egov May 2012

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-governance

Prof (Smt) Fauzia Tehseen Khan

Minister of State for General Administration Information and Public Relations, Govt of Maharashtra

` 75 / US $10 / ISSN 0973-161X

may 2012 VOLUME 08 n ISSUE 05 n ISSN 0973-161X

27 April 2012, Mumbai

Ratnakar Yashwant Gaikwad

J S Saharia

Jayant Kumar Banthia

Rajesh Aggarwal

Sudhir Thakre

Dinesh Waghmare

Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey

Dr K Shivaji

Vandana Krishna

Vikas Kharage

Unicode:

Empowering Localisation in e-Governance

Ramnath Sonawane

— Prithviraj Chavan, Chief Minister, Government of Maharashtra p12

egov.eletsonline.com

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The prosperity of the state of Maharashtra comes not only from the boundless energy and enterprise of the people, it is also a result of the fact that the state has been on the forefront in implementing e-Governance initiatives that focus on citizens’ needs and ensure superior service delivery.

The state has been endeavouring to work out a time bound approach to incorporate and encourage the use of UID for various e-Governance projects, which seek to facilitate the delivery of services to the right beneficiary.

The state has taken the landmark step of using Marathi as the first language in all e-Governance initiatives. I am happy that, which goes back to centuries and which enshrines a rich cultural, religious and historical heritage has found its rightful place on the digital platform.

I am happy to learn that Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd is organizing e-Maharashtra conference on 27 April 2012, at the Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan, Nariman Point, Mumbai. The e-Maharashtra is an ICT conference seeking to address regional issues and challenges in the ICT initiatives that have been undertaken in Maharashtra.

The vision for implementing new e-Governance initiatives and bringing about seminal improvements in the quality of people’s lives will certainly get reflected in various thematic conferences under the umbrella of e-Maharashtra.

The Government of Maharashtra extends warm welcome to the delegates to this conference.

( Prithviraj Chavan )

MINISTER OF STATE FOR GENERAL ADMINISTRATION INFORMATION AND PUBLIC RELATIONS, CULTURAL AFFAIRS, PROTOCOL, SCHOOL EDUCATION, WOMEN AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT PUBLIC HEALTH AND FAMILY WELFARE AND MINORITIES DEVELOPMENT (INCLUDING AUKAF) GovERNMENT OF MAHARASHTRA Mantralaya, Mumbai 400 032 www.maharashtra.gov.in

Date

Message Maharashtra is regarded as a state that is an early adopter of technology. The state began its e-Governance journey much earlier than other states in India. The Government of Maharashtra has always been committed to using new technologies for better governance. The state has adopted many administrative reforms. These reforms have led to government services becoming available to citizens in a more transparent and efficient manner.

The state government has been a driving force in encouraging the adoption of technology for enabling better governance. The state is judged as the leader in e-Governance in India. Maharashtra is one of the first states to have formulated a comprehensive e-Governance policy. Government of Maharashtra, through this policy, intends to ensure that eServices become a mandate for each department and are offered to citizens in a uniform manner.

The state has also laid down the various technology standards and policies to ensure a speedy and cost effective implementation. The state envisions connecting each citizen to state governance machinery online. The citizens will not have to visit to various government departments.

The power of technology became accessible to a larger spectrum of the population with the availability of Marathi language on all kinds of digital platforms. Earlier English was the primary language of the digital world and that proved to be a major deterrent in wide-spread adoption of technology. However, today Marathi fonts are easily available on mobile phones, and it is a lot easier for common citizens to aspire for becoming part of the digital society. We are now entering the phase of an e-inclusive society.

With rapid improvements in technology, e-Governance is becoming a necessity for every state government. When better e-Governance tools are available so easily, it makes sense for government to start using them, in times to come m-Governance will become very popular with citizens. Many people will start interacting with government department with the help of their mobile devices. lt gives me immense pleasure to share with you that Government of Maharashtra and Elets Technomedia are jointly organising eMaharashtra 2012 - State e-Governance Leadership Summit - on April 27, 2012, at Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan, Mumbai. The aim of the event is to showcase the success stories and future roadmap on e-Governance in Maharashtra.

I extend my best wishes to the event.

( Fauzia Khan )

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Contents may 2012

second grid grid name issue 05 n  volume 08

34

interview Vandana Krishna Principal Secretary, Dept. of Women & Child Development, Govt of Maharashtra

21

public health Leveraging ICT for better Public Health Use of ICT in Public Health Dept

25

eGov policy eGov 0.0 Building an ecosystem to encourage innovation

36

public health Initiatives in NRHM Maharashtra

12 | cover story

Taking Healthcare online

Unicode: Empowering

37

Unicode has enabled access of e-Governance to the masses by making it possible to deliver content and service in local languages

Moving Forward with Innovative ICT solutions

Localisation in e-Governance

ELECTIONs Maharashtra State Election Commission

40 30

MoS, Gen. Admn., & Pub Relations, Govt of Maharashtra

Secretary, Dept. of Social Justice & Spl. Assistance, Govt of Maharashtra

24

31

Addl. Chief Secretary, Dept. of School Education, Govt of Maharashtra

Dy. Director General, Unique Identity Authority of India

28

32

interview Dr K Shivaji

further reading

Secretary, Dept of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Govt of Maharashtra

Principal Secretary, Industries & Energy, Govt of Maharashtra

Editorial 10 book review 61

interview Prof (Smt) Fauzia Tehseen Khan

interview J S Saharia

interview Sudhir Thakre

6

AGRICULTURAL MANAGEMENT Using ICT to help Farmers in Maharashtra

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / May 2012

interview Dinesh Waghmare

interview Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey

e-Solutions for Agriculture

46

tech focus Maharashtra The Hub of Cutting Edge ICT A Range of new e-Governance Projects make the state a great place to live

may 2012 issue 05 n volume 08

President: Dr M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief: Dr Ravi Gupta Consulting Editor: Ashis Sanyal

Editorial Team Group Editor Anoop Verma (editorial@elets.in) Manager – Partnerships & Alliances Manjushree Reddy Product Manager Divya Chawla Research Analyst Sheena Joseph Research Associate Anand Agarwal Principal Correspondent Dhirendra Pratap Singh Senior Correspondent Rachita Jha, Pragya Gupta Research Assistant Sunil Kumar, Shally Makin, Mansi Bansal Sales & Marketing Team Manager – Marketing Ragini Shrivastav, Mobile: +91-8860651650 National Sales Manager – digitalLEARNING Fahimul Haque Associate Manager - Business Development Jyoti Lekhi, Amit Kumar Pundhir Assistant Manager-Business Development Rakesh Ranjan, Shankar Adaviyar, Puneet Kathait Sr. Executive - Business Development Ashad Mofiz

Web Development & Information Management Team Dy. General Manager – Strategy Raghav Mittal Sr. Executive Officer - Web Ishvinder Singh Sr. Executive Officer – Information Management Gaurav Srivastava Associate Developer Anil Kumar Information Technology Team Dy. General Manager – IT Mukesh Sharma Executive-IT Infrastructure Zuber Ahmed Finance & Operations Team General Manager – Finance Ajit Kumar Legal Officer Ramesh Prasad Verma Sr. Manager – Events Vicky Kalra Associate Manager – HR Sushma Juyal Associate Manager – Accounts Anubhav Rana Executive Officer – Accounts Subhash Chandra Dimri

Subscription & Circulation Team Sr.Manager – Circulation Jagwant Kumar, Mobile: +91-8130296484 Sr. Executive - Subscription Gunjan Singh, Mobile: +91-8860635832; subscription@elets.in Executive - Circulation Ashok Kumar Design Team Team Lead - Graphic Design Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Graphic Designer Om Prakash Thakur, Shyam Kishore Trainee Graphics Meenakshi Rajput

Editorial & Marketing Correspondence egov – Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd Stellar IT Park, Office No: 7A/7B, 5th floor, Tower-2 C-25, Sector 62, Noida, Uttar Pradesh - 201301 Phone: +91-120-2502181-85, Fax: +91-120-2500060, Email: info@egovonline.net egov is published by Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd in technical collaboration with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS).

Owner, Publisher, Printer: Ravi Gupta, Printed at Vinayak Print Media Pvt. Ltd, D-320, Sector-10, Noida, U.P. and published from 710 Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50 Noida, UP Editor: Ravi Gupta © All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic and mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage or retrieval system, without publisher’s permission.

Write in your reactions to eGov news, interviews, features and articles. You can either comment on the individual webpage of a story, or drop us a mail: editorial@elets.in

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / May 2012

Guest Editorial

The social zeitgeist of e-Governance

T

he government of Maharashtra has been pursuing a very active ICT-focussed policy, making the ICT sector one of its key priorities. However, rather than allowing development to overwhelm the social sector and creating fissures in society, the state has developed a comprehensive plan that envisages using ICT in a range of e-Governance initiatives, which can provide benefits to all sections of society.

The rapid implementation of UIDAI scheme is one of Maharashtra’s great achievements. By 2013 the entire state will be enrolled under UIDAI Scheme.

The state is developing applications and tools to use UIDAI based authentication measures to ensure that the subsidies, scholarships and other benefits reach the sections of the population for whom they are meant.

Rajesh Aggarwal Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra

Through the use of e-Scholarship scheme the state exchequer has saved lot of public wealth, while also ensuring that the students and the institutions have access to the money they are entitled to in a timely and seamless manner. The state is also leading in the implementation of CSC Scheme (Common Service Centre); as of now we are having synchronisation with 25,000 Sangram Kendras or e-Panchayats into CSCs. These will offer CSC services as well as G2C services.

Much of the success that the state of Maharashtra is seeing in the implementation of various e-Governance projects is also an outcome of the success in the State Data Centre project. The State Data Centre has our own set of IPV4 and IPV6 addresses taken directly from APNIC and more than 116 applications of various departments running on cloud. The reliability of the SWAN (State Wide Area Network has increased from 70 percent to 96 percent.

The implementation guidelines of Maharashtra’s e-Governance policy have been finalised and will start getting implemented from 1st May 2012. Lot of benefits of the new e-Governance systems that are being launched also rely on the accessibility of these systems. That is why the state has ensured that all the e-Governance systems and tools are accessible in Marathi as well, thus ensuring larger participation.

I wish the eMaharashtra event a great success!

Rajesh Aggarwal

May 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

09

Celebrating e-Governance in Maharashtra

T

he earliest recorded mention of the name ‘Maharashtra’ dates back by more than two millennia. Since then, the state has been at the forefront of revolutionary social, political and economic change in the country. The Indian National Congress which drove India’s independence movement was first convened in Maharashtra, and the Father of the Nation – Mahatma Gandhi, called one of Maharashtra’s, and India’s greatest sons – Gopal Krishna Gokhale – as his political Guru.

From the soil of Maharashtra have arisen world-renowned artists such as Lata Mangeshkar and sportsmen as Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and K Jadhav – winner of India’s first individual Olympic Gold. Maharashtra has given to the country three Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, six recipients of the Bharat Ratna, six recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards – also known as Asia’s Nobel Prize, six recipients of the Dada Saheb Phalke Awards etc. One could go on and on, and still barely skim the surface when recounting the list of Maharashtra’s contribution to the country.

In governance, Maharashtra has led the way through programmes such as the Food for Work programme and the Employment Guarantee Scheme, key features of which one can see in the National Employment Guarantee Act. It has also been at the forefront of adoption of technology in governance.

The first Unique Identity, or Aadhar, number was allotted in Maharashtra. The state NRHM office has implemented a revolutionary e-file system and has become a completely paperless office. Everywhere one turns to look, initiatives abound. All across government, technology is being deployed to usher in revolutionary improvements in service delivery, savings in time and cost and increase in general efficiency. egov magazine has been at the forefront of showcasing the impact that technology can have on day-to-day governance for eight years now. It remains India’s only monthly focusing on e-Governance.

In addition to print, we have been organising conferences and symposia to bring together stakeholders to discuss the issues and challenges in the path of e-Governance.

Maharashtra’s capital Mumbai is the financial centre of India. Almost every major company in India has a Mumbai address. Home to the world’s biggest film industry, the Maximum City drives business, culture and life in the country like few other places can do. It is apt that the inaugural eMaharashtra – State e-Governance Summit – meets at Mumbai. Organised with the objective of discussing the e-Governance scenario in the state and identifying a roadmap for the future, the Summit would also recognise excellence and innovations in e-Governance through the eMaharashtra Awards.

This special issue commemorates e-Governance in Maharshtra. The Hon’ble Chief Minister has himself penned an article on the journey of Unicode and its importance to e-Governance, and senior officers from a number of government Departments have contributed articles or shared their experiences on e-Governance. As eMaharashtra discusses the use of technology for better governance, one hopes this issue serves as a chronicle of the possibilities offered by technology. ravi guptA Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

From the history Email at subscription@elets.in to get previous issues

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egov / egov.eltsonline.com / May 2012

February 2012

March 2012

April 2012

COVER STORY

Unicode: Empowering

Localisation in e-Governance I am proud that Maharashtra and our beloved language Marathi, which goes back to centuries and which enshrines a rich cultural, religious and historical heritage has found its rightful place on the digital platform Prithviraj Chavan, Hon’ble Chief Minister, Government of Maharashtra

I

ndian languages on the digital medium form an inherent part of our lives today. Be it producing content, digital publishing, video, e-books, web-pages, mobiles, tablets, viewing subtitles and banners on TV and very soon having your own URL in an Indian language of your choice: these are taken for granted and it seems that Indian languages have always existed on the digital medium.

Imagine the herculean task of providing support for 22 official languages of India as well as our heritage scripts such as Grantha, Modi, Vedic on the computer platform and one can

12

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see that this multi-lingual support on the digital medium has been a technical adventure. I am honoured to have been associated with this saga and to have played an important part in this revolution which has brought Indian languages to the doorsteps of the people of our country and ensured that each one of us can work in his/ her own mother-tongue.

The Beginning It all started with a small chip. In the 1980’s the Government of India opened up doors to personal computers. However the world of computing was limited to English thus denying 95% of Indians who think and work in their mothertongues. This was made possible thanks to the successful GIST (Graphics & Intelligence based

Script Technology) technology, which was funded by DoE (Dept. of Electronics, Govt. of India - now Dept. of Electronic and Information Technology). The first commercial ASIC chip in India was developed: the GIST Chip 9000 – for processing Indian languages with their complex features. Housed in CDAC Pune, the GIST lab supported ably by a team of dedicated hardware and software experts ensured that Indian languages burst upon the computer medium in all domains. I am proud to have contributed in a large capacity to the success of Indian languages. I remember coming to the University campus where the GIST lab was located and working nights with the hardware and software developers to make this revolution a great success.

COVER STORY

“In the social revolution that has brought Marathi into each and every household, I am honoured to have made a humble contribution”— Prithviraj Chavan May 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

13

COVER STORY

The GIST chip started off the great multilingual revolution of India bringing Indian languages to the door-steps of Indians. The Chip evolved over the years with changes to increase programmability, improve logic implementation allowed for Indian scripts processing. It led logically to the invention of the GIST Card which was inserted within the then computers or Terminals for Unix and along with the requisite software allowed the user to store, input and view data.

Standards: ISCII However along with the solution there was a need to create standards, since it is on the bedrock of standards that all computing resides.

The fundamental standard evolved between 1988 and 1991 was ISCII. ISCII along with the INSCRIPT keyboard is a BIS standard and is a coding scheme for representing various writing systems of India. It reposes on the fundamental concept that all Indian scripts with the exception of scripts such as Urdu which are based on Perso-Arabic, are derived from the ancient Brahmi script. Be it languages of the IndoAryan family: e.g. Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese, Bangla, Punjabi or be it those of the Dravidian family: Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and even those of the Munda and Tibeto-Burman family such as Santhali or Boro, the scripts follow a similar pattern: a Unity in Diversity. ISCII encoded characters with the same phonetic value as one single code-point. This fundamental structure of Indian scripts allowed for development of ISCII which binds all languages and their writing systems in one single encoding. The advantages are obvious: easy Transliteration from one script to another (within certain limitations), mutual intelligibility and above all one uniform storage system. Since Indian languages are syllabic in

The massive encyclopedia, the Marathi Vishwakosh, is available today on all devices at the click of a button.

The Marathi language lover can access it on his tablets, notebooks, smart-phones or PCs

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nature and repose on the fundamental Akshar, ISCII also proposed a Backus-Naur formalism which allowed for a trouble-free implantation of the ISCII syllable on the computer platform and permitted for the first time in the history of writing in the world for the user to detect whether (s)he had made an error in inputting the syllable, the error being pointed out by means of a round character familiarly termed as “golu”. I had participated in discussions along with researchers and scholars of the team led by the dynamic Mohan Tambe, to finalise ISCII and also a keyboard common to all Brahmibased languages..

The development of ISCII led to one more important revolution: the INSCRIPT (Indian languages Script) keyboard. The same principle underlying ISCII: all scripts on one single platform; was the principle underlying the INSCRIPT keyboard. All scripts and by corollary all languages using the script were accommodated on one single keyboard. The Inscript keyboard is a technical marvel of linguistic engineering. The advantage of the Inscript keyboard is obvious: once learnt, it can be deployed for entering another language and since Indians normally work in one or more languages, this allows a user to type in say Marathi and Kannada or Hindi and Gujarati without the need to learn a new keyboard The pillars of all computing include Ergonomic Input Mechanism And Unambiguous Storage with one to one correspondence have been the heart of all Indian language computing on which all future high end devices and applications have been built.

Standards: UNICODE The world talks Unicode. Unicode came on the scene in the late 90’s and immediately adopted ISCII as the de-facto standard for Indian language computing. The only difference was that unlike ISCII which tried to place all Brahmibased scripts on to one single platform, Unicode identified different scripts and provided a “code-page” for each of these scripts. Over 25 scripts are supported for Indian languages ranging from Devanagari to Tamil to Vedic Sanskrit. Unicode allows for both 8 bit (UTF8) and 16 Bit storage. Today it has become the de-facto standard for multi-lingual computing and all data whether it be content or even video-text is stored and displayed in Unicode.

The text you are reading has been entered using an INSCRIPT keyboard which is Unicode

The Maharashtra Government with its mission to bring our mayboli onto the digital platform has made Unicode mandatory on all its websites and all content is stored in Unicode

compliant, high quality fonts for display are also Unicode compliant and the storage in your word-processor is also in terms of Unicode.

