Cross Sectoral e-Governance Solutions: March 2008 Issue

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THE E-GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE FOR ASIA & THE MIDDLE EAST

Fulfilling Vision of Digital Mines State of e-Government Projects in India Challenges for Successful Execution

Getting IT Ready for Sub-Conventional Warfare

IS S N 0 97 3 - 1 61 X

VOLUME 4

| ISSUE 3 | MARCH 2008

Coal India Limited

M-CONNECT

WATCHING INDIA WITH INTEREST

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

INCLUSIVE ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT SERVICES

SPECIAL FOCUS

CONTACTLESS BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION

IT Leader’s Forum

Cross Sectoral e-Governance Solutions

t n e m n r e v o e-G vernment o G e

Join us in the Deliberations on India's March Towards Transforming Public Sector Delivery INDIA

2008 29 - 31 July Pragati Maidan, New Delhi

Contact Gautam Navin +91-9818125257 egov@eINDIA.net.in

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w w w . e g o v o n l i n e . n e t | volume 4 | issue 3 | march 2008

COVER INTERVIEW

Fulfilling Vision of Digital Mines

Interview: Partha Bhattacharya, Chairman, Coal India Limited

COMMENTARY

State of e-Government Projects in India Prof. Rajanish Dass, Faculty, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and

External Consultant, Ministry of Finance, India

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Inclusive Access to Government Services Interview: Nripjit Chawla, Director, Business Strategy, eGovServices

EVENT DIARY

22 46

CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards

11th National Conference on e-Governance

DEFENCE FOCUS

Getting IT Ready for Sub-Conventional Warfare

Sandeep Bangia, Director, Government, Education and Healthcare, Oracle Corporation

Strengthening Defence Management Ram Gopal Gandhekar, Software Speciality Sales Manager, Automated Lead, Tivoli

IBM India Pvt Ltd.

SPECIAL FOCUS

Contactless Biometric Authentication Sanjay Srivastava, Manager, Sales and Marketing , Fujitsu India Ltd.

MCONNECT

40 43 45

Watching India with Interest Interview: ValĂŠrie Faudon, Vice President, Marketing Programmes, Alcatel-Lucent

Network that Reaches Every Village Interview: Lt. Col. H.S Bedi, VSM, CMD, Tulip IT Services Ltd.

News

March 2008

48 3

ov volume 4 | issue 3 | march 2008 PRESIDENT

Dr. M P Narayanan EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Ravi Gupta GROUP DIRECTORS

Maneesh Prasad Sanjay Kumar ASSISTANT EDITOR

Prachi Shirur RESEARCH A SSOCIATE

L. Chaitanya Kishore Reddy RESEARCH ASSISTANT

EDITORIAL Building robust and competitive public sector institutions Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have become the core central theme for most electronic governance programmes being implemented by the federal (central) government departments or those of the states. In a robust e-Governance environment, all governmental organisations should be networked and interconnected. This connectivity facilitates exchanging information among different organs of the government with minimal manual intervention. This is dependent on introduction of principles of good governance.

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Some of the key attributes of good governance can be identified as follow: Honesty; Efficiency and Effectiveness; Justice; Reliability; Participatory Democracy; Accountability; Accessibility and Transparency; Equity; Visionary in decision-making, among others. Many of these attributes can be achieved through proper implementation of e-Governance using the state of the art technologies. When ministries of coal and defence embark on e-Governance programmes, there are few interesting commonalities that come to mind. Coal contributes to 52% of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy needs. This can improve a lot with modernisation. Both organisations are large, employ a huge number of manpower, and as an organisation are spread across the length and breadth of the country. In an increasingly globalised world, keeping the organisation competitive and sustainable means making strategic decisions. The key to adopting digital solutions for management means the change management and process re-engineering are well charted out, as is the capacity building of the workforce. The numbers of people to be trained is huge. The combined defence workforce is over a million people strong, and the coal ministry employs as much as 0.45 million people. Such a huge trained manpower can become valuable national asset in the future.

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Becoming competitive means following transparent procurement practices and including trained manpower for better management of scarce resources. Introduction of accurate and efficient systems means more value for money. Competitiveness is the key to success, and innovative e-Governance strategies adapted are the key to ensuring that. Improving communications and logistics management in both these institutions will lead to greater efficiencies.

R P Printers, Noida, India egov does not neccesarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors. egov is not responsible or

In this issue we are covering both these sectors, besides examining how other e-Governance programmes are faring, be it at the national level or at the states. We hope that you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed putting this together.

accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided. egov is published & marketed in collaboration with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. (www.elets.in) ÂŠ Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies 2008 www.csdms.in

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

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ov egov is a monthly magazine providing a much needed platform to the voices of various stakeholders in the arena of e-Government, apart from being a repository of valuable information and meaningful discussion on issues of e-Governance in general, and eGovernment in particular -both to the specialist and the generalist. Contributions to egov magazine should be in the form of articles, case studies, book reviews, event reports and news related to e-Government projects and initiatives, which are of immense value for practitioners, professionals, corporates and academicians. We would like the contributors to follow these guidelines, while submitting their material for publication.

ARTICLES / CASE STUDIES should not exceed

2500 words. For book reviews and event report, the word limit is 800. AN ABSTRACT of the article/case study not exceeding 200 words should be submitted along with the article/case study. ALL ARTICLES / CASE STUDIES should provide proper references. Authors should give in writing stating that the work is new and has not been published in any form so far. BOOK REVIEWS should include details of the book like the title, name of the author(s), publisher, year of publication, price and number of pages and also send the cover photograph of the book in JPEG/TIFF (resolution 300 dpi). Book reviews of books on e-Governance related themes, published from

year 2002 onwards, are preferable. In case of website, provide the URL. THE MANUSCRIPTS should be typed in a standard printable font (Times New Roman 12 font size, titles in bold) and submitted either through mail or post. RELEVANT FIGURES of adequate quality (300 dpi) should be submitted in JPEG/ TIFF format. A BRIEF BIO-DATA and passport size photograph(s) of the author(s) must be enclosed. ALL CONTRIBUTIONS ARE SUBJECT TO APPROVAL BY THE PUBLISHER.

Please send in your papers/articles/comments to: The Editor, egov, G-4, Sector 39, NOIDA (UP) 201 301, India. tel: +91 120 2502180-85, fax: +91 120 2500060, email: info@egovonline.net

EDITORIAL CALENDAR 2008 MONTH

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APPLICATION FOCUS RAILWAYS

MAY 2008

MOBILITY

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JUNE 2008

STORAGE AND DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

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COVER INTERVIEW

Coal India Limited

Fulfilling Vision of Digital Mines “When we come to the issue of introduction of ICT, we can not ignore the importance of re-engineering and change management. We all know that if we automate an inefficient process, it still remains inefficient. Existing processes must be rationalised and all non-value adding processes eliminated, before any largescale ICT project is introduced”, says Partha Bhattacharya, Chairman, Coal India Limited, in an exclusive interview with egov magazine Please tell us about the vision and mandate of Coal India Ltd. Our vision is to make Coal India the most admired company in the energy sector in India. We want to continuously adopt the best practices from all around the world- from the mine to the market, to evolve into a world class energy solution company. Energy is a vital input into our economy and therefore, if India is to move to the higher growth rate or even to sustain the current rate, we must ensure reliable availability of energy, particularly electric power and petroleum products, at internationally competitive prices. Coal is the prime source of energy in India and 75 percent of our electricity is generated by using coal as fuel. We cannot hope to compete effectively in world markets unless these critical energy inputs 10 }

are available in adequate quantities and at appropriate prices. The mandate for Coal India is, therefore, to produce planned quantity of coal economically and efficiently to ensure the energy security of our nation. How important is the coal sector in the Indian economy? How has been the growth of coal sector in India compared to other developing nation? The major part of the country’s electricity is generated by thermal power stations, who use coal as the fuel. Thus for our energy security, role of coal is vital and crucial. India’s energy security, at its broadest level, is primarily about ensuring the continuous availability of commercial energy at competitive prices to support its economic growth and meet the lifeline energy needs of its households with www.egovonline.net

safe, clean and convenient forms of energy. Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growing dependence on energy imports exposes its energy needs to external price shocks. Hence, domestic energy resources must be expanded. For India, it is not a question of choosing among alternate domestic energy resources but exploiting all available domestic energy resources to the maximum as long as they are competitive. In this backdrop, coal assumes much more importance in our economy than what is perceived by us. Growth of coal sector in India has been noteworthy making India a global player in coal mining and the third largest producer amongst the coal producing countries in the world. The production of coal has risen from a level of about 70 metric tonnes (mt) at the time of nationalisation in early 1970s to around 420 mt in 2006- 07. Please tell us about some of the ICT applications taken up by CIL? When were they first initiated ? We have long recognised the importance of ICT in bringing efficiency, transparency and speed of decision making in our operations. Many initiatives were taken by CIL in this direction in the past, some of the important ones beingestablishing V-Sat connectivity with all our subsidiary headquarters and Coal India, setting up of enterprise databases at central locations, introduction of a customised three-tier Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution for all functional areas of management, remote sensing and satellite imaging for mapping spatial resources in the mine areas and introduction of mine modeling and surveying software in our mine planning activities. Many of the above initiatives were introduced in late 90â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and the true momentum picked up in early 2000. We have recently appointed a reputed consultant to frame a long terms strategic IT policy for us, which, when completed will prescribe a road map for our ICT applications in the coming years. What are the areas â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for instance procurement, safetywhere the ICT and other technologies such as GIS are being introduced? What has been the outcome in terms of bringing efficiency and transparency in CIL? We are using remote sensing and satellite imaging technology in a big way. A project for processing satellite images captured by National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) for all large mines and posting the same on our web-site to display the progress of forestation programmes in the mine areas has been taken up. We are yet to take significant initiatives in GIS, but we recognise the importance of GIS as a powerful decision making tool for our mine-managers. We have taken an important initiative in introducing eMarketing and e-Procurement, which have brought a lot of transparency in two of our important functions, namely marketing and procurement, which require dealing with customers and vendors and so are quite sensitive in nature. We have sold more than 10 million tonnes of coal through e-Auction, which brought enhanced value to CIL and our consumers, as the entire processes were totally transparent and user-friendly. In case of e-Procurement, we have successfully completed reverse auction for procurement of ov

March 2008

explosives, a vital input for our operations, of an approximate value of INR 10,000 million. We had provided digital signatures to our vendors to ensure that the bids submitted by them are encrypted, secured and authentic. We are very satisfied with the outcomes of such initiatives. More importantly, our customers and vendors are equally happy and upbeat about the success of these initiatives. They could experience the benefit that technology could bring to them in terms of increased transparency, ease of carrying out their transactions with CIL and the inherent equity inbuilt in the entire system. How did CIL deal with the process of re-engineering and change management issues? When we come to the issue of introduction of ICT, we can not ignore the importance of re-engineering and change management. We all know that if we automate an inefficient process, it still remains inefficient. Existing processes must be rationalised and all non-value adding processes eliminated, before any large-scale ICT project is introduced. Here lies the importance of doing business process re-engineering (BPR) before going for a big bang ICT project. As far as change management is concerned, we fully understand that ICT is not about hardware and software. It is more about people-ware, about making people learn and use the system. To do this, we have to make the user community aware of the benefits that ICT will bring to them and motivate them to use the system. To make a software project really successful, tremendous amount of efforts in sensitisation, capacity building, training and hand-holding during the implementation period is required. Another pre-requisite for success in such projects is a top-down approach with full commitment of top management. CIL is fully alive to these issues. What is your opinion regarding the National e-Governance Plan being implemented by the Government of India ? What are the key factors that public sector should bear in mind while implementing e-Government solutions? The essence of e-Governance, to my mind, lies in making governance SMART, that is making it Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent. e-Governance enhances the efficacy of citizen and government interaction. Therefore, the success of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) hinges not only on accessibility and availability to the information and various services but also awareness regarding the programme, effective branding of NeGP and finally a communication strategy that addresses the above two. I think the key drivers for success of the plan will be (a) to build distinctive brand of NeGP which will be utilised across communication platforms; (b) to create awareness among citizens about the initiative and its objectives; (c) to motivate stakeholders, with an emphasis on the point that NeGP is not about computerisation or technology but making interaction with government easier; and (d) to create a demand driven atmosphere, which would ensure the service delivery. I think that the single most important factor in implementing any e-Government solution is the people and not the technology per se. I can share our experience of introducing 11

