e-COURTS Mantra for Speedy Justice?: November 2007 Issue

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Towards Speedy, Inexpensive, Transparent and Accountable Justice Mainstreaming ICT for Judical Delivery System A New Approach Towards Justice Delivery System

Service Oriented Architecture for Government

M-CONNECT

LEVERAGING WIRELESS BROADBAND FOR ACCESSIBILITY TOWARDS CONNECTIVITY FOR ALL

S U B SC R I B ER C OP Y NO T FO R SA L E

STATE FOCUS: MADHYA PRADESH

E-GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES IN MADHYA PRADESH

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e-COURTS Mantra for Speedy Justice?

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COVER FEATURES

Towards Speedy, Inexpensive, Transparent and Accountable Justice

Interview: Justice GC Bharuka, Chairman, e-Committee, Supreme Court of India

Treading in the Right Direction Interview: Krishnan Dharmarajan, Principal Consultant, Programme

Management Unit, National e-Governance Plan, Department of IT, Government of India

Mainstreaming ICT for Judical Delivery System

Madaswamy Moni, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre

Production of Under-trial Prisoners through the Video-conferencing System

Vijay Raghavan, Asst Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Service Oriented Architecture for Government

Jaijit Bhattacharya, Country Director, Sun Microsystems Ajay Ahuja, Senior IT Architect, Sun Microsystems

Relevance of IPV6 in e-Governance Nitin Gupta, Indian Institute of Management

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Helping Build Information Infrastructure

Interview: Rajesh Janey, Vice President, North and East, EMC (India)

EVENT DIARY

India Telecommunications Summit 2007

MCONNECT

Leveraging Wireless Broadband for Accessibility

Interview: Tarvinder Singh, Head Marketing and Product Management, Motorola India

News

Towards Connectivity for All

Interview: Pranav Roach, President, Hughes Network Systems India Ltd.

STATE FOCUS: MADHYA PRADESH

e-Governance Initiatives in Madhya Pradesh

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

PRODUCT SHOWCASE

Sharp

COUNTRY FOCUS: UGANDA

DistrictNet

Dr. Victor van Reijswoud, Prof, Uganda Martyrs University-Nkozi, Uganda

RE GULA R FE A TURE

Dr. Arjan de Jager, Country Manager for Uganda, IICD

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENTS

November 2007

WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ON

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

terial for publication. ARTICLES / CASE STUDIES should not exceed

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

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

Please send in your papers/articles/comments to: The Editor, egov, G-4, Sector 39, NOIDA (UP) 201 301, India. tel: +91 120 2502180-85, fax: +91 120 2500060, email: info@egovonline.net EDITORIAL CALENDAR 2007 MONTH

SOLUTION FOCUS

APPLICATION FOCUS

STATE FOCUS

NOVEMBER

E-GOVERNANCE ARCHITECTURE

COURTS

MADHYA PRADESH

DECEMBER

MOBILITY

POLICE

WEST BENGAL

JANUARY 2008

3RD ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ISSUE

Just like that! IT vs. Sales A man is ﬂying a hot air balloon and realises he is lost. He reduces his height and spots a man below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?” The man below says: “Yes, you’re in a hot air balloon hovering about 30 feet above a ﬁeld.” “You must work in Information Technology,” says the balloonist. “I do”, replies the man. “How did you know?” “Well, everything you told me is technically correct, but is of no use to me.” The man below says, “you must work in sales.” “I do”, replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?” “Well, you don’t know where you are or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were in before we met, but now, it’s my fault.” Source: http://www.jokeswarehouse.com/cgi-bin/viewjoke2.cgi?id=20021019

In Box Well done, Kemal! I have been there at Softopia too and I think Kemal has described it perfectly ! Softopia - a place to go to! Cristian (cristian_tanasoiu@yahoo.com) ‘Softopia: A Centre of Excellence in the Centre of Japan’ (http://www.egovonline.net/articles/article-details.asp?articleid=1490&typ=country focus)

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ov volume 3 | issue 11 | november 2007

EDITORIAL

PRESIDENT

Dr. M P Narayanan EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

e-Courts for Efficient Judicial System

Ravi Gupta SR. SUB EDITOR

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Gautam Navin mobile: +91 9818125257 email: gautam@csdms.in Himanshu Kalra mobile: +91 9818485406 email: himanshu@csdms.in Debabrata Ray mobile: +91 9899650692 email: debabrata@elets.in DESIGNED BY

