Steering india towards excellence in e-governance : May 2011

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ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-GOVERNMENT

MAY 2011 > ` 75/VOLUME 07 n ISSUE 05 n ISSN 0973-161X www.egovonline.net

Steering india towards excellence in e-governance Kapil Sibal

Minister for Communication and IT, Government of India Receiving ICT Leadership Award from Elets Technomedia p6

watch out for

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

www.eworldforum.net

Laying Aadhaar for a billion plus population

overnment of India has taken up a mammoth task of creating a national citizen database and assigning unique identification number- Aadhaar- to a billion plus population, with the help of information systems and biometrics identity management system. Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the body constituted under the aegis of Planning Commission, in January 2009, chaired by Nandan Nilekani has been given the mandate of tagging every resident in the Indian territory and provide online authentication service to the government and market agencies for better service delivery. The need for a standard identification proof is a common concern shared by most of the Indians. While resolving the issue of lack of standard identification, the government, with assigning Aadhaar to each individual, intends to enlarge the financial cover so as to include its 80 percent of the unbanked population and eliminate duplicacy into the databases, across the government. There are numerous precedents of national citizen databases in developed countries, essentially for delivering social security services and expanding the tax cover. While United States has the Social Security Number (SSN), United Kingdom (UK) has the National Insurance Number, and Germany has an identity card, got in existence either de facto or by law. On the other hand, developing countries like Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria and Malaysia have also implemented national identity systems, primarily for reforming the social benefits delivery to the citizens. According to a study on the implication of UID integration with social sector schemes, the leakages in subsidy provided by the government could be fixed to a large extent and a savings of ` 20,000crore could be done through this integration. Nonetheless, the civil society organisations (CSO) working in rural areas and keeping an eye on the execution of the schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREG) programme and Public Distribution System (PDS) are fiercely opposing the linking of UID with these programmes. They point to the un-reliability of biometric technology and caution that the dependency on technology for delivering social benefits could make the schemes exclusionary, since in case the equipment fails to authenticate the village resident, the payment would not be done. Instead, the faulty categorisation of population in below poverty line and above poverty line section, quid pro quo between politicians, public administrators, and local contractors and poor public policy are the real factors affecting the delivery of social benefits to the poor. Moreover, there is a big concern around privacy and data security of the individuals. UID being the common denominator in all the data bases of the government and in the market agencies, getting information about the lifestyle of a person would just be at a click away of the government. There has already been a number of cases of phone tapping and surveillance of individuals by the state agencies. Given the quid pro quo between the people sitting at the helm of affairs, UID poses threat to infringement of individual privacy, liberty and even life. The situation may become all grim, given the fact that India doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a stringent law on privacy and data security. It is an imperative on the government to ensure institutional and legislative safeguards for fundamental right to freedom of expression and right to life and liberty.

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Contents May 2011

second grid grid name issue 05 nâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; volume 07

Event Report secure IT 2011 Report on Secure IT 2011

NeGP Update policy watch A brief on m-Gov and EDS policy draft

case study Capacity Building at the Grassroots On e-learning solution deployed by Andhra Pradesh Academy of Rural Development (APARD)

14 | cover story

The line of debate While government aims to assign unique numbers to a billion plus population for providing a portable identity and eliminating of ghosts from databases, it has spurred a public debate on the potential misuse of UID leading to infringement of individual privacy and liberty and data security

keynote Kapil Sibal On Indian leadership in ICTs

technology Measuring Life the Digital Way A detailed report on varied application of biometrics

interview Anil Swarup How IT and biometrics are enabling cashless health insurance for the poor

On the need for interdepartmental data exchange

opinion use of Multi- modal Biometrics for CCTNS

further reading

On progress made in e-Governance in Maharashtra

Maharashtra is now being counted among the leaders in e-governance readiness in India

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

opinion The Catalytic Effects of e-Governance

On strengthening CCTNS through Automated Multi-Modal Biometrics Identification System

interview Vijayalakhsmi Bidari Prasanna

state special At the cusp of e-Transition

Editorial india News news industry news world special feature hid

03 8 10 11 40

May 2011 issue 05 n volume 07

second grid

INbox

grid name

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At Secure IT 2011, Elets Technomedia Conferred ICT Leadership Award on Kapil Sibal, Uniion Minister of Communications and IT and Human Resource Development Shri Kapil Sibal has initiated a number of path breaking initiatives which includes: • Issuing of draft policy paper on National Frequency Allocation, Electronic Delivery of Services, and National Cyber Security • Country-wide launch of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and proposed launch of wireless broadband scheme for providing wireless broadband coverage to about five lakh villages • Initiated inter-ministerial consultation on “Manufactured-in-India Electronics Products” for all government procurements • Promotion of manufacturing of Telecom equipment in the country and setting up a National Electronics Mission (NEM) with the objective to facilitate development of ESDM capability to meet the target of USD 400 Billion in the next 10 years • Modernisation of India Post with an approved plan outlay of `1877.2 Crore • Integration of ICTs in school and higher education • Introduction of liberalised geo spatial map policy

Shyam Kishore Web Development Team Zia Salahuddin, Amit Pal, Anil Kumar IT Team

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Mukesh Sharma Events Vicky Kalra

Correspondence

Asia’s First Monthly magazine on ICT in Education

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Highlights Cover Story: Digital Content Special Focus: Security issues related to e-Learning Interviews: Dr Veera Gupta, Secretary, Central Board of Secondary Education Sally Goggin, Project Manager, UKIERI speaks about the UK-India collaborations in education and their presence in India with definitive goals

The Enterprise of Healthcare (www.ehealthonline .org) Highlights Cover Story: Patient Monitoring Equipment Special Focus: Health Insurance in India Interviews: Dr Ajay Singla, Additional Secretary, H&FW, Government of NCT of Delhi and CEO, Aapka Swasthya Bima Yojana Dr S Vijayakumar, Special Secretary, H&FW, Government of Tamil Nadu Babu A, CEO, Aarogyasri Healthcare Trust Jagannathan MS, CFO, Columbia Asia Hospitals Speciality: Role of Technology in Treating Autism

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keynote keynote

Kapil Sibal Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We Will Be World Leadersâ&#x20AC;?

ith the advent and proliferation of information and communication technologies, the world will be interconnected through a cyber system, in the coming years. The world will know no boundaries and there will be information flow from one part to another. The cyber infrastructure will let the world communicate with each other. When the cyber infrastructure is put in place, the way we interact with each other and the way we build our development processes will

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

be far easier than it is now and the citizens will be truly empowered. That of course is the objective of the ICT revolution. It ultimately leads to the empowerment of the citizen, who has no information and thus cannot exercise his constitutional rights. I have, therefore, always believed that the right to information (RTI) should be a part of right to free speech. Unless RTI is made part of right to freedom of speech and expression, information will be a commodity and will not be available as freely as it should be. A farmer, who is tilling his land or harvesting his crop,

must know when he should go to the market. He must also have weather information from the weather department through GIS technology. He must know what will be the quantum of rain that his field is going to get. Similarly, fisherman must know when he should go out and fish. He should know which part of the ocean has chlorophyll and which does not. The general public must have information on when a Tsunami is going to hit. One of the reasons why the Japanese were able to protect themselves was because of their technological advancement. They have made the

keynote

most modern early warning systems for Tsunami. The authorities were able to tell one minute in advance that a tragedy of this sort of monumental proportions is going to happen, during which 20,000 people lost their lives and communities and infrastructure were destroyed. The challenge India faces is that, we have a nuclear problem on our hands, like the Chernobyl disaster that took place many years ago. Looking at the positive side, things could have been much worse had Japan not been having the early warning system in place. I remember when the Tsunami hit us we had no system in place. It was sometime in December 2004 that the Tsunami hit us and we vowed that by September 2005 we will have an early warning system for Tsunami in place in India. We did deliver the system to the people of the country in September 2005 at a cost of `120 crore. This system is one of the most modern systems of the world. In fact, Indonesia, Australia,

our neighboring countries, Sri Lanka and others are all connected with it now and we can share the information with all these countries. If there is an earthquake of a magnitude of 9 or more and there is a displacement of land mass then it causes the water, underneath the ocean, to swell and it results in tidal waves. It will take four hours for those tidal waves to reach the Indian coast and with this system in place, we will have enough time to prevent the disaster. We are also enabled to predict other parameters such as, when the Tsunami occurs which part of the eastern coast it will hit first, which cities it will hit, what will be the extent of destruction, when will the waves recede and which parts of the territory of the east coast can be identified from where it can recede. Therefore, we will be able to manage the consequences of Tsunami, as well. This technology allows you to detect and determine, which properties will get damaged and which won’t. This is just one example of how ICT revolution is going to overtake us in the coming years. The other aspect is that we have today one of the largest communication systems in the world. We have so many satellites in place. We also have remote sensing agency, which is exceptionally efficient. Through spatial technologies we can have a lot of ICT products, which can be used in the market, not just for disaster preparedness but other things as well, for instance, criminal or intelligence network. All these investigative agencies track some case or the other and have their data but the data is not communicated or seamless. If we want to build a national intelligence network then we have to make sure that all this data is interactive. As you know India is setting up a national Intelligence Grid and one of our objectives is to ensure that the connectivity of various intelligence agencies and will also link enforcement agencies as sometimes enforcement agencies don’t have access to information with intelligence agencies and vice versa. This national grid will leverage all the collective information to optimum use. Once you move from a paper to a paperless world it becomes your critical infrastructure for most of the operations and so you need to protect it. There will be lots perpetrators who would want to hack in the system and destroy it. This will be in the context of a war, this will be in the context of commerce to destabilise the internal mechanisms of departments of

countries to ensure people are relegated to a state of confusion. In such a state protection of that infrastructure is required and we need IT solutions for it. I am sure that in the times to come these solutions will evolve. Telecommunications is the delivery mechanism but the real content must come from IT. We in India are concentrating on delivery and not concentrating on content. So you may have another 500 million mobile phones and broadband connections in place connecting every village and district but if we do not have the content then it’s of no use. We must shift our emphasis on creating IT solutions. It is much beyond just cyber security or disaster management; the entire developmental process is baseless without content. We are going to connect 26,000 colleges and 700 universities in the next two years through the national knowledge network. In addition to this, however, we need open source material and content to actually empower the students. I believe, this is a great opportunity for the IT industry. Also, if you marry IT with GIS you will have a product that will be the most empowering product in the world. Imagine if a child sitting in Mohali wants to know his/her prospects in a college in Hyderabad, through GIS he can look at images of the college and can actually walk through the college and decide. We are at the cusp of an entirely new revolution in this country. We will be the world leaders I can promise you that, because no one has the enormous capacity that India has. By marrying information technology with human resources, we can build solutions tomorrow. No other country has human resource, advanced information technology or even a basic network of the information technology that we have. If you go to a country like Taiwan, they are very net-savvy, very tech-savvy but they don’t have any young people; same is with Korea; South Korea has no people. So, where there is technology, there are no people, no human resource and where there is human resource there is little technology. India is perhaps the only exception, where we have the combination of very high quality human resource with advanced technology and a satellite communication network which can match anyone in the world. I can only say that to actually achieve the above, if you walk 5 steps I will walk 10 steps ahead with you. Excerpts from Kapil Sibal’s speech at Secure IT 2011 For full speech please log on to: www.secure-IT.in

May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

news

projects people policy events products

Arunachal for electoral enquiry through SMS

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is going to launch ‘electoral enquiry’

system in Arunachal Pradesh for providing correct information

assembly constituency number, part number or polling station number, elector’s serial number in the photo electoral role of particular polling stations will be received by the senders. The ECI is also going to introduce an online public complaint lodging system in the electoral officer’s website shortly, to lodge public grievances.

After few seconds, the sender will receive a reply SMS by an auto generated system which will provide various information to the particular electors to ensure his or her troublefree casting of votes. The SMS number will be announced later in a public announcement, the sources informed. The information like, EPIC number, name of elector,

e-services

After Gujarat, Uttarakhand rolls out e-Mamta

Bihar to launch a slew of online services soon Bihar’s Rural Development department has decided to provide online services to the people seeking income, caste, birth and death and other certificates. “We are contemplating to provide line service to people, who have to run to the block office for such certificates,” Nitish Mishra, Minister of Rural Development said. Mishra said that

to the voters for their convenience. The unique short message service (SMS) system will provide electoral information to the voters, who want to know his or her electoral details. To get the details one has to only send an SMS to a particular mobile number with his or her own elector’s photo ID card (EPIC) number to get the details.

the people would not have to go to the block office every time for certificates. The scheme christened as ‘kahin bhi kabhi bhi sevayen’ would be launched soon. “The department is moving methodically before launching the scheme aimed at mitigating the problems of the common masses,” the Minister stated.

Post Gujarat’s inauguration of e-Mamta project, which aims at monitoring mother-infant health pre and post delivery, Uttarakhand’s Health Department has followed suit. The Health Department of Uttarakhand has finalised the e-Mamta system of mother and child tracking which mainly aims at ensuring proper and timely vaccination of the pregnant women and new born. This project would use SMS alerts to constantly inform and remind the users of upcoming vaccinations. The project is being run with the help and support of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) which has provided

training to the state and block units. More than1000 pregnant women have already registered themselves under the e-Mamta project in the state and all the block units have been given the user name and passwords for the entry of the names of the women and children in their active database. The project would be implemented with the help of the ANM and Asha workers in the state as they work at the grassroots level and disseminate health services. The scheme would include registration of the pregnant women and tracking of their health and

vaccination of the new born infants. The mobile numbers would be fed in the database and the users would get the information about the impending vaccinations from time to time. This would ensure that no vaccine is missed and the health and future of the children is not compromised.

Mobile VAS in Punjab by BSNL In a bid to transform mobile telephony in Punjab, Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology has launched the Bharat Sanchar Nigam’s (BSNL) value-added services (VAS) in the state. The new VAS launched includes ‘dial-a-video’, ‘live share services’ and ‘video SMS’ services. “The value added services

08 egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

would transform communications for users in Punjab,” Pilot said, reported IANS. The Minister said that BSNL was reaching out with its services in the most interior and difficult parts of the country. He said the BSNL had installed towers and provided services in Maoist-affected areas

where private mobile operators were reluctant to go. Users of ‘dial a video’ services can access entertainment or video based services on their mobile anytime anywhere without requiring a special data plan or settings, as long as the user has a video call enabled phone, a BSNL official said.

“With live share services, users will be able to share videos instantly through their mobile phones with their families, colleagues, and friends over SMS or popular social networking sites. The video SMS service will allow users to leave video messages for anyone as long as they have a phone which supports video calls,” he added.

news

Geo-Informatics centre coming up in Himachal The Himachal Pradesh government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Gujarat for setting up a centre in the hill state to facilitate use of geo-spatial technologies for decisionmaking and planning of development activities. The Aryabhatta Geo-

Informatics and Space Application Centre would be set up in collaboration with Bhaskaracharya Institute, Gandhinagar. State Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said the MoU has opened a new vista of technical collaboration between the hill state and Gujarat.

service delivery

Kapil Sibal inaugurates rural service centre in Haryana

Union Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal inaugurated a rural service centre (RSC) in Badshahpur village recently. The RSC set up by a private telecom infrastructure firm, as per the PPP model, will facilitate education through Internet, telecom services, healthcare and e-Governance-related services in rural areas.

People will be taught in batches of eight in an education centre powered by a 1,800-watt solar panel. People of all ages will be welcome to come and learn about agriculture and related topics. Facilities like e-Education, primary and vocational classrooms, life-saving drugs, vaccine storage, biometric ATM services, access to PDS rates, commodity prices, employment exchange, payment of taxes, birth, death, land record registration and provision of bore-well water will be available for villagers in this centre. This model will give surplus power supply to the village.

e-payment

e-Payment facility in Kerala University Students of Kerala University no longer need to stand in long queues to pay their examination fees. They can now do so from the comfort of their homes. The e-Payment facility for paying the examination fees of the University was launched by Dr. A Jayakrishnan, Vice Chancellor, Kerala University at a function held in Thiruvananthapuram. Designed, developed and maintained by the Kerala University Computer Centre (KUCC), the web-based facility has been tested and secured by STQC, Department of IT, Ministry of Communication &

Information Technology, Government of India. The e-Payment facility can be accessed on the KUCC website. The service is currently available for the sixth semester B Tech Degree students. This will be rolled out to other semesters and eventually, to all the students of all courses, in a phased manner. This is the continuation of the paperless registration programme (e-Registration) for the conduct of examinations. With this launch, Kerala University becomes the first university in Kerala to have an e-Payment facility.

smart cards

Pension through smart card in Haryana Haryana Social Justice and Empowerment Department announced a new initiative, wherein, beneficiaries of various pension schemes in Haryana will now get their pension amount through electronic banking using smart card. The move is aimed at making policy implementation transparent and also to check corruption. Under the new system, the beneficiaries of pensions would have to open bank

accounts through District Social Welfare Officers in the banks specified by the department, Haryana Social Justice and Empowerment Ministery informed. Business Correspondents appointed by the concerned bank would visit each village to open bank account of the beneficiaries. The pension for the month of April 2011 would be paid to the beneficiaries through banks.

swan

Arunachal links departments through SWAN Arunachal Pradesh successfully set up the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) project recently to connect various offices in 15 district headquarters and 46 blocks in the state in a network. Under the project, digitisation of database and government records will be done which would enable a common man to obtain various documents without any hassles and at considerably low cost.