COVER INTERVIEW

e-Procurement, an important component of e-Governance. Before implementing the e-Procurement project, we carried out a series of training programmes for our vendors at our cost, to make them comfortable with the process. We did not do it just by delivering lectures. Each of them were given hands-on opportunity to place their bids by using their digital signatures and then running a real simulated demo till they were fully conversant with the system. What is your take on public-private partnerships in terms of the value addition to e-Government? Government agencies throughout the world are conducting e-Governance initiatives with the help of private players. The scene in India is also much the same. The development of a suitable telecommunications network for establishing the connectivity of the government with the common man is a basic need for success of any e-Governance programme. Private players in the telecom and IT sector need to extend their overall support to make the e-Governance projects successful. The Central Government has taken several initiatives to advance ICT usage across all government bodies as they ultimately benefit the common man. These include the roll-out of the National e-Governance Plan, the launch of Mission 2007, and the formation of e-Panchayats across the country. I think the government is very clear in welcoming private participation in fulfilling the e-Governance initiatives. But this participation can only happen at the front-end level since the government is presently handling all the back-end work. For example, in the case of ICT kiosks, any private party can do the setting-up of a kiosk, but to run that kiosk the government will need to provide all support and all contents to be put in such kiosks. We know of some of the IT companies that have taken a pioneering role in e-Governance projects, namely Microsoft, Sun, IBM, TCS, HCL and Adobe. I think this is a healthy trend and I hope that this will continue in future also. What are the business opportunities for the private sector in the Coal sector? How keen do you think is the private sector towards PPP? In the mines and mineral sector, which was a typically inward looking sector so far, India is speedily opening up to investments by the private sector. The Group of Ministers set up by the Centre has recommended allowing 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment under automatic route in both coal and non-coal mining sector, removing some of the present restrictions. One hundred and thirty six coal blocks have already been identified for allocation to private sector captive mining. It is estimated that there will be an opportunity, over the next 10 years, to invest US$ 30-40 billions in exploration and developing new coal mines, in manufacturing and marketing state-of-the-art mining equipment and technology and in creating related infrastructure for off-take of mined coal. The Vision 2025 document for the coal sector forecasts a total coal production of 1086 Million tons by the year 2025 from the current level of 420 million tonnes. This will require a massive investment of INR 950,000 million for opencast 12

mines and INR 230,000 million for underground mines. Investment in benefication plants will require another INR 160,000 million. As foreign direct investment (FDI) in the coal sector pours in with the speeding up of reforms in the coal sector, the coal sector of India will become stronger and stronger. It will augur well for the country’s energy security. As regards keenness of private sector in PPP, I think PPP is all about partnering. A partnership can become successful only if the partners bring in complementary skills and capabilities on the table and the project ensures equitable returns on investment to all partners. Unfortunately a critical ‘P’ seems to have gone missing from the 3 Ps of the PublicPrivate Partnership model that is being sold as the panacea for India’s infrastructure woes. A study published in the McKinsey quarterly has revealed that a mere 4 per cent of the total planned investment in transportation infrastructure in the country, between 2005-10 has been contributed by the private sector. PPPs are recognised as the way for transforming public services, bringing in competitiveness and creating additional financing capacity. The private sector is still reluctant to fund certain types of projects like transportation projects. These projects have a long gestation period and yield returns slowly. But wherever assets are moveable, the private sector is more willing to invest, like in aviation, which has over 60 per cent private ownership . In the coal sector, there is huge potential for PPP, particularly in the area of newer technologies like coal washing, coal beneficiation, coal gasification, coal to oil technology etc. Suitable models of long-duration contracts like BOOT, BOLT, BOO etc. may be adopted for formalising such partnerships. What are some of your future plans with regard to the use of ICT in the coal sector? World-wide, the mining sector is moving towards fulfillment of a vision of ‘digital mine’, where all information about the mine is kept in a digital medium and shared on real-time basis from the ‘bore hole to the board room’. Modern mines in the world uses technologies like laser operated surveying, computerised equipment management and optimisation systems, remote sensing, mine modeling and tele-robotic mining. I think, if we want to become a world class company, we need to use technology. We have taken certain initiatives towards this direction. We will soon have GPS (Geographical Positioning System) based Truck dispatching systems in some of our large mines. The system may be rolled over to other mines in a phased manner. We plan to have an integrated, robust, flexible and modular enterprise resource planning back bone, connecting every mine with every other mine. Technologies like GIS (Geographical Information System), Real-time GPS and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to speed up the decision making process is likely to be introduced soon. We also have plans for connecting with our vendors and customers through a dedicated Virtual Private Network (VPN). Initiatives to make our operations ‘paperless’, with introduction of technologies like electronic data interchange and work-flow are also in the offing. www.egovonline.net

COMMENTARY

State of e-Government Projects in India Challenges for Successful Execution Prof. Rajanish Dass

‘Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’ Albert Einstein

INTRODUCTION

e-Governance and technology adoption for better decision making, management and enhanced service delivery to different stakeholders including citizens have taken centre stage of the policy makers of India. Appreciating the criticality of adapting digital technologies for enhancing governance, both federal and state governments have put substantial thrust on e-Governance. The seriousness of e-Enablement of different ministries, departments and services got reflected in the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) that India came up with. NeGP had announced twenty seven key projects to be executed in various ministries and departments of the government. Looking at the criticality of their being executed for better e-Enabled service delivery to the citizens, these projects were termed as Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) with the expectation that the corresponding owners of these projects would show enough seriousness to have these projects rolled out as national missions to ensure better service delivery to different stakeholders. The intention and identification of these projects reflect the seriousness of the planning agency. Although, the plan and intention of identifying these twenty seven MMPs had been grand but till the end of 2007, the overall situation of execution of these projects does not seem to be very enticing. Either some of these projects have not yet started, else majority of these projects had started, but have not yet seen the light of successful execution and acceptance. At hindsight, doing a post-mortem analysis and trying to understand why a particular project failed is obviously an easier task, easier than taking proactive strategies to make a project get implemented successfully. Had failure taught more than success, then given the fact that majority of the e-Governance projects today are not in a state of success, would have ensured that we have a battalion of brilliant managers who can understand the success factors for implementing an e-Government project successfully and we would have found a number of the planned projects being rolled out successfully. 14 }

Albeit, some of the project managers indeed seem to be learning from the failures, but that is not restricting the rate of e-Governance projects being unsuccessful. With the scale and scope of some of these projects going up, with the increased complexity of the proposed solutions and moreover with steep increase in the overall expectation from these projects, the challenge of delivery and acceptance of some of the e-Governance projects have become more challenging. The early leaders in this area among the world’s nations made many mistakes as they set off down this road, wasting literally billions of dollars. Increasingly, these countries are now starting to get to grips with the complex set of cultural and organisational changes which are needed to derive full benefit from the opportunities which new technologies open up, and to integrate their e-Government programmes into much broader and more radical programmes of public sector transformation. Yet no country has got this completely cracked. Meanwhile, IT suppliers are grappling with the demands of winning contracts on an increasing scale and complexity, and of working ever more closely in partnership with the public sector to deliver huge change programmes. Such a partnership is a major challenge for industry as well as government. The focus of this article is to draw attention of decision makers towards some of the pertinent problems hampering successful implementation of e-Government project in India.

CHALLENGES FOR e-GOVERNANCE PROJECT EXECUTION IN INDIA

Experiences across the globe suggest that the key challenges for successful execution of e-Governance projects are that of lack of strategic clarity, understanding of end-user needs, poor supplier management and lack of skills for executing these projects. Moreover, lack of sustained political will and leadership at the senior management level emerges out as critical success factors. Broadly, it has been strongly felt that the above challenges (as had been found by the developed nations) do play a very important role in India as well, more because India has started emphasising more and more on technology enabled channels for delivery of services. Rest of www.egovonline.net

the article will focus on some of the pertinent issues that need serious consideration at all levels of e-Governance policy formulation.

LACK OF SYNCHRONISATION OF EFFORTS: NEED FOR PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT

In a number of projects, lack of synchronisation and disjointed efforts between different projects play an important role in execution of whatever was intended initially. For example, the State Wide Area Netsork(SWAN)/Common Sercice Centres and State Data Centres (CSCs) and State Data Centres (SDC) schemes, which were announced at different points by Government of India, are required to be implemented in each state in a synchronised manner. However, these schemes were announced at different points in time and were taken up by different states with different priorities; effective execution of all these three schemes has started getting jeopardised. This jeopardy will lead to under utilisation or non-utilisation of expensive technology infrastructure assets. The problem of lack of synchronisation becomes more serious when we consider the asynchronous implementation of the MMPs which are supposed to feed these three elements of technology infrastructure with content. Interestingly, each project in each department of each ministry at each state is perceived to be a unique project and has a different project team. No one can deny the fact that as of day, the government departments act in silos. One more new project is actually seen as a separate silo within the department itself. It is extremely crucial to understand how these different projects actually fit in the larger mesh of objectives and goals with which these projects were created. What is required is evolving an organisation structure and framework for effective ‘Programme Management’. According to wikipaedia ‘Programme Management’ is the process of management|managing multiple ongoing inter-dependent projects. Programme management provides a layer above project management focusing on selecting the best group of programmes, defining them in terms of their constituent projects and providing an infrastructure where projects can be run successfully but leaving project management to the project management community.

LACK OF OBJECTIVITY IN SELECTION AND SCOPING OF PROJECTS

Looking back at the distribution of time and resources for a particular project, a typical skewed pattern is observed towards allocating lesser time and resources for actual project planning and preparation. Hence, for majority of the projects, we do not find a detailed project report detailing governance issues, service levels, expected outcomes, critical success factors for successful project completion etc. Many frameworks and models exist today, for assessing an e-Governance project, after it is implemented. Using these frameworks like EAF 2.0, one can determine the success and impact of the project. However, this amounts to a postov

March 2008

mortem exercise. What is needed is a tool or framework which will enable the decision makers to determine what is most required and what is most likely to succeed. Replication of a successful pilot may not always deliver a similar successful outcome, since, either the priorities of the local citizens may be a little different, or the organisational capabilities may be different or both. If a framework or a model can be built which can help the decision makers to assess the success rate of a future project, based on real time parameters, it will serve a better purpose than an assessment framework.

EMPHASIS ON REDESIGNING SERVICES WITH CITIZEN FOCUS

Although this principle is now widely known and accepted, in practice it is rarely followed. In majority of the cases, e-Government project specifications are not being done after any in-depth understanding of the needs and requirements of the citizens and/or end-users and are actually done as a top-down exercise only. To ensure successful roll-out of implemented projects, it is necessary to ensure that proper understanding of end-user requirements are taken care of. Moreover, in-depth study and re-engineering of existing business processes should be made an intrinsic part of the project preparation and planning phase. The current practice is to load this responsibility on the application software vendor. The vendor’s approach is driven by the dual constraints of tight delivery schedules and achieving user acceptance for his software. The vendor thus is tempted or forced to accept the path of least resistance. On the other hand, the business process re-engineering, actually is a path of maximum resistance and the only mitigation strategy is Change Management. The application vendor’s role should be to automate and implement the re-engineered processes which are already debated and approved by the customer organisation.

TECHNOLOGY BEING CONSIDERED AS A PURCHASABLE COMMODITY

Looking at majority of the e-Governance projects, it actually seems to confuse a third party observer. The basic intent of these projects, whether they are intended to deliver services to the doorsteps of common man and/or increase efficiency of the governmental processes or if they are meant as a competition to purchase hardware comes in question. As has happened, cutting across majority of the projects, a majority of these projects have dedicated resources and made Request For Proposal (RFPs) to the finest details of specifying hardware capabilities needed for project execution, happily shifting their focus from the service delivery aspect. It becomes crucial for the decision makers to understand the effects of technology obsolescence. It is important that the decision makers are made aware, looking at technology as a commodity to be purchased but rather focus on technology projects as modes of services to be delivered. In fact, it would make much more sense to seriously consider different PPP models for ensuring project delivery and execution. 15

COMMENTARY

LACK OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVES

LACK OF SKILLED MANPOWER

The identification of the business process re-engineering and ‘emerging citizen services’ should be the two main prerequisites for an e-Government project. They also lay the foundation for drawing a road map for effective change management. At present, the trend or common practice is to make the application software vendor responsible for defining these prerequisites. Ideally, this activity should be carried out by the ‘inside government’ stakeholders, since the activity requires a deep understanding of government functions, rules and regulations, and domain knowledge of the department or organisation. If that is not feasible, then the second best option is to entrust the task to those consultants who possess similar quality professionals in their ranks. Once the roadmap for change management is defined, the next stage is planning for its execution. Another neglected aspect is creation of formal intraorganisational and inter-organisational communication channels. By the nature of governance and established practices, all formal communications inside a department, moves only within a narrow pre defined hierarchy. But the change management, which essentially aims at breaking these barriers, requires establishment of new yet formal channels of communications. There is a need for institutionalisation of such channels.

As has been mentioned earlier, the whole intent of using tax payer’s money for automating service delivery and enhancing government processes is not under question. The question ultimately comes in the silo structure that the government departments operate and the capability of the departments to absorb the complexity of managing these through technology decision making and execution. This actually calls for a major re-look at the reorientation and capability building of the skillsets of the employees in different government departments to ensure an easier change management. In a scenario where a large number of government employees still think that computerisation will snatch away their jobs, discussing successful roll-out of e-Governance programmes are but a major challenge.

POOR VENDOR RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

For majority of the e-Government projects, vendor relationship management takes the least of the priorities. Albeit, strong partnership with vendors are essential, in majority of the cases, the situation goes into a mode of winner’s curse, where the vendor loses interest in delivering the best while the project deliverables get delayed immensely. This calls for a more detailed inspection of the roles, payments terms etc. as mentioned in the RFPs. Non-standardisation of the tender documents are also major issues across government agencies.

ISSUES IN PROCUREMENT POLICIES AND PROCESSES OF GOVERNMENT

It is necessary to devise a policy to enable procurement of ‘Product and Services’. The current policies can only handle ‘bespoke’ software development and delivery. It is thus depriving e-Government projects the advantages offered by proven products and their implementation by similarly proven implementation vendors. The current requirement for all MMPs to follow the ageold procedures of approval is causing interminable delays. The system of Empowered Committees (ECs), though established in several MMPs, is not yielding the desired result, as they are not really empowered with the financial approval powers. ECs have to be made all-powerful in respect of the MMPs. 16

LACK OF SUSTAINED MANPOWER THROUGHOUT PROJECT LIFE-CYCLE

A host of initiatives in the country have fallen by the wayside due to arbitrary change in leadership. The issue has been plaguing IT adoption in governments in the country since the time governments in India have started adopting IT. Unlike non-IT activities of the government, IT has the peculiarity of being extremely intense and requiring focused implementation at a speed that is more than the speed of obsolescence of the systems as well as the requirements. Hence regular transfer policies of the government is highly impeding for a proper roll out of government systems. Depending on the seriousness of the government to embrace technology for better decision making and service delivery, it may be a good idea to seriously consider options of sustained manpower through out the project life-cycle. In cases of e-Governance projects being taken up by the different entities of the Central Government, these management challenges can be addressed with lesser efforts for coordination. However, in cases where the execution needs to be done by different state governments and other local entities, the complexity of these challenges scale up substantially. For example, while considering technology adoption for the transportation department of all different states, serious and substantial effort needs to be put in towards identifying and sharing of best practices, knowledge sharing between transport departments of different states thus ensuring an integrated and successful programme execution.