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UDICIARY being the third pillar of the State authority, impartiality and accountability in the judicial administration is of paramount importance. Citizens look up to this institution with hope. Simplifying and rationalising laws and procedures; strengthening the independence of judges; improving the administration of the courts; balancing the costs of justice; expanding access to justice for the poor and other disadvantaged groups; are some of the important steps to bring about efficiency, transparency and accountability in the judicial system. The rapid advancement in the deployment of technologies is opening up opportunities for judicial reforms across the world. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are considered as the major tool to enhance efficiency, access, timeliness, transparency and accountability. Many countries are leveraging technologies for judicial reforms. Singapore Supreme Court has initiated ‘the paperless court’, where electronic filing helps cut costs and improve efficiency. US Federal Courts are implementing electronic filing to streamline the process and enhance effectiveness. India is also not far behind in the use of ICT for judicial reforms. The e-Courts mission mode project was recently launched by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the former President of India. The project marks the beginning of a new era for the administration of justice in the country. e-Courts project aims at enhancing the efficiency of the judiciary by linking the courts electronically and digitising the services.

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One of the advantages of virtual justice is the democratisation of the relationship between justice and citizens, thus preparing more demanding citizens within the legal system. However there are several forms of exclusion on the access to e-Citizenship. The right of equal access to legal information, to the courts and to legal institutions, in the context of ICT can exclude those who do not know or are not able to explore all the resources required. These limitations, not withstanding, the role of IT for efficient judicial administration is well established. In this issue of egov magazine, we have attempted to provide you with an overview of e-Courts movement in India, status and the way forward, from none other than the pioneer in the field of use of IT in judiciary in India, Justice GC Bharuka. We have also covered the perspectives from the nodal agency, the Department of Information Technology, Government of India implementing agency and the National Informatics Centre. We wish you a happy reading and look forward to your comments and suggestions.

egov is published & marketed in collaboration with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. (www.elets.in) © Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies 2007 www.csdms.in

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

November 2007

COVER FEATURE: E-COURTS

Towards Speedy, Inexpensive, Transparent and Accountable Justice

gcb@bharuka.com “For availing the technology in the way we profess it to be used, we need resources like domain experts, technology experts, sufﬁcient funds, strong institutional commitment. Government support and a sustained policy to continue with it. Fortunately, today, the Indian Judiciary has all the requisite elements of its institutional capacity building,”says Justice GC Bharuka, Chairman, e-Committee, Supreme Court of India, in an exclusive Interview with egov Magazine What is the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), in your opinion, in judicial administration of the courts? Use of ICT in courts can immensely help in implementing court management tools like case-flow management, case management, targeted clearance rates, online information of case laws, and statute laws and the like, which are key to the 6}

efficiency of judicial functioning. Automated support systems will reduce workload, delays and discretions at the registry level. All the registers, statements, returns, forms, summons and notices can be digitally generated and hard copies can be taken, as and when required. Video conferencing, digital transcription, digital signatures, digital storage of documents, document management are some of the effective tools for www.egovonline.net

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COVER FEATURE

inter and intra-courts. e-Connectivity can greatly improve the functioning of the judiciary. It will immediately start reflecting transparency and accountability. What factors led to the judicial reforms in India? On 11th March, 1959, the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, while addressing the State Law Minister’s Conference, had said that our judicial system has become rusted and outmoded. It requires thorough renovation. The Law Commission of India, during the last fifty years, has submitted one after another 197 reports suggesting reforms, both in substantive as well as the procedural laws. A plethora of reasons has been put forth by the jurists, judges, lawyers, academicians and social engineers for delay in disposal of cases in the Indian courts. Interestingly, arrears have continued to mount.

FORMER PRESIDENT OF INDIA INAUGURATING THE E-COURTS PROJECT

According to the studies, the seeds of delay are hidden in the micro-level processes of decision making. These are inextricably interwoven with working of courts of all ranks and levels; which again directly and indirectly affect each others working creating a complex institutional dependency. These are happening primarily because of non-availability and non-communication of information as and when required, as also because of distance. These need to be clearly identified through in-depth study of the judicial system and then ICT should be deployed to gradually eradicate these hidden causes. When did the process of computerisation of courts begin in India? Computers are not new to the Indian courts. Towards the end of 1989, one low-end computer was installed in Supreme Court of India for caveat matching. Immediately thereafter, in 1990, I initiated the process of court computersation in Patna High Court, as a sitting Judge at Patna High Court. On my transfer to Karnataka in 1994, I undertook to introduce ICT in the entire judiciary of the state of Karnataka. All the 600 courts in the Karnataka state located upto the taluka level were computerised. All the judicial officers and court staff were trained. There was a complete automation from filing of a case to grant of a certified copy. Digital production of undertrial prisoners by video-conferencing was made possible in 8