Why Standards Standards are a must for all computing. They ensure that data can be safely stored in one single manner, freely exchanged and above all viewed by all. The Maharashtra Government with its mission to bring our mayboli onto the digital platform has made Unicode mandatory on all its websites and all content is stored in Unicode. This is vital for e-governance where data has to flow freely between the user and the administration. Standards play a big role in the area of education: be it e-learning or providing to the public free e-books which can be rendered perfectly on a variety of platforms: iPAD to Android. The massive encyclopedia, the Marathi Vishwakosh, is available today on all devices at the click of a button. The Marathi language lover can access it on his tablets, notebooks, smart-phones or PCs . Standards are the wheel that makes the world go round. Thanks to the script-grammar which defines the exact manner in which the Marathi language is written: be it simple shapes or complex conjuncts, one uniform way of writing Marathi will slowly be adopted all over Maharashtra

Conclusion I am proud that Maharashtra and our beloved language Marathi, which goes back to centuries and which enshrines a rich cultural, religious and historical heritage has found its rightful place on the digital platform. In this important social revolution which has brought Marathi into each and every household, I am honoured to have made a humble contribution and lit the first lamp which has brought knowledge and information to our state.

IN PERSON

“e-Governance has got a huge potential to transform governance into good governance�

Prof (Smt) Fauzia Tehseen Khan Minister of State for General Administration Information and Public Relations, Government of Maharashtra

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IN PERSON

Prof (Smt) Fauzia Tehseen Khan

Minister of State for General Administration Information and Public Relations, Government of Maharashtra

“Maharashtra is one of the pioneer states�

M

aharashtra was the leader in a recent e-readiness survey conducted by the central government. While the infrastructure is pretty much there, how do you see the applications growing and e-Governance becoming more prominent across Departments?

We are moving ahead very well in Maharashtra and we have come out with an e-Governance policy for the state. I think Maharashtra is one of the pioneer states to have come out with an e-Governance policy. Most of our Departments are taking initiatives. We recently inaugurated the e-office for National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), which is a completely paperless office. In fact, a number of Departments are coming up e-Governance initiatives and some of them have really done well on this front.

With IT becoming increasingly common across Departments, how do you see the governance machinery working with technology?

Technology is the answer to the many of the problems that we have in our functioning today. Since technology is human-independent, we will have a more transparent system that would take care of issues of corruption, slowness, deliberate lingering with the files, etc. All these issues will be addressed and I think administration will become more citizen-centric. The reason why we all work is for benefit of citizens, and if our services become more efficient, I think it is a good development.

Technology will really take us forward; from e-Governance we are now moving towards m-Governance. Many of our Departments are taking the lead in this. For example the Health Department has the Mother and Child Tracking System, there is the Rajmata Jijau Mission in the Women and Child Department; we have e-tendering, we have Common Service Centres which have been put up.

Of course there many issues which are needed to be addressed but the progress is definitely gathering speed.

Prof (Smt) Fauzia Tehseen Khan, Minister of State for General Administration Information and Public Relations, Cultural Affairs, Protocol, School Education, Women and Child Development Public Health and Family Welfare and Minorities Development (including Aukaf), in conversation with Rachita Jha

How do you see technology moving ahead with the vision to ensure education for all and benefit students and children in the state?

There are two aspects to school education as such. One is the administration part where the implementation of various schemes and process such as approval for setting up the school, approval for appointment of teachers, monitoring the student and teacher strength, monitoring attendance, etc., are all one part of it.

May 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

17

IN PERSON

people would be reduced, as you could reach the state administration right from the Gram Panchayat and vice versa.

We have also got SWAN connectivity from Mantralaya to the Taluka level and are currently taking steps to extend the reach to another level. Of course there are challenges.

Out of 500-600 talukas, we have been able to have good connectivity at about 300 talukas. In a couple of months, we hope to go beyond that.

Issues such as power, connectivity, digging up of roads etc hinder progress. Still, we now have video conferencing facility from Mantralaya to the Commissionrates, Collectrates etc. This leads to considerable savings in terms of time and efforts as officers can just connect to the Secretary or any Minister or even the Chief Minister directly instead of having to come to the state capital.

e-Learning and distance learning is another part of it and it can really create a revolution, since education involves good teaching, that is one of the important requisite as far as education is concerned. While we have teachers who are facilitators of learning, being a good teacher is a big challenge, sometimes one has to have an inborn ability in order to be really able to communicate with the children and facilitate the learning in the right way. Everybody cannot be a born teacher, so technology can be a very important tool in bringing good teachers to the remotest areas through the use of distance learning and at the same time, the training needs in the section of education can be catered to very well.

In Maharashtra, we have District Institute of Educational and Training (DIET). Every DIET has video conferencing facility. Through this we can address the training needs of the teacher and the School Education Department. These institutes can now even go forward and also take up training for other Departments.

Has a system for connectivity been implemented for the administration as well?

About 6,000 Gram Panchayats have got Internet facility and we have got computers installed in about 25,000 Gram Panchayats. We are also taking up a pilot project for two-way video conferencing facility. Once this is implemented, pone hopes that transparency would improve in a big way and gap between government and

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also in the process of finalising a law related to mandatory delivery of Services through the online mode. In fact, the Central Government’s Electronic Delivery of Services Act is based on a large extent on our draft law.

How has the adoption of biometrics changed the working culture at Mantralaya?

Biometrics compel people to be on time, to be regular. As I said, there is always resistance to any change and this is no different. One does come across machines not working, and some of the instances are due to deliberate tampering. There are issues, but biometrics have had a positive impact on the work culture in the Mantrayala and I am hopeful that with time, resistance would go down, and we will see even larger gains from the system.

“Lots of positive

changes are taking place across many Departments”

In what ways can e-Governance be a factor that will take Maharashtra ahead of other states?

This would definitely be a big transformation in the near future. As of now, some Departments have taken good initiatives; some districts have taken up good initiatives. Whenever any change is proposed or implemented, there is always resistance, this is human nature; but here what I can see is that lots of positive changes are taking place across many Departments and so I am quite optimistic.

How is the IT department in Maharashtra different from other states in approaching e-Governance?

We have formulated an e-Governance policy and that has given us a broad vision regarding where we want to go. We then asked each Department to prepare an e-vision document laying down their objectives with e-Governance. Each of them has given a list of initiatives which they are taking or proposed to taking in the near future. In addition, we are always available for interactions, and any handholding or other support that might be needed. We are

How do you see the grassroots entrepreneurs utilising the opportunities offered by CSCs? There are about 11,000 CSCs in the state and about 6,000 of them are functioning very well.

These have become viable units, particularly in large villages, and the services which everyone is providing right now are 7/12 extacts and Maharashtra State Electricity Board bills. Some 250 different services are being offered by one CSC or the other. As we go along, I think more services will be added and people especially in the villages will get benefitted because there are so many things you can do through this service centres including education, health etc.

How do you think e governance has transformed the way good governance happens in Maharashtra? e-Governance has got a huge potential to transform governance into good governance.

However, I think using the term ‘has transformed’ is too early and ‘is transforming’ will be a better verb for that. We are transforming ourselves from governance to good governance, and e-Governance is definitely playing a major role in this.

eMaharashtra Awards 2012

eMaharashtra Awards 2012: Nominations for egov Awards Total 38 nominations were received under four categories of egov. Details are available at http://emaharashtra.eletsonline.com/ nominations-egov-maharashtra-2012-awards/ Best Government to Business Initiative Single Window Clearance (SWC) – Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation: The SWC Portal of MIDC provides a web based single window facility for approvals and clearances required by the Industrial Units within the state of Maharashtra.

Short Term Open Access – Centre for Development of Advanced Computing: The Short Term Open Access (STOA) software is a G2B application which allows providing online services for various utilities in the power sector.

MAHAVAT – e-Services of Maharashtra Sales Tax Dept: MAHAVAT is the e-Governance project implemented for the administration of sales tax in Maharashtra.

Selection of System Integrator for e-Tendering Project – Department of IT, Govt. of Maharashtra: Operational since June 2010, the project allows for centralised registration, renewal, withdrawal and cancellation of tenders. It is a secure, tamper-proof system with PKI security.

Best Government to Citizen Initiative Online Application System – Maharashtra Public Service Commission: MPSC deals with lakhs of applications coming by post or hand delivery. The Online Application System (OAS) has reduced the selection turnaround time.

Recruitment of class-C employees in Kolhapur & Pune region - Water Resource Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: Water Resource Department scanned 95,000 Optical Marks Reader (OMR) answer sheets and declared results within a month.

Government Receipt Accounting System – Finance Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: The dept. has decided to receive its tax and non-tax revenue receipts electronically. For this purpose a new treasury ‘Virtual Treasury’ which dedicatedly handles all the online transactions across state centrally.

Mahaagri SMS Advisory Service – Agriculture Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: Mahaagri SMS service has been launched to disseminate locally relevant, need based, advisories. So far 3.22 lakh farmers have been registered for this service.

eMojni – Land Records Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra Mojni is a Marathi term used for measurement of land parcels. The webbased solution designed by National Informatics Centre Pune is operational in all 358 officers of the Dy. Superintendents of Land Records in the State of Maharashtra.

Website and Web Application – Social Justice and Special Assistance Dept, Govet. of Maharashtra: The website http:// mahaeschol.maharashtra.gov.in hosts a solution that automates the scholarship application process, the sanction and disbursal procedures across the 35 districts under the seven divisional officers in the state.

Octroi Automation Programme – Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai: Itz Cash Card Limited, partnered with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and State Bank of India to introduce and implement collection of octroi with an RFID Contactless Card called Octroi Silver Card.

SMKC e-Governance Project – Sangli Miraj Kupwad City Municipal Corporation: The project has been implemented across 35 departments of the SMKC, thereby offering efficient and faster citizen services to the public.

Use of Geo-informatics in implementation of Forest Rights Act 2006 – Tribal Research and Training Institute, Govt. Maharashtra: Under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), there are approximately 3.38 lakhs claimants to forest land in the state. 1,85,918 cases have been measured and uploaded on the online system. e-Pani – Water Supply and Sanitation Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: e-Pani is a web based SMS linked application developed by the Department Water Supply and Sanitation for redressal of grievances of consumers. eScholarship – Social Justice and Special Assistance Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: The Department of Social Justice and Special Assistance introduced ‘e-Scholarship’ solution in Maharashtra.

Mastek Ltd designed, developed and implemented e-Scholarship solution.

Behtar Zindagi – Handygo Technologies Pvt Ltd: Operational in the state of Maharashtra with focus on costal regions, ‘Behtar Zindagi’ is a rural Interactive Voice Response service.

CSC Maharashtra – Spanco Ltd: The project is operational in Pune

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eMaharashtra Awards 2012

and Konkan Divisions, covering 10 districts. It provides one-stop shops to citizens, where they can access government, semi-government and private services.

broader system of collection of agriculture statistics. The platform is being customised for distribution of Rs 2,000 crore assistance to cotton, soybean and rice producing farmers of the state.

Document Journey Management System and File Status Tracking - Directorate of IT, Govt. of Maharashtra: DJMS is an application used to track the movement of file and references with the government. It helps the employees to maintain a consistent watch over movement of various important documents in the process of decision making.

Generation Control Room Project – MAHAGENCO: MAHAGENCO is in the business of Power Generation with its nine power plants located in Maharashtra. CMC Ltd is implementing the project for MAHAGENCO. The project would help in reduction in fuel cost through optimised operation of the plants.

Maharashtra Government Portal – Directorate of IT, Govt. of Maharashtra: The portal has its information architecture designed and structured keeping in mind the various stakeholders. The information architecture is easily searchable and organizes information easily. The website can be viewed in Marathi or English.

Election Management Software – State Election Commission, Maharashtra: Election Management Project was conceptualised to conduct local body and urban local body elections in a transparent, fair and efficient manner. Under the project, a multi lingual website (www.mahasec.com) has been developed.

Best Government to Government Initiative MAHAVIKAS (Maharashtra Vikrikar Automation System) – Sales Tax Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: MAHAVIKAS (Maharashtra Vikrikar Automation System) is the e-governance project implemented for the internal administration of sales tax in Maharashtra.

Medical Officers Masters, Availability and Transfer Request – Public Health Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra : The Medical Officers Masters is an application that is a database of all medical officers in the state. Availability of Doctors is an application that is accessible to general public.

Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance System – Water Supply and Sanitation Deprt, Govt. of Maharashtra: The system is a pioneering effort to ensure quality of public drinking water sources. It also provides results on chemical and bacteriological testing for its potability. It indicates sources, if water is contaminated for necessary remedial measure.

e-File – State Health Society, National Rural Health Mission: Public Health Department is implementing the E-file system in their offices at Mumbai and Pune. National Rural Health Mission is at the forefront in launching the e-file system programme in order to give better transparency and access to information on public administration processes.

Best Urban ICT Initiative Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation Municipal e-Governance Applications: The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) Municipal e-Governance Applications (MeGA) suite is a turnkey project executed by Mars Telecom Systems Pvt Limited.

It is a comprehensive open-source, GIS-integrated e-Governance Application Suite.

MHADA Online Housing Lottery Project- APRIL 2011 Mumbai Housing and Area Development Board: MHADA has made Housing Lottery Project completely online. TCS was the lead consultant and Mastek was the application vendor for this application.

Integrated Housing Lottery Management System – Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority: Mumbai Housing and Area Development Board (MHADB) provides affordable housing to families belonging to various income groups.

Mastek Limited has designed, developed and delivered the system.

Document Management System for Mantralaya – Dept. of IT, Govt. of Maharashtra: Implemented by Sify Technologies Ltd, the system creates a Digital Secretariat. The objective is creation of a single repository for all documents across 43 departments.

i-Election: Innovative way to reach to voters – Intellection Software & Technologies Pvt Ltd: The company has developed an application to manage elections in India.

The application name is coined as i-Election and it is available on tablets or mobiles having Android 2.2 system.

Drug Inventory - Public Health Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: The Medicine Inventory Management System is a comprehensive online system which gives detailed information about medicine from procurement to consumption by end user.

Automated Building Plan Approval System – SoftTech Engineers Pvt Ltd: Automated Building Plan Approval System (AutoDCR) is an innovative software application for automatic scrutiny of building plans.

ASHA – National Rural Health Mission, Maharashtra: The application has been developed to support the recording of transactions carried out by the ASHA workers. It has generated a comprehensive database of all registered ASHA workers in the state.

Maharashtra Agri Census 2010-11 – Agriculture Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: The agriculture census form part of a

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Computerisation of Education, Examination and Scholarships – Social Justice and Special Assistance Dept, Govt. of Maharashtra: The e-scholarship programme is a massive initiative by the Social Justice Department that enabled centralised management and distribution of scholarship grants for institutes and students across Maharashtra.

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / May 2012

Municipal Administrative Information Network – Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation, Maharashtra: ABM Knowledgeware Limited has designed, developed and implemented Municipal Administrative Information Network (MAINet) the ERP solution by re-engineering more than 400 business processes in Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation.

Public Health

Leveraging ICT for better Public Health The Public Health Department of Government of Maharashtra is using Information and Communication Technologies in multiple ways, and expanding the scope, reach and quality of its services through e-Governance Jayant Kumar Banthia, Additional Chief Secretary, Public Health Department, Government of Maharashtra

In addition to this, we are trying to do away with the idea of the monthly progress report.

Technology allows us to do real time data, so we are no longer looking to wait for the month-end to review performance and progress. Within a reasonable time of a service being provided, the data regarding it is available to decision makers. The same applies even for the financial expenditure. The moment expenditure has been made or funds released, it should be known immediately. Under NRHM we are keenly trying to follow how funds have been released, where are they lying, how are they lying, why are they lying if they are supposed to be continuously released to the beneficiaries and so on.

ICT for managing ASHA workers

T

he Public Health Department is one of the largest the government of Maharashtra, having more than 1,00,000 workers of various categories and spread over all villages of Maharashtra. Ever since the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) began in

2006-07, there has been further expansion in the Department and we have added around 60,000 ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers and another 17,000-18,000 contractual workers. Managing such a huge Department without the assistance of e-Governance and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is virtually impossible.

The Department is in any case heavily dependent upon various service data and service statistics since it is a service department. We have used IT C in several manifestations, some of which would be common to large organizations and basically deal with the Human Resource Development part. For example, the profile of every person working in the Department is now available in the electronic format. Our first major success was in terms of creating a master data for medical officers. This is a database of close to 8,000 medical officers. We are possibly the only state in the country with a database of 60,000 ASHA workers. These workers have been employed under the NRHM and they have to be imparted training, they have to be recruited and when they perform they have to be given honorarium. All these things were not possible without the use of IT and it is a matter of great pride that in the Public Health Department have been able to create the full database of ASHA workers, their background characteristics, the training they have been imparted and monthly performance – both physical and financial. This is important as ASHA workers come from the rural background and should be aware of their entitlements in terms of finances and if there is a delay in getting the honorarium, then she should know and we should know at the top, as to the reasons behind a delay when funds are available, why is it that a person who has delivered has not been given the due financial package.

Health Advisory Call Centres The other use of ICT which we have made successfully is in terms of Health Advisory May 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Public Health

Call Centres. In Pune, in our district hospital, we have set up such a centre which is open 24X7 centre and all ASHA workers, ANMs, MPWs, and medical officers can call and get assistance on problems related to various types of services provided by them. Let us assume a case of an ASHA worker or ANM giving a particular service to a lady in a village and during delivering this service if the ANM wants this assistance, she has nowhere to go right now. Theoretically, she is supposed to contact the medical officer but that is not always possible. A dedicated phone number 104 has now been made available 24X7. The ANM can now call this number, and if her phone number is registered (we are actively encouraging all stakeholders to register), she can get advice because the paramedical staff

statistics also. The advantage in using GIS is that it allows a good spatial interpretation of the data and it can be used for very quick interventions and various efforts have been made to ensure its extensive use. It is hoped that during the year, most of the programme officers across the state would be using this simple tool.