REFERENCES

The references for this article are available online at www.egovonline.net Prof. Rajanish Dass ( rajanish@iimahd.ernet.in. ) is a faculty in the Computer and Information Systems Group at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Currently, he is the External Consultant to the Ministry of Finance of India for all IT initiatives of Direct and Indirect Taxes.

www.egovonline.net

Higher Levels of Security now within reach The way the world has changed is altering the way we look at security. Virtually every organization, municipality, institution and business has made security one of its highest priorities. In addition, government regulations are mandating higher levels of security across the board. The investments allocated to provide premises and property protection, personal safety, systems security and public safety are growing exponentially. The increasing public safety threats are starting to win over privacy concerns and the benefits of wide area video surveillance, in providing defence and deterrence, are being well accepted. What is enabling the flexibility and capability needed to deploy wide area video surveillance are Motorola MOTOwi4 Fixed wireless broadband technologies, specifically point-to-point (PTP) and point-to-multi-point (PMP). With data rates up to 300 Mbps and a range up to 200 km, with latency rates as low as 0.6 milliseconds, Motorola’s PTP connects in some of the harshest and most challenging environments including difficult terrain and highly corrosive saline environment. Thus, wi4 Fixed PTP represents an effective wireless backhaul solution, while wi4 Fixed Canopy PMP can serve the denser last mile network required for video surveillance. Remote Surveillance Gujarat-based fertilizer and chemical major installed a video surveillance system supported by Motorola’s Canopy™ wireless broadband network that connects all strategic locations to monitor hazardous areas and to prevent theft of company property. Motorola established 4 Fixed and 6 PTZ Cameras to relay full motion, sound & video from different locations of the plant to the Command Center located at the main gate where security officers monitor and control cameras and gates through CCTV screens and cameras. Using Motorola’s Canopy solution for security and surveillance the organisation effectively eliminated vandalism, improved incident response and, provided criminal evidence. It has saved the organisation enough money to pay the system within 12 months.

Video Surveillance When the Kolkata based residential estate developers needed video surveillance to monitor the activities in the 17 blocks of their Housing Complex within the limited funds available, they chose to deploy OFC and Terrestrial Wireless Network based on Motorola’s Canopy™ broadband technology. The surveillance system runs a total of 52 cameras on a network of 6 Canopy PMP Access Points, Cluster Management Module, 17 Subscriber Modules and 2 PTP Backhaul links. The entire deployment is in the unlicensed spectrum of 2.4 GHz, but backhauling was in 5.7 GHz. The video capability of 25 frames per second was achieved within the bandwidth of 1.75 Mbps.

• • • • • • •

Motowi4 portfolio offers greater coverage than patrols Ability to optimize feeds over single link at 4 mbps each High Resistance to interference Offers best monitoring facilities for the network to Security form Offers NLOS, nLOS & LOS feature Best ROI in the industry using wi4 products Holistic approach of surveillance solution for public safety

community. The broadband wireless system supports video conferencing in eight of the 39 municipal facilities, allowing municipal leaders to communicate more effectively. Also, Nashik residents can complete a wide range of tasks – including, registering births, marriages, paying property taxes and other administrative communication – online. The wireless equipment also played a big role in the smooth and speedier execution of elections in 2007. Wireless backbone provided data connectivity, video conferencing and video surveillance from six counting centers to a centralized location and speeded up the municipality’s ability to report election results. Voting results could be sent using the wireless backbone from remote locations and then be consolidated in one central location.

Safety First with Wireless WANs

Video Conferencing Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) installed Motorola’s wireless broadband network capable of enabling video conferencing and video surveillance to connect the NMC’s head office with the divisional offices spread over an area of 259 Sq. Kilometers. Motorola equipped 39 locations with broadband connectivity and connected them to the head office. The system uses 12 Motorola Canopy™ Advantage Access Points capable of speeds of 20 Mbps and 3 Canopy Access Points capable of speeds of 10 Mbps as well as 36 subscriber modules and 4 Canopy™ Advantage Backhaul capable of speeds of 20 Mbps. The system can traverse long distances without signal loss. In addition, NMC uses Motorola’s Cluster Management Modules (CMM) and its Prizm Element Management System to manage the broadband system. The broadband system also supports video surveillance in more than 11 NMC facilities, including the Property Tax collection centers and a check post; thus protecting valuable revenue sources for the organization and the

With greater coverage than physical patrols, the ability to optimize multiple video feeds over a single link at 4 Mbps each, and with high resistance to interference compared to other wireless solutions, Motorola’s PTP and PMP fixed wireless wide area networks (WANs) are helping municipalities and security agencies recover costs in less than 12 months. Motorola’s Wireless broadband solutions help traverse long distances without suffering signal loss, bridge non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) or near Line-of-Sight (nLoS) environments, and overcome path obstructions. Security firms that want to monitor densely populated sites can also cluster more Motorola radios without increasing interference and remotely manage the radios from the LAN.

Points contributed by Subodh Vardhan Director Sales and Country Head Government and Public Safety Motorola India Pvt. Ltd. e-mail: askmore@motorola.com

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Inclusive Access to Government Services â&#x20AC;&#x153;eGovServices has become the largest CSC operator in the country (and perhaps in the world). We did face, and continue to face law and order issues, infrastructure issues and human resources issues but continue to invest in the Jharkhand CSC projectâ&#x20AC;?, says Nripjit Chawla, Director Business Strategy, eGovServices to egov magazine 18 }

www.egovonline.net

Please tell us about the vision and goal of eGovServices? What are the strategies adopted to achieve these goals? eGovServices is the largest dedicated Public-PrivatePartnership player for pure Government to Citizen (G2C) solutions and is modelled as a ‘Social Corporate’, that is a company with a social purpose. Our vision is to provide inclusive access to government services through technology enabled stakeholder participation. To achieve this vision, we have three major goals. First, we want to have 360 degree stakeholder participation. What that means is that we see the environment changing such that consumers of government services do not want to be mere consumers but also want to be participants in the process. Thus you would see that in providing G2C services in Jharkhand, the citizens are teaming up to become Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE’s) and are becoming partners in the service delivery. We see this trend increasing in many parts of the world, especially the developing countries. We believe that this is another manifestation of the democratic and participative nature of our government. The second goal of eGovServices is to provide the enabling financial environment to support the 360 degree stakeholder participation. Increasingly we see that projects are going to large corporations that can get finance at cheap rates from the financial institutions. This excludes the common citizens from participating in the G2C service delivery process. In order to make the process inclusive, we have devised innovative mechanisms to fund the common citizen’s desire to be part of the government service delivery process. And our third goal is to leverage technology to provide a sustainable 360 degree stakeholder participation. You would notice that our solutions are Web 2.0 enabled and they have embedded e-Learning tools. This helps in rapid capacity building of the participants (citizens). For example if the government wants to have a system to make available opportunities for domestic employees, then the ordinary citizens and the domestic employees would need to have the capability to use such a system. Our solutions help in rapidly training them through online and offline mechanisms that leverage technology to the hilt. Unless we use technology, it will be an uphill task to bring the benefit of better governance to the citizens. What role do you see of ICT kiosks for delivering eenabled services to the citizens? ICT Kiosks provide the crucial last mile connectivity for delivering services to the people. For thousands of years, governance has remained more or less the same - taxes are collected and some services are provided but large swathes of the population are left out without any services. ICT kiosks are set to change that and revolutionise the delivery of government services. In fact, it is an open secret that large parts of this country are under the influence of Naxalism. One of the key factors for Naxalism is the lack of access to governance. Even if we e-enable the government services, it still cannot be accessed by the most needy of the population because of the issues of lack of literacy, digital divide, low PC penetration, poor connectivity and even poor availability of power to run any ov

March 2008

ICT device. This is where ICT kiosks play a critical role in having literate local youth as the mediator between the common populace and the ICT enabled services through the ICT kiosk. The model not only helps in bringing in better governance, but also enables local job creation and provides a sense of participation in governance to the local communities. What is your opinion regarding the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) and the Common Service Centres (CSCs) programme in making the government services accessible to the citizens? Do you think public-private partnership model of implemenation strengthens government? We feel that the CSC under NeGP is a visionary programme of the government. With one single project, the government is able to bring in: • Accessibility to governance • Increased IT penetration • Bridge the digital divide • Increase sustainable employment opportunities • Increase domestic market for IT • Provide a channel for inclusive growth by providing a route for delivering microfinance in a scalable manner • Provide a tool for market linkages to rural economies • Help in reducing the gender bias by economic empowerment of rural women who are able to become VLE’s and are becoming the main bread earners in the family. It would have been impossible to have such a wide impact with a single programme if it was not a public-private partnership model. We strongly feel that if such programmes are not implemented through a PPP mechanism with local participation, it not only increases resistance to the service but also takes away critical stakeholder inputs that make or break a project of this scale and magnitude. Moreover, if it is an external agency that comes and implements and walks away with the government money allocated for the project, then the local micro-economy does not benefit from such a government investment. It is absolutely essential that projects of this nature are done through the PPP mechanism with inclusion of the local youth as key stakeholders. The Government of Jharkhand has awarded the tender for 2,943 CSCs to eGovServices, the first CSC tender issued by the Government of India. What is the progress regarding the implementation of CSCs in three divisions which have been awarded to you, viz., Ranchi, Hazaribagh and Kolhan? You will be happy to know that by virtue of identifying almost 2000 CSCs in the above three divisions, eGovServices has become the largest CSC operator in the country (and perhaps in the world). We did face, and continue to face law and order issues, infrastructure issues and human resources issues but continue to invest in the Jharkhand CSC project. Since we are primarily a ‘Social Corporate’ where our primary objective for this project is to ensure that local jobs are created in a sustainable manner, we have taken the losses and the excess investments in our stride for the bigger objective of providing good quality employment. The 19

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

youth in Jharkhand have also risen to the occasion and are benefitting from the project as VLE’s. We hope the income generation capability of the VLE’s will increase once the connectivity becomes better in the state. What are some of the challenges in delivering e-Services via the CSCs? How can one attain sustainability of these ICT kiosks? The primary challenge is connectivity. eGovServices is a CSC operator and not a telecom operator. We feel it is important for large telecom players to step in and provide good quality connectivity in the state, not only for higher income generation of the CSCs but for overall development of the state. I believe that Prof Leonard Waverman of London Business School says that economies experience a 0.5% of additional growth for every extra 10 phones per 100 persons. The second issue is of law and order. Our employees and our VLE’s are increasingly facing threats from local hoodlums who pass themselves off as naxalites. Sometimes the threats are also from naxalites. Fortunately, through an intense and extensive on-ground information dissemination programme, we have been able to communicate to the naxalites that the CSC initiative will actually benefit the people. However, the hoodlums are the different issue and they are severly impeding the progress of the project. By our original plans, we would have finished deploying all the CSCs by now, had we not faced such problems. The third strange problem that we see is that the lower level government officials feel that they are the ‘inspectors’ of the project rather than partners in the project. This difference in approach changes the very nature and spirit of the project. Unless all the stakeholders participate constructively and positively and work towards resolving the issues in a sincere manner, we will not be able to achieve the expected outcome of the project–we will only have the output of CSCs operating, but the larger public benefits will not be there. What are the technological issues in implementing the CSC programme? How can the private sector provide support?

As mentioned in the previous question, power and connectivity are the two most serious issues. Places where we invested in generators are now complaining about the rising fuel costs. Places where we invested in invertors, are complaining that there is not enough electricity available to charge the batteries of the invertor. We feel that the large telecom and power companies must step forward to address this issue, not only for CSCs but also for the benefit of the entire state economy. Under the NeGP, a media campaign plan has been envisaged to raise awareness regarding the CSCs. What are the various means by which eGovServices is campaigning for general awarenss about CSCs in Jharkhand? Coming from media, you would appreciate it better that the nature of media in the rural areas is very different from the urban areas. We do have a working relationship with Prabhat Khabar, the largest circulation Hindi daily in Jharkhand. Beyond that, we have mulit-channel approach in Jharkhand, including word of mouth, spread by local influence networks, posters, street plays and demonstration of the Pragya Kendras (CSCs of Jharkhand) in various fairs, government seminars etc. The Government of Jharkhand has been extremely supportive in this and we are especially thankful to Mr R S Sharma, the Secretary, IT, Government of Jharkhand for his unstinting support. What are some of your future plans to expand your market in the coming years. As I mentioned, we are a ‘social corporate’ and our concept of market is very different from that of a traditional corporate. If we are able to better the lives of more people, we believe we have expanded our market. Therefore, if we continue to positively impact more people in Jharkhand, we believe we are expanding our market. In addition, we believe that there are many other areas where our expertise and our understaning and intellectual property can go a long way in bettering the lives of people. We are in discussions with several government agencies for helping them implement such initiatives in a sustainable manner.