Besides, video conferencing facilities, the SWAN project is set to improve the functioning of the government by faster electronic transfer of information in the form of voice, video and data. Some of the flagship e-Governance projects identified for implementation included public distribution system (PDS), driving licenses and registration of vehicles, commercial taxes, and integrated financial management system.

Citizen Engagement in Policy Making Through `20 cr Fund In a major initiative towards making citizen engagement more integral and active part of National e-Governance Plan across the country, the Centre has proposed a Citizen Engagement Fund. The fund will be utilised towards funding citizen

engagement pilots which will demonstrate the conceptâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s utility before being rolled out informed, Department of Information Technology (DIT). The fund will be in place by September 2011. The Centre will make it mandatory for state

governments to go in for citizen engagement before taking up any e-governance initiatives. Currently, most consultations are done on an informal basis which woefully falls short of expectations and aspirations of the people going to be beneficiaries of

these initiatives. Many new ICT tools would be used which would enable implementers identify potential methodologies and mechanisms to implement them. Active citizen engagement in policy making to achieve credible public

participation in a country as vast and complex as India is challenging as the Centre proposes to utilise the unique opportunity that technology offers to engage with citizens in real time and meaningful manner, to make policy making citizen centric.

May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

news

industry

e-municipality

power

Maharashtra signs up ABM for e-Governance project

HCL signs 138 crore deal with Jharkhand Electricity Board

ABM Knowledgeware has recently announced that it has bagged a `63.62 crore e-Governance contract from the Municipal Corpora-

tion of Greater Mumbai (MCGM). The scope of work would include supply and implementation of SAP licenses along with post implementa-

tion support. The contract has to be executed in the financial year 2011-12 and involves a lot of projects under the Municipal Corporation.

leadership

Ajai Chowdhry awarded Padma Bhushan

Ajai Chowdhry, cofounder, HCL & chairman, HCL Infosystems, was awarded the Padma Bhushan, by the President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil. Ajai Chowdhry is one of the six foundermembers of HCL, India’s IT garage start-up founded in 1976. It is has grown into a global enterprise of over ` 24,000 crore with a

global headcount of 79,000 people. Ajai took over the reins of HCL Infosystems, the flagship company of the group, as President and CEO in 1994. He was appointed Chairman of HCL Infosystems in November 1999. Under Ajai’s stewardship, the company’s turnover has grown to `12,221 crore from `400.6 crore in 1994. Employing over 7,200 people, it has emerged as the country’s informationenabling powerhouse. Reacting on the same, Ajai Chowdhry said, “When I got together with my friends 34 years back to start HCL, all we had

was a barsati, some money and tons of passion. What we needed were people who will believe in this dream and join hands to take India on the world stage. We have come a long way and I would like to dedicate this recognition to my great country, my family of 79,000 colleagues, numerous friends, partners and well-wishers who have stood by me all these years.” HCL Infosystem Chairman Ajai Chowdhry led the list of this year’s awardees named for the government’s civilian “Padma Bhushan”award, among the representatives of trade and industry.

The Jharkhand State Electricity Board (JSEB) has signed an ` 138crore deal with the HCL Infosystems for implementing IT infrastructure project for power sector reforms in the state under the centrally-aided Restructured- Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme (R-APDRP). It would cover 30 towns including 66 sub-divisions and 354 offices of the JSEB. JSEB Chief Shiv Basant said the project would help the power utility company from ‘concept to commissioning’ for facilitating reduction of aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses through strengthening and upgradation of the transmission and distribution network. This project will work towards establishing reliable and automated systems for sustained collection of accurate base line data, and the adoption of Information Technology in the areas of metering, billing, energy accounting and customer care to provide the right information and experience to customers. The modernisation of the IT systems will also help curb revenue leakages and ensure increase in overall revenues and thus contribution to the exchequer, he added. HCL Infosystems recently also bagged a ` 300 crore order from the Indian Air Force to deploy a portable wireless network covering many air force stations across India. The new network will be integrated with the existing air force network and will provide it the backbone connectivity and ensure video interactivity for video calls and other communication platforms.

Semi-conductor market grew by 143 percent in 2010: Gartner The worldwide semiconductor equipment market grew 143 percent in 2010 to nearly $41 billion as the market recovered from the industry slowdown of the previous two years, according to final results from Gartner. All major market segments

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

grew significantly in 2010 with automatic test equipment (ATE) sales up by 149 percent, Wafer Fab Equipment (WFE) sales up by 145 percent and sales of Packaging Assembly Equipment (PAE) up by 127 percent. “The semi-conductor equipment market soared

in 2010. Driven by the pent-up demand from the 2008 and 2009 downturn, and a stronger economy than projected, 2010 just kept getting better and better,” said Klaus Rinnen, managing Vice President, Gartner. “Memory and foundry

spending were the key drivers, although all areas showed significant growth,” he added. The share of the top 10 semi-conductor capital equipment companies rose nearly 2 points in 2010, accounting for 63.4 percent of total revenue, up from 61.6 percent in 2009. The

recent earthquake in Japan is going to have a near-term impact on the industry, depressing quarterly revenue in the second quarter of 2011. However, Gartner analysts said semiconductor equipment manufacturers should be able to recover in the second half of the year.

world

news

electronic passport

e-Passport to be launched soon in Sri Lanka The Department of Immigration and Emigration of Sri Lanka is planning to introduce biometric passport system within a year to increase travel document security and personal identity protections. The issuance of biometric passport was proposed at the first Colombo team meeting by the Regional Immi-

gration Liaison Officer Network early this year. Immigration and Emigration Controller Chulananda Perera said in his inaugural speech that experts from Australia and Hong Kong are preparing feasibility reports on implementing biometric passports. He stated that introducing the ‘N’ series of passports,

installing new equipment in the Documentation Examination Laboratory is among suggestions submitted. Introducing an electronic travelling system and issuing visas online are also raised. Perera said the 30 years of war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam saw criminal and terrorist

biometric

Ghana for biometric registration of voters

The government of Ghana will shortly introduce biometric technology to promote e-voting in the country. The Minister for Communications, Haruna Iddrisu, announcing the government’s intention to support the Electoral Commission (EC), said the exercise could cost

over $80 million. Since Ghana’s return to constitutional rule in 1993, the country has faced challenges such as bloated electoral register, impersonation of voters, stuffing and stealing of ballot boxes, dub ballot papers, among others. Supporting the biometric voter registration and electronic-voting proposal, Mr. Iddrisu said that the government was committed to enhancing the integrity of elections

e-BANKING

Online Banking in Bangladesh Banks in Bangladesh have begun their first ever online operations, allowing their clients cash deposit and withdrawal facilities, foreign exchange remittances and fund transfer services. DutchBangla Bank Limited (DBBL) launched the service in collaboration with mobile phone operators Banglalink and

CityCell, reported IANS. Initially the online service will provide cash deposit, cash withdrawal, utility payment, salary disbursement, foreign remittance, and fund transfer services.

in Ghana. Since the EC announced its decision to use biometric technology early January 2011, many Ghanaians, especially politicians, have hailed the initiative, stating that the introduction of electronic voting in Ghana was both feasible and desirable. With the biometric voters’ register, it is also expected that Ghana’s electoral system will be less costly, free from errors, delays and fraud that frequently undermine the credibility of results.

elements abusing the Sri Lankan system for committing cross-border crimes and violations. “Identity theft, passport forgeries, counterfeit visas, illegal crossing of borders both by air and sea to make bogus asylum claims have undermined our border and national security interests as well as security of countries in

the region and beyond,” he said. Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are among the Southeast Asian countries that have started issuing e-Passports. The use of these biometric enabled passports by 2015 is mandatory for member countries of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

egovernment

Bulgaria, Austria join hands for e-Government cooperation A bilateral agreement on the cooperation in the fields of IT and electronic government was signed on Monday between Bulgaria and Austria. The document was signed by Bulgaria’s Deputy Transport and IT Minister Parvan Rusinov and Head of the Presidential Section at the Austrian Federal Chancellery, Manfred Matzka. Austria’s experience in absorbing EU funds provided for the develop-

ment of an e-Government will be very helpful for Bulgaria, the two officials stated. “Information Technologies are a great opportunity for little countries,” Manfred Matzka pointed out. In January 2011, the European Commission has once again confirmed Austria’s leading position in the latest e-Government Ranking 2010. In terms of availability and service, Austria succeeded in achieving 100 percent.

biometric

Biometric Identification for Tourists in Malaysia From June 1, 2011 onwards, foreigners entering Malaysia will have their thumbprints taken under a biometric system. Covering all 96 entry points, this security effort is meant to register and monitor foreigners from their arrival until departure, informed Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

Foreigners will have their thumbprints taken and processed within 20 seconds upon arrival at the immigration check-point. The National Foreigners Enforcement and Registration System (NERS) will be linked to the police’s existing Biometric Fingerprint Identification System (BIOFIS) to grant law enforcers access to the

movements of foreigners with criminal records. Immigration DirectorGeneral Datuk Alias Ahmad said that the fingerprint database was far more efficient in crime prevention as it would alert the checkpoint staff if a foreigner had entered the country before using a different document or identity.

May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

Better skills for better opportunities

Prahita Soni was married when she was 15. Today, 15 years later, her life has changed.

Synapse | www.synapse.co

An opportunity to develop IT skills sparked her determination to be self-reliant.

She learnt to input data.

Create documents and presentations.

And enjoyed being in a classroom again.

By day, she works as a Client Servicing Representative.

At night, she studies in her father's tea shop to complete her graduation.

Prahita is the first person in her family to complete the 10th grade. Her shining example of hard work and confidence will ensure that she wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be the last. She is one of 290,000 people trained by Project Jyoti, Microsoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Computer Technology Skills Program. This initiative ensures sustainable livelihoods by enabling job-ready IT skills in over 1,400 learning centres across 20 Indian States and Union Territories.

To know more about Microsoft's initiatives, visit www.microsoft.com/india/msindia

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egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

cover story

s it is frequently quoted and known, if one goes to get a driver’s license, one must have a ration card, and to get a ration card one must have a birth certificate. Although the need for a standard identification proof is a common concern shared by most of the Indians, the situation is grim when it is related to identification of an individual residing in rural India. Courtesy the economic policy of the government and fairly genuine know your customer (KYC) norms of the banking sector, nearly eighty percent of the population, mostly residing in the country side, is estimated to be out of any formal banking and financial coverage. Delivery of essential government to citizen services, especially the welfare and targeted programmes, meant for the lowest income group, is also marred with inefficiency and leakages. Subsequently, these very welfare programmes, which are operational under the inclusive agenda of the government, have become exclusionary. In addition, poor policy design and faulty databases make their contribution in bits and pieces in depriving the genuine beneficiaries of the proposed benefits and leaking out into the hands of people, falling in the above poverty line category. To resolve the issue of precise targeting of the deserving beneficiaries and fixing of the decades- old leakages, government has set up Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), chaired by Nandan Nilekani for building a national citizen database, leveraging information technology (IT) and biometrics identity system, by assigning unique identification number—‘Aadhaar’ as UIDAI calls it—to every resident inside the Indian territorial boundary. It intends to, in the words of Nilekani, ‘get rid of our phantoms’, eliminate the duplicate identities and ghost beneficiaries resting in several government databases, resulting in savings to the exchequer and promulgating ‘inclusion’ through effective targeting of the beneficiaries. However, parallel to the UID advocacy, there are several concerns arising out of UID project. Several civil society organisations (CSO), rights activists and organisations working on ICT for development domain are all pointing out the

challenges in integration of UID with the social sector schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREG) programme and Public Distribution System (PDS), among others, and questioning its projected efficacy in facilitating inclusion. Moreover, there is a huge uproar on issues of infringement of individual privacy and liberty arising out of an increased possibility of tracking and profiling of citizens by the state (the government) with the help of UID—the common thread interlinking various databases within the government. UID, has one more time, spurred the public debate on drawing of the thin-line between indi-

and non-citizens should be issued identity cards of a different colour and design.” Later, in 2003, the Government of India gave approval for assigning MNIC at national scale to each resident. However, in 2006, the Planning Commission conceived a similar initiative, which aimed to provide unique identity number for each resident across the country, which would be used primarily as the basis for efficient delivery of welfare services. Eventually, the government decided to collate the two parallely running programmes of the time—the National Population Register under the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Unique Iden-

R S Sharma Director General and Mission Director, Unique Identification, Authority of India

“While Aadhaar cannot be a panacea for all the challenges PDS or MNREGS currently face, it can be leveraged for making systems more transparent, convenient and cost-effective” vidual liberty and privacy and national security. The drifting understanding on technology solutions, being a replacement for good policy, rather an enabler, and pushing citizens into the technological complexities and dependence, is another argument which is being debated in India, as the government plans to go ahead with creating world’s largest citizen database, without much parliamentary debate and public consultation.

Genesis The genesis of a national identification project goes back to the year 1999. The government commissioned a Kargil Review Committee, appointed in the wake of the Kargil War, in 1999, which submitted its report the next year, and was referred to in the report of Inter Ministerial Group on Reforming the National Security System. The report said: “There should be compulsory registration of citizens and non-citizens living in India… All citizens should be given a Multi-Purpose National Identity Card (MNIC)

tification Number project of the Department of Information Technology, with the forming of empowered group of ministers (EGoM) to look into the feasibility of rolling out unique identification numbers to the residents. On January 28, 2009, the Unique Identification Authority of India was constituted and notified by the Planning Commission as an attached office under the aegis of Planning Commission. Nilekani, the co-founder of the second largest Bangalore based Indian IT power house, Infosys was appointed as Chairman by the Prime Minister of India. The UIDAI aims to offer a strong form of online authentication, where agencies can compare demographic and biometric information of the resident with the record stored in the central database.

Application UIDAI is working on the principle that ‘inability to prove identity is one of the biggest barriers May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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preventing the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies’. In theory, UID is believed to reform the service delivery mechanism in the country through its integration with the social sector schemes like PDS, MGNREG, among others. The Identification Authority avers that the amount of money that could be saved from pilferage in these development programmes could be in the volume of tens of thousands of crores. Currently, the Authority is working on ‘defining the usage of the number’ across critical applications and services. PDS, MGNREGS, Education, Public Health and Financial Inclusion, inter alia are few such applications. The Authority proposes that using Aadhaar solely for identification would enable clear targeting of PDS beneficiaries, the inclusion of marginal groups, and expanded coverage of the poor through the elimination of fakes and duplicates. The government intends to make a shift in the way PDS services are being delivered from a static, supply-led approach to a demandled and dynamic approach, one which gives ‘power and choice to the beneficiary’. It has been pointed out that the number would help residents collect entitlements from any fair price shop (FPS) within the state. Government would then replenish FPS stocks based on authentication-linked off-take. Needless to say that using Aadhaar in identification of beneficiaries in PDS databases will eliminate duplicate and fake beneficiaries from the rolls, and make identification for entitlements far more effective. On UID application in MGNREG, the Authority proposes its integration with job cards, muster rolls, bank account and transaction authentication. UIDAI’s Working Paper on UID application on MGNREG elaborates that the UID can fully replace the need to provide supporting documentation for the standard KYC, which will make opening a bank account significantly simpler. The paper puts forth role of UID in preventing ‘theft from beneficiaries and taxpayers’. It says that UID authentication at the site of work could ensure a match between the hours claimed by the workers and the official supervising the site. Similarly, the over-reporting on amount of work done, could be corroborated against the wages paid to the beneficiaries, ‘establishing the execution of the project’. “The Aadhaar number can be employed in multiple applications, including the PDS and NREGS, and in banking for the poor. While

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

Aadhaar cannot be a panacea for all the challenges which programmes such as the PDS or MNREGS currently face, Aadhaar can be leveraged at various points in these programmes to improve the delivery systems by making them more transparent, convenient and cost-effective,” R S Sharma, Director General and Mission Director, Unique Identification Authority of India said. He added: “The proposed authentication infrastructure of Aadhaar which will enable a resident to authenticate his/her identity will be able to bring about the accountability and transparency at the final delivery point and enforce the no-transferability of entitlements in various programs.” UID would facilitate financial inclusion in a bigger manner. While enabling banking cover to the rural population, linkage with UID would facilitate electronic micro transactions, very typical of the economic culture prevailing in villages. Direct cash transfer, on the place of subsidy, could be facilitated much easily with linking UID to individual’s bank account. Providing a unique identification to all the residents, especially the BPL population would

Aruna Roy Founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)

“There is very limited potential benefit of integrating UID in social sector schemes especially where less complex means of fighting corruption have already proved to be effective”

make them eligible for receiving direct cash transfer, without any intermediary intervention. Ashish Sanyal, former Senior Director, Department of IT said, “In my opinion UID is the first correct step towards realisation of so-called Connected Government or Joined-up Government.” He opined, “It is happening at a very suitable time also, because, through implementation of National e-Governance Plan, government is heading fast towards such a requirement, in order to derive maximum benefits from some flagship schemes/programmes planned under NeGP for country-wide roll-out.” Moreover, security is yet another major application area where UID aims to make a difference. UID proponents say that in a single identity paradigm, the surveillance and monitoring of people would be far easier. The security agencies will be able to track the movements of people with relative ease. Integration of the databases with help of UID is poised to transform the way information and intelligence is gathered by the security agencies. Providing a cop’s perspective, T Krishna Prasad, Additional Director General of Police, Andhra Pradesh said, “UID would be of particular significance in crime prevention and detection, making identification of the person in dock much easier.” R S Praveen Kumar, Joint Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad said, “In the existing situation, our databases of all departments are not integrated. While we search for the criminals and offenders, the veracity of the person is a big question mark. With UID and the networking of servers, across departments, we will be able to see banking history, travel history, health history of the person and zeroing in on the real culprit would be far much easier.” Purushottam Sharma, Inspector General of Police (IGP), Head, State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB), Madhya Pradesh informed:“If Government of India permits the police and other security agencies to utilise this UIDAI database - in future which I strongly believe that it will be granted- it will be much beneficial in tracking of criminals and absconders.”