Inventory Management and Procurement of Medicines All the PHCs in the state have been provided with Internet wherever it is available. More than 90 percent of the state’s rural and sub-district hospitals and taluka hospitals are already connected in any case. Further, we have gone ahead and implemented an inventory control system for medicines. This means, sitting in Mumbai, one can find out what is the

“We are possibly the only state in the country with a database of 60,000 ASHA workers”

on the helpline have been trained for this. An algorithm has been devised for describing various symptoms and to arrive as to what is the possible line of treatment or action that is required. In addition to paramedical staff, a team of physicians, paediatricians, gynaecologists and surgeons is also available 24X7. This has been started from January 2012 and the response has been very good. Around 20,000 calls are being made from various paramedical and medical staff.

GIS Applications Another major use of ICT which we have already introduced is with Geographical Information Systems (GIS). With the help of UNICEF and a private firm, we have taught people extensively on how to do GIS mapping.

The exercise was conducted across the state with and personnel from PHC level upwards with taluka-level officers, medical superintendents at rural and sub-district hospitals, District Health Office, Civil Surgeon Office, etc., were trained on using GIS for medical statistics, biomedical statistics and for financial

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availability of medicines in a particular PHC, which hitherto was not possible. This implementation took approximately an year to roll out and the second module – the procurement module – is under implementation and should be rolled out in a couple of months.

This will facilitate not only the proper procurement and timely indenting of medicines, but medicines which are nearing their expiry data or those that need to be transferred from one health institute to can now be identified and proper action taken. The system will also introduce a fair amount of transparency. The use of ICT would improve transparency across the board, in the entire system.

Grievance Redressal System Another unique initiative introduced by the Department relates to timely redressal of employee grievances. It is a web-based, online system available 24X7 to any employee, but right now it is directed towards retired employees who have to run around for their pension benefits and paperwork related to other service matters. They no longer need to physically

visit the concerned office and they can put all their requests or complaints with documents under the system. The concerned members of the staff have been given intensive training on the system and usage is picking up. Once fully adopted, the system would significantly reduce the harassment employees have to face. This will again improve transparency and also make supervisory officers become more accountable as it is in their office that the requests lie pending for months altogether.

e-Files in the NRHM and other Initiatives Under the NRHM, we have also introduced the system of e-files now, and that is again a unique system. The entire NRHM office is working on e-files now and is a paperless office. Proposals initiated at lower level offices are processed much faster, we save a lot of paper and have improved transparency and speed of decision making. It has also helped us in ensuring several levels of officers know the decision taken, which was not otherwise possible in the manual file systems.

There are other programmes, for example, the mobile health phone which si going to be introduced for the IEC and also for transmitting the data on service delivery. Great improvements have been made under some of the programmes of the Government of India like the MCTS (Mother and Child Tracking System) and much improvement in services to pregnant mother, lactating mothers, young children etc.

Telemedicine, which was introduced a few years ago, continues to improve and is being extended in scope and coverage with the help of new gadgets. This is going to revolutionise health services in rural areas. For example, an ECG which cannot be interpreted in a PHC can be transmitted to an urban area where physicians are available and the interpretation could then go back to the PHC, saving the time and money needed to travel to the urban area.

Overall, the Public Health Department is looking towards ICT support and the long term objective is to ensure that the system of e-Governance gets embedded in the entire Department at all levels. This is not an easy task given the size and spread of the Department - village to sub-centre, PHC, rural hospital, sub dist hospital, District Director Hospital, and so on.

education

J S Saharia Additional Chief Secretary, Department of School Education, Government of Maharashtra

Online systems can monitor lakhs of schools scope will be much wider. Speaking specifically of the education sector, the most important stakeholders in education are, of course, the students. We are using e-Governance systems to bring more benefits to the students. Online tools are being used to monitor the teaching system and bring more efficiency to the management of our institutions.

What kind of mobile based projects are you planning for education sector?

T

ell us about the implementation of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan in the state.

Sarva Siksha Abhiyan is being fully implemented in the state. We are focused on ensuring that the financial outlays are made in efficient and transparent manner. The issue of stakeholders is also important. We also recognise the fact that there is need for more e-Governance in the education system. Steps are being taken to implement the e-Governance initiatives. There is lot of technical and repetitive work that can be easily done through online systems and other technological tools.

Lakhs of schools can be monitored through online systems, which are now being created. It

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is important that we have a robust and efficient software. We have plans to use latest mobile communication systems to seamlessly transfer data wherever it is needed.

Please shed some light on the e-Governance projects being implemented in the state of Maharashtra. e-Governance brings transparency to the working of the entire system. The citizens of the state are able to access services from the government in an easier manner. e-Governance also enables the government to have a holistic look on how its projects are working at the ground level. Are the benefits actually reaching the targeted sections of the population? There is a new kind of clarity in the system that is beneficial for both the citizens and the government. The e-Governance systems that have been launched are already bearing fruit, and in times to come their

Students are already very close to mobile technology. It is possible to transfer information to them about the course and the content through mobile devices that they hold. Basically this is an emerging technology. We still need lot of new information to create solutions that are durable and useful. But we are determined to bring mobile based solutions into our education system and there are going to be lot of new developments in times to come.

Have the new developments in ICT inspired some changes in curriculum?

Of course, technology always has the power to change not just the methodology of education but also the content. Computer labs are being started in various schools. There is renewed focus on ensuring that our students get quality education in latest technological trends.

Our first and foremost priority is the students.

We are doing everything we can to ensure that they have access to best teaching methods. We have in place a system of monitoring the quality of the computer labs and ensuring that the quality of teaching is as per the guidelines set by the state government. There is a system for receiving regular feedback from schools located across the entire state.

e-gov policy

eGov 0.0

A Primer on e-Governance Issues e-Governance is only possible when there is good governance. Decentralisation, Transparency, simplified systems are hallmark of good governance. Do these things first, and then use IT for better efficiencies and better interfaces. Get Political Support from the beginning, and create a strong leadership team for the project Rajesh Aggarwal, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra

Citizen Interface Citizen interface, which is defined as the front end of the government, is extremely important. Ideal situation is to eliminate all physical interaction of the citizen with the government, replacing it with online systems for payments, SMS/e-mail/IVR systems for complaints and Application Status etc., an outsourced computerised Front Desk for submitting or receiving physical papers, and a courier system for delivering papers from Government to citizen. Many RTO offices (for driving licenses), Passport offices, Hospitals have a privatised front desk.

Akshay/Friend centres in Kerala and Bangalore One centres in Karnataka have token system and air-conditioned seating space for citizens, and run 24/7, compared to earlier system of citizens standing in long lines or falling over one another in heat or rain. The scheme of CSC (citizen service centres) run by private companies and VLEs (Village Level Entrepreneurs) has been very successful in some states. Many certificates or copies of extracts from databases (like property card, affidavits, exam results etc.) can be given on the spot, or citizen is given a computerised receipt indicating when he can come back and collect his document.

Most popular services are Birth and Death certificates, Age and Income certificates, Property cards etc. It is essential to standardise these basic services across the State (Fees, Application Form, annexures or accompanying documents, Approval process, Output Form). In Maharashtra, almost every Tahsil-

dar has different forms and process for these, and Revenue Department is expected to issue orders for Standardisation soon. A study by IIM Ahmedabad, conduced across a number of states, has indicated that CSCs have helped in reducing average number of trips made by the citizen to get a service, reduced time taken, and reduced bribes. CSCs have also done a great job in online recruitments (stories of kids appearing for police constable exams and dying in stampede, replaced by huge response by filling in forms and getting admission cards from CSCs). In a country where literacy is low, CSCs also act as assisted access centres and double up as cyber cafes, many of them also imparting computer education.

Many departments feel that they have done “full computerisation” when they have set up a Website. A website is just the beginning of eGov. In departments’ websites, FOUR stages can be identified: One, just Web Presence (basic website); Two, Interactive website (email, feedback, and downloadable forms); Three, Transaction based (complete and secure transactions); Four, Transformation. Obviously, aim for reaching this stage fast. There have also been efforts to use of Social Media (Facebook, blogs etc.) to get citizens feedback, on issue like traffic violations, potholes etc. This is being called eGov 2.0.

Online portals act as alternative to CSCs. (eGov cliché: Why stand INLINE when you can be ONLINE). Lakhs of kids can fill forms online sitting at home, citizens file Income Tax returns sitting at home rather than go stand in long queues, people can take online appointments for passport, property registration etc. and then turn up at the given time, and so on.

Many Municipalities have started system of computerised slips at parking lots, saving hundreds of crores of money being extracted by parking lot mafia. Such small steps get huge thumbs up from citizens, as service becomes not only cheaper but also courteous. Bangalore Traffic Police use of BlackBerry phones and portable thermal printers for giving challan receipts not only boosts government revenues, but gives a very transparent and polite service to citizens. Now they have gone one step further and the citizen can pay the money at a citizen service centre rather than at police station. All May 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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these are examples of better citizen interface.

At toll nakas, truck drivers appreciate the computerised system (electronic weight bridges, computerised receipts, smart cards etc.) not only because it reduces bribes or time taken, but because it gives them a more dignified treatment than sometimes even verbal or physical abuse they are normally subjected to in the manual system.

Projects like eDistrict are focussing on totally Digital workflow. Citizen comes to CSC or sitting at home, scans his papers which are uploaded to a server, whole workflow happens digitally at backend (Clerks, Awal karkoons, Naib Tahsildar Tahsildar etc. use Digital Signatures to recommend/approve/reject), and a digitally signed certificate is issued. It may have Barcode, QR code etc. along with a Mobile number to send SMS and verify, or a website URL to verify this document. This is effectively DEMAT system, where paper document is being replaced by something stored in server. If a student applies to a college, then rather than submitting his degree in original or a photocopy (both of which can easily be faked), he could just submit his degree unique number, and the college could verify this form the central server.

Our share market has gone totally Demat. Air Tickets are now booked electronically rather than jackets purchased, and train tickets are going the same way. Currency (too many fake notes) could also slowly give way to electronic money- now even plastic (credit cards) may give way to newer technologies like NFC (Near Field Communications). Central Government has recently introduced a bill on Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Services, which may result in more and more departments offering many Digital Services (in addition to, or in lieu of Manual Services).

Hence the citizen interface with business and government is undergoing a transformation, and eGov project managers have to be well informed on all the emerging technologies.

Please, please do NOT insist on your department opening its own set of CSCs - this will make even the existing ones unviable.

ICT infrastructure for e-Governance Government of India has focussed on three critical Infrastructure projects - SDC (State Data Centre), CSC (Citizen Service Centres) and SWAN (State Wide Area Network). More than a dozen states now have functioning State

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Data Centres. Other departments can just tell IT department to make servers, storage, bandwidth and software licences available in the SDC, and save on lot of time and money. Many SDCs now deploy virtualisation or Cloud technologies to reduce the number of Servers required, and also to provide flexibility. During Exam Results, education department will get more hits; during Elections, election servers will get more hits, and so on. Cloud environment provides flexibility to provision extra servers, and bandwidth quickly.

CSCs (Citizen Service Centres) have been covered in detail earlier. Almost any department can think of good use of CSCs to receive papers or payments and to provide decentralised services.

Real Democracy will come only when Local Bodies are so much empowered that people do not have to come to State headquarters, or District, or even Tahsil offices, and can get the work done at CSCs and local levels. Please think of how you can decentralise to an extent that most of the services are given on-the-spot at CSCs. SWAN basically connects Tahsil offices to Districts which are in turn connected to State Headquarters through dedicated leased lines.

Now, most of the SWAN networks are connected to State data Centres, so that employees at field offices can get connectivity to District and State servers. Due to unreliable Power and Bandwidth, many departments have not relied on totally centralised Web Servers which is being done worldwide. Instead, we are still forced to keep district level servers also in many applications, which in turn synchronise with central servers mostly at night time. SWAN has also been used in many states for Video Conferencing, saving time of district level officials to travel to State Capital. The SWAN POPs (Points of presence- where routers etc. lie) are at Tahsildar offices and District collectorates, and other department offices can connect horizontally to them, thus becoming part of bigger network.

Hence, each department should initiate a dialogue with their IT or eGov department, to leverage the use of SWAN. Most of the IT departments offer Emailing solution, SMS gateway, payment gateway, eTendering solution, and GIS solutions to other departments free of cost. As indicated earlier, many IT departments provide Rate Contracts for Hardware/Software/ Bandwidth/ Manpower etc. which can be used by other departments to have quick roll out of their projects. SeMT (State eGovernance Mission Team) team in IT depart-

ment is supposed to help other departments in framing RFPs and designing SLAs (Service Level Agreement) etc. Make use of this SeMT team. Be aware of IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) issues. For any software code written for you, your department must have IPR and not the vendor. In implementation also, keep strategic control with you. At least develop Monitoring capacity within the department.

Some departments may be suffering from First Mover Disadvantage. They may have beautiful, running IT systems, but if the software code is 10 years old, probably it is time to start again with a clean slate and write the code afresh. Ask your IT department for help.State IT department may have associated Corporations, or Societies, or Joint Ventures which can help other departments. In Maharashtra, we have State and District level SETU societies and a joint venture company MahaOnline. Common Applications like HR (Salary Payments, Seniority Lists, Transfer, GPF etc.), Inventory/Asset management solution, File Tracking Systems, RTI, Grievance System etc. need not be developed by each department separately. Insist on IT department giving it to your department.

NIC has most of these modules ready and can customise it for the state. UID project is resulting in IT departments creating State Residents Data Hub (SRDH) which can be used by all departments. Projects like SSDG (State Service Delivery Gateway) will also make various databases talk to one another.

Finally, IT departments may have funds and programmes for Capacity Building. In Maharashtra, IT department has signed a MoU with State Training Academy, Yashada for offering many types of courses (classroom, virtual classroom, field visits, courses abroad, GoI STEP training program, evaluation studies, and so on).

Fun Ideas like “First Saturday, Tech Saturday” every month across the state, identification of “Technology Champions” in each department, “Tell us good IT ideas and win cash prizes” etc. are also yielding very good response. Private companies are also being roped in to train government employees, and expose them to new gadgets, ideas and technologies. Resistance to new Technologies is at top management levels, while young recruits take to technology like fish to water, hence Capacity Building courses have to target this group on priority.

Read the full paper at http://emaharashtra.eletsonline.com

IN PERSON

Sudhir Thakre Secretary, Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Government of Maharashtra

A silent revolution of technology sweeps rural Maharashtra lessly connected to towns and cities. They can avail many of the facilities and services at par with cities – so technology is a great leveller in India. The mobile revolution has led to further improvements in connectivity. It has changed the landscape of rural areas. In Maharashtra we have 27,920 Gram Panchayats. The state has close to 1 lakh human habitations, consisting of 6.15 crore and 1.30 crore families. We aim to use technology to transform the service delivery model and make it more transparent, speedy and corruption free. Rural population has access to simple services such as birth certificate, death certificate, marriage certificate etc.

What is the Sangram Project?

H

ow is technology being used in rural

Maharashtra?

There was a time when we thought of connectivity as something that geographically connects spaces and people. Now we have the system of virtual connectivity, which has led to seminal transformations across Maharashtra.

People from rural Maharashtra are seam-

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Sangram – Sanganakiya Grameen Maharashtra is a computerised programme for enabling rural Maharashtra to fight against corruption.

The basic infrastructure for providing online services in the villages is already there. Our vision is that eventually all the G2C, G2B and B2C services will be made available to the villages under this programme. This will be accomplished in a year. Currently all G2C services are available online.

How has the state’s population benefitted from e-Panchayat applications?

The Panchatayi Raj Software or PRIASoft as it is called is an accounting software, so once all the vouchers are fed into the computer, we get an automated balance sheet. The village centre has to just ensure that each payment voucher is fed into the system, and the status of expenditures can be tracked from anywhere. Maharashtra is

the only state in which March 31 account of all the zila parishad, gram panchayat are closed.

Today anyone can see that there are 64 lakh vouchers and each can be tracked. This has brought more accountability in the gram panchayat. The PlanPlus software is helping us plan our strategy by feeding in our requirements.

It helps in decision-making. It is also helping the villagers in planning development projects and implementing priority projects. Rural literacy in Maharashtra is below 75 percent, most people who manage these gram panchayats are illiterate. So we have had all the instructions depicted in a pictorial form. This aids in operations - computers are a big help in the same. We are ensuring connectivity through a combination of BSNL, wireless and satellite connectivity channels. Use of biometrics attendance in 1000 villages is showing results, a BDO sitting in his office can monitor the teacher and student attendance in the class, this attendance is also taken for mid day meal in the afternoon.

Is technology helping you address the BPL discrepancies?

There is a BPL survey, previously it was done by physically going to each family and taking the details on paper, now it will be done using tablets. The survey questions are noted and data is downloaded at the gram panchayat and then transferred to block level, state level and central level on the same day. There were many fraud and bogus cases in practice of declaring a family BPL, this has been arrested to a great extent and the real beneficiaries are now getting their rightful benefits under the BPL schemes.

IN PERSON

Dinesh Waghmare

Secretary, Department of Social Justice and Special Assistance, Government of Maharashtra

Biometric System for Pension Disbursement state offer 1,200 crore worth of scholarships to students from the backward and disadvantaged sections. However, off late we have observed many leakages in the disbursement system, also there were instances of bogus students siphoning off funds. So we implemented the e-scholarship scheme as our flagship project to ensure the largest group of beneficiaries in our schemes should benefit first.

What are benefits of e-scholarship scheme and using UID as a component?

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ell us more about the evolution of technology in

your department?

We cater to the welfare of schedule caste and other backward classes including criminal and de-notified tribes in the state, in addition we are also have a mandate for welfare of senior citizens and the disabled. Our total budget is of around 12,000 crore with 2,500 personal employed. e-Governance is a new concept in our department, earlier it was limited to payroll management. But I decided that technology should be used where it has a larger impact on the beneficiary. Our scholarship schemes in the

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The project is being implemented by Mastek and is uniquely designed to ensure that the scholarship money gets directly transferred to the bank account of the students and designated colleges. This eliminates the chain of middlemen and touts in the system. Applications are now filled online, validated by the principal of the college, followed by district social welfare officer, then the data goes to the treasury and the money is deposited in the student’s or college’s bank account through ECS. Last fiscal year, we distributed close to Rs 1,300 crore in scholarship schemes, and due to direct disbursement of funds in beneficiary accounts we saved 150 crore that might have gone to 2.5 lakh bogus students.

As Maharashtra is a leading in UID enrolment, our department from this year will add the UID or Adhaar number as the identification number and code for students.

How are you using the online platform to connect with citizen?