Ministry of Railways (India) takes the IT Route Presenting his fifth budget, the Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav defined IT Vision for the Indian Railways which will be implemented over the next five years with clear focus on three core areas: freight service management, passenger service management and general management. Indian Railways is planning for the integration of present and future IT applications for improvement of operational efficiency, transparency in working and to provide better services to the customers. He further said that the nationwide communication infrastructure will provide the foundation for a common delivery network and platform. Modern technologies like Geographical Information System (GIS), Geographical Positioning System (GPS) and Radio Frequency Identi-

fication (RFID) will be deployed. Indian Railways is exploring the possibility of issuing reserved and unreserved rail tickets through 300 million mobile phones in the country which is expected to increase to 500 million by 2010. IT companies were not far behind in their praise for Lalu Yadav. Companies like Satyam Computers are already in talks with the Railways for outsourcing deals while others see a major role for their firms in several initiatives that the Railway Minister outlined in his budget. Linking of call centers for freight and passenger services management, the national train enquiry system, on-line display in coaches and stations, tele-booking, the proposed surge in e-ticket booking were other initiatives that found favour with the industry.

www.egovonline.net

EVENT DIARY

CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards The CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards 2006-07 were announced during the 42nd CSI Annual Convention at Grand Ashok, Bangalore, India on December 1st 2007. Instituted in 2002, the CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards encourage the spectacular efforts by states and organisations in the implementation and development of indigenously developed practices and software in the area of e-Governance that benefit the common citizen. Being held for the fifth successive year, the CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards are an annual process of identifying and recognising the best e-Governance initiatives in India, particularly in the government services. The awards received tremendous response in terms of enthusiasm and participation. The awards function was held at the annual CSI convention and attended by dignitaries from the IT industry, as well as personalities from government and nongovernment organisations. Kailash Vijayvergiya, Minister of IT, Science and Technology and Public Works, Government of Madhya Pradesh was the guest of honour on the occasion. A book titled ‘Compendium of e-Governance Project Initiatives in India’ edited by Gen RK Bagga and Piyush Gupta was released which documents projects competing for the CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards 2006-07. It gives an insight to all stakeholders in e-Governance and shares the critical success factors in the implementation process. Speaking on the occasion, Prof KK Aggarwal, President, CSI said, “Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are increasingly being used by governments to deliver services to citizens at convenient geographical locations. The objective of e-Governance initiatives is to improve the reach, make services more transparent and reduce response time with reducing costs. The aim of the CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards is to recognise and replicate the successful initiatives of states and organisations in achieving good governance using ICT. We have continuously improved the evaluation process making these awards the true benchmark for quality conception and implementation of e-Governance initiatives. This year we received over 100 entries. Heartiest congratulations to all the winners.” Mr. Ravi Teja, Associate VP & Head - Enterprise Transformation Group, Nihilent said, “Change management is a subject matter that is currently sweeping public and private sector organisations. It addresses the changes being faced by modern public administrators, both internally and externally. The biggest challenge of deploying e-Governance is not technology but change management in terms of people and processes that the automated environment will introduce. Nihlent is committed to supporting such initiatives that create 22 }

Mr Raj Kumar, Principal Secretary Gujarat receiving Best e-Governed Sate Award from Shri Kailash Vijayvergiya, Minister of IT, Science and Technology and Public Works, Govt. of Madhya Pradesh. Mr Lalit Sawhney and Ms Neeta Shah, Director e-Gov Gujarat are also seen in the photograph.

a sustainable process for change moving in the direction of good governance.”

CSI-NIHILENT E-GOVERNANCE AWARDS FOR 2006-07

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Goa, Jharkhand and Kerala jointly received the award for Progressive e-Governed State. The Special Jury Award for Best e-Governed Department was given to Department of Education, National Capital Territory (NCT), Delhi. e-Procurement and VAT Information Systems from Gujarat were declared joint winners in G2B (Governmentto-Business) category, while the runner up award went to Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organization (PESO), Nagpur. Child Record Information System (ChRIS) from Madhya Pradesh was adjudged the Best e-Governance Project G2C–Rural (Government-to-Citizen) and Samadhan Ek Din Mein from Madhya Pradesh was the runner up. Centralised Allotment Process for the Professional Course Admissions (CAPNic) from Kerala and Web based Rail Reservation (Internet Ticketing) from IRCTC were joint winners in G2C–Urban and Rural category. The Best e-Governance Project Award G2G/G2E (Government-to-Government/Government-to Employee) was jointly shared by Integrated System for Food & Grains Management from Food Corporation of India and DC*Suite from Palakkad, Kerala while Basic Services/ Amenities Management Programme ‘PARAKH’ from Madhya Pradesh was the runner up. www.egovonline.net

Opportunities for Digital India

Parallel Tracks

29-31 July 2008 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi

Organisers

Co-Organisers

knowledge for change

Supporting Partners

www.eINDIA.net.in

Key Speakers 2007 Adrian Hall Director of Mobile Learning Steljes Ltd., UK

Kuldeep Nagi Asst. Director, e-Learning Assumption University Thailand

Asha Swarup Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Government of India

Astrid Dufborg Executive Director, Global eSchools and Communities Initiatives (GeSCI), Dublin Ireland

K.S. Lasith Gunawardena Lecturer, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka

Dr. Basheerahmed Shadrach Sr. Programme Officer telecentre.org/IDRC India

Buckley Dan Principal Consultant, Cambridge Education England, UK

Michael Clarke Head ICT4D, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada

Isabel Guerrero Country Director â&#x20AC;&#x201C; India World Bank

Cho Cheung Moon Director, Global Cooperation and Planning Team, Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion (KADO) Korea

Mike Erlin Regional Vice President Blackboard, UK

Jainder Singh Secretary, Department of IT Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Government of India

Chris Thatcher Director, SE Asia Educational Development, Cambridge Education, Thailand

Nancy Knowlton CEO, SMART Technologies Canada

J Satyanarayanan CEO, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) India

Gerolf Weigel Head - ICT4D, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Berne Switzerland

Shammema Parveen Knowledge Officer, Edutech Middle East

Dr. Maxine Olson UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative (India Head)

Harsha Liyanage Managing Director- Fusion Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka

Dr. Subarna Shakya Executive Director, National Information Technology Center, Ministry of Environment, Science & Technology, Govt. of Nepal

S Khuntia Joint Secretary, Department of Secondary Education and Literacy, Ministry of HRD Government of India

K.M.Taj-Biul Hasan Producer (TV & Radio) Media Centre, Bangladesh Open University, Bangladesh

Dr. Youn-Min Park Manager, KADO Korea

Dr. William Dar Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Topics (ICRISAT), India

eINDIA2008: Introduction Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) announces and invites you to join the premier ICT4D (Information and Communication Technology for Development) event - ‘eINDIA2008’. The event aims to examine the myriad challenges, which appear in integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to different spheres of life, to share and work together, to analyze and assess, as well as to work towards realising a technology enabled knowledge society.

The eINDIA2007 Conference and Exhibition attracted more than 1200 participants from around 50 countries representing all continents, making it India’s largest ICT4D conference.

Programme Advisory Board Chair

eINDIA2008 (http://www.eINDIA.net.in), fourth annual ICT4D forum in India will be convened at New Delhi, India from 29th to 31st July 2008. The three day forum aims to render active conferencing, networking and showcasing, while organising six seminal tracks- egov INDIA, Digital Learning INDIA, Telecentre Forum INDIA, eHealth INDIA, mServe INDIA, eAgriculture INDIA, and the i4d film festival As an international event, apart from the general public and the media, the eINDIA2008 Conference and Exhibition expects to bring together

Co-Chair

R Chandrashekhar

S Khuntia

Additional Secretary, DIT, Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India

Joint Secretary, Department of Secondary Education and Literacy, Ministry of HRD, Government of India

discuss and exchange knowledge and ideas that will shape the future of global ICT development. The Conference offers a perfect platform for establishing and fostering high level networking contacts with leading representatives of the world’s ICT sector on both governmental and business levels.

Conference Objectives The conference aims to: •

The Venue: Pragati Maidan

eINDIA2007 featured the work of more than 300 speakers, addressing all forms of technology-enhanced knowledge needs, including a rich mix of themes, topics and a variety of session formats. 2000 high level representatives of the ICT industry, government, civil society, academia, and the private sector, from all across the globe to share the best practices and digital opportunities for development, to

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Provide a collaborative forum to participants to share knowledge and ideas, enabling them to develop cross-sectoral contacts and partnerships, as well as to enhance their knowledge, expertise, and abilities; Give a reference framework for describing impact, and looking at approaches and methods currently used in the ICT4D sector, and their suitability; Highlight barriers of ICT integration in India and for other countries, and identify gaps in current research; Synthesise the main results of experience sharing and the progress made in recent years to provide a baseline for discussion with policy makers, and community of practitioners.

Exhibition

Organiser

The programme will feature an Exhibition and Demonstration area, where leading international ICT4D players, manufacturers, suppliers and service providers shall present their latest products and services. Participants will evaluate the exhibition as a critical meeting point for professional interaction within the conference.

C e n t r e f o r S c i e n c e, D e v e l o p m e n t a n d M e d i a S t u d i e s (www.csdms.in) is a leading Asian non-governmental institution engaged in advocacy, research and community building in eGovernment, ICT for Development, and knowledge management issues, through capacity building and media initiatives.

Lead Speak The potential of IT to stimulate the development of different sectors of the domestic economy in India is enormous. It can dramatically reduce the cost of communications, improve access to technology and marketing capabilities for the rural poor, eliminate intermediary exploitation in the production and distribution chains, increase government accountability, and stimulate democratic participation. Thiru A. Raja, Honâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ble Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Government of India

e-Governance is never going to be really effective, unless it is also tied in very closely with the right to information. On the other hand, RTI is not going to be very successful and in fact, it could be doomed to be a failure, if it is not tied with the concept of e-Governance. Wajahat Habibullah, Chief Information Commissioner, Government of India

The rural communities of India, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, have similar issues and challenges and require similar assistance. Thus we could collaborate to provide the solutions that they require in a more efficient manner. More minds working on itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; will certainly create more superior applications for other areas. Dato Dr. Halim Man, Secretary General, Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications, Malaysia

We are now looking towards creating a National ICT policy in School Education. During the coming years we have the formidable task of providing literacy to more than 300 million people. Champak Chatterjee, Secretary, Department of Secondary Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India

It is the right time for implementing e-Governance effectively and a better way, for instance, explosion in IT and IT-enabled services, explosion of service providers and manpower, mobile telephony, ICT services in the economy and market, explosion of ICT4D and e-Government initiatives... An enabling environment has been created for e-Governance in India. R. Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India

We are such a huge country, the number of farm holding is so large that ICTs offer an opportunity to meet the information gap. ICTs need to be harnessed in a much more significant manner than we have done so far. A K Agarwal, Joint Secretary (IT), Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India

egov INDIA2008, the fourth in its series is an important track in the annual eINDIA event. The conference is the platform for convening of all stakeholders, policy-makers, practitioners, industry leaders, academicians and architects of e-Government projects - to discuss the achievements, challenges, and the progress made towards achieving the goals of e-Governance. In India, we are witnessing that some states are far ahead in e-Governance, while some have just begun their journey. egov INDIA2008 will fulfill the need to create a common ground for equitable governance provision, which facilitates a process of overall development of the country. Along with Exhibition, it will be a forum to showcase best practices, innovative technologies and ICT solutions. The conference will provide an opportunity to meet face to face with hundreds of potential customers in the fastest growing economy of Asia.

KEY SPEAKERS 2007 egov INDIA 2008 WILL FOCUS ON: • • • • • • • • •

Government Process Re-engineering for Good Governance Administrative and Policy Reforms needed for e-Governance in India Challenges in implementation of National e-Governance Plan Security and legal issues Open Source for sustainable e-Governance Mission Mode Projects and the progress made Emerging Technologies and their use by the government to deliver services Lessons from successful and failed Projects International Best Practices

Who should attend • • • • • • • • • • •

Heads of e-Government CIOs & CTOs IT Directors and Managers Heads of Information and Communication Public Administrators IT Project Directors Integration and Development Managers Technical Architects ICT Services Directors Strategic Planners Information Systems Managers

Delegate Profile The conference will have multi-stakeholder participation involving governments, industry associations, civil society organisations and research and academic institutions. This includes • ICT verticals: CEO’s, CIO’s, CTOs • Key officers and departmental heads from Ministry of IT, Industries & Commerce, Public Administration, Human Resource Development, Urban Development, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj • State Governments – IT secretaries and departmental heads • Senior representatives from International Agencies • NGO Practitioners • Professional and research institutes • Embassy representatives • Enterprise Public Sector Units • Local Industries • International and national media

Wajahat Habibullah Chief Information Commissioner, Central Information Commission, Government of India

R Chandrashekhar Additional Secretary, DIT, Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India

B K Sinha Additional Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India

Rohit Kumar Country Head, Public Sector, Microsoft India

Satish Kaushal Country Manager- Government, IBM India

Anirudh Prabhakaran Chief Operating Officer, South Asia, 3i-Infotech

Prakash Kumar Joint Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India

Y S Malik Joint Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India

EXHIBITION FLOOR PLAN Hall No. 11 & 10 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi

Media and Partners Zone Cafeteria 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 Cafeteria 18 sqm 9 sqm 9 sqm 9 sqm 9 sqm 9 sqm 9 sqm 9 sqm 9 sqm 9 sqm 21 sqm

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Cambridge University Press

MBD Alchemie

Springer

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17 16 130 sqm

63 sqm

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mServe Amitabh Mukherjee +91-9871686548 Email: mserve@eINDIA.net.in