Perspective As per UIDAI’s understanding the inability to prove identity is one of the biggest barriers preventing the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies. However, this very principle is being debated by many civil society organisations (CSO) working closely at the grassroots level.

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Though some of the CSOs agree to the fact that lack of identity proof may be one of the reasons behind poor state of service delivery and source of exclusion, they point out towards the quid pro quo among the politicians, administrators and local middle men and contractors, flaws in policy design, and poor categorisation of BPL and APL as the real source of denial of services to the poor. Commenting on this proposition of UIDAI, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society said: “Instead it is the lack of transparency in the benefits and subsidies system. Corruption monitoring, systemic transparency and accountability - via right to information- and decentralised public participation is the key to providing access to benefits and subsidies.” Right activists are of the view that the pilferage of `20,000 crore is not because poor people are defrauding each other. This scale of fraud is possible because many rich and powerful people are involved and there is collusion by government officials. Debating the integration of UID with social sector schemes like MGNREG and PDS, Aruna Roy, founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) said, “One has to evaluate the potential costs and benefits of integration of UID into social sector schemes. There is very limited potential benefit especially where less complex means of fighting corruption have already proved to be effective.” On the other hand, “UID could end up throwing in disarray the entire registration process, delivery and monitoring systems because of technological failure or failure to ensure universal coverage,” Roy added. She pointed out that it is not worth taking such a risk especially when no technological-based system in this country has so far managed to ensure universal registration. In MGNREGA, the concern is that UID can

only address wage related defalcation, not material, which is arguably much greater in incidence and severity. In PDS, much of the problems of delivery are related to policy (e.g., targeting which leads to errors of exclusion/inclusion) which cannot be fixed by UID. Reportedly, duplicate cards could be eliminated through UID, but there is little evidence to show that the problem of duplicate cards is that widespread (e.g., 2% in Tamil Nadu and 8% in Chattisgarh). Under such circumstances, UID

Sunil Abraham Director, Centre for Internet and Society

“Corruption monitoring, systemic transparency and accountability - via right to information- and decentralised public participation is the key to providing access to benefits and subsidies”

could end up being exclusionary and end up doing more harm than good. As per the concerns raised by the civil society, although a cost benefit analysis is yet to be done on UID project, a comparison between scope of UID application in service delivery and its cost show that the cost outweighs benefits, given the limited role of UID in fixing the loopholes in the social sector schemes, which are primarily due to flaws in policies and processes. United Kingdom in 2005 introduced an Identity Cards Bill in the Parliament, primarily meant for ‘combating terrorism, reducing crime and illegal working, reducing fraud and strengthening national security’. However, the bill faced strong opposition from all sections of society, led by researchers and academia, in face of issues arising out of data protection and privacy concerns. In an assessment report, the department of information systems of London School of Economics said: “The proposals are too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lack a foundation of public trust and confidence.” Pointing that proposal missed key opportunities to establish a secure, trusted and costeffective identity system, the report put forth consideration of alternative models for an identity card scheme that may achieve the goals of the legislation more effectively. While providing cost estimation, LSE reported that the likely cost of the ten-year rollout of the proposed identity cards scheme could be between £10.6 billion and £19.2 billion, with a median of £14.5 billion, substantially higher that the projected cost of the project by the government. On UID, while UIDAI has informed that the cost for each enrollment is approximately INR150, there has been no public disclosure on the over all, long term cost of the UID project.

Privacy, Security and Orwellian state Pawan Duggal Lawyer, Supreme Court of India

“The government needs to do quite a lot in terms of addressing the various legal policy and regulatory issues pertaining to UID in India, before implementing and launching it in a big way”

Privacy of the residents’ data is another major concern. Use of UID to track citizens’ lives will go a long way in encroaching civil liberties. Besides, India doesn’t have a stringent privacy law, as is the case in the US and other European countries, which has a national citizen database. UID being the common denominator in all the databases, mining information from databases of the government and market agencies would fetch complete information on personal details about travel, health, communications and banking history of an individual. “The actual objective of UID seems to track May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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large numbers of people, which fundamentally undermines citizens’ civil liberties,” Roy said. Given the quid pro quo between the politicians, bureaucrats, police, local administrators and contractors, there is a high possibility of this enormous information being used against innocent citizens. Data security of the central UID repository is yet another concern, which assumes even greater proportions given the fact that the existing legislative framework doesn’t address these issues. Legal experts are of the view that in face of 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the government through Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, have acquired huge unprecedented powers for protecting national security and for interception, monitoring, decryption and blocking of electronic data and information transmitted through computers, computer systems, computer networks, computer resources and communication devices within India. However, there has been little or no action on ensuring data security and individual privacy for the citizens. Voicing his concern, Pawan Duggal, Lawyer, Supreme Court of India said that despite the amendment of Information Technology Act, 2000, there is not enough provisions therein relating to individual privacy and data security. India also does not have any dedicated legislation on privacy and data security. While having an optimistic view that the UID project would not lead to an Orwellian state, Purushottam Sharma also pointed out to the imperative of having stringent legislative mechanism to ensure privacy and data security. He said: “The Government of India has to work on a [legislative] framework to ensure the security of database and has to decide who can

T Krishna Prasad ADG, Andhra Pradesh Police

“Cases of phone tapping have been happening all the time. Post UID, it will be tracking of individual lifestyle and movements. You can’t stop it, as long as you don’t have those transparent institutional mechanisms to deal with these issues” access this UID database.” The creation of national citizen database is a right move in the direction of providing standard identification to all the residents, besides leveraging it for providing the financial cover to 80 % of the population. Moreover, it could also expedite the process of identification and

prevention of criminal and crime, respectively, making the task of security agencies far more easier. It would lead to objectivising and catalysing the prosecution process. However, the thin-line between individual liberty, privacy and national security must not be blurred. “There is a need to draw a clear line between concerns regarding national security and safeguarding individual privacy,” Praveen Kumar opined. The government has the onus of devising objective, transparent mechanism so that the transactional data, with a linkage to UID, would not be misused by the people sitting at the helms of affair for profiling, tracking and harassment of innocents. Some of the best bureaucrats and cops, noted for their integrity and impeccable public career, share the concerns about the vulnerability of misuse of data against the innocent residents – the aam aadmi- in the country. Pointing towards need for a transparent institutional mechanisms defining the use of UID in individual tracking and profiling, Krishna Prasad said, “Cases of phone tapping have been happening all the time. Post UID, it will be tracking of individual lifestyle and movements. You can’t stop it, as long as you don’t have those transparent institutional mechanisms to deal with these issues.” It is an imperative in the part of the government to devise stringent legislations which may safeguard individual privacy and liberty. There is an urgent crying need to come up with appropriate checks and balances in this regard. “The government needs to do quite a lot in terms of addressing the various legal policy and regulatory issues pertaining to UID in India, before implementing and launching it in a big way in India,” Duggal affirmed.

Your daily cup of hot tea with hot e-Governance news! Log on to www.egovonline.net

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

technology

Measuring Life the

Digital Way

The former complex technology is fast becoming the most used for identity management; the main reason for this new trend is its promised accuracy By Sonam Gulati, eGov Bureau

se of biometrics is fast catching up in every sector all over the world. The former complex technology has now become the most simplified form of identity management. One of the main reasons for this is accuracy. For example, fingerprints are one of the most reliable modes for identification; the crossover accuracy of digital biometrics fingerprint technology has been calculated to be 1:500 for a single finger. Use of multiple fingers increases the accuracy exponentially. It is highly unlikely (estimated at 1 in 64 billion) that any two fingerprints would be identical and therefore impossible to tell apart. This is the factor where the technology of biometrics works. Fingerprints are one of the few parts of the human body which are unique in a way that they can never be duplicated or be same as anyone elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and thus are used by biometrics. The other parts that can be used by biometrics are Iris/retina recognition (con-

sidered the most accurate), Facial recognition and Palm prints, DNA, Hand Geometry, Vascular Pattern. Biometrics as a technology, in simple words, measures a particular set of vital statistics of human body to determine/establish identity. However, the scope of using biometrics for identity management is limitless. In particular for India, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second largest populous country, identity management is a challenging task. May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

technology

Type of Biometric

How Does it Work

Pros

Cons

Fingerprint

analyses fingertip patterns

Easy and Economic

Time taking, can wither due to rigorous work

Iris

analyses features of colored ring of the eye

Most accurate, single sample taken can last a lifetime

Expensive, susceptible to poor image quality thus making sample redundant

Facial Recognition

measuring facial characteristics

Can capture the sample from a distance doesn’t require direct subject interface

Long hair, smile, low resolution images, poor lighting can affect the matching

Retinal Scan

analyses blood vessels in the eye

Speedy and accurate

Subject needs to be close to camera, expensive

DNA

analyses genetic makeup

Most accurate, chance of two people sharing one sample is one in a billion

Cannot be done in real time and a physical sample must be taken

Souce: Wikipedia

Biometrics has lately gained momentum in India and is being largely used in almost all SMEs to enterprise offices, mainly for attendance in place of access card or time-sheets. But that’s not all, the most ambitious project of the country-Aadhar- which aims to give a unique identification number (UID) to all the citizens is using biometrics technology for identification. A unique number is being given to every individual in lieu of their iris, fingerprint and facial recognition encryptions. Any application that requires establishing the identity of individual has potential for implementing biometric technology. These days, even some laptops are embedded with fingerprint scanner that is used during the login process. Biometric algorithms are used to convert these biometric samples into biometric template, match against all the templates previously enrolled (de-duplication process) and

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

store the new template if it is not duplication. It will complete the enrolment process and store the template along with background information (e.g. name, address) that will be used in the authentication process. Once enrolled, the system collects another sample of the individual, uses the same Biometric algorithms to convert this into biometric template and compares with the stored template (1:1 matching process). If it matches with the template against claimed identity of the person enrolled earlier, authentication process confirms identity, else rejects it. In this matching of identity, there are two kinds of errors that can occur, False Acceptance and False rejection. False acceptance is accepting the identity against a person who he/she is not and false rejection is rejecting the identity of a person who he/she is. “Biometrics is considered to be the most reliable technol-

ogy available for confirming the identity of a person. The biometric algorithms have evolved in the last years to such levels that the false rejection or acceptance errors have been reduced to a minimum level,” said Rajdeep Sahrawat, Senior General Manager, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on talking about the biometrics technology. “These particular errors can also be conquered by using a fusion of multiple algorithms, like using both iris and fingerprint for identification,” he added.

Technology per se Not all body parts can be used by biometrics for the purpose of identification. Biometrics as a technology can only identify algorithms that have certain key features like, universality; uniqueness; permanence of a feature measures how well a biometric resists aging and other variance over time; collectability - the ease with which acquisition of the template; performance, accuracy, speed, and robustness of technology used; acceptability, in terms of degree of approval of a technology; circumvention, ease of use of a substitute or susceptibility to duplication. Apart from the features above the identification part of the technology, which enrolls, matches and identifies the algorithm fed into it depends on certain key aspects which are as follows: Authentication speed- Time taken to identify or match the template fed is very critical as often while identity authentication is on, if it takes too long then the whole purpose of using a high-end technology is defeated. There is also a chance of it affecting the server if at the same time many templates are being fed across the sectors then it has a strong chance of affecting the server if the speed is not upto mark. Template size- the size of the algorithm being fed, whether it is a fingerprint or a niris or face recognition, should be in sync with the server because if too many big templates are fed the server might crash out. FAR & FRR- As mentioned above FAR refers to False Acceptance Ratio and FRR refers to False Rejection Ratio, for a successful biometric identification module both of these ratios have to be a bare minimum otherwise does not function as accurately as it should.

Can we afford it? “Five years back the usage of biometrics was not at a very impressive scale. Over time it

technology

“Biometrics Simplifies Identity Verification” How practical is it to use biometric technologies in rural areas where fingerprint might get distorted due to manual labour? Usage of multi-modal biometrics (fingerprints and iris) enables UIDAI to successfully use biometrics even in the rural conditions. Since our biometric standard covers all the ten finger prints, it will be possible to find at least one finger which is authentication – worthy. The residents can be informed of their ‘golden’ finger.

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

Security of information stored in the central repository is a big challenge. How is it being dealt?

What are the advantages of using Biometrics over other technologies for identity management?

Aadhaar system at Central ID Data Reposi-

Three primary characteristics of ‘Aadhaar’ Number: Global (can be used across various applications), unique (one resident gets one identity), and permanent (remains same throughout the lifetime of the resident and is never assigned to anyone else) - allow Aadhaar system to offer a strong, portable national identity to every resident. Biometrics is the only mechanism to establish these characteristics. UIDAI has hence decided to use multi-modal (fingerprints and iris) biometrics for its purpose. Biometrics simplifies identity verification.

specific access control mechanisms. The data

has increased due to increase in awareness as well as reduction in cost. Today biometrics is a very affordable means for identity management, especially the fingerprint recognition mode,” said Ranjit Nambiar, Director of Sales - South Asia, HID Global. Talking about his associations with the government projects, he informed that HID Global has been associated in the T3 project of Airport Authority of India and he commented, “If you take Metro or Airport projects, cost is never a factor as security concerns are much more serious and thus affordability is never an issue.” The affordability of technology as such depends on project to project where a simple access control system in an SME might just take an economic fingerprint authentication device and a highlevel organisation such as Indian Space Research Organsation (ISRO) or any other threat-prone

tory (CIDR) is guarded both physically and electronically with several security zones and is secured with the best encryption and is also designed to be tamper-proof, and is stored in a highly secure vault. UIDAI has procured several technologies such as firewalls, network and host intrusion prevention systems, tamper-proof hardware security appliances (for securing encryption keys) to ensure that information stored at CIDR is fully protected. UIDAI has a comprehensive security policy to ensure the safety and integrity of its data.

organisation would opt for a multi-spectral technology which uses multiple identification algorithms. All in all the cost definitely has come down with many a small offices also opting for biometric to the earlier modes of identification. The UID project is a government investment where the data is being collected from all over the country to provide each citizen with one unique number which could be used in place of all other identification proofs. For UID there is no use as such of the data they are collecting and storing, thus their RoI would come from the various applications where this data may be used for matching the templates. For example, if a person wants a phone connection or a LPG connection, he/she will just have to provide the UID number and the verification would be done on its basis, the authorities may charge a fee on that matching of the algorithm.