Presently our website is more of an information platform and is very static in nature; I see it becoming more dynamic and interactive in future.

e-scholarship has a separate portal with online applications and online payment gateway. The website will eliminate the need of our beneficiaries to come to the offices; they will be able to avail all the facilities online. Apart from scholarship, we have around 2,300 hostels in Maharashtra and there is a plan to make the hostels searchable on the website. The website will have more vibrancy in future with two-way communication, and building a community of practice. We are making the website available in Marathi and English. The website is currently being administrated centrally; in future field officers will be able to update the website on a regular basis with video clips and photographs. This will lead to decentralisation of the website and its content.

How has the ECS mode of payment for pensioners benefitted the department?

The special assistance department has a mandate to give senior citizens pension schemes, including other schemes for destitute, old age homes etc. For the release of pension funds, we use ECS and online transfer of money. Three districts have started use of biometric and smart cards. By use of biometric identification system of pension disbursement we are able to save 80 crore by eliminating bogus persons registered as beneficiary. The business correspondents go to villages using hand-held devices and distribute pensions directly to them. We have tied up with ICICI Bank and Union Bank, so almost 13 districts will be doing this project and in future the entire disbursement will be through Adhaar number. In Aurangabad, we have already started that distribution of pension using Adhaar number..

IN PERSON

IN PERSON

Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey

Deputy Director General, Unique Identity Authority of India

“Maharashtra will lead the way in applying UID“

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hat is the way ahead for e-Governance?

Maharashtra has always been in the forefront of e-Governance. It was one of the first states to implement projects such as the File Tracking System in the Mantralaya. The state set up a high –powered committee under the Chief Secretary way back in 1999. Constituted under a Cabinet directive, this committee was empowered to take decisions about e-Governance projects in the state of Maharashtra. Several projects were subsequently launched and are operational today. Sales tax is one example; SETU

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project under which computerised citizen facilitation centres for fast and efficient delivery of various services to citizens and businesses have been established, is another. The Health Department has also undertaken e-Governance on a large scale. All treasuries have been computerised and connected. In terms of infrastructure, the State Data Centre and the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) are in place.

plug leakages and make the system more efficient, transparent and closer to the people.

Maharashtra will lead the way in applying UID for improving e-Governance in the state as it is a very powerful platform that can be used for taking benefits directly to the people without any intermediary or middleman.

What in your view are the key technologies for e-Governance?

If any e-Governance project is not done in a local language, it cannot achieve success. In Maharashtra, appropriate emphasis was laid on communicating with people in their language so that they could take full advantage of the project. All citizen centric interfaces have been implemented in Marathi, so that the people assess the system with ease.

I am personally inclined towards mix of mobile and wireless. Of course the backbone network will be based on broadband but as far as the consumer-facing end is concerned, it will be mobile and wireless network, because we have very good mobile penetration and with 3G and 4G, bandwidth at the last mile is improving.

Last mile connectivity can be done very fast with wireless and this helps in quick rollout of projects. So the consumer-facing end should be mobile and wireless while the backbone would be largely based on optical fibre.

What is the next stage in the UID project?

UID was launched in Maharashtra by the hon’ble Prime Minister and the hon’ble Chairperson of the UPA on September 29, 2010.

Since then the state has become the biggest registrar as far as enrolments under Aadhar are concerned. Roughly around 4 crore people have been enrolled in the state so far. The state should be able to enrol every resident by middle of next year. Several e-Governance projects can then be launched in a big way as UID will facilitate such projects. It will help benefits reach the people,

How important are language tools in e-Governance?

What have been the major challenges in e-Governance?

The common challenges are for any new project that replaces or modifies an existing system are that it will encounter inertia, it will encounter resistance. This is the case with e-Governance as well. One has to work with the stakeholders and address these challenges. The state IT Department and now the UIDAI have been working with various Departments and facilitating the move to IT-backed systems.

It is important to convince the stakeholders that e-Governance would lead to improved service delivery, that efficiency and transparency will go up and leakages in the system will be plugged, and intermediaries will become redundant. This will bring governance closer to the people. This is what we keep communicating to the various Departments, and the results are showing.

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IN PERSON

Dr K Shivaji Principal Secretary, Industries, Energy Government of Maharashtra

e-Governance

initiatives at MIDC The ERP implementation was undertaken in 2010. Digital MIDC is being implemented in four stages: • Development of online portal and various web services for MIDC such as Single Window Clearance System (SWC) for existing and prospective customers. It was launched in April, 2010.

• Software/ applications for Land Acquisition, General Administration, Legal, and Town Planning services, Environment for MIDC’s internal users • Software/ applications for Integrated File Management System (IFMS), Pre-Tendering, Post Tendering for MIDC’s internal users, E- tendering for MIDC’s vendors/ contractors • Software/ applications for Water Billing, for MIDC’s customers. The customer will receive water bill by email and he may pay it online.

What is Maha e-biz initiative?

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hat e-Governance initiatives have been taken by your Department?

The MIDC aims to digitise all its business processes to make its modus operandi more systematic, channelised, centralised and transparent. The concept of ‘Digital MIDC’ has been realised through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation.

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In order to make the state more investor friendly, the Maha e-biz programme was launched. Customers will be served through this digital window by all departments of Govt. of Maharashtra related to industries. The Single Window Clearance portal was initiated under this scheme, with the major objective of providing ‘One stop services for entrepreneurs’.

How can policy enable usage of technology for citizen-centric services?

In order to ensure implementation of the above mentioned initiatives and interoperability of each of these and establish an integrated environment for delivering seamless Government to Citizen (G2C), Government to Business

(G2B) and Government to Government (G2G) services in a cost effective manner, the e-Governance policy has been prepared. This policy puts a framework in place for development and implementation of e-Governance systems and applications in the state. Each department including the industries has prepared a list of citizen services for e-enablement of services in a time-bound manner. The e-enablement of services shall include information availability, submission of online forms, online processing and payments, online verification, online status tracking and online availability of services.

How can technology benefit remote villages?

To further augment the use of technology and SWC features and make it more unique, noteworthy and customer friendly, MIDC will incorporate these new features in near future: Barcode tracking services will provide a unique identification number to each application. This feature will facilitate the separation and indexing of documents that have been imaged in batch scanning applications. The feature will increase the visibility and management of the SWC process. Backend processing platform through ERP- MIDC aims to make its backend processes digital which will pave the way for the standard, real-time exchange of business documents and will streamline the processes of MIDC. Increasing the SWC outreach, MIDC plans to link the services of Labour dept. and MSEB dept. directly to its online SWC portal Fire services in Non-MIDC area - As of now, MIDC provides services for approvals and clearances for MIDC areas only. The organisation plans to gradually incorporate fire services for NonMIDC areas also.

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IN PERSON

Vandana Krishna

Principal Secretary, Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Maharashtra

e-Governance for better Care of Women and Children

Anganwadis. The system would have data on parameters such as stocks of essential supplies, workers, number of beneficiaries in the particular Anganwadi, number of malnourished children being served by the Anganwadi and so on. Once the system is operational, it would be possible to click on a map and see the Anganwadis in the area, and also access information related to individual Anganwadis.

The Department also runs a number of orphanages, which we call Children’s Home or Children’s Institution. The registered number of children in such homes is about 90,000 and actual occupancy may be 60,000–70,000. This is a large number of children to track. In order to do so effectively, we are planning a special software – the Child Tracking Software where information related to each child would be available.

Could you share some major success stories with us?

P

lease share with us some e-Goverance initiatives taken by your Department.

Under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), which is one of the world’s largest such schemes, the Department runs about 1,00,000 Anganwadis and mini-Anganwadis in the state. Every Anganwadi has two workers and provides food, education (pre-school education) and some other services to children below 6 years. It is a huge set up with more than 60 lakh beneficiaries. In addition to the children, ICDS also targets pregnant mothers. Tracking the multiple services, tracking lakhs of beneficiaries, tracking supplies, schedules etc., is an extremely challenging and complex task. The Department is making use of software and mobile phones in this sphere in a big way.

The Department is also working on a Geographical Information System (GIS) based solution which will create a spatial database of all

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The Department has put up a lot of data related to children in children’s homes and also those being served by the Anganwadis online. The ICDS website has data regarding severely or moderately underweight children, and it is now planned to implement a biometric-based system for more effective tracking of the children.

The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) office has implemented a completely paperless office and they now work entirely on e-files.

This is a major success and one would like to see it replicated across the government.

What would be the biggest challenges for e-Governance?

It will take 5-10 years for the system to stabilise and gain acceptability.

People are learning all the time. Even the so-called experts are also learning how to work with the government system. This entire process is based on trial and error and is hence time-taking. Some time back, we wanted to implement an e-tendering system so that all purchases could be moved online, and the entire process would be accessible online to anyone interested. We got expert help and also support from the IT Department but every now and then glitches kept cropping up. People also raised issues like how to ensure sanctity of the tender process if the website controllers had access to all data and suchlike. So, we have yet to resolve such issues, which pose serious challenges in mainstreaming of e-Governance.

Public Health

Initiatives in NRHM Maharashtra The state unit of the NRHM has implemented a comprehensive e-file system which has enabled it to function as a completely paperless office.

It has also led to quicker and better decision making and considerable savings in terms of money and time Vikas Kharage, Mission Director, National Rural Health Mission, Maharashtra

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he Maharashtra office of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has implemented an e-file system and is the only office without a single physical file in Maharashtra. The NRHM has been in the forefront of launching the e-file system programme in order to give better transparency and access to information on public administration processes which has been the thrust area of e-governance in the State. The Government of Maharashtra has been one of the pioneers in promotion of ICT and e-Governance in India and this initiative is a continuation of this approach. The Public Health Department is also implementing the e-file system in their offices at Mumbai and Pune.

In the initial phase, 250 user ids for Mumbai and Pune offices were issued, including those for topmost officials in the Mantralaya. The digital signature so processed is valid for two years and is implemented with no cost for government offices except for customisation charges. The entire project was implemented at a total cost of Rs 19 lakh, including the expenses on creating an IT infrastructure for offices. A dedicated fibre optic line was connected to the Mantralaya in order to improve connectivity between the Departments.

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compared to a situation when it would have been moved in the physical format. The file status can now be tracked easily. The software also allows use of regional languages, thus making it extremely user friendly. Implementation on a secured webbased system enables the officers to clear the files even if they are on tour. It saves time as well as enables faster file movements and brings transparency in office procedures unlike manual systems.

This leads to a faster decision-making process.

No file can be missed or removed as it is copied on three back up servers. Monitoring is also easy as the system has provision for generation of many different kinds of reports. Previously, only 25-30 files were processed per day but with such integrated platform we now process around 70-80 files.

Online Payments The connection used for the project has been provided by RailTel and is a 10 Mbps line.

Features of the e-File System The e-file system comprises of a systematic and stepwise process of distribution of day to day correspondence, managing the inward/outward documents, movement of files followed as well as remarks and decisions by the senior officers. All of this is implemented through an online system.

A file can be transferred from one Department to another within minutes – a saving of 15 days

In partnership with ICICI Bank, an online payment gateway has been integrated with the system. The integration was completed within eight days by a team of IT specialists.

All the 472 banks across Mumbai and Pune have been linked through e-banking and the funds allocated to various districts can be thus tracked. It is now planned to introduce SMS alerts for transactions. We are also looking to engage 70-80 users in the health department by next year along with the Directorate of Health Department and all eight circles including all Deputy Directors.

elections

Maharashtra State Election Commission

Moving Forward with Innovative ICT solutions The Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) has taken many important steps to bring efficiency and transparency in its systems through the use of cutting edge ICT systems. The SEC has developed plans for an interactive website, which is bilingual and is available in English and Marathi

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he Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) website provides details of all the activities of SEC, its Acts & Rules; it has links to all LB/ ULB election websites. It also offers a glimpse of all the ongoing election programmes, important information, telephone directory, past statistics, RTI, training material, forms, downloads, contacts and much else. In addition to the information that is already available, separate web pages have also been developed for all the LB/ULB election programmes.

Information by website and SMS Another important step taken by the Maharashtra SEC is the innovative E-yadi System, which is web based software for preparation of voter list. The software takes the base data and facilitates the creation of a database for LB (Local body) or ULB (Urban Local Body) elections with pre-entered ward details. The software is so efficient that it can allow voters the convenience of searching the SEC website for relevant information. Voters can also demand response through SMS.

Voters can SMS their surname, name, middle-name to the prescribed short code, in a designated format and they will automatically receive a SMS containing the Voter’s Full Name, Sr. No, Gender, Age and Polling Station. For different elections, the voter will have to use separate keywords, the list of which has been provided at the website.

Enhanced security For managing the aspect of security, different levels of operations have been incorporated into the system. The Surveyor / Computer Operator is allowed to browse and upload control charts at various stages. There is the Ward Officer, who verifies the control charts and can edit control charts at various stages.

There is the Assistant Municipal Commissioner, who can print control charts for verification, monitoring of his jurisdiction.

The Deputy Municipal Commissioner will monitor his jurisdiction. The Municipal Commissioner is responsible for printing of control charts for verification, monitoring of entire e-Yadi process.

In the history of LB/ULB elections the e-Yadi is a pioneering system. It will be used by government officials and employees, who may not be conversant with technology, at various levels. So some elementary introduction into technology is necessary for the system to be

fully effective. In corporations, the area is vast and at times it has been found to the difficult to have control on the staff working on the ground. At times the staff proves to be vulnerable to political interventions.

With the usage of e-Yadi system, the commissioner can actually conduct enterprise checks up to the ground level staff leading to more efficiency in the election process. As updated information is available in a seamless and transparent manner, there is scope for much greater transparency. All the information regarding e-Yadi is available with just a click and the elections become a rather controlled and efficient phenomenon.

New domains When it comes to municipal elections, separate websites have been created for different corporations. So you have websites like - www. pcmcelection.com (in 2007), www.nmmcelection.com (in 2010), www.kdmcelection.org (in 2010), and www.kmcelection.org (in 2010).

Each website has basic voter list information, ward information, important telephone numbers, and much else. 25 domain names have been booked for municipal corporation elections. 200 domains are set to be booked for separate website each for municipal councils.

35 domain names are being booked for Zila Parishads.

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IN PERSON

Chandan Dange

Director Technology, Ultimate ITPL

“Online systems for transparent elections” ect is aimed at making concise and unbiased information available to citizens. Voters are able to learn about who the candidates are in their ward, they can also learn about their ward number, their name in the voter’s list and the details of their polling centre. The Election Management Project also serves the purpose of addressing the challenges of election officer and election staff.

What are the important features of your e-Yadi solution?

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ell us about the Election Management Project, with which you have been involved in Maharashtra.

The Election Management Project has been conceptualised to conduct local body and urban local body elections in a transparent, fair and efficient manner. The common voter is at the focal point of this initiative. The proj-

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Ultimate ITPL is a pioneer in solutions, which enable us to prepare centralised voter list. This solution consists of application software, document generation and printing services. Ultimate’s e-yadi application is available in web based and standalone editions. The Election Management Project is currently using our web based edition, with which election staff can work from practically anywhere, and prepare ward wise or polling booth wise voter lists. Before the coming of e-yadi service, the process of electoral roll preparation used to involve drudgework of manual cutting, pasting and copying. Chances of single voter getting added into multiple wards were common. The strict monitoring system could not be established, as result of which electoral roll preparation process was full of loop holes.

At times these loop holes got misused by corrupt social elements. e-Yadi has ushered in a regime of perfect transparency that can be monitored through centralised as well as decentralised methodologies.

Tell us about the photo electoral roll that can be generated through e-yadi.

The e-Yadi platform facilitates generation of photo electoral roll. When voter’s photograph

is available on voter list, identification becomes easy. Bogus voting numbers come down drastically. One of the advantages of having centralised software is that it makes it possible for us to have data available at a single place. However, the creation of printed electoral roll involves moving data across multiple processing stations. We have partnered with large printing houses and distribution networks to generate the photo electoral roll and make them available at distant places.

Tell us about the voter search engine.

Voter search engine has been linked to Maharashtra SEC website since June 2011. Initially it helped voters find their names in voters list from a database of about 8 crores. This service has been enabled so that voters may register or apply for routine tasks like name change, address modification etc. As electoral roll formation process started, search results also provided information like ward names, polling booth addresses etc. Voter Search engine is also available as Web Based as well Mobile Text Message based service.

On the day of election, Mumbai Corporation alone received 40 search requests per second.

Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad, Nasik and Nagpur also followed heavy amount of requests.

Tell us about the Cloud Based solutions that you have developed for election process?

Ultimate has partnered with Nasik based ESDS data centre company to establish a highly efficient system for State Election Commission. eNlight is home grown cloud computing platform that improves efficiency leads to great savings in terms of cost. The carbon footprint of cloud based systems is also quite low.

Agricultural Management

Using ICT to help Farmers in Maharashtra With the objective of catering to all the needs of the farmers in the state, the Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra, has initiated the process of building a strong IT infrastructure with the help of National Informatics Center, Pune (NIC)

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he field offices of the Department of Agriculture (DoA), Maharashtra, are computerised up to the block level and are capable of running various software applications, developed by National Informatics Centre, Pune. The offices are fully networked through broadband and are equipped to meet different needs of the state’s farmers. The e-Governance applications that DoA uses include the following:

Website: (G2C) The Department of Agriculture operates a bilingual website, which came into being in October 2000. Located at http://www.mahaagri.gov.in, the website contains the all kinds of information that farmers in the state need to keep track of.

Online daily rainfall: (G2G and G2C) Rainfall data is uploaded daily on the online application at the district level. This data is also made available on GIS maps. Data for last twenty years is available in the usable form.

Crop Watch: (G2G, G2C, G2B) Crop sown data is weekly uploaded at the district level. This data is also made available in the public domain.

Disease and pest monitoring system: (G2C) The disease and pest causes heavy damage to the crops leading to reduced production and losses for the farmer. The department has successfully implemented the “Disease and pest monitoring and awareness system” for Cotton,

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Soybean, Gram and Pigeon pea crops. Rice crop has been included in year 2011-12.

Mahaagri SMS Advisory System: (G2C,G2G) For timely and fast delivery of the information to farmers, the department has developed a SMS Bulk Broadcasting application, which is first of its kind in the country. Location and crop specific critical agro advisory is given to the farmers on their cell phones. These SMS are delivered in English, as well as in Marathi.

its grass root level workers. The project will definitely bridge the digital divide and empower the farming community through ICT.