all the three court-complexes at Bangalore, which was later extended to six more districts in Karnataka. Through the Karnataka judiciary website, causelists of the High Courts and district courts was made available online, a day before, for the first time in the country. The system created has subsequently been adopted in different states in India. Please tell us the genesis of the e-Committee? Keeping in view the need of ICT in the judicial wing of the state, it was felt necessary that a centrally sponsored national policy be devised to equip all the courts in the country without any exception, with IT tools under a centrally sponsored scheme. In the year 2004, accepting the Karnataka system as the role model, the Union Cabinet, on a recommendation of the then Chief Justice of India, Hon’ble Justice R C Lahoti, formed e-Committee, appointing me as its Chairman for formulating a National Policy and Action Plan for Information and Communication Technology Enablement of the Indian Judiciary and suggest measures for management related changes. The mandate of the e-Committee was, inter alia, to formulate a National Policy on computerisation of the justice delivery system and to draw up an action plan with appropriate phasing for time bound implementation. This Committee was also required to concurrently monitor and evaluate the action plan on periodic basis. All technological and implementation aspects are to be taken care of the eCommittee. Besides the Chairman, the Committee has three more members, namely, Member (Judicial), Member (Technical) and Member (Management/ Human Resource). The e-Committee prepared the Report on Strategic Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology in Indian Judiciary, which was presented to the Chief Justice of India in May 2005. The Judges of the Supreme Court, senior advocates and senior executives from Department of Justice, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology as also National Informatics Centre (NIC) were present on the occasion. The Report of the e-Committee was circulated by the Chief Justice of India to the Chief Justices of all the High Courts requesting them to consider the proposals contained in the report and send suggestions as may be found advisable. Copies of the report had also been sent to the leading jurists, academicians, concerned ministers and ministries of the Union Government including NIC. The report was made available to the Law Ministers of all the states as well as the Law Minister’s Conference held at Simla in June 2005 and elaborate discussions were held thereon. e-Committee also held detailed discussions with large section of ICT related organisations, service providers, research and development experts and leading manufacturers to ascertain the existing status of the technology, its use in the context of court related processes, pricing, availability, security, implementation, scalability, sustainability, pace of change and support systems. Based on the inputs received from persons having expertise in diverse domains relevant for change management in the Indian Judiciary, the eCommittee framed the National Policy and Action Plan for its implementation during a span of five years from the date of its effective commencement. www.egovonline.net

COVER FEATURE

In August 2005, e-Committee submitted the National Policy and Action Plan to the Chief Justice of India. The project for ICT enablement of the the judiciary envisioned by the e-Committee, was launched by the Honâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ble Prime Minister of India on 5th October 2005. While launching this Policy, the Prime Minister assured that for such an important project that aims to streamline the judiciary, the government will lend its full support, both managerial and financial. In June 2006, the union cabinet declared the project to be one of the Mission Mode Projects under the National e-Governance Plan, and subsequently on 8th February 2007, gave financial sanction to the first phase of the project. It appointed NIC as the implementing agency which is required to implement the project in close consultation, guidance and supervision of the e-Committee. What is the vision of the e-Courts project? We want to achieve the goals of speedy, inexpensive, transparent and accountable justice, in a phased manner of implementation. All registry level activities, which has the roots of corruption, will be fully automated. The judges will be provided online access to all legal tools like, case laws, statute laws, law literature. Distant filings at anytime from anywhere would become a routine affair. The handicaps based on distances would be completely eliminated. The days of manipulating documents may be a foregone affair because of online accessibility of all official records. Management, through video-conferencing, and decision making tools will be a part of court administration. All case-related information from its filing to the disposal like case status, orders, judgements, etc; would be made available online. What is the current status and the progress of the eCourts project? The project is now under implementation under my guidance and close supervision. The first phase of the e-Courts project was launched by the former President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam on 9th July 2007. I am happy to inform that the things have started happening. 12,155 laptops with customised operating system befitting judicial needs have reached the High Courts and District Courts to be delivered to every judicial officer of the country. It supports 11 regional languages. Process of providing digital connectivity to all the judicial officers at their home offices, chambers and court halls has already been commenced. Each judicial officer is being trained by one IT trainer in use of technology for two months before or after court hours. The officers are taking this training very seriously and are very positive about the use of IT. The process of acquiring video-conferencing equipments has already been initiated. Similarly, steps have been initiated for acquiring the other components of Phase I of the e-Courts project. All the High Courts at their levels as well as at District Court levels have constituted appropriate implementation committees which are all functioning excellently. What are some of the implementation difficulties in the e-Courts project? The court, as an institution, functions on the basis of its legal system. Any change in the system has its immediate impact 10

on the functioning of the judges, lawyers and the subordinate staff as also the litigants. The system is composed of its codified rules, the traditions and practices regularly followed in the court and the procedures judicially recognised. All these governing rules of procedure and court management are not always uniform for all the jurisdictions. Therefore, no handy software providing whole some solutions to the legal system is commercially available. It is required to be developed under the day-to-day guidance and supervision of persons well-versed with IT and the particular justice delivery system.