Challenges The possibilities are endless, a biometric algorithm can be stored in a chip in a ‘Smart Card’ and be used by the person for various purposes, or it could be used for financial inclusion by giving such smart cards to BPL families for proper identification for micro-finance, also the biometric data could be used for basic identity management in various developmental programmes of the government where duplicate or multiple identities are the biggest problems. The possibility of misuse of information stored and illegitimate invasion of privacy of the individuals are the two biggest counter criticisms. “As far as privacy breach is concerned, first of all, Aadhaar project keeps the privacy concerns of a resident at the centre of the various technology applications developed and adopted. Secondly, The UIDAI will not reveal personal information in the Aadhaar database – the only response will be a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to requests to verify an identity, thus privacy will never be compromised,” Said R S Sharma, Director General & Mission Director, UIDAI. With increasing use of the technology there are other operative challenges mushrooming too. Like maintaining the kind of support systems, using the right method to record biometrics and not over doing it. “The biggest challenge is Interoperability. There is a need for creation and follow-up of International Biometric standards to stop proprietary algorithm used in biometric technology. This will eventually reduce cost and build a sustainable model for the future,” commented Sanjeev Mathur, CEO, Smart Identity Devices Pvt. Ltd. Talking about cases where the finger might get cut or a person might get blind on other such circumstances where the template might not match despite being of that person only, Ranjit Nambiar of HID commented, “It is end of the day technology and it will always need manual techniques as a benchmark. It is not a standalone identity management solution. We would always need traditional forms of identification in place.” Biometrics or any technology cannot be a panacea or a nostrum for all our ailments but yet we can take from it what is relevant. Biometric identity management sure has some scope in a country like ours with a diverse population, as it is for all of us to witness a history which is in the process of beingwritten. May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

THE PREMIER GLOBAL PLATFORM FOR E-DEVELOPMENT Presents

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

EXPO

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

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

Why participate?

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

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

CO-Organisers

supporting partner

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

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

Award Categories ICT Innovations in Governance • Best Government to Citizen (G2C) Initiative • Best Government to Business (G2B) Initiative • Best Government to Government (G2G) Initiative Theme based Awards in Governance • ICT enabled Financial Inclusion Initiative • ICT enabled Agriculture Initiative • ICT enabled Municipal Initiative • Innovative Grassroots Telecentre Initiative • Best m-Governance Initiative • Best Practices in Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) • Best Cloud Computing Initiative • Best Rural Broadband and Connectivity Service Provider • Best Public Safety and Security Agency • Best Urban Governance Initiative • Best Power IT Initiative • Best State Data-Centre

• Best Intelligent Transport System Provider • Best Innovation/ invention in Taxation (including GST) Policies through ICT • Best use of ICT for Public Sector Units (PSU) • Best e- district Initiative • Best Information Security providing Agency • Most Effective Food Security (including PDS) providing Agency • Best Rural Governance Initiative ICT Innovations in Healthcare • Best Government Policy • Best Civil Society/ Development Agency Initiative • ICT enabled Hospital • ICT Enabled Diagnostic Service Provider • ICT enabled Health Insurance Initiative • Most Affordable Healthcare Provider • Best Medical Technology Innovation • Best PPP Initiative • Best m-Health Project/Programme • Green Hospital Initiative

• Green Laboratory Initiative • Best Use of Social Media in Healthcare • Best online Healthcare Provider • Most Innovative Technology for Healthcare Inclusion • Excellence in Care Delivery through Innovative Use of Technology • Healthy State ICT Innovations further Millennium Development Goals • Best ICT initiative in Eradicating Extreme Poverty and Hunger • Best ICT initiative in Promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women • Best ICT initiative in Reducing Child Mortality • Best ICT initiative in Improving Maternal Health • Best ICT initiative in Combating HIVAIDS, Malaria and other diseases • Best ICT initiative in Ensuring Environmental Sustainability • Best ICT initiative in Developing a Global Partnership for Development

Key Speakers at eworld forum 2011

Walter Fust Chairman of UNESCO’s International Program for the Development of Communication (IPDC) and President of Globethics.net Geneva

R Chandrashekhar Secretary Ministry of Communication & Information Technology Government of India

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

Professor Michael Blakemore Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Durham, UK

Shankar Agarwal Joint Secretary Department of Information Technology Government of India

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

Brendan Doyle Head of Institutional Relations Line Center for Information Technology & Communication

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

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

Ranjith Siyambalapitiya Minister of Telecommunication and Information Technolog Government of Sri Lanka

and many more...

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in person

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are planning for a national database system called CIES (Comprehensive Information Exchange System)â&#x20AC;?

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

in person

Anil Swarup

Director General for Labour Welfare, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India

â&#x20AC;&#x153;To make the scheme cashless and paperless technology came handy for usâ&#x20AC;?

hat was your objective behind implementing IT in the RSBY scheme?

RSBY started its operation on April 1, 2008 and has now been operational for almost three years. While we were conceptualising the scheme, we were cautious of the basic characteristics of the target beneficiaries, which are the below poverty line workers. We were aware that these persons were primarily by definition poor. We wanted a scheme, which is cashless because a poor man cannot raise resources to meet his requirements and claim in the insurance company. Another challenge was that majority of the beneficiary population was illiterate. Therefore, we wanted to evolve a paperless health insurance scheme and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where technology became handy to us.

How have biometrics and smart cards helped the scheme? Since most of the workers migrate from one place to another. It was a challenge for us to enable them avail these facility anywhere in the country and again technology was the answer to this. I am not very sure ten years ago this could happen; technology was not mature enough to take care of these problems. We are fortunate that use of smart cards became the basis of the scheme. It helps the identification of beneficiaries through biometric system. Large numbers of schemes in India have not been successful as beneficiaries were not clearly identified as there was no foolproof method of identification. Here, biometrics has been immensely beneficial in the identification process.

Do you think that biometric identification is more workable than real time connectivity system?

The brainchild of Anil Swarup, Director General for Labour Welfare, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) has transformed the life of millions of people in the unorganised sector . IIn an interaction with Divya Chawla and Dhirendra Pratap Singh, he shared his perspective on this health insurance scheme and threw light upon the role of IT in streamlining its processes.

There has been a debate that whether smart card should actually be used or there should be real time connectivity. Unfortunately, in India all places are not real time connected and it will take some time for the entire country to be real time connected. In biometric identification, the data is stored on a chip. When the person goes to hospital the data is verified with the data on chip and it enables the offline system. Smart card also helps to ascertain whether there is sufficient amount available in the card. May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

IN PERSON

The latest incident of application of this scheme is in the German embassy. They are going to implement RSBY for all their casual workers working for them.

software, which is developed by World Bank. Then there are a host of process softwares, out of which the enrollment software has been prepared in-house and the other software have been developed by different agencies.

In India corruption and fraud has always been a challenge in the implementation of various government schemes. How have you dealt with such challenges?

When you initially started the scheme, what was your motive behind using technology in such a huge way?

Technology plays a very important role in the overall implementation of RSBY. To control fraudulent activities the data generated everyday is analysed. We study

Everything was not pre-planned. In term of poverty and illiteracy, we learnt that technology was the only solution as we wanted to make the scheme cashless

“The scheme has a

business sense for everyone involved and by this all

are serving the poor”

Almost every state of the country is now offering RSBY scheme to its BPL population. As on date, 23 million smart cards are active in the country and more than 1.5 million people have already availed treatment at various hospitals. The scheme has been chosen by the World Bank as one of the top 18 social security schemes. Countries like Bangladesh and Maldives have also taken the decision to replicate a similar scheme in their countries.

The current union budget proposes to expand the reach of this scheme to include various unorganised sectors. Please throw light on this decision. Now, the scheme is by and large stabilised. It started with BPL and is now going beyond BPL. It is going to extend to the street vendors. In the current Union Budget Finance Minister has announced the extension to MGNREGA beneficiaries and beedi workers also. Railway Ministry is going to extend this scheme to railway portals and postal departments to extend it to their postmen.

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

getting personal Education Masters in Political Science Passion Handling issues relating to the welfare of unorganised of sector workers in the country which constitute 94% of the labour force in the country Positions held Served as the Secretary, Department of Food Processing and Horticulture, Government of U.P; Chairman, Agriculture and Processed Food Projects, Export Development Authority (APEDA), Ministry of Commerce, Government of India

the trends on daily basis to check what is happening where and in this way we can verify if something goes wrong somewhere. We can access data, analyse data and then take appropriate action.

Do you think RSBY will be able to achieve the goal of inclusive growth in India? It has achieved the goal of inclusive growth. It is addressing poorest of the poor and the out of pocket expenses of the poor have come down to a large extent. In case of RSBY, every penny is electronically accounted for. Perhaps, this is a first ever business model for a social sector scheme in India. The scheme has a business sense for everyone involved and by doing this business, they are serving the poor. Such business models are very sustainable. It is a very unique model that it is happening in India and I think this is quite a revolution.

Could you please tell us about your technology providers? We don’t have a single technology provider. There is a security software, which is entirely prepared by the NIC as the security software could not be given to anybody else. Another is data

and paperless. We have committed mistakes and corrected ourselves and have evolved after a period of time. It has been quite a journey. We are still evolving on the technology front. We are planning for a national database system called CIES (Comprehensive Information Exchange System). We plan to link all hospitals through the CIES.

What were the challenges in technology implementation in RSBY? Smart card technology was not stabilised anywhere in country. Secondly, health insurance was itself a challenge because health insurance was collapsing worldwide. I think the biggest challenge was our internal attitudes to believe that it can happen. Fortunately, we have an outstanding team, which is full of energy and is always looking towards solutions. Also, we have not been able to reach out to the beneficiaries as much as we wanted. We are glad that a lot of agencies like UNDP are helping us. However, a lot of things still need to happen. For instance, we are not so happy with the quality of service. In future, we are going to evolve a methodology to prevent collusive frauds and misuse of cards.

state special

MAHARASHTRA

State Special state focus

interview

e-Gov stock taking in the state of Maharashtra

Vijayalakhsmi Bidari Prasanna, Director, DIT, Maharashtra

At the cusp of e-Transition Maharashtra is now counted among the leaders in e-Governance readiness in India and is poised to be the only state with single front-end delivery of 100 G2C services by next year By Rachita Jha, egov Bureau

ccording to the latest e-Readiness Assessment Report for state and UTs brought out by the Ministry of Information and Technology, Maharashtra has taken a giant leap from its 2006 assessment survey to emerge as a leader state in ICT environment and readiness landscape. The state government has worked extremely hard in laying out the ICT infrastructure across the state and as the next step has now vowed to spin-off close to 100 online services to effectively leverage this enabling environment and high readiness for on-ground ICT usage within the state especially in remote areas and villages. With a series of initiatives launched in collaboration with various state departments, results are already evident with many urban and rural services now becoming available online. Maharashtra is the first state to have its own e-Governance policy; the draft was opened for comments in January this year. Taking

the initiative further, DIT, Government of Maharashtra has already got its e-Governance policy team and advisory committee to draft the detailed implementation plan to accompany the e-Governance policy guidelines.

State e-Gov policy DIT, Government of Maharashtra has drafted e-Governance policy for the Government of Maharashtra that aims to create a standardised and seamless implementation framework of all e-Governance projects by various departments in the state. The document illustrates the creation of a State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG) in line with the national delivery gateway being designed by Government of India to act as a middleware between the state portal and the departmental e-Governance applications. SSDG shall act as a hub for all the interactions between service seekers and various service providers. The policy also finds mention of much talked about cloud computing as a stateof-the-art service oriented architecture for various e-Governance projects and mandates

top 10 csc districts

interoperability and use of open standards in all e-Governance projects in the state. Overall the policy aims to weave the various components in any e-Governance project under one document for the department to follow and implement easily. With sections on capacity building, PPP models, audits, budgetary allocations and implementation guidelines, it is a step forward to have an enabling environment that assists any department to go ahead on projects successfully. As a landmark initiative, the policy clearly states to work out a time bound approach to incorporate and encourage the use of UID for various e-Governance projects to facilitate the delivery of services to the right beneficiary. This makes it the first state to include UID in its state policy for service delivery. As the nodal agency for implementation of the UIDAI project in the state, DIT had the national launch of UIDAI project in Tembli Village of Nandurbar District in Maharashtra on 29th September, 2010. Since then, it has successfully achieved 14,73,236 enrolments, with establishment of 599 enrolment centres and 2059 enrolment stations. The state has approximately 4 lakh Aadhaar numbers generated until now. The policy also paves way for creating a legislation framework for e-Governance. Maharashtra is the first state to draft a Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Public Services Act that empowers citizen with the right to e-Services.

Right to e-Services Another path-breaking initiative taken by the state is the adoption of Maharashtra Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Public Services Act (MMEDPS Act) that will give every citizen in the state the right to have option of online services availableâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a right to e-Governance. The draft is ready and has been opened for public comments. This legislation will make it May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

state special

mandatory for all government officers/departments to offer online services to the citizens in the state. In the next five years the Act will enable introduction of 100 online G2C services from 44 state departments. There is also a provision for appointment of an Electronic Service Delivery Commissioner for resolution between citizens and departments and also for constraints faced by the state departments in implementation of online services. Through this Act, Maharashtra aims to step further from single window to no window for citizen services whereby citizens get digitally signed certificates without coming to the government offices. They will fill the forms online, track the status of their application and get their digital certificates, without meeting any government official. This is also mooted as one of the key steps to curb corruption in government departments by eliminating the stages of middlemen

in the entire process. Taking cognizance of the initiative, the Central Government has now taken up the proceedings and will pass it as a Central Act for all the states to follow.

Tech-driven state economy The state known for its financial capital Mumbai and growing industrial contribution is also largely dependent on agriculture for its overall state gross domestic product (SGDP). The economic survey of Maharashtra aims for an optimist 10.5 percent during the year 201011, as against 8.7 percent during the previous year. And the key driver for this growth rate is said to come from the increased agricultural production that will help ‘agriculture and allied activities’ sector to grow by 12.5 percent, as against a growth of 3.1 percent in the earlier year. The state government believes that the accelerated growth rate in this sector will not

only push the growth in the overall SGDP, but will also bring around 50 percent of the population under the ‘growth umbrella’ that will make the growth more inclusive. The rural kiosks have a mandate to serve as information and service delivery centres for villagers and have access to information on government schemes, agriculture market and other relevant data. Many projects have been initiated by various state departments to bring the farmer as an active participant in the growth story of Maharashtra and accelerate the state economy. A reflection of the faith in technology tools for growth overdrive was evident in the address of H. E. Shri K Sankaranarayanan, Governor of Maharashtra at the Joint Session of Maharashtra State Legislature at Vidhan Bhavan, Mumbai early March this year. He announced the launch of Commissionerate of Agriculture sponsored under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas

interview

“In three years, all

state departments will be integrated online” Tell us more about the novel initiative of introducing an e-Governance policy in the state by DIT, Government of Maharashtra?

Photo: Gayatri Shah

The e-Governance policy is headed by a committee of experts headed by Prof Vijay Bhaktar, a well-known technocrat and pioneering work in IT. We have taken inputs also from various stakeholders, this includes all the people working in the government and also from industry including hardware and software, and finally from the general public. The draft policy is now presented in the cabinet. The policy is now due for inauguration. It is very comprehensive as it addresses a lot of common issues such as standardisation, IPR, sharing resources, emphasis on usage of Marathi language using standardised language software. We also have more focus on open source technology. The policy also paves way for a landmark Act that we have formulated called the Maharashtra Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Public Services Act (MMEDPS Act).

Vijayalakshmi Bidari Prasanna Director, Department of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

Maharashtra Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Public Services Act will be a landmark bill when introduced, what are your views? Maharashtra Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Public Services Act (MMEDPS Act) 2011 is probably the first state in the country to have initiated the Act in the country wherein citizens have the right to

state special

Yojana, which is implementing an innovative â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Crop Pest Surveillance and Advisory Projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (CROPSAP) during the year 2010-11. The online monitoring system for major pests in Soybean and Cotton throughout Maharashtra will assist farmers for early detection of attack of pests on the crops and suggest measures to be adopted to protect such crops through SMS. He also mentioned the issue of 75,558 smart cards to the fishermen community in the state. Fisheries have been a significant contributor of the state economy but the fishing community has largely been ignored in the earlier state development plans.

Infra check The state had been aggressive in the installation of the core infrastructure deliverables under the NeGP and this has been made possible by the motivated team of empanelled consultants

demand for online services from a particular department in the government. He can also have the right to know that in what time-frame the department will deliver the services. He can then appeal to a commissioner who will look into the matter and settle the issue. The Electronic Service Delivery Commissioner will decide on a suitable time-frame for conflict resolution. The legislation also lays down a minimum time-period under which all the departments will have their own website updated with latest information to access them online. Following the website creation, they will try to make all the applications online and also include online payments in due course of time. And within three years, we look forward to an integrated environment wherein first year will have all the information available online, followed by second year in which we aim to make all transactions to be made online and in the third year we would move towards integrated environment wherein the various departments would be linked to each other to resolve all the decisions that require the citizen to interact with multiple agencies in the government. They can talk to each other and offer a single interface for the citizen on the front-end and the back-end has all the departments integrated. We would like to prioritise our services for G2C based on the scale of impact it will have on the population and affect at least one lakh citizens.

under the State e-Governance Mission Team (SeMT) that constantly pursue the key result areas for the department. A round-up of the status on the infrastructure deliverables are mentioned below.