56 sqm 60 sqm

eAgriculture Rajat Banerjee +91-9910573590 Email: eAgriculture@eINDIA.net.in

84 sqm 81 sqm 108 sqm

Indian Telecentre Forum Vignesh S +91-9999654458 Email: ITF@eINDIA.net.in

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Cargo Entry

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NIIT

Promethean

eHealth Dipanjan Banerjee +91-9968251626 Email: eHealth@eINDIA.net.in

54 sqm

Educomp 18 sqm

18 sqm

Digital Learning Siddharth Verma +91-9811561645 Email: DL@eINDIA.net.in

Lunch Area

e-gov Gautam Navin +91-9818125257 Email: egov@eINDIA.net.in

40 sqm

21 sqm

90A

54 sqm

18 sqm

27 sqm

Designmate

16A

ACTIS

25 sqm

Lunch Area

Contact

24 sqm

87 12 sqm

40 sqm

21 sqm

S Chand

36 sqm 19

18 sqm

20 sqm

Luidia Inc

18 sqm

12 sqm

16 sqm

18 sqm

12 sqm

20 sqm

Call for papers:Open now Submission of Abstracts:28th Feb Notice of Selection:20th March Submission of Final Paper: 15th April Online Registration: Up till 30th June 2007 Exhibition Booking: Up till 15th June 2007

15 sqm

30 sqm

12 sqm

Everonn

9 sqm

12 sqm

42 sqm

Digital Learning Exhibition Area

Registration: www.eINDIA.net.in/register

9 sqm

25 sqm

63 20 sqm

Digital Learning Exhibition Area

Abstract Submission: www.eINDIA.net.in/abstract

9 sqm

9 sqm 6 sqm

Important Links

9 sqm

54 sqm

indicates tentatively blocked

138

137

32 sqm

60 sqm

135

36 sqm

136

24 sqm

110 15sqm

111 9 sqm

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9 sqm

113

Metalearn

134

48 sqm

SMART Technologies

84 sqm

Digital Learning Exhibition Area

122

121

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27 sqm 9 sqm 12 sqm 9 sqm 12 sqm 9 sqm 12 sqm

115

15 sqm

114

15 sqm

egov, eHealth and mServe Exhibition Area

21 sqm

DEFENCE FOCUS

Getting IT Ready for Sub-Conventional Warfare Increasingly defence organisations are relying on technologies-databases , middleware, collaboration capabilities and business applications-based on open standards. These help organisations get more from existing technology. Sandeep Bangia

Defence organisations are turning to advances in Information Technology to help them modernise their military. In the past few decades, the challenges that the defence organisations have confronted have been dramatically different from the past. Troops continue to guard not only international borders but also play a key role in preventing infiltration by antinational elements. While defence budgets are increasing, the initiatives that need funding are also increasing. There is a need to equip soldiers with 21st century weapons. However, increased spending on weapons modernisation must compete with the increased budgetary allocations on priority sectors like education, health and social welfare. The armed forces must also compete with the private sector to attract, retain and develop a highly skilled, professional workforce. The battlefield environment is now dominated by sub-conventional warfare and the forces are combatting an enemy that is hidden and undefined. This demands a workforce that possesses a high educational standard, is physically fit and mentally alert. The above challenges have highlighted the need for a revolutionary change in the nation’s defence systems and processes. The vision is to have a coordinated organisation

30 }

that can flexibly respond to military threats and use Information Technology as a key asset. There is a growing realisation that Information Technology must facilitate the transformation of the defence forces and strengthen India’s military capabilities. Defence Information systems must support the achievement of the following outcomes: • Force Readiness: Hire, support, and retain military and civilian personnel with the skills to meet the mission needs. • Logistics Modernisation: Provide logistics support that responds to the needs of the warfighter at an affordable cost. • Network Centric Operations: Support information based warfighting with interoperable network centric systems.

FORCE READINESS

Human capital is a key differentiator for the defence forces. Today, agencies like US Navy Recruiting Command are adopting ‘Targeted Marketing Campaigns’ to recruit the right people. The right candidates need to be attracted and their interest sustained through regular interactions. Such interactions also help capture new recruit priorities and preferences. Job candidates are approached in the same way as prospective customers: carefully identified and targeted, attracted to the defence force and its brand, and then sold on the job. Having recruited the right people, it is vital to align the officer’s action with the mission and goals of the defence agency. To achieve this, organisations must follow the editorial best practices for communicating internal news and events. Knowledge Portals enable employees to submit information within their departments as well to a broader audience. A centralised knowledge repository also helps relieve employees of the administrative burdens of accessing information while enabling them to remain focused on the job at hand. www.egovonline.net

The tracking of the skills and qualifications of personnel and enabling detailed insight into performance and career path progression helps increase employee satisfaction.

LOGISTICS MODERNISATION

As war strategy becomes more dependent on rapid implementation and quick response, it is essential that realtime logistics systems be in place that can get the troops the resources, provisions, weapons and machine parts that are needed to support them. • Business processes to ‘manage and maintain assets’ make sure that assets are serviced and are always ready for use. • Device Relationship Management uses the Internet to access real-time information trapped in intelligent devices and transforms it into business insight. • With remote diagnostic ability, the service delivery model does not have to be reactive in nature. • With a proactive service delivery, service organisations can become more customer-centric by anticipating problems. Preventive Maintenance Solutions provide the ability to proactively keep the customers up and running without costly downtime. With multi-trigger ability, preventive maintenance is no longer tied to monthly, quarterly, or annual time intervals. Usage and threshold triggers fire-off whenever there is a sign that equipment requires preventive maintenance.

NETWORK CENTRIC WARFARE OPERATIONS

Military organisations are undergoing their most extensive transformation since decades and are rapidly evolving from an industrial-based model to a 21st-century information-based war fighting force. Network-centric warfare is emerging as the guiding paradigm for driving this transformation and, in

a reversal of roles from previous transformations, is drawing its guidance from the commercial business world. Imagine a scenario when soldiers on ground – or horsebackusing laptops or PDA’s send latitude/longitude to orbiting aircraft which then launch precision-guided munitions to defeat enemy armor and artillery. This is an example of ov

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information-based war-fighting, where systems are interconnected in near real-time and provide order-of-magnitude improvements in the ability to bring commander’s intent and overwhelming force to the enemy at precise points. The current issues facing the military are how to best make use of Information Technology (IT), how should the military’s 21st century IT infrastructure be built, and how will forces organise to make the most use of IT. The military is beginning to realise the power of finding and sharing relevant information and using it in a timely manner to keep our enemy off balance. Threats, targets, intelligence analysis, logistics information, and personnel data can now be weaved together to paint that common operational picture and allow the theatre commander to prioritise missions much more rapidly than before. The theatre commander must have information systems that can recognise sensitive information and the users who need it in a flexible yet secure way. Network-centric operations require a high degree of collaboration over a robust technology infrastructure. Realtime target planning, intelligence sharing, ‘self synchronisation’ and the ability to get inside the enemy’s decision loop all require users in different locations to be able to share information simultaneously. Collaboration technologies provide electronic chat rooms, virtual whiteboards and the ability to manage voice, video and data. A critical element of establishing the common operational picture is the ability to represent data in geographic terms, such as force structure and threats arrayed on a map. This helps the commander, war fighting forces, and intelligence analysts and logistics providers to synchronise and respond to events in much shorter time-frames. In a network-centric information infrastructure, geographic imagery is referenced to predefined spatial coordinate systems to provide accurate targeting and intelligence analysis capabilities.

CONCLUSION

Increasingly defence organisations are relying on technologies –databases, middleware, collaboration capabilities and business applications –based on open standards. These help organisations get more from existing technology. Physical assets are less important than the intelligent use of knowledge. Agencies with technology infrastructures and business practices that help them get inside the decision cycle of their enemies are at a decided advantage.

Sandeep Bangia is Director for Government, Education and Healthcare at Oracle Corporation. Sandeep oversees business development, executive relationships with customers and partners, and delivery of IT solutions to national and local governments; intelligence; higher education; and healthcare.

DEFENCE FOCUS

Strengthening Defence The EMS way Ram Gopal Gandhekar INTRODUCTION

In the nineties, with the advent of the World Wide Web, globally there emerged a trend of increased deployment of IT by governments. Infact, most of the governments, weighed down by the rising expectations and demands of a highly aware citizenry, willingly decided to believe that there can be a new definition of public governance characterised by enhanced efficiency, transparency, accountability and a citizenorientation in the adoption of IT enabled governance. The emerging trend of IT deployment by governments translates itself to a march towards better and efficient governance mechanisms by enabling amongst others, an increased number of informative forums that facilitate several useful government to citizen interactions.

helping to reduce costs. The EMS portfolio spans software for Networks (Voice, Data, and Wireless), security, compliance, storage, performance, availability, configuration, operations and IT life-cycle management, and should be backed by world-class services, support and research.

E-GOVERNANCE MARKET DRIVERS

Though e-Government is still in its infancy, over 20 states/ union territories already have an IT policy in place. In terms of basic computerisation, police departments, treasury, land records, irrigation, justice and online customer service centres are seen as having the maximum potential. Various state governments have already expanded their network (WAN, LAN, Wireless, Voice) to facilitate wider reach of all e-Governance projects/initiatives. Several district headquarters are in various stages of usefully implementing computerisation to have an online centralised mechanism for data sharing. There are several demands from all government sectors for efficient infrastructure management initiatives to proactively monitor and ensure zero downtime of mission critical applications. Also the legacy systems and the roll-outs of new applications, compels a centralised end-to-end monitoring system to address all key domains including networks, systems, database, application, middle-ware, wireless, voice infrastructure, IP and Non IP devices.

EMS SOFTWARE

Enterprise Management System (EMS) software helps organisations to efficiently and effectively manage Information Technology (IT) resources, tasks and processes in order to meet the ever-shifting business requirements, and deliver flexible and responsive IT Service Management (ITSM), while 32 }

PERCEIVED VALUE PROPOSITION

Apart from the scalability and extensibility of the solution, the list below indicates the key value propositions, which should be factored in, while going in for an EMS: • Completely Vendor Independent • Network Management system (Layer 1 to Layer 7 support) • Solution for Wireless Networks • Complete Lifecycle of Asset Management (Assets Include IT and Non–IT) and Software Asset Management • Provisioning (OS on bare metal remotely) • Industry standard and ITIL Compliant Helpdesk software • Log Trail Management • Application dependency discovery without agents strengthens the CCMDB for any dynamic changes. • Offers True Business Service Management (BSM) • Automates workflows/processes (Information Technology Infrastructure Library, ITIL) through process managers by integrating the Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) and Operational Management products seamlessly. www.egovonline.net

SOLUTIONS FOR GOVERNMENT

NETWORK-CENTRIC DEFENCE OPERATIONS

The vendor’s portfolio should deliver to federal, state and local government agencies with cost-effective, monitoring and management of critical applications, and network-based systems. These solutions should help government agencies to meet requirements for defence, homeland security, intelligence and civilian initiatives. It should be highly scalable and provide rapidly deployable solutions that deliver end-to-end IT service management, problem isolation, and automation to help government agencies operate more effectively.

The EMS / Network Management Software (NMS) portfolio helps defence agencies meet the needs of network-centric operations by delivering real-time IT management and common operational views to improve and monitor the availability of critical services. From wireless to terrestrial networks, these products deliver real-time monitoring and fault diagnostics to help deliver reliable situational awareness and command and control. The various application suites provide a single point-of-control for managing all information technology, helping to quickly identify and resolve IT problems before they impact mission critical communication and access to information.

CIVILIAN SERVICES

The EMS solution should help agencies support key drivers of government transformation. This simplifies the management of complex infrastructures, helping agencies to centralise the control of IT silos and bring new services and programmes on-line more quickly. By supporting the monitoring of both civilian and inter-government services and programmes, these solutions help agencies improve reliability of critical applications and services. Easily deployable, they should provide a solid foundation to integrate legacy applications and new IT resources into a single ‘pane of glass’ for improved operational efficiency.

COMPLIANCE AND STANDARDS

Industry standards such as the Federal Enterprise Architecture and ITIL are playing an increasingly significant role in how agencies manage information technology. By adopting these standards and best practice methodologies like ITIL for IT service management and Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) for improved IT controls, government agencies can better align IT with their business objectives.

