towards l Provision of public

telephone services; l Provision of household telephones in net high cost rural and remote areas; l Creation of infrastructure for

provision of mobile services in rural/ remote areas; l Provision of broadband connectivity in villages in a phased manner; l Creation of general infrastructure in

rural/remote areas for development of telecom facilities; and l Induction of new technological developments in the telecom sector in rural and remote areas.

The National Optical Fibre Network or NOFN to connect 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats using OFC connectivity is being implemented as a first step to facilitate availability of affordable high bandwidth broadband proliferation in the villages ing green telecom policy in projects like National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), and cellular coverage programmes for uncovered villages.

Understanding plan of availability of EB supply is important while taking a decision. Using outdoor BTSs without shelter and air-conditioning reduces cost and power requirement. Reduced power load reduces land requirement for RET and facilitates faster roll out. Device charging arrangements for public can make USOF sites highly effective. Solar power though more expensive initially, has very low operating costs.

The other popular hybrid alternatives are wind mills, bio mass etc.

What are the other complimentary efforts being made? How will the use of broadband and other Telecom facilities be ensured in rural areas?

DeitY through NIC has unfolded ‘MeghRaj’, the government Cloud, to take various e-governance services and contents to users. Several government departments also have complimentary programmes, like NMEICT, NKM and National Rural Health Mission, to name a few, to support augmenting of the infrastructure and availability of relevant content. Capacity building is taking place through several centres and state initiatives. This is supported by the industry through availability of stateof-the-art technology. The enhanced use of broadband and other Telecom facilities call for capacity building, development of hotspots and spread of broadband facilities to schools, hospitals and gram panchayats, etc. India-centric application developments and enabling regulations to promote use of mobiles for banking, financial inclusion, etc. will enhance the usage.

The government acting as an anchor customer may create a win-win situation.

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many more...

Financial Inclusion

• Health Insurance • Financial Inclusion in Health Sector • Organisation of the year • Access to banking and financial services • Capacity building and financial literacy • ICT based innovation

Banking Technology

• Health IT • Technology in Rural Health • Industry Infrastructure Initiative • Institutional Infrastructure Initiative • Internet Banking Service • Security Initiative

Payment Systems

• Cashless Health Payments • Online Health Payments • Online Payments Solution • Mobile Payments Solution of the Year • Multi-Channel Payments Solution • Contactless Payments Project

Mobile Banking

• Health Services on Mobile • Online Health Services • Overall Mobile Banking Application • Mobile Application Design • Multiplatform Service • Tablet Application

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e-Learning

Cloud-ed Education

High-tech Answer to New-age Challenges Cloud-based learning solutions are fast catching up among both students and teachers as these education tools have the potential to revolutionize the education sector in ways more than one, writes Prof (Dr) Elizabeth Sherly, Director, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITM-K)

L

everaging cutting edge technologies to gear up the learning process in higher education has been attempted at during the last several years, but often it has been a struggle to get the maximum benefit out of it. A suite of technology enhanced learning solutions such as web based e-learning platforms, virtual classrooms, collaboration tools, online resources, digital library access, videos on demand, syllabus based content creation and smart classrooms are being experimented with since 2000, but those lack a coherent system to cater to the various needs of educationalists and learners. The data created are still in silos and there is no common platform to share the content in an effective manner. So, a better collaboration among teachers, students, administrators and parents is needed to make education more exciting and also to use data as learning analytics to predict the future of a student.

Cloud-based learning solutions play a crucial role that can be utilized to revolutionize the education sector in many ways. The cloud can be considered as the most sought-after technology to achieve many digital learning techniques and administrative data into one

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Prof (Dr) Elizabeth Sherly platform with better speed, avoiding duplication, cutting cost and expanding accessibility.

The future opportunities for success or failure of students could rest in the cloud.