CSCs The target is to set up 11,818 Common Service Centers (CSCs) or Maha e-Seva Kendra as they are called on a Build-Own-Operate Model in Maharashtra. This is one of the largest spread of IT-enabled delivery systems among other states. In its vision to take IT services to the masses, Maharashtra Government in 2008 signed agreements with four companies to set up common service centres (CSC) in all six revenue divisions of the state. However, Nasik region now has a new SCA for the project following termination of the previous agency. The current status stands at an impressive 78 percent

The Act is ready and we have taken comments from department of law and judiciary, finance and planning among many others. It is also going in as a Cabinet note for approval. We are looking to appoint a Commissioner from an IT background from the society who will head the works related to the Act and its implementation in the state.

Mahaonline portal is poised to be the front-end interface of the state government. Tell us more about the project and its deliverables? We have performed well in our CSCs completion targets and as one tenth of the total roll-out numbers of CSCs, it is a major contribution to the NeGP plan. We have envisaged the portal to be a single front-end for the entire state. Here we will have all the 8500 CSCs or Maha e-Seva Kendra in the state for citizens through a single portal. They will be able to upload applications and transactions across all G2C services. The portal will deliver 96 service, operate payments through the e-Payments gateway. This is taken up from the Nanded model that has successfully done these services. No other state has so many applications available through a front-end portal. In a years time we aim to deliver 100 services online for the citizens. We are ready to launch the five e-Districts where we have completed the pilot run.

of the target achieved as 9,213 CSCs are rolled out in six revenue divisions across the state. Of the 11,818 Maha-e-Seva kendras that will be set up through this model, 10,483 will be in rural areas and 1,335 in urban areas. Nanded district has taken the lead in setting up a success model for other districts in delivery of 96 G2C services in a semi-automated way via CSCs. Similar model is already operational in five districts and now following evaluation from SDA has shown keenness to standardise the delivery model and be replicated across the state.

MSWAN & SDCs The Maharashtra State-wide Area Network (MSWAN) shall connect State Head Quarters with all 35 Districts, 324 Talukas and 6 Divisional Head Quarters. The status of Maharashtra State-wide Area Network (MSWAN) stands completely supported by bandwidth

How do you plan to ensure that these CSCs areviable for the villages? All our 8500 CSCs are completely manned by entrepreneurs and are offering up to 70-90 online services. Recently we had a CSC operator who brought a nano from his earnings. So our efforts have been to make these centers viable and reliable. We have not yet reached every house but have definitely reached every village. The panchayat system is very strong in Maharashtra and we aim to integrate them with our CSCs. The next level of integration will include the availability of gram panchayat services online which lie mainly in the collectorate and tehsil offices.

DigiGOV has made the DIT in Maharashtra paperless. What are your future plans on the system? The document management system or DMS has taken a step forward from DIT and we have now taken up DMS to the entire state, wherein all the important documents will now be available on the portal. This will provide easy access to the documents and also enable a trouble-free search system for any relevant files for the officials apart from saving a lot of space. The judiciary department has come forward with the proposal to digitise all the decisions of the lower courts so that people do not have problems in accessing their orders anytime for any references. Once the history and legacy May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

state special

service providers - BSNL & Tulip. Currently the network is established between 314 PoPs out of 359 and a Third Party Audit (TPA) is on-going. MSWAN shall be the backbone for data, voice and video communication throughout the state and would act as vehicle for effective implementation of e-Governance across the state. The network provides a secure network for data, voice and video interactions for the Maha e-Seva Kendra for information delivery. The government is now creating awareness at the district level officials to ensure that the technology is utilised for vertical integration within the government administration between state and taluka and also between departments through horizontal connectivity, such as departments of agriculture, education, land and revenue, food supplies, etc. DIT, Government of Maharashtra is building the State Data Center for the entire state of Maharashtra for all G2C, G2B and G2G services. The Data Center shall provide facilities for various departments of Government of

Maharashtra to locate their server infrastructure, obtain hosting services for the software application, manage the data center operations and disaster recovery and backup.

of any department in entirely digitalised only then can any department can effectively become paperless and digital office in the true sense. This coincides with our digital journey management system (DJMS) tracking system in which we can track the journey of the document as it travels across the officials in the government and we plan to take it to all the districts. DigiGOV is already operational in the IT department and through this software all our files are now moved digitally. So our approach has been to start with the older documents so that the past has been digitised and then we integrate them into the current IT platform so that at any time for any reference the documents are all available to us. This will enable us to have a seamless integration of the system.

such as teachers, doctors and personnel in CSCs are available there. This technology with GPRS integration has the power to monitor the number of doctors, teachers etc. who are appointed and their regularity in these institutions.

the government in terms of cost savings. In terms of GDP percentage, even if we introduce UID in the food and supplies departments, health, education and pension departments we could save 4000 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 10,000 crore of money.

UID project has highest number of enrollments in Maharashtra, how do you envisage the project to be used by various state departments?

What are your views on the inclusion of mobile technology in the governance systems delivery models?

How have you used the biometric attendance system in the governance systems? The biometric attendance system is being executed in all government office above 25 employees and these have now being extended to all the ashramshala and gram panchayat schools and CSCs in the state. This is announced to ensure that those who are appointed in the villages

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

e-District DIT, Government of Maharashtra is implementing the e-District project for e-Enablement of services at the Collector and Zilla Parishad offices in accordance with the guidelines of Government of India. Currently, the state is preparing for the launch of five e-District pilots in Pune, Nagpur, Latur, Nanded and Sindhudurg. In terms of G2C services, over 35 services are being delivered in a semi-automated way through the CSCs across the state. These include updating and mutation of land records, birth and death certificate, various caste certificates, income and domicile certificates, marriage certificates, ration card services, various services under national schemes (such as National Old Age Scheme, Sanjay Gandhi Yojna, Indira Gandhi Yojna), water connection,

We currently have the highest number of enrollments in the country and in UID numbers distribution we are currently in third position. We aim to leverage the use of UID in the food and supplies system, education systems, health and all the other departments to ensure that the right beneficiary gets the right benefit. We have also included the UID project in our e-Governance policy to ensure a department-wise integration of the same. We have announced awards and rewards for our collectors and district commissioners to increase enrollments. At the state level we have initiated a reward system with all the secretaries of departments to create UID-based applications who take the initiative to leverage the use of UID within their beneficiaries. The project will direct by benefit

senior citizen ID card, etc. Again, Nanded, by offering over 92 G2C services has been exemplary for the other districts. During the e-District pilot, the delivery of 10 G2C servicesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; income certificate; temporary residence/residence certificate; age, nationality and domicile certificate; solvency certificate; senior citizen certificate; birth registration; death registration; election related services â&#x20AC;&#x201C; addition and deletion of name from voter list; and RTI information services will be looked into.

Ranking of CSCs The state has brought in a unique initiative of ranking all the districts that have rolled out CSCs in the state. To enable and promote healthy competition among districts, every month the State Designated Agency (SDA) issues rankings based on the performance of the CSC scheme in Maharashtra. The evaluation is based on the percentage rollout of Maha e-Sevakendras, number of G2C services activated and the number of

We surely believe in the many benefits of mobile technology and its ability to reach to remote areas much before broadband connectivity and PC penetration reached the villages. The services can be across many urban as well as rural schemes and programmes. We are using SMSs for internal communications chanels. We have an MTNL and broadcast communication to our district level offices, state ministers etc. This tool can be extended across all departments in the state. The department of education has completed their pilot on using SMSs for monitoring of the mid-day meal scheme in Pune. We aim to use mobile technology to leapfrog over the phase of PC and broadband in the villages for delivery of services in rural areas. They can access the Internet on their mobile phones it will do away with the need for PC in the villages.

state special

Top 10 CSC districts in Maharashtra as on March 2011 District Name

Name of the Service Planned Total Rollout Center Agency (SCA)

Percentage Rollout

Number of G2C Number of G2C Final Rank Rank Last Services Rollout Transactions Month

Aurangabad

CMS Computers

381

207

24188

Nanded

CMS Computers

453

236

23772

Kolhapur

SPANCO

344

168

6339

Osmanabad

CMS Computers

210

123

7768

Satara

SPANCO

471

306

2700

Washim

CMS Computers

219

110

1201

Akola

CMS Computers

270

104

6859

Latur

CMS Computers

269

138

2722

Gondiya

Reliance Communication

263

259

Bhandara

Reliance Communication

242

234

To enable and promote healthy competition among districts, every month the State Designated Agency (SDA) issues rankings based on the performance of the CSC Scheme in Maharashtra

G2C service transactions completed at the Maha e-Sevakendras. Three Service Centre Agencies (SCA)—CMS Computers, Spanco Ltd. and Reliance Communications—together have rolled out 8,939 centres so far. In January 2011, Basix (Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Ltd) too was appointed as the state’s fourth SCA, responsible for rolling out in Nashik Division. In the ranking system followed every month, 50 percent weightage has been allotted for the percentage rollout of Maha e-Sevakendras, 25 percent weightage for the number of G2C services activated and the rest 25 percent for the number of G2C service transactions completed through the Maha e-Sevakendras last month. From March onwards, the Department of IT in Maharashtra has started using registered numbers on the Online Monitoring Tool (OMT) for rollout of Maha e-Sevakendras in each district. This helps to validate rollout numbers, enforcing registration and uptime as metrics for considering CSC as functional. This initiative has proved to be driver for performance amongst the districts and has led to pro-active approach in not only installing ICT infrastructure in the CSCs but also

ensuring that the roll-out of more G2C services take place to bring-in more benefit for the rural communities. It has led district collectors to work on improving their performance further.

Challenges The most common cause of delay in e-Governance projects remains to be the absence of skilled manpower in IT-project implementation departments that can help them to plan, execute and monitor the projects in the state. Most of the departments demand experienced and qualified personnel in executing such projects from time-to-time based on the requirements. Taking heed to this ubiquitous need, Maharashtra DIT has found out a very novel solution – by suggesting creation of an IT cadre for assisting the state departments in their respective IT projects. This will provide support to all the departments with skilled manpower with experience in working on government projects based on their respective needs and requirements. Another key initiative of the department is the creation of an empanelment of consultants and software engineers. This allows all the

departments to use all the consultancy services and reasonable rates to help in hand-holding of departments to use their services for various projects. This ensures that they do not fall short of any professional expertise. Similarly, based on man-month basis any department can hire a software company that is empanelled with the state government and execute their software creation requirements without going through the lengthy tendering process. These initiatives are sure to allow the various departments, irrespective of their progress in IT readiness, to hire software skills and consultancy manpower at competitive prices and ensure that any point that have readily available professional expertise and technical help available to curb delays in project planning and execution.

Way Forward The allocation of 0.5 percent of the state budget has been already committed to e-Governance projects for all the state departments, that amounts to nearly `200 crore. In addition, in the proposed e-governance policy, the state aims to hike the share to 3 percent. This is surely a reasonable amount for state departments to begin on the delivery models for G2C services. With the mandate of e-Governance now part of the deliverables for the entire state department through the mechanism of e-Vision as a commitment of all state departments. This vision statement will guide the IT roadmap for the department and have identified 6-7 services that they would aim to deliver in next three to five years. The state has created an enabling environment for e-Governance with most of the required infrastructure in place. The next target to deliver 100 online services in a year’s time will bring the citizens much closer to the government. May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

event

Secure it 2011

inaugural session

Efficient use of technology, not procurement is the key India stands at a threshold where security is an area that poses a great threat as well as throws a great opportunity at us

(From L-R) M P Narayanan, President, CSDMS; Maj Gen R Siva Kumar, CEO NSDI, DST, GoI; Anil K Sinha, ViceChairman, Bihar State Disaster Management Authority; Shambhu Singh, Joint Secretary, (North East), Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI in the panel discussion at the inaugural session of Secure IT 2011

ecurity is one of the gravest concerns of any nation today. Be it internal, external or even cyber security. India stands at a threshold where security is an area that poses a great threat as well as throws a great opportunity at us and using this opportunity coupled with the new and innovative technologies will make us come over the threat. Effective use of technology, technology for disaster management, community awareness, open data policy and other such important topics were discussed at the inaugural session of Secure IT 2011. The eminent speakers included Anil K Sinha, Vice-Chairman (in the rank of Cabinet Minister), Bihar State Disaster Management Authority & Chairman & Co-

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

Open data policy as was thoroughly discussed by R Siva Kumar, DST, is critical for our nation as it firstly would reduce the burden from the government sector for locating information and secondly somewhat reduce the need for Right To Information (RTI) applications felt by the citizens. Data once recognised as ‘non-confidential’ should be available publicly for various purposes such as research, social audit and stock-taking. The main cons in the debate for an Open Data Policy are reluctance to share data and non-availability of data in digital format. The pros are simple for everyone to see. It will be a reason to digitise all the government data which is anyway a much needed reform. Also it will help in self-monitoring by the government officials. However, there is a difference between RTI and Open Data, both of them are often confused. A major point regarding the same was highlighted by R Siva Kumar, “It is slightly different if we see it from the perspective of RTI. RTI is more reactive where information is available only to the applicant and he/she can further disseminate it but in digital data sharing (open data) we are aiming at a more proactive manner of all government departments.” “We also need to have meta data, that is the data about data, which will enable people to discover the data and then explore it. We need to develop a lot of technological tools for all these,” he added.

RTI is reactive but Open Data is proactive where government cognizantly puts up data for public consumption

Founder, Global Forum for Disaster Reduction, Shambhu Singh, Joint Secretary (North East), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, Sanjiv Mital, CEO, National Institute for Smart Government, Maj Gen (Dr) R Siva Kumar, Head (NRDMS) & CEO (NSDI), Dept of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India.

Technology alone cannot be a panacea for all our problems. Knowing the technology, using it effectively and coupling it with some highlyefficient traditional methods is what is needed. For example GPS is a very effective tool for monitoring and tracking movements. Using it for monitoring of vehicular movement can be a good move but coupling it with traditional

secure it 2011

event

Shambhu Singh

“Much can be learned from Japan”

Anil Sinha Vice-Chairman (in the rank of Cabinet Minister), Bihar State Disaster Management Authority & Chairman & Co-Founder, Global Forum for Disaster Reduction “In the way in last couple of years we have seen, disasters have literally been knocking. It is the worst disaster that took place in Japan. Look at how they have reacted to it. What has happened in Japan is ironically an alarm for people in Bihar and all over India. Japan undoubtedly is the best prepared country for such disasters. They had prepared for the worst, but their worst was around 8 on the richter scale, they were beaten as what happened was much more than what they had imagined that too happened at a location at a depth that generated a large tsunami. If you have closely watched the losses and damage due to earthquake were almost negligible, they coped very well with the tremors. One thing which is notable and remarkable in the people of Japan is how they responded to the earthquake. They first try to observe the seriousness of the tremor as they get hit by tremors almost every day. Once they realise that this is some-

methods like appointing an armed guard in government vehicle will ensure a two-point strategy. Sanjiv Mital, CEO, National Institute of Smart Government (NISG) pointed out some facts in this direction. He said, “Technology alone will not make a difference. Effective use of technology has to be there. Some time back a truck carrying explosives meant for various legal tasks such as mining, construction etc. went missing. If we have a proper tracking system for those trucks those explosives might not go into wrong hands.” “In Chhattisgarh use of simple GPS has increased the efficiency of the PDS by at least 10 times. Use of technology today and if it is

thing unusual then they follow the do’s and don’ts taught to them in preparedness. There are so many areas where we can learn from them. This was one of the gravest possible situation and see how they are coming back to the usual living. You won’t find media showing large number of dead bodies or people shouting and running around for food or other things. Why did they respond like this compared to the usual behavior of the people in such situations. It is because of their preparedness for disasters. They know what to do and how to do in such a situation. Knowing what to do and how to do in such crises situations is what we should learn. IT is a great tool to tell people what to do but how to do will come only from practice, mock drills, which has to be done repeatedly, like it happens in aircrafts. Have you ever boarded a flight where the initial safety instructions are not given? No. Many of the buildings we live in have fire extinguishers, are very well maintained but how many of the residents are trained to handle that fire extinguisher? In Japan you don’t only have to come out of the building but also use the fire extinguisher, fully operate it. Public awareness and community education is the first step towards any disaster preparation or litigation. You cannot talk of risk reduction or litigation unless there is awareness and education. This is the area where we are weak. Public awareness and community education is the basic step and important also because they are the first respondents to any such disaster. We have to use the technology to reach out to women, children and each and every class. Not technology alone will help; effective use of it is the essential part.” Excerpts from his speech at Secure IT 2011

a secure technology will definitely be of great use and great help,” said Shambhu Singh, Joint Secretary (North East), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Amongst many other topics discussed another prominent topic was disaster management discussed by Anil Sinha, Vice-Chairman, Bihar State Disaster Management Authority. He meticulously pointed out various learnings that India as well as all other countries shall take from Japan in coping with disasters such as they suffered just recently. “What has happened in Japan is ironically a wake-up call for people in Bihar and all over. There are so many areas where we can learn from them. Public