Kisan Sanchar Toll Free Service (G2C) To address the issues related to agriculture input - seed, fertiliser and insecticide – and the quality control related queries of farmers in the state, an interactive Toll Free Service 1800-2334-000 has been commissioned by Department of Agriculture.

Close User Group – CUG (G2C)

Online Licensing (G2C,G2B)

Mobile phones are penetrating rural areas with great speed. BSNL has been selected to provide CUG services. This service is called the “MAHA KRISHI SANCHAR”. Six lakh farmers and officers have been subscribed in CUG as on 31st May 2011.

Licenses to Seed, Fertiliser and Insecticide manufactures/Producers/dealers are issued by the department of agriculture. Online licensing software is developed by the help of NIC Pune.

Application for obtaining license and tracking of the application and issuing of the license is being done by this system.

Micro Irrigation Online Implementation Application System

Soil Health Card (G2G and G2C)

Every year approximately Rs 700 Crore subsidy is distributed for micro Irrigation in the State. To bring about transparency and efficiency in the work flow, the whole process from application to subsidy deposition in the beneficiary accounts, an online application has been developed. The application will be rolled out in Year 2012-13.

The State Agriculture department has initiated various programmes to maintain and enhance soil health. Software for Soil Health Management, Soil Health Card online dissemination and expert advice on crop and nutrient management is being developed with the NIC and the application will rolled out on 1st May 2012.

Cyber Extension Project

Agriculture Census (G2G)

Cyber Extension is the need of the hour, as it can lead to strengthening of Agriculture Extension and improvements in service delivery.

With Rastriya Krishi Vikas Yojana hardware in the form for Laptops is being provided to all Circle Agriculture Offices in the state. The project aims to provide ICT tools for efficient, locally relevant agriculture extension through

For conduction of agriculture census of the state, an application has been developed with help of NIC, Pune. The application allows integration of database of Land Records, which are available with Department of Revenue, Government of Maharashtra. This has saved resources for manual data collection, time and resources to greatest possible extent.

MahaOnline

Taking Government Online Under the MahaOnline initiative, the Government of Maharashtra has formed a Joint Venture with Tata Consultancy Services for offering government services online under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model

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ata Consultancy Services (TCS) has three joint ventures (JVs) – APOnline with the Andhra Pradesh Government, MPOnline with the Madhya Pradesh Government and MahaOnline – the newest one – with the Maharashtra Government. All the three JVs have been established to implement e-Governance initiatives in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. Citizens have to presently spend a lot of time and money for accessing government services, getting different types of certificates, paying bills etc. To resolve these problems and to increase transparency in the working of government, the project was started. The motto of the JV is “Citizen from Inline to Online”.

The main objective of the JV is to provide all Government to Citizen (G2C) services to citizens at the nearest point from their home. For this, in Andhra Pradesh (AP), we have more than 50,000 kiosks. In Madhya Pradesh (MP), more than 2500 kiosks are working, along with 7000 Common Service Centres (CSCs), which have been linked with MPOnline. In addition to this, approximately 1000 university kiosks work exclusively for universities. In MahaOnline, presently we don’t have kiosks but we are working through CSCs which have been set up under the National e-Governanc ePlan (NeGP) of the Government of India. In all, 11,000 CSCs are to be set up in Maharashtra. Of this, 5000 have been set up MahaOnline services are being provided through these CSCs. Online delivery of services helps in massive savings in terms of

time and money, generates employment and also helps increase computer literacy. In MP, we found that students save approximately Rs 150-200 per form. One organisation saved Rs 6-7 crore per year by taking the process online.

In counselling, a student is able to save approximately Rs 2400-3000 due to online process.

Features of the Model The JV model implemented as a PPP means that the Department does not have to pay for anything. Services are made available online and costs are recovered through sage charges from the citizens. The charges are shared between the JV and CSC/kiosk operator. The JV has a lifetime of 10 years beyond which the government can choose to continue it or take it over. The data, services and people employed are all safe in this manner, and the model is financially viable.

Important Initiatives under MahaOnline One important initiative which is under implementation in MahaOnline is DigiGov which is a file movement software. It will create a lesspaper office. All the files which move from one Department to another can moved electronically. All papers will be scanned, sent electronically and approved electronically, with digital signatures. There would be no need to send the physical files from one Department to another and this will save time, and effective monitoring of the file movement. It is a bilingual software available in English and Marathi. Testing is already under progress in the IT Department and the Raj Bhawan and the system should be rolled out within the next six months.

One important initiative which is under implementation in MahaOnline is DigiGov which is a file movement software The other thing being implemented under MahaOnline is a Human Resource Management System. The service books of all Mantralaya employees are being digitised and will be available electronically within 6-8 months’ time. Approximately 1500 service books have already been digitised. The next target is to make all leaves online, so that employees can make requests for leave online and response on the same is also given online.

The third is G2C services for various departments. 40-odd services have already been enabled and trials are underway in Nagpur region where 16 forms have been implemented and service is provided through CSCs. Similar initiative is also underway for the Panchayati Raj Department under which 25000 operators would be active in Gram Panchayats and all Panchayat services and certificates will be made online. The operators have already reached the locations services would be starting shortly.

Currently the operators are working on the Gram Panchayat Accounting System PRIA Soft.

Maharashtra is the only state in the country where all accounting of Gram Panchayats has been made online. The records till last week are available online. 70 lakh vouchers have been digitised and entered into the system and expenditure of around Rs 3000 crore has been tallied with the system.

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IN PERSON

Ramnath Sonawane

Commisioner, Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation

e-Governance in kdmc when the system was designed at the start itself we found out what the major requirements of citizens are. The citizen requires two things: one, they want service and the other, lodge complaints. The e-Governance solution implemented at KDMC makes the process of applying for services as well as lodging complaints totally online. The software has been designed to ensure full satisfaction to customers or citizens.

The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) model implemented at KDMC has ensured that all resources of the corporation are working in integration. This has helped to bring transparency about what is happening inside; ensure that there is no duplication of work, there is no duplication of data and data is also accessible to everyone. Overall, it has promoted accountability, responsibility, transparency and efficiency.

How is e-Governance working out in other parts of the state?

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hat are the main features of the e-Governance solution implemented at KDMC?

Basically we started with the solution that should be integrated with all kind of services which are having citizen centricity, along with the internal processes that should be integrated in such a way that anyone can access it. So

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The same solution has been implemented by the Government of Maharashtra in all 222 municipal corporations. Out of this, implementation is complete in 220 corporations and 4–5 services are live. This was the manner in which the implementation was taken up at KDMC also. Now there are 23 Departments and services that are live. Complaint lodging and redressal system is working in 70 -80 places.

The e-Governance solutions at each of the 222 locations would be independent, but would allow some analysis. For example, if the government wants to compare what Nagpur is doing with what Kalian is doing or Amravati is doing, or to find out the rate of recovery and the rate of efficiency, it would be possible to gener-

ate appropriate MIS reports of the services and to develop the new model which will help in decision making. The government will be able to track the report and the working status of the council.

A Decision Support System is also in the process of being developed for the project so that the data can be analysed and utilised in an efficient manner.

How has technology improved the functioning of KDMC? Earlier, when a complaint was lodged, there was no mechanism to track it and there was no record of number of complaints or type of complaints etc. Today, it is possible to track individual complaints, analyse patterns, categorise them by type and so on. The new system has established a watchdog for each complains. If an officer has more than 25 complains pending in their account at the end of the month, a warning would be generated and the officer would be asked to improve the level of efficiency. A token deduction of Rs 50 is also made from the salary. The amount may not be significant but it acts as a blot on the officer’s record. The system would have identified the individual for low efficiency and no one would want that to be on their service record. As a result, officer typically carry over only 10 -12 complaints.

Even otherwise, the tracking mechanism has colour codes for different stages of complaints, so that it is possible to see each individual complaint and deduce at what stage of resolution it is stuck on any given date. This alone has improved governance significantly. Of course, the other modules have improved efficiency and service delivery as well.

tax management

Maharashtra Boasts of a State of the art tax Management Solution The Economic Intelligence Unit in Maharashtra uses advanced digital technologies to store and interpret data collected by the state’s sales tax department

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n Maharashtra the computerisation of sales tax department was done quite early; in fact, Maharashtra is one of the first states in India to start computerisation of sales tax. We realised that the concept of physically monitoring the dealers. Today Maharashtra boasts of a state of the art tax management and intelligence system.

Economic intelligence unit for sales tax data analytics The value added tax system was introduced in Maharashtra and many other states in 2005. For the effective implementation of VAT System, the geography based division structure was re-organised into function-based organisation.

The major change being that of adoption of trust based compliance.

The use of electronic systems was made mandatory, and the state took recourse to solutions like as e-return, a statutory audit report in the form of e-704. As a result, huge electronic data started accumulating at the sales tax department.

Thus it became necessary to invest in storage and usage of this data, and the ‘Economic Intelligence Unit’ was born. Maharashtra is the first state in India to successfully implement such projects.

The entire information that is received from various departments of MSTD and outside revenue departments such as Income Tax,

The divisions of Economic Intelligence Unit

The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) in Maharashtra has four divisions. These include: • e-704 data analysis and integration unit - It is mandatory to upload certified audit report (e-704) for the registered dealer whose annual turnover is more than 60 lakhs. The detailed evaluation and analysis of this report is done and each transaction is verified and in case of any discrepancy the case is taken for investigation and business audit.

• 360 degree analysis unit – As per the pilot project of central government, the revenue related information from various revenue departments such as income tax, central excise, customs, and service tax is shared with MSTD and analyzed by

this division. It also identifies importers, suspicious dealers etc.

• TINXSYS and Registration data analysis unit: Tax Information Exchange System (TINXSYS) is a centralized solution to facilitate information between State Commercial Tax Departments of India. This data analysis unit analyses declaration details under CST Act. The verification of interstate purchases, branch transfer, entry tax dealers is performed in this unit • BIDW and Cyber Forensic Unit: EIU is currently implementing two key projects namely business intelligence & data warehousing (BIDW) and Cyber Forensics Lab. For the first time in India, latest technology is being used in the commercial tax of any state government.

Service Tax, Central Excise etc will be extracted transformed and loaded. The analysis of this information will be fast, accurate and is geared to provide business intelligence to MSTD. It will also strengthen investigation and will result in capture of frauds and tax evasion cases.

The Cyber Forensic Lab has forensic tools such

as Encase and FTK. In Addition, through the usage of e-discovery tools a series of digital evidences get created. These digital evidences are admissible under IT Act. In addition to the above the EIU also has Data Management and Monitoring Unit, Commodity Analysis Unit and a Dealer Profiling Unit.

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Techno Speak

Open Source Infrastructure Anuj Kumar, GM India & Subcontinent, Red Hat India

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loud Products Majority of virtual machines in public clouds run on Linux.

Nine out of the top 10 successful public clouds rely on Red Hat software.

Four out of the five largest public clouds run on Red Hat’s virtualisation technology.

Healthcare Solutions We provide healthcare organisations with the technologies necessary to build a reliable IT infrastructure for life-critical applications. Red Hat Enterprise Healthcare Platform is a reliable and affordable information technology platform designed for delivering safe, high-quality patient care. The platform packages Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, and updates

via Red Hat Network with services specifically tailored to the needs of the healthcare sector.

Financial Sector Solutions In the financial services industry, market opportunities grow faster than IT budgets. Red Hat’s footprint of stock exchange customers running mission-critical applications on Red Hat solutions represents approximately half of the world’s equity trading volume. Affordable, reliable and secure, Red Hat open source solutions give you technology and performance advantages and provide the low-latency, high-throughput infrastructure your financial services environment needs. e-Governance solution Red Hat is actively working with Government (Defence) and SI Partners on several mission mode projects. Key to our solutions is the interoperability it offers to enable cross department and cross function integrations,

which is fundamental to implementing large scale e-Governance solutions with heterogeneous systems and data formats, standards conformance levels provided by Red Hat further ensures that an unbiased and competitive environment is available to all providers both at the Hardware and Application Solutions levels to participate in shaping up an efficient and cost effective solution. Another important aspect is the economics of open source based solutions, it saves you a lot of money, and you can spend it to develop better application software which is often deprived of budgets in order to buy in the expensive infrastructure software.

Government Sites on Hit List

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nformation Technology is a powerful tool for accelerating economic development. Developing countries like India, have thus focused on development, by effectively using the IT and Web. With emerging utility of these highly productive, convenient and flexible services, one must also be worried about the hazardous clouds of cyber threats looming around.

Luckycat attacks Vulnerability of Government websites was once again highlighted, with announcement by the Indian Minister of State for CommunicationsIT, Sachin Pilot, of 117 websites being hacked between January and June in 2011. However, the most significant attack is the one that has been dubbed ‘Luckycat’ attack. The ‘Luckycat’

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Sunil Sharma, VP -Sales - India & SAARC, Cyberoam document, attached to emails, when loaded, activated the VBS.Sojax malware. HTTP was very wisely used to breach firewalls. These attacks have shown how a brilliant attacker can succeed, even without much experience.

campaign primarily attacked Indian military sites and was reported to be sourced from China. The attack was active since June 2011 (till Feb 2012) and reportedly attacked about 223 computers systematically.

The attackers employed minimum amount of work needed to attain maximum gains by using very simple viruses, which needed very little development time or skills, along with easily available Web host servers, to successfully carry out a very effective attack. The malicious

What are the solutions?

We must always keep an up-to-date IT network with regular defence plans. Blocking any website, application or email that can lead to network infection is crucial. A solution with improved warning capabilities is ideal. Government officials have thought of implementing various measures in terms of utility policies for security, but how far these measures can succeed is yet to be seen.

Perhaps a better solution to these issues can be a unified threat management solution, which can single-handedly handle all the issues of security.

Cyberoam helps Security Governance with Identity-based Controls and visibility to improve warning capabilities.

Financial Inclusion

Leveraging Technology for Financial Inclusion Technology is playing an extremely important role in helping banks meet targets of Financial Inclusion and bring the marginalised into financial mainstream Arjun Ghugal, General Manager, Bank of India

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issued by capturing biometric information.

We have empanelled three technology service providers to develop a technological backbone for the system. We have a network of 3,900 BCs and 21 corporate BCs who are installing kiosks at various places. We are in the process of integrating the CBS branches and the no frills accounts would be shifted to our FI server.

Bank accounts are not being opened on the basis of UID as of now, but the system is UIDcompatible and one can expect accounts to be opened on the basis of UID in the near future.

inancial Inclusion (FI) means linking people without any banking facility to the formal banking system and fulfilling all their financial requirements. It also involves ensuring that the facilities are provided not at a designated bank branch but as close to the beneficiary as possible, ideally at their doorstep. This is so because a typical FI beneficiary would transact in small amounts and cannot be expected to make a long journey which involves foregoing earnings as well as the cost incurred in travel. This is not viable. So the solution is to provide services in proximity of the beneficiary. This includes facilities for deposit, withdrawal and transfer of money; micro-insurance, need-based financial assistance for agriculture, trade, education etc.

print of all ten fingers, name, date of birth, age, sex etc are captured. These details are embedded on a smart card and this card is then used to control access. A person can access their account only thorough the thumb impression.

In this way, no one else can access a beneficiary account and thus security is ensured.

Technology for viable FI

Role of Aadhar

In order to make FI viable for banks, there is requirement of a platform that can be created only through use of technology. By using Business Correspondent (BC) model and technology such as micro ATMs, banking products can be made accessible to consumers at their convenience.

At the time of opening an account, biometric and demographic information such as finger-

The system is also Aadhar compatible, so that when the 12-digit Aadhar number is fed into it, the details associated with that number can be used towards fulfilling the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms.

Bank of India has opened about 63 lakh FI (no frills, zero balance) accounts in the Core Banking System (CBS) by complying with KYC norms. Of this, 6,80,000 smart cards have been

Ultra Small Branches 32 Departments of the Government of India release approximately Rs 4 lakh crore in subsidies through various schemes and programmes. All this will now shift to Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT). The government has come out with a model of One District, Multiple Banks and One Leader Bank. Using the UID, the amount will be released to leader bank. Leader bank will verify the data and release the funds to beneficiary account in respective bank. It will be the duty of the bank to make payment within a reasonable time frame.

Bank of India has opened 501 Ultra Small Branches in rural areas. These branches are located in the village Panchayat building and provide services to the villagers. A bank official visits the branch once every week to take care of account opening, grievance redressal, applications for financial assistance etc. All the financial transactions are handled by the BC.

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Maharashtra The Hub of Cutting Edge ICT

Maharashtra is not only a geographical expression, it is also an entity built on collective efforts of its people. There is thrust on ICT solutions for processing information and delivering services. A range of e-Governance projects, which make Maharashtra a great place to live in, have been launched Anoop Verma, Elets News Network (ENN)

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maharashtra

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nown as the trade and commerce capital of India, Mumbai is also the financial centre of the country. The state of Maharashtra has emerged as a key hub for ICT, electronics, and the captive business outsourcing industries.

The state is an attractive investment destination as it offers a wide range of subsidies, fiscal and policy incentives and other advantages to big and small investors from India and abroad.

During the last few years, the state has come up with a range of sector-specific policies for ICT. Perhaps the most appealing thing about Maharashtra is the fact that India’s famous film industry, popularly called “Bollywood” is located in the State.

Leader in Infrastructure The well-developed social, physical and industrial infrastructure in Maharashtra is a prime attraction for businesses from around the world. The state is one of the largest recipients of FDI in the country. There is good connectivity through road, rail, port and air. The road network is spread across 2.41 lakh km. 97.8 percent of the villages are connected through all weather roads. Mumbai is one of the busiest airports in India. In order to reduce congestion in Mumbai international Airport, an additional airport has been proposed at Navi Mumbai.

The JNPT (Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust) is the country’s largest container port. The Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) and JNPT handled 45.58 million tonnes and 43.49 million tonnes cargo traffic respectively during the April 2010 to January 2011 period. The state also has a large number of smaller ports.