Some of the major challenges in web-based education system is creating content, standards and quality of content creations, availability of various resources such as software and hardware, dearth of skilled and qualified teachers to create content and assist students, dynamic scalability to conduct exams and supporting evaluation to a large mass, effective use of resources, storage and manageability of videos, multimedia content and

maintainability of portals and servers, etc. The power of cloud computing could bring in a new wave and meet the growing demands due to its dynamic elasticity, scalability, flexibility and availability.

Universities or educational regulatory bodies need to take the initiative in establishing cloud-based learning system at their data centre, so that the entire data is managed by a higher authority and that can be distributed or shared as per demand. The data created or available by various colleges and universities has to be managed and controlled in the data centre, which is connected to a large number of distributed computers. An architecture of cloud-based e-learning platform consists of Infrastructure layer, Platform layer and Software/Application layer. Infrastructure layer acts as dynamic and scalable physical host pool with information resources for learning

Dating with Data No matter whether the nature of educational data is structured, semi-structured or unstructured, all types of data in large volumes can be handled in a coherent manner using the concept of Big Data Analysis

e-Learning

The Transformer Cloud technology can help bring many digital learning techniques and administrative data on to one platform with better speed, avoiding duplication, cutting cost and expanding accessibility

Figure 1 depicts a cloud-based Learning Analytics platform that works on the top of an e-learning system.

Benefits of LAS Æ Offers better evaluation procedures for teachers and students Æ Facilitates better decision making for management Æ Throws up predictive and diagnostic assessment - measures for college performance, dropouts, an early indication of students’ performance Æ Systemic, real time comparisons and evaluation with global standards Æ Analyses underlying patterns to predict students’ outcome such as dropping out, needing extra help, or being capable of more demanding assignments. Æ Real time feedback system for teachers and students –

embedded in Instructional Process to improve performance quickly Æ Assesses the gap between what students know and what they are expected to know Æ Suggests where students should focus their time in order to improve exam performance Æ Helps teachers quickly diagnose their strengths and instructional needs Æ Identifies “at risk” students - prediction models based on truancy, disciplinary problems, changes in course performance, overall grades of students likely to fail and probability of identifying students who drop out Æ Tracking performance

and teaching, and its supporting software and hardware. Resource layer offers a portal for e-learning developers – a platform for software and hardware resources to share. Application

through dashboards and visual displays Æ Helps regulatory agencies like AICTE and UGC to monitor performance and take decisions Æ Graphical display of various analyses, trends, reports Æ Focusses on outcome of education, not merely learning inputs Æ Creates new research opportunities, intelligent tutoring systems, simulations, and learning games Æ Offers adaptive and ubiquitous learning environment, especially for disabled Æ Helps job hunters easily track and find best matches

layer provides content production, content delivery, virtual laboratory, collaborative learning, and assessment and management features, including Learning Analytics tools. A

cloud middleware between the Infrastructure and Resource layers provides virtualization through which dynamic and scalable host pool can be given shape, and new physical host can be added in order to enhance physical computing power for cloud middleware services, such as Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service and Software as a Service.

The main advantage of such a cloud based e-learning system is availability of data under one umbrella, which could be used for learning analytics, so that the future of each college, university, teacher and student can be predicted. No matter whether the nature of educational data is structured, semi-structured or unstructured, all types of data in large volumes can be handled in a coherent manner using the concept of Big Data Analysis. The pool of data will be a goldmine for education researchers to analyse and predict using Learning Analytics System (LAS). LAS is a technique to improve the academic outcome by serving as a predictive and prescriptive system for each stakeholder.

Aiming high in higher education requires wealth of diversity in learning process where the role of technology is nowadays indispensible. The cloud can be a powerful vehicle for aligning your institutional mission by driving administrative and academic transformation.

A cloud-based e-learning platform transforms the entire world of knowledge made available to teachers and students that can be accessed anytime, anywhere and from any device. This would enable students across the globe to acquire the 21st-century skills and training they need to compete and succeed in the global information society. Further, such an education platform has the power to transform education through personalized learning, improve teacher development and performance, enhance access to information and more efficiently manage the processes that facilitate teaching, learning, and research to be more productive.

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