Implementation of e-Governance in judicial system needs substantial finance and trained technical hands. Courts have to depend for all these on the government which again moves at its own speed and discretion. There is a tendency of non-cooperation and/or obstruction by the functional staff at the registry level since they apprehend impeding of their interest. Beneficiaries of the pre-existing system try to obstruct the change over to IT since it makes the legal process more transparent. Please tell us more about the capacity building strategy in e-Courts project? Institutional capacity building has been adopted as the dominant object of this project. This includes the capacity building of all its stakeholders as well. This is meant to enhance the judicial productivity both qualitatively and quantitatively. The only requirement is a correct understanding of the way in which the system functions and how technology can be used at every level of the system to give it a desired speed and accuracy. This is an extensive exercise. It requires a lot of expertise. It requires development of expert systems, i.e., specifically customised softwares, which we quite often call â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;adding artificial intelligenceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to the computers. For availing the technology in the way we profess it to be used, we need resources like domain experts, technology experts, sufficient funds, strong institutional commitment. Government support and a sustained policy to continue with it. Fortunately, today, the Indian Judiciary has all the requisite elements for its institutional capacity building. www.egovonline.net

COVER FEATURE: E-COURTS

Treading in the Right Direction e-Courts Mission Mode Project

krishna@mit.gov.in krishna@mit.gov.in e-Courts is an important integrated mission mode project under NeGP. What is the vision and implementation strategy of this project? The vision of the e-Courts is aligned with the vision of overall NeGP (National e-Governance programme), of delivering services to the citizens. As judiciary is an important arm of the government institution, e-Court is a very important ov

November 2007

“One of the important things associated with the implementation of e-Courts project is that it is led by the people who are part of the entire judicial administration like Justice Bharukha and his team, who have designed and conceptualised the entire system of the e-Courts for active, effective and efﬁcient functioning of the judicial administration in the country,” says Krishnan Dharmarajan, Principal Consultant, Programme Management Unit, National e-Governance Plan, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India, in conversation with the egov magazine

mission mode project (MMP) for making the services of the courts accessible to all citizens. A key aspect emphasised under the NeGP, is the necessity of projects being owned by the implementing Department and not being driven from outside. While outside experts could lend their expertise, the leadership for implementation should come within. One positive point with regard to e-Courts project is that it is led 11

COVER FEATURE

by people who have extensive experience in the judiciary. The current version of the e-Courts implementation began with a financial proposal covering equipment procurement for the court complexes. However, we understand that they now are in the process of detailing the entire project in a

comprehensive manner. The NeGP requires Mission Mode Projects to list out services proposed to be delivered under the project along with associated service levels through a process involving stakeholder consultations. It further requires Departments to formulate detailed implementation plans for each Mission Mode Project listing the milestones and timelines, right from initiation of the project to its completion. Project implementation plans are also expected to include a monitoring and evaluation framework to assist monitoring of milestones and timelines and evaluating progress. It is expected that an experienced project management team led by e-Committee would steer the mission mode project of e-Courts in line with the over all framework set out under the NeGP.

For availing the technology to bring about speedy and efficient judiciary system, the resources required as specified by justice Bharuka are domain expert, technology experts, sufficient funds and strong institutional commitment. How are these being ensured from the Ministry level? The Department of Information Technology (DIT) initially provided support to the e-Courts project in framing the project plan, detailing the overall specifications, etc. This support extended by DIT was for a limited duration and it was expected that a more formal Project Management Unit (PMU) would be established to assist implementation of the e-Courts project. For large projects like e-Courts, it would be desirable if a PMU is set up centrally comprising experts from the domain (in this case the judiciary) along with technology experts and professionals in the areas of process reengineering, change management and project management. Considering the fact that the implementation will need to take place at the State level, it would also be desirable to have Project e-Mission Teams (PeMTs) established in each State for implementation of the e-Courts project under the overall guidance and in coordination with the central PMU. What are the monitoring mechanism adopted by Department of IT (DIT)? Under the NeGP, the Apex committee headed by Cabinet Secretary has been given the responsibility of monitoring implementation of all Mission Mode Projects. DIT, assisted by a PMU established for this purpose, plays the role of a secretariat to the Apex Committee in connection with its role in monitoring of NeGP. DITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scope in this regard includes ascertaining the status of various projects, pinpointing delays and facilitating interventions at a higher level to expedite projects.