The Economic Survey of Maharashtra for the financial year 2011-12 that was recently tabled in the state legislature has estimated the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) at current prices at 10,68,327 crore. The state contributes about 14.9 percent of the GDP. Industrial and services sector together contribute 87 percent of the state’s domestic product, rest comes from agriculture and allied activities. The power supply grid is well developed. The state boasts of highest installed capacity and generation of electricity in the country.

tech focus

Leader in ICT The economic survey states that IT industry and financial services groups have received sizeable FDI proposals in the state. Between August 1991 and September 2010, the IT industry has received 762 proposals. The total FDI investment amount in IT sector is Rs. 12,765 crore. 37 public IT parks have been developed by Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) and CIDCO. For improving the level of private investments in the state’s IT industry, 451 private IT parks have been approved, out of these 107 have started functioning with an investment outlay of `2107 crore. The remaining 344 IT parks with proposed investment of `6345 have also been given Letters of Intent. A report from NASSCOM states that 90 percent of the IT-BPO industry in India is concentrated in and around 7 cities in India, including Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra.

Cities like Aurangabad, Nagpur and Nashik are also emerging as major hubs for industries in ICT space. Chief Minister, Shri Pritiviraj Chavan, has said, “Maharashtra needs to grab the top position in the IT sector. The state has its own IT policy and there are several software parks here with few more in the offing. This development will help Maharashtra become the number one destination for investment in Information Technology.”

The communications sector in the state has been growing rapidly due to private sector contributions. The private sector currently holds 91.7 percent of the wireless market, rest of the wireless market is with the two PSU operators BSNL and MTNL. When it comes to broadband, Maharashtra is ahead of every other state.

It has largest Internet subscriber base of 14.93 lakhs and a broadband subscriber base of 22.88 lakhs, as on 31st March 2011.

Leader in e-Governance One of the pioneers in promotion of ICT and e-Governance in India, the government of Maharashtra has been at the forefront in implementing e-Governance initiatives that focus on citizens’ needs and ensure superior service delivery. The e-Governance in the state is focussed on bringing greater transparency and providing everyone with access to information on public administration processes. In all e-Governance initiatives Marathi has been accepted as the first and mandatory language.

Marathi co-exists with English. The usage of Marathi is supposed to enable large sections

The well-developed social, physical and industrial infrastructure in Maharashtra is a prime attraction for businesses from around the world of the state population to take advantage of the e-Governance initiatives.

In order to provide faster and more efficient governance and easier access to information, the state has got its MSWAN (Maharashtra State Wide Area Network) implemented. Through the network, the state government has created an integrated community encompassing 35 districts, 324 talukas, 6 Divisional Headquarters, and several hundred horizontal offices connected with the state headquarters in Mantralaya, Mumbai.

The system will help citizens get certificates like 7/12 land extract, passports, domicile certificates, various affidavits and the like.

The state government has been making impressive efforts to facilitate the reach of high speed broadband to all parts of the state, including rural areas. In many cases cloud computing solutions based on new generation networks have been deployed for e-Governance projects.

Cloud solutions not only bring greater transparency and efficiency, they are also friendlier to the environment.

All departments in the state have to earmark a certain part of their operating budget for e-Governance. The focus of the earmarked budget for e-Governance is on e-enablement of citizen services and creation of backend infrastructure support for the same.

The state government is planning to use the Aadhar numbers issued by UIDAI to ensure that the subsidies, benefits and grants reach the targeted sections of the population.

UIDAI enrolments in the state have been a great success. Large numbers of citizen-centric programmes that work on the basis of UIDAI are being planned. Having generated nearly 2.5 crore UIDAI numbers, the state has second highest number of enrolments in India. The UIDAI project was launched in the state at the Tembli village in Nandurbar district. Up to the taluka level, the UIDAI project has been institutionalised. The village panchayat has been made an introducer to help villagers register for UIDAI. May 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Virtualisation and Consolidation for better e-Governance “Maharashtra is one of the pioneers in the promotion of ICT and e-Governance...”

tition in Maharashtra where a COTS based approach is pursued. Though most departments are using SAP products and solutions, we do see competition from local custombuild application vendors. GOM should really re-look at this aspect, as most of these projects result in inordinate delays, low user adoption, time and cost overruns, and high vendor dependency.

Tell us about SAP’s e-Governance initiatives.

SAP India partnered with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), Asia’s largest urban body. SAP also has extensive engagements with PSUs like ONGC, SAIL, GRSE, BEL, Security Printing & Minting Corporation of India Limited, etc. We are also engaged with many state owned power generation and transmission utilities in the country.

Tell us about the project that SAP has executed for Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM).

What are some of the trends that SAP sees in ICT implementations/ e-Governance in Maharashtra?

Maharashtra is one of the pioneers in the promotion of ICT and e-Governance. It has been at the forefront in implementing e-Governance initiatives that focus on citizens’ needs and ensure superior service delivery. Mobile based service delivery is an area where we see a considerable focus from the government.

Overall the state has transformed from an L1 regime to an entity that lays stress on total cost of ownership, strong engineering principles, best practices, replicable nature and adherence to universal standards.

What are the benefits that the government has achieved because of these engagements?

Some of the direct benefits of ICT and e-Governance include timely availability of information, reduction in processing time, and reduction in errors. The consequential benefits range from streamlined processes, better employee productivity to reduction in pilferage and revenue leakage. Most importantly, in spite of Change (in) Management, we can see Change Management practices being religiously followed in the departments.

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Mathew Thomas Vice President, Strategic Industries, SAP India What are your expectations from the Maharashtra government in terms of ICT policies?

SAP expects the Maharashtra Government to take a lead in standardising the application landscape for each department and ensuring that the same is used by units under that department. Software acquisition approach needs gradual overhaul to incorporate the internal efficiencies and strategic benefits brought in by Commercially-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) offerings. This saves a lot of time in projects to go live, ensures project success and a quicker return on investment.

Who are SAP’s main competitors in Maharashtra?

Maharashtra offers extensive opportunities to IT companies for implementation of ICT initiatives. We do not witness serious compe-

The key objective of the project that SAP, along with few other companies, has executed for MCGM is to integrate all the workflows/processes seamlessly for efficient service to the citizens, employees and administrators. There is tight and seamless integration with legacy systems, and there is maintenance of single source of truth with regards to data. With this system, the entire city of Mumbai has been networked; 24 Citizen Facilitation Centres (CFCs) have been connected; 550 locations are covered; 24*7 Portal is available; over 210 services have been covered; and approximately 335 backend processes are seamlessly integrated.

When it comes to e-Governance in Maharashtra, what is your dream project?

Our dream is to assist Maharashtra in Emergency and Disaster Management. Natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, cyclones etc. cause damage and result in disruption of Information and Communications infrastructure, which is necessary for effective and efficient disaster management activities.

We feel Maharashtra should establish ICT System for effective disaster response.

maharashtra

tech focus

Deploying Integrated Monitoring & Management Solutions Maharashtra is one of the most forward looking states in the country, when it comes to ICT adoption by the government to deliver G2C, G2B and G2G services

MSWAN & SDC After the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was proposed by the Government of India in 2006, the Department of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra, was among the leading states to conceive of the Maharashtra State Wide Area Network (MSWAN).

MSWAN is the backbone for effective communications providing a converged network that allows not only better information exchange between various government departments but also improves the delivery of citizen services.

The project connects government offices, including the state headquarters (Mumbai – Mantralaya) with the district headquarters, divisional headquarters, and the taluka headquarters. Additionally, a number of government offices and state agencies dispersed horizontally also make use of this network.

Subsequently, State Data Centre (SDC), as a core infrastructure component under NeGP, was setup with the objective to provide shared, secure and managed infrastructure for consolidating and hosting state level applications with the view to provide G2C, G2B and G2G services. Maharashtra, again, has been among the leading states, to setup this core infrastructure, and more importantly, start leveraging the SDC to provide fast, efficient and secure online services to the citizens.

In both these core infrastructure projects, Maharashtra State Government has deployed integrated monitoring and management solutions from CA Technologies. It provides vision for enabling a new level of management control by integrating and automating the management of IT applications, databases, networks, security, storage and systems across departments and disciplines to realise the full potential of each.

Maharashtra Water Resources Department Maharashtra Water Resources Department (WRD) took the initiative of an “Integrated Computerised Information System” (ICIS) with an objective of better managing its ongoing con-

struction activities and water management of completed projects. The solution provides near real time data with respect to the availability and demand of both surface and ground water. It leads to better dissemination of inter and intradepartmental information for informed decision making and improves efficiency.

The Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solution from CA Technologies addresses WRD’s core business process requirements for “Project Investigation & surveys”, “Planning & Designing”, “Monitoring of construction and maintenance projects”, “Irrigation Management”, “Research Management”, “Workflow management”, “Collaboration & Document management”.

Accelerated Power Development and Reforms The Re-structured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms (R-APDRP) is a Central Sector Scheme by the government of India under the XI Five-Year Plan. The programme focuses on actual, demonstrable performance in terms of sustained AT&C loss reduction. Under Part-A of this programme, government of Maharashtra came out with a project for establishment of baseline data and IT applications for energy accounting/ auditing & IT based consumer service centres. Here again, the Service Assurance and Security solutions from CA Technologies are being deployed to effectively manage the IT infrastructure and ensure the service levels envisaged under the project are measured and monitored, thereby ensuring the success of the project.

MSRDC Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Ltd. (MSRDC) conceptualised an initiative to setup 22 computerised Border Check Posts (BCPs). Apart from the Civil and Electrical work, the project also required IT, non-IT (electronics) and software components for the BCPs and the central control room / data centre. The project further

Vibha Agrawal Head- Government vertical, CA Technologies

involved implementation of Border Check Post application software, VAT application, data interface for transferring vehicular data to Mahavikas, Vahana and Sarathi and any other applications that may be developed by these departments in future. CA Technologies is providing solutions for monitoring of connectivity across the BCPs and the central data centre. CA solutions are being deployed extensively in this project.

Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System The Ministry of Home Affairs conceived the Mission Mode Project (MMP) of Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) for creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of policing at all levels and especially at the Police Station level through adoption of principles of e-Governance.

Maharashtra Police is implementing this project by procuring the necessary infrastructure, computerising all its police stations and making available the CCTNS application across all police stations for generation of a central crime and criminal database.

CA Technologies is providing solutions for performance monitoring of entire IT infrastructure of Maharashtra Police. It will help in the measure of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that Maharashtra Police signed with the System Integrator for ensuring availability and performance of CCTNS application and associated infrastructure. Further CA is going to provide its security solutions to this project, which will help in ensuring the safety of crime and criminal database and prevented it from both inside and outside attacks.

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e-Governance through Cloud-based Systems

Jaijit Bhattacharya Adjunct Professor with IIT Delhi and Director, South Asia, Global Government Affairs with HP Tell us about HP’s ICT initiatives in Maharashtra.

HP has had multiple initiatives including the award winning MEDD project, which connects hospitals in Maharashtra to a single IT system, improving healthcare delivery and providing advanced healthcare support to the people in the state.

How do you plan to utilise the strengths of Maharashtra?

When it comes to e-Governance, what is your dream project?

Maharashtra is an industry friendly state; it is also the financial capital of the country.

The Government has industry friendly policies. The infrastructure in Maharashtra is relatively better than in many states. This combination positions Maharashtra as a destination for IT Hardware manufacturing.

However, there are a few more policy tweaks that would be needed to make Maharashtra an even more attractive destination for ICT.

HP would like to be involved with cloud computing e-Governance projects that increase government revenue, reduce the cost of governance, improve the quality of life of citizens and also improve the internal or external security of the country.

Tell us about the e-Governance solutions that you have developed.

HP has several path breaking innovations in the pipeline in the printer, scanner, tablet, PC, server and cloud computing space. HP India labs has come out with Vayu – a device that allows one to convert a regular television into a computing device. Some of these products will take time to be commercialised.

However, HP will continue to dominate the IT arena with its innovations, and that pace of innovations is going to speed up as move into the second half of this year.

HP is one of the first companies to develop a cloud enabled e-Governance solution – this is the e-procurement solution that was initially developed for the state of Karnataka and is now being used by many government agencies. HP is now focusing on cloud enabling government solutions as we feel that cloud enablement is the optimal way of rolling out e-Governance.

Tell us about the innovations that HP is planning in the printer, scanner, smartphone, tablet, PC and other devices space.

Securing the IT Infrastructure What is the level of IT security awareness in Maharashtra?

IT security awareness has been a major concern. To overcome this, we as an IT security service provider have been actively taking various initiatives to create awareness about the network security issues amongst the IT users across the state. We regularly initiate road shows jointly with our channel partners to educate about the best security practices amongst our customers. We are also present across all the leading social networking sites such as Facebook, Plurk, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. wherein we interact with our end users via discussions on latest

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security trends that are emerging and precautions that need to be taken to remain secure from them.

What are the main advantages offered by Maharashtra in the ICT sector?

Being populated with people from various states, cities like Mumbai and Pune are blessed with multilingual workforce. The state has a dedicated infrastructure for e-Governance in place, and this makes it a compelling destination for IT and Telecom industry. Another good thing about Maharashtra is that it is strategically working towards creating more IT-ITeS hubs in cities

like Nashik, Aurangabad and Nagpur.

What is your response to the e-Governance policy that is currently active in the state?

The e-Governance in Maharashtra is focused on strengthening the state’s economy. e-Governance has made governmental procedures transparent, licensing has been eliminated in almost all sectors. The system in the state is immensely market friendly.

Going forward what will drive your growth in Maharashtra?

Looking at the security landscape in 2011, security experts estimate

Govind Rammurthy CEO & MD, eScan that cyber threats will continue to grow indefinitely. This in turn is increasing the demand for security solutions, not just in a particular state but worldwide.

company profile

Mastek Company Profile Mastek is an INR 614 Crore (FY 2011) publicly held, global enterprise technology solutions and systems integration provider to customers across Government, Insurance and Financial Services.

For over 28 years, we have combined our leading products, people, and processes to drive business impact and competitive advantage. Mastek uniquely combines its wide intellectual property base, domain expertise, mission-critical program management abilities and complex solutions capabilities to help customers unlock business value. With employee strength of around 3000 people, we operate across India, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Europe and North America. Mastek has eight world-class global delivery centers in India and Malaysia.

Product and Services

Sudhakar Ram CMD, Mastek

contact Company Name Mastek Ltd Management Team • Sudhakar Ram, CMD • Ashank Desai, Non-Executive Director • Vinay Rajyadhyaksha, Head – Asia Pacific • Vidyesh Khanolkar, Head – Government, Asia Pacific Head office #106, SDF IV, SEEPZ Andheri (East), Mumbai - 400 096, India Tel: +91-22-66952222, Fax: +91-22-66951331 Major regional Offices New Delhi, Pune, Chennai Contact Person for Clarification Sanjay Mudnaney, Head – Corporate Communications, Tel: +91-22-66952222 Website www.mastek.com Customer Support helpline number +91 -22- 66952222

Tax Administration Suite– effectively manages all critical operations relating to tax collection, administration and dealer services. It complies with the existing VAT laws/procedures, and can be upgraded to meet the GST laws/ procedures in future.

Social Welfare Suite– manages all schemes designed for social welfare, offers end to end processing from application to disbursement of benefits to beneficiaries. It also includes a dashboard feature for effective planning and perennial capacity building of the department.

Urban Local Bodies Suite– caters to key functionalities within any Municipal Corporation/ Municipality with integrated suite for GIS based Works Management and e-Tendering, Local Body Tax, Property Tax, Town Planning, Water Billing etc. These meet guidelines and recommendations made under JNNURM program.

Public Distribution Solution– supports management of entire back-office needs of Food and Civil Supplies Department and also those of the fair price shops. eGovernance Services– help state departments improve their internal processes and deliver services to the citizens and businesses effectively.

Targeted Verticals Mastek has enabled both central and state governments and PSUs transform their governance vision to deliver quick and efficient services to citizens and businesses. Mastek offers e-Governance solutions and services in the areas of Tax Administration, Social Justice, Urban Local Bodies, Public Distribution, Prison Management, Power, Education.

We are currently working with various departments in the states of Maharashtra, Odisha, Gujarat and Kerala, providing our e-Governance Solutions and Services. We are also an empanelled IT solution vendor for the UIDAI. As mentioned above, we have several e-Gov solutions especially in the areas of PDS and Social Justice etc. where UIDAI could play a role.

Achievements and USP • 20+ years of government experience • Demonstrable expertise in designing and developing mission critical applications in complex and multi-vendor environments • Received the ‘Best IT Company’ award in Software Category in 2008 and e-Governance category in 2011 by Government of Maharashtra • Awarded ‘Best ICT in Financial Inclusion Initiative of the year’, at eIndia 2011 Awards, for e-Scholarship solution developed for Department of Social Justice & Special Assistance, Government of Maharashtra • Awarded ‘Best Urban ICT Initiative of the year’, at eIndia 2011 Awards, for Integrated Housing Lottery Management System (IHLMS) solution developed for Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), Government of Maharashtra • Department of Commercial Tax, Government of Odisha, won the jury award for the Best Project in the Government to Business (G2B) category at the eWorld Forum 2011 for the ‘e-Services’ solution developed by Mastek • Quality Certifications and Assessments: SEI CMMi Level 5 (version 1.2), ISO 9001-2008 and ISO 27001:2005 (Information Security Management)

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Maharashtra offers better Business Outcomes “We have ambitious expansion plans for our two large development centres in Mumbai and Pune.”

Tell us about iGATE Patni’s ICT initiatives in Maharashtra.

What are the ways by which the Government can help players in ICT space?

iGATE Patni has been working in Maharashtra for more than three decades. The state houses some of our key development centres.

From these centres, we provide various IT services such as Application Development & Maintenance, Infrastructure Support, Product Engineering and Business Process / Knowledge Process Outsourcing Services.

The government should provide appropriate infrastructure in terms of uninterrupted power, land, transport, telecommunication, speedy clearance of investment proposals, and education to enable skilled talent availability. These should be at competitive cost so as to be a preferred choice for investment.

Also, in Maharashtra, there is a need for more active involvement of ICT companies in the State governance.

What according to you are the main advantages offered by Maharashtra in the ICT sector?

Maharashtra offers a great advantage in terms of education, technology, transportation, telecommunication infrastructure and law and order. It has a rich pool of talent and skilled resources, which can be leveraged for various ICT initiatives. Maharashtra is also the hub for many industries like banking and financial services, manufacturing and IT, which also requires support from ICT. We plan to leverage these strengths by expanding our global delivery centres in Mumbai and Pune. We also have aggressive growth plans for the domestic public and private sector.