Joint Secretary, (North East), Ministry of Home Affairs

“In Chhattisgarh use of simple GPS has increased the efficiency of the PDS by atleast 10 times. Use of technology today and if it is a secure technology will definitely be of great use and a great help” awareness and community education is the first step towards any disaster preparation or litigation. This is the area where we are weak,” he said. Public safety in terms of internal security and disaster management are the most relevant topics in the wake of the recent disaster in Japan and the various insurgency incidents happening in India as well as all over the world. Optimum and effective use of technology is the key to dealing with all. As it came out in the session too, technology alone won’t suffice. For example, having a high-tech biometric smart card won’t suffice if the card holder doesn’t know how to effectively use it and we don’t have solutions that are compatible with that particular technology. The event had many other important themes for the day with the first session being on ICT in Policing, Intelligence, Prisons, Airport, Railways, Border Security; the second on Disaster Management: Preparedness and Response and the third on ‘Security of IT Infrastructure: Cyber and Network Security’. May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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Cyber and Network Security

Phishing the boundaries In the wake of cyber security threats, India needs to focus on strengthening the security of IT infrastructure and combating the dramatic rise of cyber crimes

(From L-R) Ramandeep Singh Walia, Head - System Engineering Group, Check Point Software Technologies; Ruchin Kumar, Principal Solution Architect- India & SAARC, SafeNet India Pvt. Ltd; Purushottam Sharma, IG of Police, SCRB, Madhya Pradesh; AK Mukhopadhyay, PVSM, AVSM, Former Air Marshal, Indian Air Force; Alok Jauhary, Vice President, Government Practice, NIIT Technologies Ltd; Dr Ramachandran, Centre Director, National Technical Research Organisation, Government of India

omputers rather than missiles could pose the biggest security threat, with nations able to cripple rivals by using cyber warfare. Indian companies lost about ` 58.59 lakh in revenues in 2009 due to cyber attacks, according to Symantec 2010 State of Enterprise Security Study. In addition to this, Indian enterprises also lost an average of ` 94.56 lakh in organisation, customer and employee data in 2009, while they lost an average of ` 84.57 lakh in productivity (factors leading to hampering of work like problem with servers), according to the Study. With Gartner predicting that total data center capacity in India would grow at 31 per cent to reach 5.1 million square feet by 2012, data security is a concern for IT administrators. The study found that more than 50 per cent of the enterprises surveyed planned to implement significant changes to their data centers in 2010. Reportedly, a total of 198 Indian govern-

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and government per se. Different stakeholders have to play their own game.”

Trends in cyber crime The recent trends in cyber crime are professionalisation of cybercrime, hacktivism, cyberwarfare, rising rate of identity theft, epidemic of security vulnerabilities in software & networking products, shrinking time from exposure to attack, soaring rates of SPAM, targeting of web-based applications, targeting of desktop computers, new risks stemming from mobility of data; and emergence of sophisticated, multi-vector “blended threats”. Pavan Duggal, Cyber Law Expert and Advocate, Supreme Court of India says, “The major cyber crimes that the government and the police are facing are four in different categories. The first category can be of cyber crimes against persons, like cyber-stalking, cyber harassment, cyber-nuisance. The second category is cyber crimes against property, where a particular property is targeted - a computer, a network, a data base, or some information. Hacking and cracking are typical cyber crimes against property. The third category is of cyber crimes against nations- where a particular nation is the target.” SS Sharma, Additional Director, CERT‐IN,

A total of 198 Indian government websites were defaced by foreign hackers in the past six months

ment websites were defaced by foreign hackers in the past six months. B Bhamathi, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Home, Govt of India says, “Risks in cyber space have the potential to damage national security, businesses and individual civil liberties.” Srinivasan Ramakrishnan, Former Director General, C‐DAC and Chairman, Delhi Chapter of Cyber Society of India says, “Technology can itself be a good solution but can introduce vulnerability, too. The new upcoming technologies must consider the protection aspects and enough safety. We cannot leave the security issues only purely to service providers

Department of IT, Government of India opines, “The attack targets are critical infrastructure, the business intelligence, personal and peripheral informations. Today, the motive of cyber attack is more of purpose orientated, stealing intellectual data and business informations.” Recently, the government has issued the draft of proposed National Cyber Security Policy (NCSP) that identifies indigenous development of IT products essential for curbing threats from imported hi-tech products. The draft has asked government to identify the most dangerous classes of cyber security threats to the nation, critical IT infrastructure

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“The country needs a detailed regulatory, legal and policy-enabling regime”

B Bhamathi Additional Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs Risks in cyber space have the potential to damage national security, businesses and individual civil liberties. With the objective of having an integrated approach towards policing, the Ministry of Home Affairs has come up with a ` 2000 crores project–Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS). This important project is scheduled to be in place by 2012. CCTNS-CAS is being developed on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) which shall enable the seamless sharing of information on crimes and criminals within police departments and across various other external agencies like transport departments, Passport authorities, Courts and Jails. CCTNS addresses several functional and technical challenges with respect to data standardisation, generation of reports, redundancy in data entry, mapping of major and minor crime heads. CCTNS aims to facilitate storage, collation, analysis and transmission/sharing of crime and criminals related information at the police station, district, state and central levels. National Crime Records Bureau, on behalf of the Ministry of

vulnerabilities and cyber security problems and use these findings to develop and implement a coordinated R&D effort focused on the key research needs. Says Pavan Duggal, “Cyber secrecy and network security are extremely relevant in today’s context. Both the requirements of national sovereign governments as those of balancing the needs of data protection and privacy have to be appropriately addressed.” Sujoy Choudhury, General Manager, NIIT Technologies says, “Today, Security is no longer an option, it has become an imperative. At NIIT technologies, whenever we design, develop and deploy IT technologies, we make sure that we understand all the security concerns of stakeholders in any enterprise application.”

Home Affairs, is the nodal agency for overseeing the implementation of this project. CCTNS can act as a catalyst and technology-enabled agent for initiating a change in Police functioning. To address issues pertaining to natural and man-made disasters, the Disaster Management Act of 2005 was passed leading to the formation of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). It is mandated by the Government of India to create the policy framework, transform disaster management plans and establish guidelines for effective response to disasters. The enforcement of its policies and implementation of its guidelines, disaster mitigation provisioning and disaster prevention also form the broad charter of apex body. The pace at which the envisaged reforms and modernisation initiatives are being adopted are not the same as that on an international level. The country needs a detailed regulatory, legal and policy-enabling regime to facilitate further protection and preservation of cyber security. The security architecture proposed for the CAS application shall ensure complete authenticity and integrity of data and transactions. Access control procedures shall cover all stages in the life-cycle of user access, from the initial registration of new users to the final de-registration of users, who no longer require access to information systems and services. Special attention shall be given, where appropriate, to the needs to control the allocation of privileged access rights. Government needs to create a national body to evolve a fine balance between cyber data protection and privacy of citizens as the society and businesses become a part of the huge electronic ecosystem. Cyber security can be achieved if interwoven with corporate governance. Excerpts from her speech at Secure IT 2011

A new form of warfare Cyber war has moved from fiction to fact. Cyber terrorism is one of the biggest challenges India is facing. The cyber terrorist today is an extremely intelligent mind whose only job is to try and destabilise a particular country, its institutions or its networks for the purpose of creating terror in the minds of the people. Pavan Duggal states, “A cyber terrorist, who is jamming or effectively de-stabalising the network could have far bigger ramifications and that is where I think India really needs to work hard in terms of coming up with distinct laws on cyber crimes.” If we see globally, the recent case of cyber attack is with Iran. Iran has been targeted by a second computer virus-Stars

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virus-in a cyber war waged by its enemies, according to its commander of civil defence Gholamreza Jalali. Prof Srivathsan, Pro VC, IGNOU elaborates, “The concern is regarding professional and academic approach to deal security. Every data has its multiple attributes. Different parties have right to own it. We need to evolve certain data models—i.e. what is data and who owns it.” A major tool of cyber warfare is key-loggers, which is a software program or device designed to monitor and log all keystrokes. Key-loggers are intended not to steal source code or information but to record the data input into a computer, to be used for financial fraud. Says Prof K Subramanian, Director, Advanced Center for Informatics & Innovative Learning, IGNOU, IT Advisor, CAG of India, “Cyber has no territorial boundary. Identification mapping in citizen to citizen and asset classification are challenges in cyber security space. Management, technology assurance, financial and network audit, service delivery assurance and forensic aspect should be covered in security considerations.” In the wake of increasing cyber crime in India, the Information Technology Act, 2000 was amended in February 2009, but it remains insufficient tool to effectively protect the nation from a cyber onslaught. While, laudably, the new Act legislates against the growing menace of identity theft, phishing and violation of privacy, it does not even contemplate the tools of modern cyber crime. B Bhamathi says, “The country needs a detailed regulatory, legal and policy-enabling regime to facilitate further protection and preservation of cyber security. Government needs creating a national body to evolve a fine balance between cyber data protection and privacy of citizens as the society and businesses become a part of the huge electronic ecosystem. She adds, “Cyber security can be achieved if interwoven with corporate governance.” From power stations to sugar factories, dam sluice gates to suburban train signalling systems, banks to stock exchanges, most complex systems are largely controlled by computers. If hostile elements gain control of these decidedly civilian establishments, they can create havoc. Therefore, cyber security has to go beyond securing overtly sensitive systems such as in the government and the defence network. May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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ICT in Policing, Intelligence, Prisons, Airport, Railways, Border Security

IT is an Epitome for Modernisation

The gap between the mandatory management of security forces and appropriate technology gives them the encouragement to terrorist culture

(From L-R) Prof Srivathsan, Pro-VC, IGNOU; Srinivasan Ramakrishnan, Former Director General, C-DAC and Chairman, Delhi Chapter of Cyber Society of India; B Bhamathi, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India; Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India and President, Cyberlaws.Net ; Prof K Subramanian, Director, Advanced Center for Informatics & Innovative Learning, IGNOU, Hon. IT Advisor, CAG of India; SS Sarma, Additional Director, CERT-IN, Department of IT, Government of India; Sujoy Choudhury, General Manager, NIIT Technologies Ltd.

ndia is at the cusp of complete structural and technological transition in the area of physical safety and security. Being the back benchers in technology adoption in the government, the security agencies are now speedily leveraging information systems and technologies like biometrics, global positioning system (GPS) and geographical information system (GIS) for better preparedness and response. State polices across the country are working on some or the other technology projects for modernising and enhancing the capacity of the agencies. Cops in Karnataka are working on enterprise resource planning. In Madhya Pradesh, biometrics and integration of servers are being worked upon intensively. Border Security Forces (BSF) is working on computerisation and electronification of its offices. These were the key deliberations that took place during the session on ‘ICT in Policing, Intelligence, Prisons, Airport, Railways, Border Security’. The session was chaired by A K Mukhopad-

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Practice, NIIT Technologies focused on how can IT help in managing security. He said that IT has got significant role to play on creating cyber infrastructure, collection of data, storage, analysis, flow of information, assist in rapid decision making and increase in efficiency. Giving details of a large project in government which NIIT is currently working on, Jauhary said, “We are working on a project of the security forces, right from providing infrastructure, ensuring information collected from lower levels to reach to the top.” It includes training of personnel who are completely computer illiterate and grooming them to work on the IT systems. NIIT technology mission is to enable enterprise to leverage our services and focus on managing information rather than on technology. Ruchin Kumar, Principal Solution Architect India & SAARC, SafeNet India said that Crime Criminal Tracking Network and System (CCTNS) aims to improve service delivery, enhance tool for law and order maintenance, increase operational efficiency from police stations to central sites. Speaking on the need for confidentiality and proper authorisation, Kumar said, “Authentication and proper provisions, other than login and passwords such as biometrics, pin, digital certificate biometrics, etc, are significant for

State polices across the country are working on some or the other technology projects for modernising and enhancing the capacity of the agencies hyay, PVSM, AVSM, Former Air Marshal, Indian Air Force. Giving the opening remarks, A K Mukhopadhyay said that computer is one of the greatest foods for imagination. Information technology has become an epitome of modernisation. “During my early association with Air Force, we had a computer with memory of 4 Mb and we were feeling modern, but now the RAM is also of Gigabytes. I compare technology to a mother. Mother embraces the child but gives him full freedom to give his expressions and growth.” Alok Jauhary,Vice President, Government

ensuring data security and preventing data tempering. Similarly, he further added that IGRS for property details could be done through fingerprints and signatures, downloading the registry copies which could be misused. Sanjay Sahay, IGP, State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB), Karnataka said that 9/11 has really shattered people’s faith in the ability of government to provide mankind safety. ICT is being used by the terrorists for purposes such as money laundering, gun running, narcotics or open acts of terror. The gap between the mandatory management of security forces and appropriate technology gives them the

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encouragement to terrorist culture. Sahay opined: “Homeland security needs policy makers with experience from the IT industry to build an ERP solution for data creation and information dissemination, and search engine Ebiz, city based video surveillance, automatic vehicle location system, GISbased crime analysis and search engine, tetra radio network, and integration of all networks. Pointing out the challenges, Sahay stated that the major challenge is the ownership of projects because of its quality and timeline, since most of them have been running indefinitely. It can be sorted out with the effective delivery of standard technology like ‘tetra’ which has shown great benefits in public safety. Project management is still not up to the level so the top levels should be made to learn. Loknath Behera,IGP (O & C), National Investigation Agency, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India said that Police is not yet IT savvy. “Today we will not be able to know that whether a case was registered in J & K. However, CCTNS will now take care of these on-integration issues. We wish 14,000 of the police stations can be connected so that information can be easily accessed. The crime and criminal will be seen through CCTNs,” he said. Dr Rajvir P Sharma,IG of Police, Planning & Modernisation, Karnataka remarked that there are very few technocrats in police. Pointing

towards the dearth of skilled human resource, he said, “We suggested that we should have different cadre of technocrats and technology driven people to look after the management.” Purushottam Sharma, IG of Police, SCRB, Madhya Pradesh elaborated on the deliverables of CCTNS and said that once CCTNS is implemented, it would facilitate complete connectivity from remote areas which would connect to the headquarters and the NCRB would become the repository of all the crime. He informed that the connectivity in CCTNS would be provided through MPLS network and state wide area network (SWAN). “CCTNS has got wonderful software to generate reports at the central level, which can be used for providing information or a reply in the Parliament,” Sharma further added. Sharma referred to the word ‘tracking’ in CCTNS project and said it is of particular significance. “It has been envisaged to have a repository of biometrics data of the criminals, which would enable tracking.” He also stressed on the need for networking of servers and databases within the Police from different states. “We have 18 states which have Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) but we have got tremendous challenge, they are working in isolation. No interconnection. The databases are not shared.” Citing an example, Sharma said, “I got a

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call from joint commissioner that they are encountering cases of robberies and that they are suspecting the criminals are from the border areas of Madhya Pradesh. But we could not get the two systems integrated. We were unable to define technology.” Ramandeep Singh Walia,Head System Engineering Group, Check Point Software Technologies said that the vectors of the threat are changing- people could leak the information from agencies. The armed forces are not able to protect the information which is being spread or leaked. “FBI says that the number of criminals has outnumbered the money attached to drug trafficking. This is some information in the changing vectors in the digitised world. The proliferation of the web tool is causing threat. The state of today is the beginning of the new era.” Dr Ramachandran,Centre Director, National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), Government of India highlighted the increased use of GPS and GIS technology in governance and security purposes. He said: “It (GPS) has great information and the way it has grown in number of entries in Wikimedia maintained by the University of London is commendable. The number of GPS points is huge like 2 trillion points at the positions and the exponential growth in the availability of content primarily by web 2.0 to be contributed is huge.”