EMS SOLUTIONS FOR DEFENCE

In the case of defence sector, the global trends in terms of expectations are as follows: • Electronic / network warfare - now regarded as absolutely critical • Increasing diversity in defence missions demands greater agility and integration, without cost and complexity • Mission assurance of network, rationalisation of Infrastructure, Application, Networks and Communications, retain silo/point solutions (where needed) but consolidate event and alerts via a ‘manager of managers’ • Increased need for store and forward capability, especially for deployed land and sea elements, Network Enabled Capability (NEC) • Real-time e2e Management This clearly states that whatever the business, there is a constant transformation that demands for innovation. ov

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In general the solutions is geared to offer : • Real-time situational awareness and global view of networked systems, applications and services • Assurance of war fighter’s ability to access information • Network Common Operational Picture (NETCOP) to improve mission effectiveness • Comprehensive visibility of global missions and operational units • At-a-glance status views of combat systems and supporting systems (viz C4ISR) and applications • Real-time visibility and status across the C4ISR infrastructure • NMS solution rapidly overlay onto existing C4ISR systems • Meets the commander’s need for real-time situational awareness from a total force perspective 33

DEFENCE FOCUS

The EMS / NMS need to provide : • Centralised management of networks, systems and applications with real-time monitoring, alarm reduction and problem isolation • Visibility of critical IT services facilitated through a network-based common operational picture • Faster problem notification and resolution, significantly reducing the Mean-Mime-to-Resolution (MTTR) of problems • Proactive identification of mission-impacting outages with advanced escalation and automation of first-line troubleshooting. • Mission assurance by testing connectivity and latency between military and network access points • Testing the availability and responsiveness of applications to ensure the timely access to information •

Implement service quality improvements and mitigate business risk

IBM TIVOLI NETCOOL

REALTIME ACTIVE DASHBOARDS

Active Dashboards helps business (government / defence) and operations staff to understand the complex relationships between services and supporting technology. It gives organisations advanced, real-time visualisation of services and processes in a comprehensive service dependency model. Active Dashboards incorporates data from a broad array of IT resources and business support systems that contribute to defining a service. Examples include applications, systems and network devices, and business-related assets such as transactions, revenue and incident records. This information is populated into a real-time, federated service model for automated service impact analysis, root-cause analysis and service level tracking. Active Dashboards also provide complete visibility into business services and processes. It can be used to: • Understand the cross-domain dependencies as they exist - in real time. align business and operational • Strategically requirements. • Dynamically track operational, business and customer SLAs and KPIs. • Automatically assess the impact of availability, performance, security and business events on service health. 34

The IBM Tivoli Netcool portfolio provides real-time management and visibility of complex enterprise environments from high level service views to the underlying infrastructure dependencies. By combining highly scalable event consolidation, and correlation with business impact analysis, the Netcool suite helps organisations proactively manage critical applications and services and control operations costs. The Tivoli Netcool portfolio offers real-time dashboards with integrated business and IT metrics to enable organisations to achieve predictive service management and true strategic business planning. • Assure service availability: Proactively detect developing problem with business applications, service and processes before they impact customers and revenue and help assure business continuity. • Reduce operational expenses: Enable successful standards adoption including: ITIL, COBIT, and Six Sigma. Improve IT staff efficiency, and reduce mean-timeto-repair through automated analysis and response. • Improve Return-on-Investment: Maximise the return on your existing IT assets through the broadest domain management, out-of-the-box third party tool integrations and comprehensive, end-to-end service visibility.

www.egovonline.net

Print Media Partner

DEFENCE FOCUS

•

Network Management- Tivoli Netcool solutions for network management provide discovery, inventory, diagnosis, and advanced correlation capabilities for layer 1, 2, and 3 networks, helping organisations maximise network uptime. Netcool solutions combine: real-time monitoring, root-cause analysis, and diagnosis, to help organisations achieve higher service availability and to gain the network intelligence required to reduce capital and operational expenditures. Application and Systems Managements- IBM Tivoli also provides end to end monitoring of host systems and applications running on those systems. From Windows to UNIX and mainframe systems, you can manage changing conditions about system configuration, status, and performance, as well as applications and file systems - automatically notifying you when problems are detected. Gain complete monitoring of critical applications, including SAP R/3, Oracle Applications,

and online trading and Web applications. Track detailed performance metrics for applications, including Apache, Oracle, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft IIS and many more. IBM Tivoli Netcool have been used by many leading large enterprises, service providers, government and defence customers worldwide for the integrated offering it offers and out of the box adaptors available to monitor the most complex heterogeneous environment.

Ram Gopal Gandhekar (rgandhek@in.ibm.com ) is Software Speciality Sales Manager Automation Lead, Tivoli IBM India Private Limited

Real-Time Networking of the Indian Armed Forces The Indian armed forces are in the process of modernising their organisational as well as operational structures and as a consequence they are undergoing their most extensive transformation from an industrial-based model to a information based network centric operations. The communication infrastructure of the Indian army is undergoing a paradigm shift from platform centric to network centric warfare. The older voice predominant network is now being replaced by state-of-art packet switched infrastructure, which can handle voice, video and data simultaneously. This is also called as “Triple Play” in telecom parlance. The future battlefields are likely to be packed with a plethora of electromagnetic emitters, including communication equipment, radars and jammers. Management of the electromagnetic space, to avoid interference among these systems, would thus pose a major challenge. Recent combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon has highlighted the requirement of strong and secure communication infrastructure which is survivable for battlefield management. The Indian Army, along with the Indian Air force (IAF), will showcase their joint synergy on the battlefield during ‘fire and manoeuvre’ combat exercise, codenamed “Brazen Chariots”, to be conducted at the Pokharan field firing range in western Rajasthan, during March 2008. They will also showcase the two armed force’s progress in their communication infrastructure too. Breaking away from the traditional approach, the Indian Army together with the Indian Air Force is set to project ‘manoeuvre warfare doctrine’ of the Indian Armed Forces. The Indian armed forces would spend US$ 10 billion over the next ten years on equipping themselves with network-centric capabilities. The networking of all the weapons and sensors of the three armed forces would mean whatever one of them could see, can be seen by all, and it would certainly increase the 36

situational awareness of the battlefield for all the arms of the defence services. The Indian Navy on its part has taken small but firm steps towards networked operations. The approach itself is twopronged. First, the plan is to net-enable the existing navy and then planning to work towards a net-centric future navy. According to Navy Chief Admiral Suresh Mehta, networking is the key to maritime operations in the 21st century. He said, “we already have potent weapons and platforms and additional surface, air and sub-surface combatants such as the ‘Vikramaditya’; the IAF MiG29K aircraft, among others are on the way. We require networking them and synergising their individual abilities.” The IAF will develop Software-Defined Radios (SDR) for its optical data link project to be used in its network-centric operations. SDR is a radio communication system, which can tune to any frequency band. It can receive any modulation across a large frequency spectrum by means of as little hardware as possible and by processing the signals through software. This will help the IAF to link up with the hardware of the networks created for the other two forces as well. The IAF has also released four Request For Proposals to four multinational companies that include Rafale, Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI), Lockheed Martin and ST Engineering. Lockheed Martin, in collaboration with WIPRO Technologies, has set up a Centre of Excellence for NCO, the next generation battlefield management environment, called ‘Ambar Jyoti’, where all components of force-equipment, command and control and logistics are integrated into a seamless operation. With all the three services working towards networking their operations the level of jointness between the forces is going to be very high in future. The task of networking is being taken in real earnest. Consequently, the real-time networking of all services will be the major thrust area during the 11th and 12th Plan periods. www.egovonline.net

SPECIAL FOCUS

Fujitsu PalmSecure

Contactless Biometric Authentication Contactless Biometric Sensors are a boon to the various government programmes that require mass deployment and answers to the call of public hygiene. Fujitsu’s PalmSecure authenticates users on the basis of the active blood ﬂow in the veins of the palm. Since the biometric characteristics required to be authenticated resides inside the body, it is extremely difﬁcult to duplicate or transfer, making it ideal for various Defence and other key Government programmes. Sanjay Srivastava INTRODUCTION

Today, government and financial institutions are aggressively looking towards use of Biometrics to register the users and give them access to various programmes and services like Ration Cards, Driving License, Passports, PAN, Voters card, ATMs, Lockers, etc. Such initiatives on a mass scale are aimed at bringing transparency to the system and minimising the cost of operations. However, it also brings in the issue of public hygiene of using the same sensor and minimising the false acceptance rate at such a large scale. Contactless Biometric Technology like PalmSecure from Fujitsu provides the answer to these issues. PalmSecure is now available in India.

makes it possible for sensor to take a snapshot of what is beneath the outer skin, something very hard to read or steal and store it in an encrypted form on Database or Smartcard. This pattern does not change throughout the person’s life and is different even in left and right palm. The near-infrared rays in the palm vein scanner have no effect on the body when scanning.

KEY APPLICATIONS AREAS

Due to the above mentioned special characteristics, PalmSecure make an ideal choice for certain key applications like :

WHAT IS PALMSECURE

The PalmSecure sensor detects the structure of the pattern of veins on the palm of the human hand with the utmost precision from a distance of 4-6 cms. The scanner makes use of a special characteristic of the reduced hemoglobin coursing through the palm veins — it absorbs near-infrared light. This

•

March 2008

Visitor Verification : at various points in an organisation or location, specially applicable to cases like airport check-ins and boarding, monitoring and controlling visitors’ movement, etc. Physical Access Control : at very high security areas like Parliament, Government Offices, Critical Research and Development Facilities, Defence establishments, etc 37

COVER FEATURE

• •

•

• •

•

Logical Access Control: Access to sensitive data, ATM transaction access to private data of patients in hospitals, PC / Web Login, etc. Monitoring and Managing Various IDs on Large Scale: like on various e-Gov projects involving many identities, under various programmes. Sector-wise, PalmSecure is most ideal for: Government: Issuing Biometric ID card, Passport, Ration Cards, etc and control its misuse; very effective in maintaining Land Records, Wages Distribution, Pension Distribution and other social benefits; thus ensuring protection against forgery of various Govt. Documents, etc. Banking: Palm Vein data can be stored in smartcard (or in combination with Magnetic swipe cards), let verification takes place at ATM (or Locker). Medical Environment: PalmSecure helps in maintaining the hygiene factor in these areas; allow access of patients’ personal data only to the authorised person; helps in verifying during medical insurance.

Airport / Airline Check-in : Helps in ensuring passenger identity during boarding from check-in data; allow access in the plane and sensitive areas only to the authorised staff, thus protecting against false authorisation granted even in case of twins. Other areas : Enabling ignition systems in automobiles; System and folder Login; Access control at apartments; Time and attendance; Library ID management; Student ID management; Enabling cashless payments; Hotel room access, etc..

Biometric System

Authentication / Cost

Challenges

Voice (Contactless)

Affected by Noise, Health Conditions, etc.

Low / Low

Face (Contactless)

Sensitive to Lighting / Posture; Affected by Eyeglasses, Facial hair, Cosmetics; Chances of Unauthorized access to Twins

Low / Low

Fingerprint (Contact)

Affected by Dirt, Wet or Coated fingers especially workers in Tea Garden, Tobacco Plantations, Automotive Plants, Field workers, etc.; Concerns over public hygienic;

High / Low

IRIS (Contactless) Internal Organ of the Eye

Located behind a curved, wet, reflecting surface; Obscured by eyelashes, contact lenses, reflections; Deforms non-elastically as pupil changes size; Psychological resistance of offering the eye to the sensor

Very High / High

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/ addisadvans.html PalmSecure (Contactless)

Sensitive to Direct Sunlight / other direct fluorescent lightings

Very High / Low

CONCLUSION

“Fingerprint scans and face recognition ID methods are associated with the police by some people on a psychological level,” says Shigeru Sasaki, director of Fujitsu’s Media Solutions Laboratory. “In public areas, others don’t like the thought of touching what everyone else has touched for sanitary reasons. This is why we created a contactless palm vein scanner.” Fujitsu’s PalmSecure takes on the challenges faced by many of the current biometric technologies available today. The USP of being purely contactless makes PalmSecure an ideal choice for deployment in various public programmes and services and addresses the concerns of public hygiene and convenience on a mass scale and providing lower cost of operations and maintenance cost. No doubt, PalmSecure is increasingly being adopted by many banks, hospitals, Government projects worldwide.

Sanjay Srivastava is Manager, Sales and Marketing, Fujitsu India Ltd. and currently promoting Fujitsu’s PalmSecure in India. He can be contacted at sanjay.srivastava@in.fujitsu.com

www.egovonline.net

M-CONNECT

Watching India with Interest!

Valérie Faudon, Vice President Marketing Programmes, Alcatel-Lucent

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“India is a very good example of a country that has embraced the telecentre concept, and people want to hear about what you have done. It really shows how we can combine public money and private money in a very effective way,” says Valérie Faudon, Vice President Marketing Programmes, Alcatel-Lucent, to egov magazine www.egovonline.net

Please tell us about the growth and operations of AlcatelLucent. Alcatel-Lucent is a very big telecom solutions provider in the world. We work in 130 countries, supplying network solutions to telecom operators and we are also the broadband leaders worldwide. So our contribution to broadband is big. We are the first at the backbone level because we are a strong provider for submarine cable, which is very important, especially for regions that are completely unconnected like South-Eastern Africa. So we provide backbone network and optical fibre as well as access. We are the world leader in broadband access technology. We have a big presence in Asia and India as well. We have 40% of all the fibre networks in the world. We also have a complete microwave transmission portfolio. We believe that we are a key contributor in the development of broadband access and services. We are using CDMA in Idea and Reliance, the leading telecom companies. We have signed a contract (GSM) in Cambodia and a contract with Antel in Uruguay as well, where we are trying to expand the broadband coverage. We are actively pursuing WiMAX contracts in India. There are several versions of WiMAX that have appeared in the market, and Alcatel-Lucent, along with other major players in the industry is committed to the latest version, WiMAX Rev-e. We delivered a cost-effective WiMAX Rev-e solution to the market in 2008. It is commercially available and ready for mass market deployment now. It enables voice and broadband connectivity for fixed, nomadic or mobile use in urban, suburban and rural areas. In addition, it is a complete, turn-key, end-to-end integrated WiMAX wireless broadband solution, including base stations, wireless access controllers, and mobile computing devices. This natively IP solution can be seamlessly integrated into any IP network. It efficiently complements any fixed or mobile infrastructure and provides a natural evolution to 4G. This solution builds on the market success of Wi-Fi technology by offering end-users ubiquitous, low-cost broadband connectivity anywhere they are. Alcatel-Lucent is number one in WiMAX Rev-e (with more than 70 pilots and trials across the world and 21 contracts signed since the beginning of 2007) pilots and recently announced commercial deployments. We recently announced a contract in Pakistan with Orascom Telecom’s subsidiary Mobilink and we announced a contract in Brazil. We also announced a very large contract with Russia. So we are confident that WiMAX will soon achieve mass market levels, and and this will drive down the cost of the CPE devices. These low cost CPE’s will enable service providers to make broadband more affordable for a greater majority of India’s population. We teamed with India’s Centre for the Development of Telematics (C-DoT) to establish a global R&D centre in Chennai, India, dedicated to broadband wireless access. Its primary focus is to develop WiMAX Rev-E solutions, adopted to the needs of Indian carriers and customers. Subsequently, these adopted solutions can be used in other high-growth economies worldwide. Tell us about the Broadband-for-All programme which you are leading. ov