Tell us about the e-Governance solutions that you have developed.

In e-Governance, our focus is on developing state-of-the-art solutions to enable the public sector to be more effective, efficient and optimum. These are end-to-end solutions where we take complete ownership and responsibility for the success of the project. For example, we are running a pilot for the Aadhaar based biometric authentication for LPG distribution and direct subsidy transfer initiative which was specified by the Honourable Finance Minister in his union budget speech for 2012-13. Some of the other Aadhaar based solutions are in the fields of PDS, education, healthcare, social sector and others.

We also enable e-Governance through inno-

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Brief us about your expansion plans in Maharashtra?

We have ambitious expansion plans for our two large development centres in Mumbai and Pune. We also plan to build a world class training centre at Pune to provide the best training to our professionals and consultants.

Pramod Deval

How do you ensure that your products and solutions continue to remain in demand?

vative solutions such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Mobile Enablement, Document & Content Management, Workflow Automation, Business Analytics etc.

We are a technology focused organisation having a dedicated division for Research &Innovation (R&I). Our entire delivery organisation as well as a dedicated R&I team are continuously identifying opportunities of innovation based on the developments happening around the world. New trends in technology are explored incessantly to ensure continuous improvement in our solutions. We are looking forward to a rapid phase of growth.

When it comes to e-Governance, what is your dream project?

When it comes to e-Governance, what is your dream project?

Our ‘Dream Project’ in e-Governance would be assignments that are transformational in nature and that involve ownership of the entire process and not just a slice of the ICT part. The Aadhaar technology project is a rather innovative and transformational project spanning across States. We do consider this a ‘dream project’ for us.

We believe in working as a partner for e-governance in the State, where we are responsible for the business outcomes of the initiative instead of merely providing solutions or skilled professionals. This approach of Business Outcomes de-risks the State from any delays or failures, as the payments are linked with the pre-agreed outcomes.

Director-Public Sector Industries, iGATE Patni

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Safeguarding the Interests of Software Sector “Maharashtra can attract more IT investments by lowering tax burden on citizens and businesses.”

What can Maharashtra do to improve the prospects of software sector?

Maharashtra can attract more IT investments by lowering tax burden on citizens and businesses.

Removal of software products from the ambit of Value Added Tax (VAT) and Octroi could be the first step. Software products are already attracting Service tax under IT Software Services (section 65(zzzze) of Finance Act 1956). Also, the state can attract more IT investments by conferring “Industry” status to software sector and offering land and infrastructure at subsidised rates. There can also be reduction in Property tax for using residential premises for IT Sector, since software creation is a non-polluting.

What is your response to the e-Governance policy that is currently active in the state?

A good amount of work has been done in the area of computerization of Sales tax department. It has made life sales tax assesse

Information Technology in Maharashtra “Octroi is the biggest hurdle for IT industry” Tell us about TAIT’s best achievements in Maharashtra.

Tell us about ISODA’s best achievements in the state of Maharashtra and rest of India.

ISODA is a national body. The organisation has worked for the ICT reseller community across India. We have created a platform for all ICT resellers of India to come together. We offer a ready and easy availability of national reseller network. The government can take feedback from us before implementing taxation policies with respect to Information Technology (or ICT).

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TAIT is relentlessly working to further the interests of the IT industry. Though TAIT is Mumbai based, lots of smaller associations of Maharashtra lookup to TAIT for advice and solutions.

Rajesh Kothari Founder Member and First Chairman, ISODA (Infotech Software Dealers Association)

much better in many small but significant ways. ISODA is expecting similar initiatives from many other departments - particularly those which are concerned with land records.

What steps has ISODA taken to ensure that there is reduction in software piracy in India?

Piracy can only be tackled by concerted efforts of all stake holders of the eco-system. ISODA plays its part in reduction of software piracy by making software products available at each nook and corner of India.

When a customer wants to purchase software products he simply can refer its requirement to a knowledgeable and experienced member of ISODA and get free guidance with respect to complex issues like licensing policies of vendors, license compliance, software delivery etc.

ISODA wishes to undertake educational role by organising training camps for hardware assemblers by encouraging them to load only licensed software on hardware assembled by them.

What according to you are the main advantages offered by Maharashtra in the ICT sector?

Many southern states have stolen a march when it comes to attracting IT investments.

This is due to a concerted effort over a period of time and is not something that can happen overnight. Encouraging usage of IT in daily activities where information is delivered and encouraging investments in Broadband penetration are good starting points.

Can you suggest some solutions to create a more investor friendly climate in the state?

Information technology is evolving and the pace of change is rapid. Faster clearance to projects and availability of resources like land, capital can act as key catalysts for attracting entrepreneurs.

Octroi is the biggest hurdle for IT industry; government should allot land to association to open GYAN centre in Maharashtra. There is also the need to provide free education to students in the state.

Champakraj Gurjar President, TAIT (Trade Association of Information Technology) To what extent, do you think the economy of Maharashtra has been impacted by the global slowdown?

Today we are operating in a global economy and though we are insulated and have a local consumption story, we cannot be left out in an upturn or downturn. Local economy also has slowed down.

What steps has TAIT taken to bring about simplification in the procedures for exports and imports?

TAIT is a proactive association; we conduct seminars and meetings for members from time to time on various topics including imports and exports.

We also help members in simplification of their imports by providing them the information or clarification that they may be in the need of. Also, all important notifications are communicated to our members from time to time.

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Maharashtra is a key focus area for Mahindra Satyam “ICT infrastructure is of great help in addressing the skill related gaps in the economy” Tell us about your initiatives in Maharashtra.

Maharashtra is a key focus area for Mahindra Satyam in the enterprise space and we are looking forward to opportunities in Public Sector Units as well. Tech Mahindra then MBT started first BOT model project in Pune, and a major project with Pune collectorate. In the area of e-Governance, Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra have the solutions like Irrigation automation, Urban Local Bodies automation, Cyber Security applications.

What are the ways by which the government can help private players who are investing in creation of ICT infrastructure in the state?

The solutions from ICT present a great opportunity for countries to enhance economic growth and employment. Government can play a key role in creating the environment for ICT-enabled innovation, not only by appropriate policy, regulation and investment, but also by its own intelligent and widespread use of ICT as a tool of efficiency and transparency. The private sector plays a crucial role in developing the ICT infrastructure of the states. Such ICT infrastructure is of great help in addressing the skill related gaps in the economy.

In this highly competitive ICT scenario, how do you ensure that your products and solutions continue to remain in demand?

The ICT field in Maharashtra is very large and there is enough room for large number of players to co-exist. The companies will sustain, till the time they are innovating and addressing the needs of the end consumer. The innovations based on mobility solutions, business analytics are definitely a need of the hour.

Newer developments in ICT have radically changed the world. What are the kinds of developments you see ahead?

The lack of ICT is understood to be an important factor contributing to the widening of the gap between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries.

Internet has the potential of transforming the way government.

The way citizens and business interact with the government will undergo seminal change.

Developments in e-Governance will change how citizens relate to governments. It will bring forth new concepts of citizenship, both in terms of needs and responsibilities. e-Governance will allow citizens to communicate with government and participate in the government decisionmaking process.

Manoj Gilra AVP, Mahindra Satyam

Going forward what will drive your growth?

Tech Mahindra will continue to focus on Network and Security, Business Analytics, Cloud technologies, Mobility solutions to name a few.

These verticals will definitely drive growth globally as well as within India. With Maharashtra state adopting ICT in more and more public sector projects, I see a lot of scope in developing solutions for ICT penetration.

Optimising the Cost of Business through ICT Tell us about your ICT initiatives in Maharashtra.

We are providing physical infrastructure to support and optimise mission critical systems primarily, but not exclusively, to our IT and telecom customers in Maharashtra. Our 3 manufacturing facilities in Maharashtra, and an upcoming state-of-art facility, also strengthen our physical presence in the state’s ICT space.

What are the main advantages offered by Maharashtra?

Maharashtra is an industry

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friendly state; it has the right policies to support growth of IT and Telecom.

The tax sops for manufacturing infrastructure are also very attractive and conducive to systematic IT proliferation, in turn helping the manufacturing sector to gain foothold and develop a strong and qualified vendor base for raw materials. It provides the necessary impetus for ICT to grow rapidly, broaden the range of offerings, and augments the energy savings for our customers.

When it comes to e-Governance in Maharashtra, what is your dream project?

We are involved directly and indirectly through our partners, in most government projects in the state as well as Centre. UID is a game changer e-Governance project and we are working on contributing in this space.

Tell us about your expectations from the state government.

Faster Single Window Clearances would aid the new manufacturing

Pratik Chube GM – Products, Emerson Network Power

companies trying to invest in the state. Well-defined Timelines and SLAs would go a long distance in attracting potential investors. Setting up infrastructure to augment the growth of industry would benefit ICT as a whole.

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Maharashtra is a Pioneer in Promotion of ICT “Incentives in the form of friendlier tax norms, SEZs, will drive growth in Maharashtra...”

use of leading technologies like cloud computing, biometrics and digitisation. The policy also refers to the legislation on ‘Maharashtra Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Public Services Act,’ which will make it compulsory for all government offices/departments to provide certain citizen-centric services electronically – this is a move in the right direction and in keeping the citizen’s interests at the heart of the policy.

When it comes to e-Governance in Maharashtra, what is your dream project? What kind of projects you would like to be involved with?

Kishor Chitale Head, India Domestic Business, Capgemini India

Recently you were selected for developing Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse solution for Maharashtra Sales Tax Department (MSTD). Tell us about the project.

different divisions of the MSTD. These initiatives will result in significant optimisation of resources, time and effort, thus bringing in considerable business benefits to the department.

Capgemini is providing data warehousing solution to Maharashtra Sales Tax Department.

Our Business Intelligence and Data warehousing solution will enable MSTD to analyse economic parameters to set targets for revenue collection. It will also help the department to expand its existing taxpayer base and prevent revenue loss through tax evasion. The solution will also provide decision support across

What is your response to the e-Governance policy currently active in the state?

The Maharashtra government is one of the pioneers in the promotion of ICT and e-Governance in India and the current e-Governance policy clearly reflects this. There is a strong focus on e-enablement of services, re-engineering of business processes, knowledge management and data mining as well as the

Capgemini worldwide has very strong capabilities in the public sector, specifically in the areas of tax and public security. We would like to draw on this experience to serve Indian PSUs, especially the Maharashtra government. We have made a good foray with the recent MSTD win and would like to build on this further to develop solutions for G2C, G2B and G2G interactions and also in the area of Business Intelligence.

Going forward what will drive your growth in Maharashtra?

Tell us about your technology plans for the future.

Capgemini India is headquartered in Mumbai and with delivery centres in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Pune, we have over 20,000 of our work force based in these centres within Maharashtra.

We have several centres of excellence (CoEs) in these locations, such as Business Intelligence (technologies on BIM and datawarehousing) and Energy and Utilities (Smart Metering and Automated Meter Reading). We also deliver to large scale customers in the field of Banking and Financial Services from our centres in Pune, while our Mumbai and Pune facilities together cater to several large manufacturing customers for adoption and maintenance of their ERP systems. We plan to grow in several areas, including Mobile solutions for large organisations, large portal development for G2C, B2B and B2C interactions and also in the area of Business Intelligence.

We have also launched specific opex based campus solutions for Indian education institutes, so that they can adopt global best practices without the burden of upfront investment. We are also looking forward to providing solutions to government and manufacturing agencies who need to collaborate with their partners in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where connectivity is unreliable thus hindering the implementation of IT solutions. Capgemini’s architecture team has developed a unique solution, which has the ability to work as a dependable transaction system in unreliable network conditions and help automate processes which link the headquarters or regional offices to their area establishments.

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Enabling e-Governance “Using an IT resource no longer depends on having the capital to own that resource, thanks to cloud computing.”

Tell us about the work that Accenture is doing in Maharashtra.

We work for multiple clients in Mumbai including Government of Maharashtra. We have been working as a consultant to Government of Maharashtra for the implementation of UID project.

We are also working with the Higher and Technical Education Dept., Skill Development Cell, Department of Labour to name a few. Accenture operates out of 9 offices in Mumbai and Pune. The work we carry out for clients in Maharashtra covers the range of our consulting, technology and outsourcing services.

Tell us about your healthcare solutions.

We deliver a wide range of healthcare business services—from addressing back office functions and electronic medical records to clinical transformation and consumer engagement. Our business services are backed by real-world experience, business and clinical insights. Our innovative technologies include Health Administration Services, Connected Health Services, Health Back Office Services, Health Management Services, and Clinical Services.

Tell us about your cloud computing solutions.

Using an IT resource no longer depends on having the capital to own that resource, thanks to cloud computing. As competitive

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dynamics shift, Accenture helps public sector organisations to map its path to the cloud. Accenture sees the cloud as the convergence of three worlds: consumers, business and technology. The rise of mobility, social networking and mobile devices has created a new norm for interaction with customers and employees. At the same time, businesses are experiencing speed-to-market and cost containment pressures as never before.

What according to you are the advantages offered Maharashtra in the ICT sector?

With high literacy rates and a large number of higher and technical education institutes, Maharashtra is the source of a significant skilled workforce for employment.

The State’s robust connectivity and IT infrastructure has helped Accenture establish a strong base.

Through our 9 offices in the State we are able to provide services to a large number of clients.

Tell us about the e-Governance solutions that you have developed.

Accenture has worked with the State Governments of Sikkim, Nagaland and Manipur to develop State Portals and Service Delivery Gateways to enable citizens to better access to government services online without the need to visit Government offices. We have also been associated with the Aadhaar project as a Biometric

Krishna Giri Managing Director for Accenture’s Health & Public Service business in India Solution Provider. Accenture is associated with one of the largest transformational projects in India – the IT Modernisation of India Post. We have also helped to enable India’s e-Governance projects for Homeland Security, National Identity, Taxation, Labor, Education and Skill Development and Innovation.

The field of ICT is highly competitive. How do you ensure that your products and solutions continue to remain in demand?

Accenture is an end-to-end service provider with expertise in all areas of service delivery, from consulting to outsourcing. Our biggest strength is our people, with more than 246,000 employees serving clients in more than 120 countries.

Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful

companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With extensive focus on research through our Accenture Technology Labs, we are able to innovate and bring in solutions and products which are in sync with client needs.

Newer developments in ICT have radically changed the world. What kinds of developments you see ahead?

We are seeing a paradigm shift with more clients looking at innovative solutions to meet their technology needs at a lower cost.

We see the focus shifting towards Cloud Computing and SaaS and that clients are looking at mobility and tablet-based applications to help them improve service delivery for citizens and develop public services for the future. Accenture Technology Labs is focused on driving innovation which keeps us abreast of client needs.

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Forbes Technosys Limited (FTL)

Automating Transactions for e-Governance “Forbes Technosys has developed a wide range of platforms and solutions, keeping in view the requirements and policy initiatives of the Government.� ensure rapid implementation of these initiatives across departments and for delivering G2C services in an efficient and cost effective manner, there is a need for innovative technologies.

Forbes Technosys has developed a wide range of platforms and solutions, keeping in view the requirements and policy initiatives of the Government.

Tell us about the ICT initiatives of Forbes Technosys Limited (FTL) in the state of Maharashtra.

Our payment and services delivery solutions are being used by several customers in Maharashtra. Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) is using Forbes Bill Payment Kiosks for accepting electricity bill payments through cash or cheque. Forbes Technosys has successfully deployed Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) at Railway stations, using which commuters can print their suburban train tickets with the use of prepaid railway smart cards. These machines are deployed across the western suburban railway stations in Mumbai. We have also deployed several types of Self Service Kiosks such as Cash Deposit Kiosks, Cheque Deposit Kiosks, Passbook Printing Kiosks, e-Lobbies & ATMs at various Cooperative banks of Maharashtra, thereby allowing cooperative banks in Maharashtra to provide customer services at par with the larger PSU and private banks. We have deployed Anytime Bill Payment Kiosks through which subscribers can deposit their telephone bill through cash or cheque and get a printed acknowledgement of the payment made. These kiosks are installed in various districts of Maharashtra.

What according to you are the main advantages offered by state of Maharashtra in the ICT sector?

Maharashtra is adopting ICT in its e-Governance initiatives through channels such as Citizen Service Centres (CSCs). The state already has hundreds of CSCs operational in the state, which currently offer only a small subset of citizen services and that too in a sub optimal manner. These CSCs can be leveraged to deploy state-of-the-art platforms and solutions to deliver the entire range of citizen services in a highly efficient manner. In addition, Self Service Platforms like Any Time Payment Kiosks can help consumers avail a

When it comes to e-Governance in Maharashtra, what is your dream project?

Well, our dream project would be the deployment of Forbes Self Service G2C platforms and solutions for providing a wide range of citizen Services, in a cost effective and efficient manner, thereby contributing to Maharashtra’s e-Governance vision and goals.

Ajay Singh CEO, Forbes Technosys Limited (FTL)

variety of G2C services. Another focus area for Maharashtra is the Aadhaar initiative for UID enrolments. This is also an area where the Forbes Porto ID can serve as an ideal platform for enrolments. The Porto ID is an integrated platform, with all the devices housed in a portable briefcase, thereby increasing the enrolment efficiency tremendously. The Porto ID can also function on solar energy, which is a huge advantage in rural and remote areas.

What is your response to the e-Governance policy that is currently active in the state?

e-Governance policy in Maharashtra revolves around implementing initiatives that focus on the citizens needs and ensure superior service delivery with greater transparency and access to information on public administration processes. However, to

Tell us about your expectations from the state government.

Government should promote and catalyse private participation in ICT development.

Government should formulate a complete and sustainable programme in order to provide a viable platform for all stakeholders to participate and contribute in the ICT advancements in the state. In order attract more private participation, government should promote usage of efficient self-service platforms. Government should also facilitate the expansion of the G2C service basket to increase transaction volumes, thereby enabling the service delivery centres to be profitable. There should be exemptions from taxes such as Octroi to further increase viability of e-Governance initiatives.

What are the main challenges that you face while implementing new projects in Maharashtra?

Erratic power supply hampers commercial activity. Utilisation of fossil fuel generation sets not only increases costs, it also degrades the environment.