Disaster Management: Preparedness and Response

Technology Needs for Facing and Fighting a Disaster The recent tsunami in Japan is the worst natural calamity to have occurred in recent years and to a country best prepared to handle it. Yet, the damage is immense both in terms of property as well as human displacement. This catastrophic disaster had ironically acted as a wake-up call for India as well as countries over the world. Indian cities are categorised in earthquakeprone areas with high sensitivity and yet when it comes disaster preparedness we don’t stand a chance like Japan. Preparedness governs

response as well as rehabilitation. Using technologies such as GIS, GPS and geo-spatial mapping and data for pre-determining the natural disasters is the call of the situation. “Disaster Management- Preparedness and Response” was discussed at Secure IT 2011 with Maj Gen R C Padhi, MOGSGS, Military Survey, India Army and Dheeraj Goel from NIIT-GIS in the panel. The issues touched upon were the need for proper disaster management systems and

tools in place for a vast disaster prone country like ours. Dheeraj Goel, NIIT-GIS touched upon the high-end technological solutions available for preparing for the calamities in advance. “GIS can definitely help in making the plans, evacuation plans for the fire handlers, preparedness of medical facility and staff and good reaction teams. Geographical management system and visualisation on the urban strata helps to plan for disaster and emergency plans for high rise urban settlements.” May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

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eworld curtain raiser

Bridging the Divide Let information technology be an integral part of every aspect of human development, from security to healthcare

nformation and Communication Technology (ICT) is performing the role of universal equaliser, enabler and integrator. The most important and revolutionary aspect of ICT is their potential to shift the balance of power in society, governance and economy towards the common people, the disadvantaged groups, the poor, the women and youth. Today, ICT can help achieve the dream of a more just, inclusive and equitable world in a most peaceful way. We can see many examples of ICT-enabled empowerment and social inclusion achieved in the developing world over the last 10 years. In the event Secure IT 2011, organised by egov, “Adopting Global Best Practices in Bridging Digital Divide Opportunities and Challenges” was discussed by eminent experts in the eWorld curtain raiser. The panel members were R. Chandrasekhar, Secretary, Department of Information technology (IT); Major General R Siva Kumar, CEO Natural Data Management System (NSDI) & Head Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) Division, Department of Science & Technology; Prof Srivathsan, Pro VC, IGNOU; Madhulika Gupta, USAID; B.S. Bedi, Advisor, CDAC and Bhaskar from Check Point. R Chandrasekhar, Secretary, Department of information technology (IT) said, “India is very

R. Chandrasekhar Secretary, Department of Information Technology (IT)

“India is very seriously going towards ICT-enabled transformations and developments. People across the world are now looking at what India is doing in ICT and what lessons can be learnt from it” seriously going towards ICT-enabled transformations and developments. People across the world are looking at what India is doing in this field and what lessons can be learnt with it.” He added, “Kenya and the mobile money are some examples that had done it very successfully: it shows that mobile phone itself can be a powerful instrument and can be substitute of credit card and UID which enables the identity to be established not only online through biometrics but also through mobiles.” In the information age, the role of Geo-Spatial data is increasing day by day. Geo-Spatial data or geographic information is the information that identifies the geographic location of features Dr R Siva Kumar CEO, NSDI & Head NRDMS Division, Department of Science & Technology

“You can empower the people through information and data. Most of the human activities are related to Geo-Spatial data. So, we have to migrate from e-Governance to g-Governance”

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and boundaries on Earth, such as natural or constructed features and oceans. “You can really empower people through information and data. Most of the human activities are related to Geo-Spatial data. So, we have to migrate from e-Governance to g-Governance. In open data policy, most of the data which is non-spatial in nature, in many of the government departments, should be made available across the platforms,” R Siva

Kumar, CEO, NRDMS Division, Department of Science & Technology said. He added, “In Geo-Spatial data, people have a lot of data, but they don’t have the capability to provide services as such. In government and private sector, the important thing is to share data or resources. If people have no consciousness of sharing; they won’t have the knowledge about resources. Unless you locate data, you can’t discover data; unless you discover it you can’t explore it.”

ICT in health Quality of public health and availability of proper healthcare amenities are one of the prime yardsticks for estimating the level of development and well-being of any country or society. Advent of powerful medical electronics coupled with latest tools of IT and communication technologies are bringing opportunities for advanced healthcare services. Spanning from primary healthcare to medical image archiving; complex forecasting of health hazards or even performing critical surgical procedures - technology is leveraging healthcare at all fronts B S Bedi, Advisor, CDAC said, “Out of the primary, secondary and tertiary health, rural health workers operate in 310 primary health centres. These health workers created database

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manually but with introduction of computers and technology, the databases are now organised and created on computers at block level in specialised primary healthcare centres.” He added, “We are adding 18 million handsets per month, and an additional 750 million handsets are there. This will be another revolution in the hands of people. Health delivery will go down right to the persons with the help of m-Health. With technology, we have the potential to reach people at their households. The lack of information is now being planned and collected by the health information system. IT shows successful results which will engage in taking information to the next generation.”

Kerala model Farmers of Kerala are availing the benefits of IT as e-Krishi Projects in various districts of the state. The project site, e-krishi.org, becomes a platform for farmers to get a variety of farm-related information ranging from the best agriculture practices to commodity prices. The website also provides trading facilities in agriculture commodities. The project has created a network of 12,500 farmers with links to more than 100 institutional buyers. The government has also integrated it with the Karshaka Information Systems Services and Networking (KISSAN) developed by the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala and the Virtual University for Agricultural Trade (VUAT) attached to the Kerala Agricultural University. The project enables farmers to interact with agriculture service providers in the private, government and non-government sectors through agri-business centres. The website and call centre are providing the farmers with information on market demand, prices, good agriculture practices, quality agriculture inputs and expert advice. The mentor of this project and Pro VC, IGNOU Prof Srivathsan said, “Every college in the rural area must have at least one local extension service which should be beyond public-private model and special purpose vehicles, and we will call it community enterprise extension service.” He added, “Link education with development, which must be central not just peripheral.” “With the help of ICT, the phenomenal growth has happened in the last decade. We must have the right policy and strategy for implementation. We should involve and

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Dr B S Bedi CDAC

“We are adding 18 million handsets per month. This will be another revolution in the hands of people. Health delivery will go down right to the persons with the help of m-Health”

Madhumita Gupta Senior Economist & Deupty Director, USAID

“As a development agency we look at ICT for delivery of services, geographical reach and targeting the people “ educate the people to achieve the objectives of governance and security,” B Bhaskar, Check Point, said.

Digital divide Hundreds of millions of lives were lost during the last century alone to seek a better world through revolutions, wars and political struggle. Despite all these sacrifices, we still have poverty, inequality, corruption, and social exclusion everywhere. There is still a huge digital divide in India. We can adopt global best practices in bridging digital divide. R Chandrasekhar stated, “Imagine a situation where everybody in the country which has mobile wallets. It is something is mindbog-

gling in terms of its possibility. Content and services will take a little time. But there are some limitations when we go to the villages or interior areas of the country. We find some basic problems-- the availability of power and connectivity are basic problems. In telecom to extend broadband to wireless and wire LAN, we are now at the threshold in the length and breadth of the country in terms of wireless and in terms of optical cables for Panchatyas. Content and services will be on one track and connectivity and arrangements will on another track and there will be synergies. We are now in a scenario where all the things are there.” He added, “People are really interested to know about the ICT scenario in the current era. This is the right time to learn from and share experiences with others. The need is to spend a lot of time in exchanging experiences and looking towards changing the scenario in ICT. That’s why, we have forums like e-India, e-Asia and e-World and elets has initiated eWorld forum at the right time.” Madhumita Gupta, USAID said “In education, physical infrastructure is inadequate. So, we look towards ICT as an option to deliver teacher education. Another bottleneck is the issue of local language. Development agencies are looking for cost effectiveness. Whenever we find a best practice model, there must be rigorous study on the enabling factors and why very good e-Governance projects are not able to reach geographical locations. As a development agency, we look at ICT for delivery of services, geographical reach and targeting the people.” India is at the threshold of being an economic power. With a strong ICT backbone, we can cross the threshold faster. For that, we need aggressive goals and thus we will be truly ahead on the path to Digital India. May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

special feature

HID

Smart way to Safer Hospitals Contactless smart card technology has been used for many years in other industries, and is now helping to solve some longstanding thorny issues in the healthcare sector as well By Holly Sacks

ver the past few years, the healthcare sector has become increasingly dependent on information technology. Contactless smart card technology has been used for many years in other industries, and is now helping to solve some longstanding thorny issues in the healthcare sector as well like safeguarding patients and staff and protecting confidential patient information. Germany has recently issued healthcare smart cards to its entire 80 million population. In the UK, many hospitals are now waking up to the benefits of using contactless smart cards to control physical access to their buildings and logical access to the IT systems that house confidential patient data. In the past, it was relatively easy for an intruder to walk unchallenged around a hospital, accessing areas meant only for authorised staff. In rare cases, this led to security breaches where babies were removed from paediatric wards. Contactless smart cards are addressing this physical access problem by using encryption to offer differing levels of building access to certain staff. For example, a cardio-thoracic surgeon would require access to the operating

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theatre, while a registrar might just need access to all the wards in the hospital. Medical professionals can also use their smart card to access sensitive patient data on a network. So as well as safeguarding the security of patients’ personal information, using a smart card for logical access can also create efficiencies in terms of time. It also helps healthcare professionals to demonstrate that they are storing and managing patient details in a safe and secure way to comply with the Data Protection Act. Smart cards can come in contact or contactless form and can offer three levels of security: single, dual or threefactor authentication. With single-factor authentication, using the card on its own will give access to a system or open a door. Dual-factor authentication - the most common level of smart card authentication in UK hospitals - adds on an extra level of security in the form of a PIN code. Three-factor authentication goes a step further, using a PIN and an extra security measure such as a biometric scan. Contactless smart cards are traditionally used for physical access control and are now being adopted for

logical access control as well. One surprising area where this technology is making an impact is infection control – a topic that is never far from the headlines. Contactless smart cards – where the card is passed in front of a reader device – are playing a key role in limiting this spread of infection. After all, if your pass card never touches the reader, it can’t spread germs. With this many advantages, adopting contactless smart technology seems like a nobrainer. But some hospitals are still using the most basic form of secure access control: the magnetic stripe – or ‘mag-stripe’ – card, where magnetic data is stored on the back of the card. While mag-stripe cards are cheap to produce, they can end up more expensive in terms of maintenance. Magnetic stripe cards come in contact with the reader when inserted, and any debris that collects on the card inevitably ends up inside the reader and on its contact pins. They are also susceptible to magnetic interference and wear and tear: constant swiping through the card reader causes the stripe to deteriorate and eventually fail. But perhaps their biggest disadvantage is that they are very easy to clone. You can

even buy a mag-stripe reader from a high-street store that will let you take data off one of these cards and use it to create an unlimited number of clones. It’s fair to say that the cost of upgrading to contactless smart cards can be a barrier to deployment for some hospitals, where funding priorities can mean that management has to choose between upgrading physical and logical access systems and having another 30 patient beds. On the other hand, is it really possible to put a price on effective infection control or security in a maternity ward? When you weigh up the costs of contactless smart card technology against the benefits, it can offer outstanding value to the healthcare sector, saving time and money, protecting patients and staff and safeguarding their personal data. Portable and secure, contactless smart cards are fast becoming a valuable tool for safeguarding physical security and guaranteeing the privacy of sensitive electronic information.

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is Senior VP, Marketing & Corporate Strategy, HID Global

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Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s m-Governance Policy Draft Tabled

he Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India, has presented a policy drat for mobile governance. The framework looks largely at ways in which the mobile can be used to provide government services. With over 791 million mobile phone subscribers in India, the framework affects one of the largest mobile societies in the world.

The proposed framework aims to formulate guidelines around the use of mobile devices and enable government departments to provide services from mobile phones like paying utility bills or filing tax returns. It aims to formulate standards for applications for easy interoperability of services across multiple service providers and multiple Government departments and other agencies. The draft proposes the development of suitable mechanisms to enable users to pay for public services through mobile phones, and develop

and deploy innovative public private partnership and multi stakeholder partnership models for the design and delivery of mobile governance services. It also encourages the development of cloud-based implementation models. It also proposes to set a Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG) platform which will be fully integrated with existing infrastructure created under the National e-Governance Plan. All ministries and departments will be able to start offering their services on this platform.

Draft e-Services Bill Open for Citizen Feedback

The Union ministry of information technology recently released a draft of the Electronic Service Delivery Bill, 2011 on its website. The draft bill says delivery of all public services, like issuing of forms and applications, licences, permits, certificates, sanctions or approval and receipt or payment of money, must be made available online. It requires the public authorities to disclose the services which will be delivered online within six months of

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

the bill being passed by Parliament. The proposed law envisages setting up of an electronic service delivery commissions both at the Centre and in all states to monitor the effective implementation of the system. The commissions can take up complaints from the public against the authorities who give any false or misleading information and fail to comply with the provisions of the bill. The commissions can impose a penalty of up to Rs 5,000 on the department head or any subordinate concerned for non-compliance of the law.

The bill also wants the state and the central commissions to submit reports to the legislature every year on the working of the system. The report should, among other things, include the total number of online service requests made available and complaints received under the grievance redressal mechanisms. As per the draft bill, all public services should be delivered through electronic mode within five years from the date of the new law coming into force.

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The organisation APARD (Andhra Pradesh Academy Of Rural Development) Key People n Phani Kumar PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES n To create e-Learning Solutions for heterogeneous groups of people (Literate, Semi Literate and illiterates) n To resolve impedients that block adoption of e-Learning in rural areas including lack of power, connectivity and computer usage n Need for a scalable learning model that could meet training demand as per the learner group size

By Pragya Gupta egov Bureau

Capacity Building at Grassroots APARD has initiated an e-learning model to hold the instructors, field officers and interested members of the public together in a learning community

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

g2G

ore than 70 percent of India’s population lives in rural areas. Educating people in rural areas is essential for substantial development and rural economic competitiveness of our country. At the same time issues of equity, quality and access remain areas of concern. However, ICT in education is fast emerging as a solution for transforming education and percolating learning to remote rural areas. For rural empowerment, it is mandatory to empower those who are appointed as the agents to bring change to the rural areas. Following the wind of change, Andhra Pradesh adopted e-Learning for rural empowerment. The Andhra Pradesh Academy of Rural Development (APARD) is the apex training institute in Andhra for capacity building of rural development officers and Panchayat Raj officials. The institute, consistently focuses on research to offer high quality consulting services in rural development, has initiated an elearning project and a number of e-Learning products have developed for various target groups for continuous learning. Highlighting the importance of ICT for capacity building of rural development officers, Phani Kumar, Former Commissioner, APARD said, “In Andhra Pradesh, we have about 2.61 lakh elected representatives of Panchayati Raj Institutions. There are another two lakh of mates and field assistants working for NREGP. We can deliver face-to-face training to them once a year in a cascade mode for about three to four days. If we have to deliver training for more days, then it has to be only using IT and relevant androgogy,”

Solution To accomplish the task of addressing such a diversified stakeholders (literate, semi-literate and illiterates), APARD developed its own Learning Management System (LMS). “We have used Moodles as the LMS. For the semi-literate, we have used books in the comic book format like Amar Chitra Katha, Phantom or Tarzan. For the illiterate, it was completely through audio-visuals.”

case study

APARD wikis were formed for collaborative learning. The difference between the teacher and the taught will be reduced, if not eliminated. WEB 2.0 technologies enabled them to depart from traditional androgogy. PR comprehensive helpline consists of a traditional helpline using a BSNL phone line, and USHAHIDI technologies have been incorporated. People can lodge their complaint through phone, email, SMS or register on the website. As Google maps are a part of the USHAHIDI system in use, APARD also states the location of the complainant. “We have encouraged our instructors to use the helpline for clearing doubts of participants if the instructors do not know the answers themselves.

Rural development through e-Learning The Andhra Pradesh Academy of Rural Development (APARD) has initiated an e-Learning model to deliver its courses on rural development to officials at district and state level, elected representatives of Panchayat Raj and farmers primarily, to hold the instructors, field officers and interested members of the public together in a learning community. A lot of bonding has taken place between them,” added Kumar. APARD has also taken the route of offline training with manuals, illustrated books, CBTs etc. For online tools like WBT (web-based tutorials,) wikis, and e-Books and educative movies on Youtube are being used. Content posting on the web has saved the trouble of running out of print while training. APARD’s LMS site is called Knowledge Commons. On the acceptance of the training, he commented, “It is really amazing to see how willingly and easily people adapted themselves to new ways of capacity building. Computer and telecommunication penetration, above all, mobile penetration in rural areas has been responsible for this acceptance of new technologies. Mobile phones have taught them how to download caller tunes, ring tones and upload pictures, etc.” Multimedia content helped this project as it is easy to develop multimedia content and transfer it to any location. Kumar said that APARD has copied content from their CBTs onto SD and micro SD cards and gave them to participants to use them in their mobiles at their leisure. “It is much more fun to watch a video or listen to a podcast than to read a book,” said Kumar. APARD collaborated with HCL in creating and deploying e-Learning courses on rural development. The courses were designed considering the low literacy rates of rural development as well as its implementation in hard to reach village areas of Andhra Pradesh.