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The Broadband for All programme basically focuses on countries where broadband penetration is very low, and India and China are examples of them. The goals of the programme are to work with service providers to expand broadband coverage and deliver broadband services that meet different user needs. To make broadband for all a reality, we are working in partnership with service providers in high-growth economies to meet the diverse needs of the end users. Through our research and experience we identified three major types or segments of end-users. The advanced users who want the latest cutting-edge services, they have a broadband connection at home and a PC and they want the same user-centric services available in mature markets. They may be residential and business customers. The second type of users are people who are using the Internet via Internet cafés, but still do not have a broadband connection at home. We recently completed some end-user research in India in August 2007. Some of the questions we asked them were related to how much money did they typically spend per month in Internet cafés, what applications do they typically access, and how much they were willing to pay for a broadband connection at home. The report uncovered valuable insights on user needs and expectations with regard to broadband services. The third type of the users are perhaps the most challenging because they are the people who do not currently have access to broadband services. In many cases they are not aware of the benefits of the Internet and the services it enables, and they cannot afford to pay for it. We also recently announced a partnership with Intel. We want to jointly work to increase PC penetration and broadband penetration together. So Intel is working on developing affordable PCs. We are also working, with Intel, on innovative business models, like helping people to jointly buy PC and the broadband connection. We provide the finance for the same. What are some of your programmes for the emerging markets? We have a project underway with the telecom Malaysia. In Vietnam, we have been working in a project with Vietnam Post and Telecoms (VNPT), basically to join their corporate broadband connections as well as the mobile hub. In Senegal we partnered with Manobi, the leading operator of mobile and Internet services dedicated to the rural sector of emerging countries. This innovative programme enabled Senegalese fishermen and farmers to access the prices of their production via mobile networks - for more equitable negotiating conditions. Most of our customers business is very focused in cities, where the majority of advanced residential and business customers are found. There are a lot of people who are not well served in the cities today and it still needs a lot of investment. Cities are very important but we need to think about what are the business models to go in the rural areas. We think that telecentres, or broadband community centres as we call them are a good model. In fact India is a very good example of a 41

M-CONNECT

country that has embraced the telecentre concept, and people want to hear about what you have done. It really shows how we can combine public money and private money in a very effective way. How do you view India as a market or as a business model? We believe that India is probably the most innovative country in the world in terms of developing Community Service Centres (CSC). We have been watching what has been going on in India with very high interest and using it as an example to many countries in the world. For example I was recently in Sao Paulo for a broadband conference, and I actually showed an example from India. What I think is fantastic about India is that there is a vision which is not only about Internet access, but about services. For instance, your e-Seva project of Andhra Pradesh has a lot of creativity and innovation. They are selling services and not just Internet access, so it provides more value to the users. Users can benefit from the services without having to be Internet literate. The CSCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s have become a place of learning, with new services being developed to suit the user needs, and new business opportunities are created. India is of course a very important market for us. We have a big team in India, they have been working with service providers, talking about possible business models for CSCs. There are provisions where they have worked on the cost of coverage and the business model to be able to make it more sustainable. But as I said, we have also been using India as a role model as we have the most innovative things happening in India right now in business models. Someone asked me to compare what is going on in India and Latin America and I said what is great in India is that big private companies are really seeing the bottom of the pyramid as big market opportunities. So they are interested in creating applications for the CSCs for e-Government services. In some countries

that is not yet the case. Private companies have not yet understood the potential of business we could have with the bottom of the pyramid segment of the population. It is a new thinking, but I think in India it has been going on for quite some time. What are the challenges that you face as far as broadband connectivity goes? The challenge is to find the most cost effective way to increase the coverage and also meet the needs of the population. The needs vary from people who want the most advanced services like those available via a blackberry for example to people who cannot afford more than two dollars on their mobile phone, and both delivered from the same base station. Some of the innovation is coming from a new micro payment solutions. Mobile payment solutions are extremely advanced because there are millions of transactions to be processed and we are trying to be the number one worldwide in the prepaid mobile segment. It is an area where we have put a lot of investment. The other opportunity is for service providers to leapfrog to IP because it is very cost effective for high traffic volumes, it is flexible to respond to changing network demands and very scalable. What is your message for our readers. I just want to say that I have been amazed by what is happening in e-Governance in India and the way they bring e-Governance services to everyone. Another thing that I think is really well understood in India is the ability to leverage initiatives from different organisations and government organisations, like what they have done in Andhra Pradesh with the one stop portal for all e- Services. I think it is a very good initiative as it contributes to the e-Education plan and e-Agriculture plan. I think in India the concept of CSCs is great. We are really watching what is going on in India and we are promoting what you are doing.

Nine Telecom Applicants Get Approval The Indian Ministry of Communications & Information Technology has approved applications of nine telecom aspirants and is close to issuing them Letters of Intent (LoIs). The approval would be followed by issuance of universal access service (UAS) licences and allocation of spectrum. However, the allocation of spectrum will take some time as the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) was finalising the amount of vacant spectrum. The proposals were pending with the Telecom Ministry after the

DoTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approval of applicants last month. Though, the issue of spectrum is still a concern as the DoTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wireless Planning and Coordination cell is in the process of identifying vacant spectrum. The department is also awaiting vacation of spectrum by the defence forces. Apart from Datacom Solutions, Aska Projects, Spice Communications, Swan Telecom, Loop Telecom (a subsidiary of BPL Mobile), Unitech Builders & Estates, Nahan Properties, S Tel and Shyam Telelink are in the fray for start-up spectrum.

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M-CONNECT

Network that Reaches Every Village â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are working with a lot of government organisations, whether it is state or city boards or different police organisations. So while the SWANs are going on parallel, we are working on a lot of other thingsâ&#x20AC;?, says Lt. Col. H. S Bedi, VSM, CMD, Tulip IT Services Ltd. in an exclusive to egov magazine

The government of India plans to provide rural connectivity across the country. Tulip is an IT infrastructure and connectivity provider. How is Tulip set to utilise this opportunity? When you talk about e-Governance, there are different initiatives that the government is rolling out. One of course is ov

March 2008

the setting up of the State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), the second is the connectivity we require for various e-Governance initiatives. As far as setting up of e-Governance networks is concerned, Tulip is a major player in this field, we have already been awarded three SWAN networks, for Haryana, which has just been completed, Assam and West Bengal. For 43

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the fourth state, which is Uttranchal, we are awaiting the order to be awarded. As far as providing connectivity is concerned, Tulip today has the largest network that reaches over 1100 cities & towns. Going forward, we intend to have a network that reaches every village in the country. We believe that we will probably be among the best placed, to be able to provide these services. Tulip has the largest wireless roll-out infrastructure and combination of networking skills, and thus an automatic partner for rural connectivity. Please tell us about some of your projects with the government, especially the Akshaya project in Kerala, for providing rural connectivity? As far as Akshaya is concerned, it was the first large scale project of this kind and probably the largest that has been done, where the benefits of the project were to be extended to all subscribers in the district. This actually became the case study on the basis of which e-Governance projects have been taken up. Going forward, we are looking at implementing a large number of similar projects We are working with a lot of government organisations, whether it is state or city boards or different police organisations. So while the SWANs are going on parallely, we are working on a lot of other things. Simultaneously, we are working with organisations that are setting up Citizen Service Centres because these centres will require a high amount of bandwidth and the only option available other than ours is VSATS, which has major shortcomings in terms of latency and the amount of bandwidth that can be delivered. So we believe that terrestrial solution, which we offer, is the only way forward and we are working really hard for that. We expect to be able to provide connectivity to a large number of Common Service Centres (CSCs). What are the IT solutions that Tulip offers to the government in its mission to deliver services to the citizens? We are not into applications, we are more into IT infrastructure, so where ever requirements come up for IT infrastructure, we will be there. We are also looking at providing solutions in the data centre space, since the government also has data centres coming up, we will also be bidding for the data centres. We have already set up some data centres for two of the state governments- government of Goa and government of Uttranchal. Data centres are one part, besides that of course, every other service that goes with IT solutions, we are going to pitch for. What is your opinion regarding National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). What are some of the challenges and how can we overcome them? The National e-Governance plan is primarily trying to create an infrastructure on which government services could be rolled out and using which connectivity and services to the various government departments can be given. I do feel that one place where it is lagging is the availability of applications. I think that it is one area where adequate progress has probably not been made and we do not yet have applications to meet the large number of requirements. Other than that I think that things are going well. 44

How important are the private sector partnerships in implementing NeGP? The private sector has come forward very well, for every bid, you find a very large number of bidders and you find the bids becoming more and more competitive, so obviously the private sector is very upbeat about participating in these projects. The private sector has a major role as government is a policy making body and an enabler but the projects need to be rolled out by network integrators and vendors-public or private. I think, in that regard, the private players have come forward in a big way, I feel everyone has been very upbeat about it. Could you tell us more about what you think is the strength of the private sector (vis-a-vis the government)? The government is an enabler, it is a coordinator, it is not a vendor. To implement the projects, government needs vendors. Thus the role played by the government is paramount because they are conceptualising the citizen centric IT services, interacting with technology partners, and ensuring the availability of funds, in a very transparent and organised manner. In fact the website of the National e-Governance plan, showcases the entire plan. The private sector players on the other hand are more in to actual ground level implementation of these projects. They bring to the table their expertise, strengths and experience in handling similar projects with ease. They are able to own the entire implementation process and ensure timely technology and commercially compliant solutions Tulip has ventured into providing end-to-end fibre connectivity in major cities in India. Please tell our readers more on this. Basically we lease fibre between cities from multiple service providers, with a view to create high levels of redundancies in our core networks. Recently we have laid out our own fibre in all major cities of the country. The aim being that we should be able to reach wherever we have customers, as others may not be reaching there, secondly to put a firewall between our customers and our vendors so that our customers are not visible to everybody else and also to increase our network reach and our ability to provide connectivity the way we want. With that aim, we started moving on in ten major metropolitan cities in India, but going forward, based on the demand that is generated, we will keep increasing this. We are looking at rolling-out fibre in a few states, right across the states. We have identified three states where we would probably be rolling out fibre right across the states. What are some of your plans to expand your market in India and outside? We are looking at impressive growth charts in the near future. We are now investing much more in R&D, hiring the best people for multi dimensional roles, and we continue to expand our network to cover each and every corner of the country. As a matter of fact, we plan to cover each and every village in the country in the next 2 years. We are looking at growing quite substantially domestically and internationally. www.egovonline.net

NEWS SPICE MOBILE’S PHONE FOR THE BLIND

INDIA ADDS 83 MILLION MOBILE USERS IN A YEAR Indian telecom industry is shinning now a days. The country has become the fastest growing telecom market in the world.

Spice Mobile has launched low-cost mobile phone for the blind at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. The ‘Phone for the Visually Impaired’ is a very simple, voice only phone with a braille keypad. As user presses button, it speaks the number and again by pressing the call button, it gives details about dialed number. The phone has ten speed dials and it could retail for less than $20. Spice has also showcased the ‘People’s Phone’, which is similar to the Braille phone but without Braille. The display less People’s Phone will retail for $10-20 in India.

Now India’s total mobile subscriber base stands at 237 million in comparison with China’s 534 million, US’s 257 million and Russia’s 172 million. At this pace, India is set to overtake US and become the world’s second largest mobile market by May 2008. According to the latest data available from Informer Telecoms and Media, 83 million is the highest number of subscribers added to any mobile network in the world between February 2007 and January 2008. The US has added a total of 20 million subscribers, pale even in comparison with Pakistan,

UN REPORT: MOBILE PHONES NARROW POVERTY GAP IN EMERGING MARKETS According to new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, (UNCTAD), the use of modern ICT gadgets like the mobile phones and net access are helping to narrow the digital bridge between the rich nations and emerging economics. The study finds that mobile telephones and telecentres are supporting livelihoods in developing countries. The report states that the mobile telephony is rapidly progressing in the developing world. In Africa, there were 50 million new mobile subscribers in 2006, and in 2007 the total number of mobile subscriptions reached an estimated 200 million. This means an average of more than 20 active cell phones per 100 persons. The report noted that the flexibility and ease of mobile technology has led to its widespread use in business transactions, most particularly by very small firms or micro-businesses. The report also comments that mobile telephony can be provided quickly and fairly in comparison with the fixed line telephony. To understand how telecentres support livelihoods among the poor, UNCTAD surveyed a number of telecentre networks in Bangladesh and India. The results show that most telecentres are concentrating on providing access to ICT and on developing basic ICT skills. In line with the type of services offered, telecentres are primarily used for information and education purposes.

March 2008

which added 26 million subscribers, taking its total subscriber base to 79 million. India added an average of 6.9 million subscribers per month in the period under review, China 6.3 million, US 1.6 million, Pakistan 2.1 million and Bangladesh 1.1 million. India is expected to have 450 million mobile subscribers by the turn of the decade, which means every third Indian will have his/her own mobile phone by 2010.

RWANDA: COUNTRY IN RURAL PHONE PROGRAMME The Government of Rwanda has launched a rural mobile phone distribution scheme in association with MTN Rwanda and Rwanda Bank of Development (BRD). The programme aims to increase ICT penetration in rural areas by providing them affordable cell phone on micro-credit scheme. In this public private partnership (PPP) project, people who are living in rural areas will be beneﬁted from MTN cell phone on credit worth US$23 and pay $1.8 each month until the debt is recovered. This initiative will bridge the communication gap in rural Rwanda. The Minister in President’s ofﬁce, Romain Murenzi stated that the government is committed to encourage implementation and integration of ICT cutting across all developmental sectors in a way to ensure a smooth run towards vision 2020.