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Ability to Predict the Market is Important IBM has been partnering with government and governmental agencies for developing better applications for e-Governance

Tell us about IBM’s ICT initiatives in India?

IBM envisioned the opportunity offered by the Indian market and the importance of investing in it way ahead of its competition.

We built our skills and capabilities across the business to ensure that we understand the challenges of the local market and provide superior services and solutions to our clients.

We have revolutionised the role of IT and the overall engagement model in the Telecom industry with a path-breaking deal with Bharti Airtel, followed by deals with Vodafone and Idea. IBM has created a benchmark in India which is now being followed across the globe. In the Banking space, we are helping organisations of all sizes – from large nationalised banks to small cooperative banks – move into the next level of banking revolution through business and technology transformation.

Tell us about the e-Governance solutions that you have developed.

IBM has played a key role in several mission mode projects. We are enabling the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to build a robust infrastructure with focus on strategic areas like asset management, messaging, security, and facility management. The project extends to 745 offices of CBDT across the country. IBM has been helping Indian railways to automate systems, enhance efficiency, and provide better security. We have worked with the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) to build a highly efficient crew management system. The system automatically evaluates employee skill sets against established train schedules to determine optimal staff assignments. The core of IBM’s healthcare solutions lies in its ability to provide greater insight to patient care and the overall organizational performance. IBM’s

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delivery mechanisms for implementing these programs need to be well organized to help expand the reach and scale.

Brief us about your geographic expansion plans?

Sameer Batra Director – Public Sector IBM India/South Asia

We are bullish in the small and medium business (SMB) sector and our expansion in tier 2 and 3 cities helps us tap into this market. Mid-market companies have distinct needs that are often ignored by most service providers. IBM’s technologies and solutions provide Indian small mid-market businesses a competitive edge. Today IBM has offices in 23 cities across the country and presence in over 200 cities, through our business partners. In the public sector space our plan is to explore opportunity in government agencies or administration office at various district and state levels. We also aim at expanding our presence in regional operations of railways.

smarter healthcare solutions can connect all the key stakeholders like service providers, doctors, insurers, and researchers and help them get information in real time.

The field of ICT is highly competitive, with new innovations continuously coming into the fray. How do you ensure that your products and solutions continue to remain in demand?

What new trends in e-governance are you witnessing?

IT is an extremely dynamic field, with technologies having smaller life cycles. The key to staying ahead of time and competition is harnessing the ability to predict the market, develop the right strategy, and execute it successfully. Our various thought leadership initiatives like Global Technology Outlook and Global Innovation Outlook give us insight on the future trends in the technology space.

We also have one of the largest commercial R&D set-ups in the world, with an annual budget of over US$ 6 billion. Many of the game changing technologies in the field of IT have been developed at IBM labs.

The adoption of e-governance in developed nation is significantly high and emerging economies are working hard to catch up.

The three emerging trends that we believe will help the Indian government deploy new services are —cloud computing, mobility and data analysis. However, to ensure that e-governance programmes are successful, government needs to establish a faster decision making system and execution mechanism. With technology life-cycle shrinking, the success of these plans will depend on how fast they are being implemented. Also, the

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The Global Economic Crisis has not Adversely Affected Maharashtra How do you see the development of e-Governance projects in Maharashtra?

Maharashtra has been very successful in driving key e-Governance projects. The focus of these projects is on ensuring superior service delivery to citizens. Maharashtra scores in the e-Governance space due to the following reasons: • Massive State Government machinery with more than 16 lakh employees across districts, urban local bodies, talukas and village panchayats.

• The state has well thought out strategy of starting small, delivering value and scaling fast. There is focus on business process reengineering instead of mere automation and outsourcing model for developing the IT infrastructure.

• Its transparent and efficient procurement process ensures that best products and services get procured in a transparent manner.

• The State is also well connected with the latest developments in the IT space • Facilitation of e-Governance goals is a compulsory parameter for the performance appraisal review of all the IAS, IPS and IFS officers in Maharashtra “so that everybody contributes to e-Governance during their tenure of work.”

• State has received due appreciation by the Government Community by winning several awards for state projects at various forums driven by reputed organisations and Central Governments.

Tell us about the e-Governance solutions that you have developed for use in Maharashtra.

At KPMG India our advisory business has a strong focus on e-Governance. We have active projects in more than 20 states in the country and a broad bouquet of services across the life cycle of e-Governance projects. We have worked

with several departments in the State. In Maharashtra we are working in the areas of health, revenue and infrastructure amongst others.

What are the ways by which the government can help private players who are investing in creation of ICT infrastructure in the state?

The government can assure the private players regarding its commitment to be in favour of a competitive, transparent and process oriented procurement process for creation of ICT Infrastructure within the State. The state must also create nodal agencies to regulate and operationalise the process of project clearance and procurement of services. The state should set up an advisory board to the State IT departments comprising of adequate representation from the Private sector players.

Navin Agrawal Partner , Management Consulting, KPMG India

What new trends in e-Governance are you witnessing?

The key trends that we can witness include the following: • Proliferation of Government websites • Creation of huge Government databases • PPP Model for financing eGovernance projects • Increase in citizen service centres and Kiosks • Focus on mobile governance and mobile commerce to ensure anytime anywhere service • Unique citizen ID • Consolidation of websites • Increasing use of e-Commerce and e-Biz

How far do you think the economy of Maharashtra has been impacted by global economic slowdown?

The global economic crisis has not adversely affected Maharashtra; here there have been fewer job cuts. The State has been able to attract significant investments across in textile, automobiles, IT and electronics space amongst others.

The demand for electricity in industrial areas is growing, indicating that there is no slowdown.

While recession might have taken a toll on some sectors, the state still enjoys the largest share of the total foreign direct investment and collaborations which will work in its favour when the tide turns.

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Government is Key Vertical for Trend Micro Tell us about the scale of your operations in Maharashtra.

Trend Micro has full-fledged office with sales, pre-sales and support team based out of Mumbai. Our support engineers are spread across the state in all the major cities. Trend Micro also has technical support partners in the state.

Are you providing security solutions to government departments and PSUs?

The government is a crucial vertical for Trend Micro. Considerable percentage of our total business in India comes from the government departments and projects.

PSUs account for the largest share in these deployments. Verticals like manufacturing, power,

Nilesh Jain

National Sales manager- Value Business (India & SAARC), Trend Micro

mining and steel industries are our top clients. Trend Micro has been managing few of the largest central and state government networks for many years.

Are you also providing security solutions to e-Governance projects?

Yes, we are providing security

solutions to e-Governance projects. There is a significant rise in the threat scenario for the Internet. Since most of the applications used in e-Governance are web based and are open to public, they are prone to attack.

Data Centre Security solutions have to be deployed at every stage of the network.

When it comes to e-Governance, what is your dream project?

We Prefer to serve citizen centric e-Governance projects, which involve large amounts of Physical and virtual servers. Large projects involve deployments of computational devices like Laptop, PC or Mobile in scattered environment and hence are of interest to us as

we have the unique capability of working on thin bandwidth connectivity combined with remote support network.

According to you how vulnerable are Indian systems to attacks in the online space?

India is becoming a breeding ground of Internet Security Threats, especially spam. There has been a noticeable upsurge in the malicious activities and especially hacking attacks. Cybercriminals have tried to profit by abusing legitimate online revenue sources and managed to hide from the eyes of both law enforcement and anti-fraud watchdogs hired by banks and other financial agencies.

tweeting e-Governance Dr Manmohan Singh @ PMOIndia I would urge the States and Ministry of Home Affairs to carry forward police reform and modernisation to their logical conclusion.

Sam Pitroda @pitrodasam The State Innovation Councils need to prepare an #InnovationRoadmap for a ‘Decade of Innovation’. Read more details: http://tinyurl.com/77nqxc9

Shashi Tharoor @ ShashiTharoor any1 know of any other panchayat in India that set up a Trust&raised money from villagers for their own health centre?Amazing accomplishment

Dr Manmohan Singh @ PMOIndia Our exports have crossed $300 billion mark for the first time in our history. Here are 2011 Economic Survey figures http://pic.twitter.com/kBcSvDy3

Milind Deora @ milinddeora Many critical projects are nobrainers, non-controversial & win-wins for all. Consensus building is important but not always efficient

eGov Magazine @egovonline DIT renamed DEITY in a function presided by Kapil Sibal http://tinyurl. com/73o5th5

Sam Pitroda @pitrodasam OGPL is a software platform, which will aim to provide enhanced #public access to Govt #data, and spur #citizen engagement with the Govt.

Ambassador Rao @ NMenonRao “@firstpostin: India one of the top performing clean energy economies: report http://dlvr.it/1QrNtG” Great news! Let’s build on this.

Sunil Abraham @ sunil_abraham The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Centerhttp://is.gd/tULFAL #sif12 Q: All with court orders?

for latest e-Governance news, follow@egovonline 60 egov / egov.eletsonline.com / May 2012

book shelf

e-Governance Matters e-Governance means the use of ICT to promote more efficient and effective government

A e-Gov 2.0 Author: Jaijit Bhattacharya Publisher: McGraw Hill Pages: 604 Reviewed by: Anoop Verma

About the author Jaijit Bhattacharya is currently an Adjunct Professor with IIT Delhi, and Director, South Asia, Global Government Affairs with Hewlett Packard

revolutionary restructuring of the government is underway through e-Governance, which has now become the fashionable mantra in all developing countries. We already have a growing body of literature in the media and in the policy making circles on e-Governance, yet this field seems somewhat under theorised, its boundaries are not clearly defined, and are often open to controversial interpretations regarding the main processes, technologies and the actors involved.

This welcome volume by Jaijit Bhattacharya contributes to the discussion by attempting to examine the technological, infrastructure related, economic, socio-cultural, political and regulatory issues that are influencing the development of e-Governance models in contemporary society. The book starts by looking at the emerging roadmap of e-Government, and goes on to examine the basic structure of government as it exists today, from there it moves on to deliberate upon the various micro and macro aspects of e-Governance. The leitmotif of the book is to draw on socio-cultural theories and explore the ways by which e-Governance can bring transparency in the interactions between government, citizens, consumers and private businesses. e-Governance is defined narrowly by Jaijit Bhattacharya in these words, “e-government means the use of ICT to promote more efficient and effective government, facilitate better access to government services, allow greater public access to information, and make government more accountable to citizens. Electronic government might involve delivering services via the Internet, telephone, community centres (self-service or facilitated by others), wireless devices or other communications systems.”

There are 26 chapters, all of which follow a similar format, as they begin with a short and crisp introductory note, which provide an overview of all the concepts that will be discussed in detail in the chapter. After that rest of the well-researched content follows. Covering such essential ideas like importance of public-private partnership in e-Government, Government Data Centres, National Citizen Identity Systems, Open Source Software in e-Government, Government Call Centres, Land Records, Urban Development Management Systems, e-Agriculture, Disaster Management System, e-Procurement and Human Resource Management System, this book enthuses a student of e-Governance by its analytical narrative from heterodox perspectives.

Incorporation of quite a few of charts, graphs and tables in most chapters makes it easier for the reader to get a grip on the concepts that are being discussed. There is a direct and conversational style in Jaijit Bhattacharya’s style of writing. For instance, in the chapter titled Urban Development Management System, he writes, “The objective of any urban development strategy is to create conditions which will make urban settlements economically vibrant. Resource constraint has to be overcome by adopting judicious investments. As resources are limited, instead of apportioning the available resources to all the cities and towns, the investments can be made in a set of select centres keeping in view the objectives of efficiency and balanced development of the region and the state as a whole.”

This is Jaijit Bhattacharya’s second book on e-Governance. His first co-authored book on e-Governance, “Government Online, Opportunities and Challenges,” had been released in the presence of the former President, Shri APJ Abdul Kalam. e-Gov 2.0 can also be seen as a book that picks of up from the point where Bhattacharya’s first book had left. This book is also about the evolution in the technological and political framework of e-Governance that is now taking place. Academics, policymakers, political leadership, industrialists and even private citizens can benefit from the book’s rigorous examination of e-Governance systems.

May 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Index of People and Organisations Index of People A

• Ajay Singh, CEO, Forbes Technosys Limited (FTL)............ 57 • Anuj Kumar, GM India & Subcontinent, Red Hat India... 44 • APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President, Govt of India........... 61 • Arjun Ghugal, General Manager, Bank of India................... 45

C • Champakraj Gurjar, President, TAIT (Trade Association of Information Technology)............................................................... 53 • Chandan Dange, Director Technology, Ultimate ITPL...... 38

D • Dinesh Waghmare, Secretary, Department of Social Justice and Special Assistance, Government of Maharashtra............ 30 • Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Deputy Director General, Unique Identity Authority of India.............................................................. 31 • Dr K Shivaji, Principal Secretary, Industries, Energy, Government of Maharashtra................................................................. 32 • Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India.................... 60

G • Govind Rammurthy, CEO & MD, eScan............................... 50

Index of Organisations

J

A • Accenture......................................................................................... 56 • Asha, NRHM Maharashtra........................................................ 20 B • Bank of India................................................................................... 45 • BEL,.................................................................................................... 48 • Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport..................... 57 • BSNL................................................................................................. 40 C • CA Technologies............................................................................ 49 • Capgemini India............................................................................ 55 • CDAC Pune.................................................................................... 12 • Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT)................................... 58 • Center for Railway Information System................................. 58 • Cyberoam........................................................................................ 44 D • Department of Industries, Energy, Government of Maharashtra................................................................................................... 32 • Department of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra........................................................................................ 20 • Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Government of Maharashtra......................................................... 28 • Department of School Education, Government of Maharashtra................................................................................................... 24 • Department of Social Justice and Special Assistance, Government of Maharashtra................................................................. 30 • Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Maharashtra........................................................................ 34 E • Emerson Network Power............................................................ 54 • eScan.................................................................................................. 50 F • Forbes Technosys Limited (FTL).............................................. 57 G • General Administration Information and Public Relations, Government of Maharashtra......................................................... 16 • GRSE, ............................................................................................... 48 H • Handygo Technologies Pvt Ltd.................................................. 19

• J S Saharia, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of School Education, Government of Maharashtra..................... 24 • Jaijit Bhattacharya, Adjunct Professor with IIT Delhi and Director, South Asia, Global Government, Affairs with HP.50 • Jayant Kumar Banthia, Additional Chief Secretary, Public Health Department, Government of Maharashtra................. 21

K • Kishor Chitale, Head, India Domestic Business, Capgemini India...................................................................................................... 55 • Krishna Giri, Managing Director for Accenture’s Health & Public Service, business in India................................................... 56

M • Manoj Gilra, AVP, Mahindra Satyam...................................... 54 • Mathew Thomas, Vice President, Strategic Industries, SA P India...................................................................................................... 48 • Milind Deora, Minister of State, Ministry of Communication & IT, Government of India.................................................... 60 N • Naveen Agrawal, Partner, Management Consulting, KPMG India...................................................................................................... 59 • Nilesh Jain, National Sales manager- Value, Business (India & SAAR C), Trend Micro............................................................... 60 • NMenonRao................................................................................... 60 P • Pramod Deval, Director-Public Sector Industries, iGAT E Patni...................................................................................................... 52 • Pratik Chube, GM – Products, Emerson Network Power.54 • Prithviraj Chavan, Hon’able Chief Minister, Government of Maharashtra........................................................................................ 12 • Prof (Smt) Fauzia Tehseen Khan, Minister of State for General Administration Information and Public Relations, Government of Maharashtra......................................................... 16 R • Rajesh Aggarwal, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra....................................9 • Rajesh Kothari, Founder Member and First Chairman, ISODA (Infotech Software Dealers Association).................... 53 • Ramnath Sonawane, Commisioner, Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation................................................................... 42

62

S • Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure & Innovations................... 60 • Sameer Batra, Director – Public Sector, IBM India/South Asia........................................................................................................ 58 • Shashi Tharoor, Member of parliament.................................. 60 • Sudhakar Ram, CMD, Mastek................................................... 51 • Sudhir Thakre, Secretary, Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Government of Maharashtra....... 28 • Sunil Abraham................................................................................ 60 • Sunil Sharma, VP -Sales - India & SAARC, Cyberoam..... 44 V • Vandana Krishna,Principal Secretary, Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Maharashtra........................................................................................................... 34 • Vibha Agrawal, Head- Government vertical, CA Technologies............................................................................................49 • Vikas Kharage, Mission Director, National Rural Health Mission, Maharashtra...................................................................... 36

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / May 2012

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

• HP...................................................................................................... 50 I • IBM India/South Asia.................................................................. 58 • ICICI Bank...................................................................................... 36 • iGAT E Patni................................................................................... 52 • Intellection Software & Technologies Pvt Ltd....................... 20 • ISODA (Infotech Software Dealers Association)................. 53 • Itz Cash Card Limited.................................................................. 19 J • JNPT (Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust)........................................ 47 K • Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation............................. 42 • KPMG............................................................................................... 59 L • Land Records Department, governmnet of Maharashtra.19 M • MAHAGENCO............................................................................. 20 • Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC).

32 • Maharashtra Sales Tax Department (MSTD)....................... 19 • Maharashtra State Election Commission............................... 37 • Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Ltd. (MSRDC)............................................................................................ 49 • Maharashtra Water Resources Department (WRD)........... 49 • Mahindra Satyam.......................................................................... 54 • Mastek............................................................................................... 51 • Ministry of Home Affairs............................................................ 49 • Mumbai Housing and Area Development Board................ 19 • Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT)....................................................... 47 • Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM),.... 48 N • NASSCOM...................................................................................... 47 • National Rural Health Mission, Maharashtra....................... 36 • Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation.................................... 20 O • ONGC,.............................................................................................. 48 P • Public Health Department, Government of Maharashtra.21 R • RailTel................................................................................................ 36 • Red Hat India.................................................................................. 44 S • SAIL,.................................................................................................. 48 • SAP India......................................................................................... 48 • Security Printing & Minting Corporation of India Limited................................................................................................. 48 • SMKC................................................................................................ 19 • Softech Engineers Pvt Ltd........................................................... 20 • Spanco Ltd....................................................................................... 19 • State Election Commission......................................................... 20 T • TAIT (Trade Association of Information Technology)...... 53 • TATA Consultancy Services....................................................... 41 • Trend Micro.................................................................................... 60 U • UIDAI............................................................................................... 31 • Ultimate ITPL................................................................................. 38

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