Monitoring Firstly, APARD has monitored the use of this content through our machinery. Then the third party assessment was subjected by Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), and National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD). This project’s main deliverable is bringing about an acceptable change in the mindset of participants regarding self paced electronic learning. I think we have achieved that, by and large. APARD organised a workshop to build a collaborative learning community in October, 2010 with the selected group of officers to build a community of learners. “The October 10 workshop was organised with intent to make APARD, a learning organisation. We wanted to develop champions of this cause.” ICT and multimedia-enabled APARD is delivering credible, stimulating and relevant training to the diversified target audience. e-Learning enables one to gain subject knowledge anytime and anywhere without any geographical barriers and empowers learners through access to a wide range of learning resources both online and offline. May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

opinion

Praful Gharpure

The Catalytic Effects of e-Governance

IT Process Consultant, Government Industry Solution Unit, TCS, mumbai

e-Service delivery in our country is fragmented due to multiple entities. e-Governance initiatives in different departments are carried out independent of each other, which dilutes the impact. One-window citizen services can be a reality—the first step is to set up an inter-departmental data exchange

hough National e-G overnance Plan (NeGP) started in 2004, the history of e-governance in the country dates back to 1976 when National Informatics Centre (NIC) was established. With the formation of NIC, Government of India strategically decided to take effective steps for the development of information systems and utilisation of information resources and also for introducing computer based decision support system (informatics-led development) in government ministries and departments to facilitate planning and programme implementation to further the growth of economic and social development. Since then NIC has conceptualised, developed and implemented a large number of projects for various Central and State Government Departments and Organisations. Some of these are noteworthy projects which offer the

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

The intent of e-Governance is to accelerate the current processes by automating the same and making them accessible to the end-user.

citizens a glimpse of the multi-faceted, diverse activities of NIC, touching upon all spheres of e-Governance and thereby influencing the lives of millions of citizens of India. While these initiatives are continuing even today, it is worthwhile to take a look at the extent of fulfillment of customer expectations. For a user of e-Services in India, there are some basic requirements which are referred in process-oriented initiatives as “Critical to Quality” (CTQs) for the service under consideration. These essentially are the “Voice of Customer” (VOCs). In the context of the subject where the final aim is to deliver an improved service, the improvement measures need to be based on end-user requirements. The solutions need to be complimentary for the user requirements which come out from such VOCs. There is significant gap in this regard which is becoming a challenge for acceptance and faith of the customer i.e the ctizen in the system.

Situational analysis The National e-Governance Plan launched has induced a wave of automation in procedures in government departments. IT implementation has found a place on agenda of almost every department. The individual service providing departments have already initiated various e-Governance projects. Most common of which is the hosting of city website which intends to serve as source of information to the users. NeGP has adequately considered these initiatives and ensured that all these get integrated to the State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG) to provide single channel of information to end-user. The fact remains that the individual departments have different mechanisms of identifying the concerned end users from the same set of citizens. As a result, the individual service provider departments are interacting with the same set of users independently mul-

opinion

tiple times, further the processes followed result in series of rework loops, duplication of efforts and non-value added works. One of the key aspects missing in all the work so far is the reach of these initiatives to the common man, who is the customer for the services. The fact which stands out is, the service delivery is fragmented with multiple entities as, the e-Governance initiatives in the different departments are carried out independent of each other; as such the impact of the initiatives is diluted for the want of a user-base itself i.e. the citizens who are the customers for the service. For a citizen to avail an electronic service delivery, it takes at least basic steps as outlined in the box adjacent. These steps are preliminary ones for any electronic service delivery mechanism; additional steps, multi-level authorisation etc are the other complexities which vary from application to application. However for a majority of citizen-centric ones, there is a need for process level reforms with strong backing of automated decision support mechanism to be successful. The basic e-Service process value analysis is described below. It identifies the pitfalls within the delivery mechanism which prevents the end-user from availing the service

Causes for Poor End-User Satisfaction.

6 steps for e-service delivery For Citizen 1. Login through website or visit Common Service Centre. 2. Fill form, give delivery option-post/self collection 3. Provide Documents needed 4. Pay required amount

5. Get Receipt and document delivery date 6. Collect the document on specified date For Official 1. Login through website. Go to work list

Process value analysis Successful implementations like online rail reservation system has seen noticeable change in user response leading to various effects on other dependent business areas giving tertiary benefits to the people linked to this business. The catalytic effects of successful e-Service delivery initiative at railways has been seen, However there are equal opportunities for such effects through other e-Governance initiatives as well

As per World Bank data in 2008, India had 4.5 internet users per 100 people, with overall users totaling to 51,750,000 which translates to mere 4 percent of the total population. In such scenarios, the extent of success of e-Governance initiatives can be easily gauged. However, government has taken steps to induce the concept of citizen facilitation centers / Citizen Service Centers (CSC) to take the e-Enabled services closer to the masses specially in rural areas. Thus the process induces a medium of CSCs where the operators are dependent on the centrally hosted IT solutions by the respective departments whose services are extended through these CSCs. In the light of this situation, it is worthwhile to see the potential failure

2. Open file, scrutinise details 3. Record Noting/comments/ Additional Requirements 4. Route file on completed Documentation 5. Second level scrutiny 6. File approval to clear service delivery

modes of the 6 steps to e-Service delivery described above. The Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) results are shown in the table. The above analysis brings out a striking feature that the highest risk of failure (Depicted by Risk Prioritisation Number – RPN) of the process comes from the failure modes like (1) re-works on account of resubmission of documents; (2) no optimisation of documents; (3) need to visit office to close the process; and (4)personal follow-ups. The Process Value analysis also links the process failure modes to its potential causes outlined in cause & effect diagram depicted in Illustration II below. In some cases there is no apparent cause, it is simply on account of non translation of Voice of Customer in to system requirements. As mentioned earlier the CTQ – VOC Link is a key to success for any online service delivery initiative. Some of the VOCs are (1) easy access to process information; (2) availability of assistance for document submission; (3) minimal travel / trips to offices; (4) assured cycle time; (5)real time update on status; (6)availability of information on “How to” and “why” etc. requirements to be fulfilled for a service to be delivered; and (7) whom to reach for questions. For a basic service delivery process on which a common man is dependent, the answers to above requirements are key to the attainment of end-user satisfaction on delivery of service. The above May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

opinion

Sr.No

Process Step

Effects

Failure Modes

Severity Occurrence Detectability

RPN

Customer accesses website Website not functional Time loss for customer

1 Customer looks for contact for official

Customer sees information & tries to access

Customer availing service

Name of official , email address not available email sent is not acknowledged , replied , most of times bounces. No one answering call on mentioned phone number Links on website leads to "page not found" error Need to submit physical document even after online submission. No optimization of required documents Payment made but not updated in system

Payments No facility to pay after due date

Follow up on service

Feedback / Grievance

270

504

567

630

504

900

720

1.Arrears in next bill despite payment. 2.Service Charge on Payments. 3.Minimal choice for user for payment option.

480

Department looses potential cashflow

600

800

900

450

175

9 9

9 5

5 5

405 225

8 9 5 Detectability Ratings 1 - Highest - Signifies very low means of detectibility of Failure 10 - Lowest - Signifies high means of dectebility of failure

360

1.Rework cost to customer 2.Customer givesup Online services 3.Customer faith on system goes down. 4.Govt investment in egovernance fails to give returns

Harasment of citizen

Requirement of personal visit to Duplication of effort close the process. Personal followup difficult as paper document is required in offices. Additional printing costs Everytime different helpline attendent as such repetation of information No mechanism to log common complaints No response to logged complaint No trace of complaint logged

If trackable - contact of concerned official not there Severiability / Occurrence Ratings 1 - Lowest - Signifies Low impact of Failure 10 - Highest - Signifies High Impact of Failure

Rework cost to both customer & agency.

1.Customer annoyance. 2.Dependency on agents 3.Customer Pays Speed Money

Failure Modes & Effect Analysis for e-Service Delivery

discussion brings out some key aspects of current online service delivery which have led to poor end user satisfaction and reduced faith in the online system. The Failure Modes & Effect analysis has brought out the areas of concern to be addressed to ensure acceptance of the service. The intent of e-Governance is to accelerate the current processes by automating the same and making them accessible to the end-user. The part of making the processes accessible to enduser is at infancy stage in majority of cases. However this very aspect if coupled with inter-departmental information sharing has a potential to transform the process performance. The catalytic effect induced with this shall lead to value enhancement for both process owner department and the customer of the process. Successful implementations like online rail reservation system has seen noticeable change in user response leading to various effects on other dependent business areas giving tertiary benefits to the people linked to this busi-

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

ness. The catalytic effects of successful e-Service delivery initiative at railways has been seen , however there are equal opportunities for such effects through other e-governance initiatives as well.

Catalytic effects

The portability of data across departments is important for efficient e-Governance mechanism with scalability to cover variety of services for citizens across the country.

e-Service delivery in our country is fragmented due to multiple entities. In addition the, e-Governance initiatives in different departments are carried out independent of each other, which dilutes the impact of the initiatives. One-window citizen services can be a realityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the first step is to set up an interdepartmental data exchange Even though IT is on the agenda of all departments, an integrated approach to its rollout and effective sharing of information and IT infrastructure is lacking. The present e-Governance initiatives need to be looked at from a service management perspective where information exchange among various departments is a vital element for service delivery and support assurance to the end customer, the citizen. The ground work for the type of data

exchange visualised here is reasonably in place with IT implementation across majority of departments providing citizen service. The need of the hour is to bring these services under one single window for user to avail those. It is equally important to provide seamless navigation and maintain the linkage of identities created for a user with each provider. Considering the fact that the IT solutions exist at various service providers the need is to leverage the existing infrastructure already in place and build over the same. It is equally important for extending the service where in a user gets to use the service himself or through an agency without being forced to visit the departments for service fulfillment. The key links of inter-departmental information exchange is missing and is left to end-user leading to rework at customer end. In event this link is established the catalytic effects shall start showing up through the value adds which the transformed process shall bring in. The table above gives some of the potential areas of information exchange, their source and recipient departments and the beneficiary of the shared information. Such an information exchange can cut the cycle time of individual process to the extent of 75 percent and also minimise the same on inter-linked processes. It also triggers the effects on non-IT areas like reduction of travel trips, less congestion on roads etc.

Conclusion Successful implementation is a key to the realisation of benefits of concepts like the one proposed which brings in multiple stakeholders on a single forum. Careful planning, selected piloting and ease of replication of solution are the key success factors. The dynamic nature of demographics is a challenge for all the major service delivery providers worldwide. The portability of data across departments is important for an efficient e-Governance mechanism with scalability to cover variety of services for citizens across the country.

opinion

Purushottam Sharma IGP, SCRB, Madhya Pradesh

use of Multimodal Biometrics for CCTNS Automated Multi-Modal Biometrics Identification System (AMBIS) incorporates state-ofthe-art biometric technologies to serve law enforcement applications beyond traditional Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) capabilities

ational Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is the central repository of total fingerprint biometrics being used for tracking criminals across the country. At present the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) exists at the NCRB headquarter and 22 other states headquarters. Eleven more states are yet to install the system. These AFIS have been running standalone with least features to deliver the desired result for tracking criminals in states.

Shortcomings of AFIS Most of AFIS are of outdated technology and have proprietary encoding and matching algorithms, which lack commonality and interoperability. Further, none of these AFIS has inter-state/ inter AFIS connectivity module and functionality and therefore no data portability and interoperability is achieved even amongst various versions of same

Automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) have been widely used in forensics for the past two decades, and recently they have become relevant in civil applications, as well.

vendor and AFIS of other vendors. All AFIS have miserably poor capability to search latent print. Moreover, no AFIS has the capability to store and search palm print and is not complete package of all required core functionalities. Because of the aforementioned reasons, these AFIS have virtually failed to track criminals and have lost their credibility and usefulness. Despite the huge database availability in the country, a fraction of it has been digitised and much lesser has reached the NCRB for tracking criminals. Keeping the above facts and anomalies in mind, a National Benchmarking Committee has been formed so that NCRB comes with a state-of-art system similar to the one, which the FBI has. It also removes all anomalies of the present system so that tracking of criminal becomes seamless as is imminently required for the success of CCTNS. Automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) have been widely used

in forensics for the past two decades, and recently they have become relevant in civil applications as well. Whereas, largescale biometric applications require high identification speed and reliability and multi-biometric systems that incorporate fingerprint, iris and face. Automated Multi-Modal Biometrics Identification System (AMBIS) incorporates state-of-the-art biometric technologies to serve law enforcement applications beyond traditional AFIS capabilities. The various modalities used today include finger (ten print flats and rolls, latent), face (mug shot and latent face) multi modal biometrics technology for CCTNS, iris (dual iris scans) and palm (print and latent). These offer a number of advantages for improving identification quality and usability.

Proposed national AFIS AFIS is a system in which images of known fingerprints are encoded and stored in a computer database. This May 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov

opinion

database of known fingerprints and other images of ten digit fingerprints is then utilised to search unidentified latent fingerprints through the system to determine identity. The system encodes the fingerprints that are being searched and finds fingerprints in the system that most closely resemble the fingerprint being searched. A qualified examiner compares the fingerprints reported by the AFIS and determines if identity of the searched fingerprint (inked or latent) can be established. It is observed that most of the latent prints found at the scene of crime are partial palm prints. Therefore an AFIS having palm print search and storage facilities are also required. The main objective of National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) is to provide the national level fingerprint database of criminals and improve crime detection rate with the help of fingerprint identification. It is proposed to have a National AFIS system at NCRB, which will store finger print data of all states. All states should have their state AFIS. The state can deploy remote stations at district, sub-divisional or police station level as required. All these AFIS systems will be interconnected with automatic remote updating and query facility. AFIS with web-enabled updating and query processing facility will be appreciated. The NAFIS will maintain the fingerprint data in standard ANSI/ NIST format. All states AFIS will be connected to NAFIS with strong networking facility. NAFIS will follow the server-client architecture and also support web-based scenario. The NAFIS will provide automated fingerprint search capabilities, latent searching capability, electronic image storage, and electronic exchange of fingerprints and responses 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As a result of submitting fingerprints for search, electronic responses to criminal ten-print fingerprint submissions would be received within hours.

Database Specification for AMBIS During All India Directors Conference

egov / www.egovonline.net / May 2011

of Finger Prints Bureaux held at Bhopal on 6-7 January, 2011 all the finger print experts from different states proposed to have National AFIS at NCRB, New Delhi. AFIS data centers should be hosted on state data center, so that there is a seamless integration of state AFISs to national AFIS. As in times to come, the average size of FP database will be nearly 10 lakhs or above for large states like Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, etc. In a similar manner, it is 5 lakhs for small states like Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, etc. So the proposed Database of AMBIS at NCRB should be: • 10 Digit Database: 1crore with upgradibility up to 1.5 crore • Chance Prints Database: 5 lakh with upgradibility up to 10 lakh • Palm Print Database: 5 lakh with upgradibility up to 10 lakh • Iris Database: 10 lacs with upgradibility up to 20 lakh • Face Database: 10 lacs with upgradibility up to 20 lakh Here we are considering these huge sizes of various databases in view of CCTNS project in which all districts units as well as police stations will be connected through a dedicated network. And as we know, fingerprint is an integral part of CCTNS project.

Core functionalities

Multi-biometric systems can solve a number of problems of uni-modal approaches. One source for such problems can be found in the lack of dynamic update of parameters, which does not allow current systems to adapt to changes in the working settings

The system must perform reliable identification with large databases, as biometric identification systems tend to accumulate False Acceptance Rate (FAR) with database size increase and using a single fingerprint, face or iris image for identification becomes unreliable for a large-scale application. Several fingerprint images from a person’s different fingers or iris images from person’s two eyes may be taken to increase matching reliability. Also, multi-biometric technologies (i.e. collecting fingerprint, face and/or iris samples from the same person) can be employed for greater reliability. The system must show high productivity and efficiency, which correspond to its scale. System scalability is impor-

tant, as the system might be extended in the future, so a high productivity level should be kept by adding new units to the existing system. The daily number of identification requests could be very high. Identification requests should be processed in a very short time (ideally in real time), thus high computational power is required. Support for large databases (tens or hundreds of millions of records) is also required. Another important criteria is general system robustness. The system must be tolerant to hardware failures, as even temporary pauses in its work may cause big problems taking into account the application size. The system must support major biometric standards. This should allow the use of system-generated templates or databases with systems from other vendors and vice-versa. The system may need to match flat (plain) fingerprints with rolled fingerprints, as our department collect rolled fingerprint databases. The system must be able to work in the network, as in most cases client workstations are remote from the server with the central database. Further, a forensic system must be able to edit latent fingerprint templates in order to submit latent fingerprints into the AFIS for the identification.

Architecture Multi-biometric systems can solve a number of problems of uni-modal approaches. One source for such problems can be found in the lack of dynamic update of parameters, which does not allow current systems to adapt to changes in the working settings. They are generally calibrated once and for all, so that they are tuned and optimised with respect to standard conditions. In this work, it is proposed that an architecture where, for each single-biometry subsystem, parameters are dynamically optimised according to the behaviour of all others. This is achieved by an additional component, the supervisor module, which analyses the responses from all subsystems and modifies the degree of reliability required from each of them to accept the respective responses.

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