EVENT DIARY

11th National Conference on e-Governance, Panchkula, Haryana

Citizens at the centre of e-Governance Programmes The 11th National Conference on e-Governance, an annual show on e-Government was once again successfully organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, and the Department of Information Technology, Government of India from 7th and 8th February 2008 at Panchukla. The Department of Information Technology, Government of Haryana was the host of the conference. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Integrated Citizen Services- Issues and Challenges’. Several interesting activities formed part of the event, including the e-Governance Exhibition- with participants from various government and private organisations; the release of the e-Readiness report, the e-Governance Compendium; and the e-Governance Awards. The conference began with an introduction to e-Governance and the status of e-Governance projects in the state of Haryana by Promila Isser, Chief Secretary, Government of Haryana. Presiding over the inaugural session, H.E. Dr. A.R. Kidwai, the Governor of Haryana said, “It is an accepted fact that India is the nursery for some of the brightest ICT technologists and scientists in the world”, however the same nursery continues to house the largest number of poor in the world and ICT revolution bypassing the poor has both economic and social costs.” Delivering the inaugural address, the Union Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Thiru A.Raja said, “The success of National e-Governance initiatives would be judged mainly by the benefits it brings to the common man.” He also distributed the National Awards for e-Governance to the winners in the categories namely, excellence in government process re-engineering, exemplary horizontal transfer of ICT-based best practice, outstanding performance in citizen-centric service delivery, innovative usage of technology in e-Governance, exemplary usage of ICT by PSUs, best government website, special sectoral focus award-focus sector agriculture during the inaugural session. Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the Honourable Chief Minister of Haryana and one of the eminent speakers of the conference, expressed his firm belief in ICTs for the achievement of the social developmental objectives. Hooda inaugurated the exhibition on e-Governance at the venue of the National conference and released the special issue of the egov magazine’s dated February 2008 (http://www.egovonline.net/current/index. asp) brought out to commemorate this conference. Also present during this session was, Pawan Bansal, Minister of State of Finance, who emphasised on the importance of 46 }

making government people-centric rather than governmentcentric. Rajni Razdan, Secretary (AR&P) gave vote of thanks and concluded the inaugural session. Chairing this session Citizen Centric Governance, Bhupinder Singh Hooda shared his government’s vision on e-Government for the state of Haryana. Emphasising the need to transform the functioning of the government, he called for the change from governance to e-Governance and further to ‘i’-Governance”, where ‘i’ stands for integrated services to the citizens and will be a government that works as one complex. Promila Isser spoke about two initiatives of the Haryana government, namely- Pricing and Revenue and as the next step, mapping of land and computerisation of maps. From the private sector, Dr Shankar Prasad, President of Vakrangee Software emphasised the importance of empowering the government employees in order to accelerate the process of e-Governance. He said, “ e-Office forms the foundation of government office, otherwise e-Services will have a lot of hurdles. The National e-Governance Plan recognises e-Office as a core Mission Mode Project”. He asserted that, “In a citizen-centric government, citizens will call the shots.” Highlighting the private sector perspective, Lt Col HS Bedi, VSM, Tulip IT Services, stressed on the need of giving www.egovonline.net

(L-R) Smt. Rajni Razdan, Secretary, Dept. AR&PG, GOI, Thiru A. Raja, Union Minister for Communications & IT, H.E. A.R. Kidwai, Governor of Haryana, Shri Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Chief Minister of Haryana, Shri Pawan Bansal, Minister of State, Finance, GOI.

importance to applications and the availability of Internet in each home and each village. He said that “the future is in financial distribution, and financial services should be available till the last village”. With the focus on Integrated Citizen Services, the first of the preliminary sessions began with the lead presentation by R. Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of India. He gave an overview of the e-Governance status of India. He emphasised the need for infrastructure. Outlining the present status of e-Government projects, he mentioned that Central Mission Mode Projects like MCA 21, Passports, etc. are at the implementation stage, while various others are in the pipeline. Talking about the State Mission Mode projects, he said that going by the present progress, common infrastructure would be ready and will be operational by March 2009. Year 200910 would be the period of implementation and by 2010 NeGP would be in place. He admitted that presently land records have been made online state-wise, while remaining projects are at various stages of development. The government is also undertaking market research for impact assessment and the major finding was that there is overwhelming response from citizens besides considerable reduction in waiting time for most of the projects among other things. Vikram Chand from World Bank spoke about strengthening the accountability mechanism. He suggested that there could be a system of ‘report cards’ as a pressure mechanism in order to improve services. Giving state perspective on the issues and challenges of Integrated Service Delivery, Raj Kumar, IT secretary, Government of Gujarat spoke about the IT vision of Gujarat, which is to facilitate inclusive growth by providing services at ov

March 2008

the doorsteps of the citizen. He also spoke about the front-end and back-end services like data availability and connectivity that Common Service Centres (CSCs) and State Data Centres (SDCs) provide to the citizens of Gujarat. Joan McCalla from CISCO emphasised the importance of strong governance and business and technological architecture as means of driving integrated services. She highlighted the importance of people and practices. Concluding her presentation, McCalla said, “Integrated Service Delivery helps in meeting the end goal -which is improved client services and increased efficiency. This vision can be achieved through people, processes, technology and government”. Neeraj Prakash, GM-Public Services, SAP expressed similar views, said that processes and technology are important elements for integration. He said that Public Return of Investment (PRoI) which is analysing the social value derived out of such projects, coupled with processes and technology are important factors for developing e-Services. (Integrated Services - Processes x Technology= People’s RoI) Vinnie Mehta, Director, MAIT, talked about the importance of localisation which was brought out to be an important factor for Integrated Service Delivery. Making the concluding remarks, the chairperson of the session Subas Pani, Secretary, Planning Commission, said that the critical dimensions covered were processes and technology, besides tools in Indian languages which are also crucial. He said that the question of standards is also very critical as is last mile connectivity. An emphasis could be laid on non-online model for integrated citizen services. Speaking in the session on Enabling Integrated Service Delivery, Dr B K Gairola, Director General, National Informatics Centre, focused on the paradigm shift in the delivery of services through cyber space. He said that 47

EVENT DIARY

fulfilling citizen’s expectations with better standards through re-engineering of processes and alignment between various stake holders within a legal framework should be given priority. According to him the challenges in the process would be to elicit cooperation, collaboration and coordination between various players in the delivery of services. Dr Gulshan Rai, Executive Director, ERNET, spoke about the concerns regarding the security in the cyber space and information security management. He emphasised on the need for collaborative efforts at both, national and global level with an increased user awareness for addressing the above concerns. Ashwini Chandhok from Oracle presented a value-added data centre framework which has a three pronged approachnamely, increasing the reach of services to citizens; value added data centre; and to ensure that the benefits reach all the stakeholders. The benefits provided are to be continuously monitored, corrected and evaluated. Arun Verma from IL & FS speaking about the CSCs initiative in India, presented a three pillar model of NeGP for anytime anywhere web-enabled service delivery at the doorsteps of rural citizens. He laid emphasis on full connectivity as a requisite for the success of Common Service Centre for Government-to-Business (G2B), Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Business-to-Business (B2B), Citizen-to-Citizen (C2C) and Citizen-to-Government (C2G) services.

The second day’s deliberations focused on enhanced development impact through ICT, focusing on education, health and agriculture. On the subject of enhanced development impact through ICT with focus on spreading education, SK Sinha, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development, detailed the strengths, challenges, threats and opportunities such as falling cost of bandwidth, availability of infrastructure, abundance of knowledge on the Internet, participation of the private sector, etc. in the use of IT in education. While speaking about the types of intervention strategies required, he mentioned that connectivity for all education purposes should be free; there should be digital literacy and inclusiveness; there should also be testing and certification as well as global opportunities for education. Change in the mindset was also a necessity for enhanced development. He said, “Modules should not be stand alone, they should be fine tuned according to the needs of the learner. With IT, we could have many types of learning modules according to the calibre of the individual.” Sinha also mentioned the use of e-Journals and e-Books at the undergraduate and post- graduate courses and virtual labs which could help in performing experiments in real time. Referring to the portal ‘sakshad’, he affirmed the use of IT in education. Prof. Kaushal Sen, Department of Textile Technology, IIT, Delhi, spoke about the ‘eklavaya’ channel that began to

Chief Minister of Haryana Shri Bhupinder Singh Hooda (extreme right) releasing the February issue of egov Magazine

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spread knowledge through technology and the challenges faced in its development and maintenance. Sharing his experience, Rajendra Kumar, former Secretary, Education, Delhi Administration said that through an implementation experiment in 2002, it was observed that through ICT, school dropouts reduced to a great extent. The results of class X and XII also improved drastically. Prabhat Aggarwal from NIIT and Managing Director, IBS Infotech Limited, gave the industry perspective. He addressed the key issue of lack of trainers. He said that “the issue of lack of good trainers could be resolved through ICT for fountain head changes.” Vikram Desai, Senior Group Director, DECU, ISRO spoke about bridging the digital divide in the urban and rural areas in education. The Ministry of Human Resource Development’s vision 2015 is to provide education to all by 2015. In order to meet this challenge ISRO educational satellite EDUSAT supplements the chalk and talk method, by facilitating the teachers. At present, the project is being implemented in 18 states, and in the process of implementation in another six additional states. He said that in villages, where there is no electricity, the terminals are being powered by solar panels. Karan Bajwah, Director, Public Sector, Microsoft India, said that in order to address the bottom-up pyramid and to provide education to the masses, innovative delivery models need to be created, and ICTs act as important tools in facilitating that. He also spoke about Microsoft’s project ‘Shiksha’ which, rather than reaching students focused on reaching the teachers in 11 states. This resulted in touching 10 million students. The questions and answer session concluded with a note that more knowledge sharing amongst the states was essential to ensure that the same mistakes were not repeated. In the session on enhanced development through ICT focusing on e-Health:Improving Access and Delivery began with a lead presentation by Dr S K Misra, SGPGISM, Ministry of Health, who gave a brief on telemedicine and e-Health initiatives undertaken by the Ministry. He said that expansion of e-Health initiatives in the states over the Eleventh Five Year National Plan period would be taken up in a comprehensive manner, which includes a wide range of interventions and evaluation. He mentioned various projects such as National Rural Telemedicine Project, National Opthalmology Network, Integrated Disease Surveillance Project, among others. He also said that the Terms of Reference included work on interoperability, defining the National telemedicine needs, identifying players, preparing curriculum and projects defining standards and structures. Dr K K Talwar, Director, PGI, Chandigarh spoke about the practical aspects of telemedicine while Dr K K Ghosh, Medical Electronics and Media Division talked about the benefits of telemedicine. From CMC, Dr Ninan Chacko emphasised on the imporatnce of trained medical people for telemedicine. Ranjan Dwivedi, NPO, eHealth, World Health Organisation (WHO), spoke about their partnership with the Rajiv Gandhi University on making journals accessible. He also emphasised on the need for evaluation. A M Sheshaigiri, General Manager, Sales, Government, Education and Healthcare, Oracle India Private Limited, spoke ov

March 2008

about the problem of data management for Public Health Information Systems and speaking about the solutions to this challenge, he said that integration of all systems needs to be done. He stated that governments should go to vendors who have made functionally rich systems instead of reinventing the wheel and data entry too should be outsourced in order to make it more effective and efficient. He emphasised on the need for capacity building. The fifth and the final session at the conference was chaired by N.K. Das, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture. The lead presentation on the theme for the session Enhanced Developmental Impact through ICT: Empowering the Farmer was given by Madaswamy Moni, DDG, NIC on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture. He spoke about the new links, networks, partnerships required to make agriculture a C2G service. Highlighting the focus ‘Regaining Agricultural Dynamism’ of the 11th Five Year Plan (FYP), he talked about growth versus development paradigm. He emphasised the need for greater research in agriculture, synergy between agricultural science and computer science, digital inclusion of farmers and fusion of various technical frameworks. He also presented a road map for agri informatics policy. Professor Jayantha Chatterjee from IIT, Kanpur speaking on Agropedia:The Vision and the Project said “there is a need for Agricultural Knowledge Repository of universal meta models and localised content for a variety of users with appropriate interfaces built in collaborative mode in multiple languages.” He further emphasised on the use of vernaculars in web material, integrated approach for small projects across the country and active participation of the people through effective use of ICTs. Shrinivas Rao from ITC e-Choupal speaking on Empowering Farmers through ICT:Lessons from ITC e-Choupal, presented a business model. He said that “market is the best solution for raising farmers income and higher incomes will lead to competitive marketing.” Drawing from the effective working of the e-Choupals he said that ICT kiosks with internet access will help in minimising the influence of the middlemen and thereby increases the farmers entitlements. Subroto Mitra of Oracle India spoke about “Empowering the Farmer.” He outlined the challenges like low growth rate in agriculture, import of essential food grains etc., and called for a complete integrated solution by strengthening information flow for empowering farmers. Arvind Chandrasekhar General Manager-Business Development, AMD speaking on “Empowering the Farmer:ICT as a Medium,” said that ICT is an enabler which can take the farm economy to the next level. He also said that globalising agri-trade which will get the farmer best deals across the globe could be a possible solution for existing challenges. Rajni Razdan, Additional Secretary, AR&PG, Government of India summarised the two days deliberations at the Valedictory Session. The award for the best stall of the exhibition went for e-Disha Haryana. Joan McCalla from Cisco bagged the award for best paper of the compendium for her paper on Integrated Delivery of e-Services: Lessons Learned from International Experiences. VS Kundu, Managing Director, Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation Ltd., delivered the vote of thanks on behalf of the Government of Haryana. 49

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October 2007

Opportunities for Digital India

29-31 July 2008 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India

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