Read all egov Interviews online @ www.egovonline.net 3RD ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ISSUE OF EGOV MAGAZINE IN JANUARY 2008 Its our extreme pleasure to announce that egov magazine (www.egovonline.in) is going to complete 3years of its long term initiative of creating a knowledge community in the domain of eGovernance. In this three year long journey, egov magazine has done excellent work in providing and disseminating information and knowledge on e-Governance initiatives, taken nationally and internationally to the policy planners, industry leaders and the academia. On this great occasion we would like to invite comments, suggestions and feedback from our esteemed readers for improvement and making the magazine more informative. Please tell us how you have liked the egov magazine and what more you would like us to cover. Your feedback will be printed in our 3rd anniversary issue of egov magazine to be published in January 2008.

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COVER FEATURE: E-COURTS

Mainstreaming ICT for Judical Delivery System A New Approach Towards Justice Delivery System Computerisation of courts was initiated during the latter part of 1980s in association with the National Informatics Centre (NIC). During the last two decades, the Supreme Court of India, the high courts, city courts, district courts, sub-district courts and fast track courts have witnessed ‘informatisation’ in their administrative and management process, and have ushered in ‘transparency’ to the ‘common public’ to a certain extent. Madaswamy Moni

While India has introduced significant economic reforms since 1991, it still faces significant institutional constraints in higher growth. These include legal and judicial systems that do not provide an adequate structure of incentives and deterents for a market-based economy to function. Globalisation also requires a legal system that conforms to global norms. “Post-1991, there has been a more explicit recognition that without a legal system that conforms to global norms, market-oriented reforms will not work,” according to Bibek Debroy, the noted Indian economist. Research information systems evidently show that India suffers from a dire shortage of officers and delivery staff (police, judges, teachers, paramedics and doctors, and maintenance staff), combined with a vast excess of ClassIII and Class-IV categories of workers (clerks, messengers and peons). The Class-III and Class-IV workers account for 90 percent of all government staff. This shows that Indian government has the wrong size in all directions. According to the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business 2007 – Database Report’, it takes 89 days to start a small business in India, while it takes only 2 days in Australia or in Canada. Thus India ranks low – ranks 134 out of 175 countriesas per the World Bank. In spite of this, India is emerging as an ‘economic and knowledge superpower’ and in less ov

November 2007

than a decade, it has emerged as the ‘electronic back office of the world’. Knowledge economy is dominated by Information, Communication and Technology (ICT).

JUDICIAL REFORMS—TO FACILITATE ACCESS TO JUDICIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL

momentum to judicial reforms. India has one of the highest numbers of pending cases in the world, due to lack of adequate infrastructure. India is said to possess one of the fairest legal systems in the world. Measures like re-engineering the processes, technology adoption, judicious exploiting and harnessing of available talents and expertise will help achieve the goal of judicial reforms in India.

The law reforms is a vast and complex subject, which embraces legislative reforms, judicial reforms and most importantly reforming the mindset of AUTOMATION AND NETWORKING OF the judiciary- judges, magistrates and JUDICIAL INSTITUTIONS: AN IMPORTANT other adjudicators who form the core INGREDIENT OF JUDICIAL REFORMS of a judiciary, as well as the support personnel who keep the system running The Box-1 shows the backlogs of courts smoothly. The Indian judicial system cases, as of December 2005, in various faces diverse problems of this nature: (a) courts of India. This figure does not slow disposal of cases leading to delays include the pending cases in various as well as accumulation of backlog tribunals, adalats (courts), consumer and (b) very low rate of prosecution in affairs courts. criminal cases. The National Common Since the 121st Report of the Law Minimum Programme (NCMP-2004) Commission of India (July 1987), of India envisages judicial and legal BOX-1: BACKLOG OF COURT CASES AS OF DECEMBER 2005 reforms as one of Sub-ordinate Courts : 26.0 Million the thrust areas in Magistrate Courts : 1.6 Million promoting good High Courts : 3.5 Million governance. In Supreme Court : 0.3 Million addition to this, NCMP-2004 also has committed to drastically reduce which has devoted a whole chapter to delays in the high courts and lower ‘Technological Advances and its Use in levels of the judiciary and give fresh the Context of Judicial Appointments’, 13

COVER FEATURE

the country has witnessed a lot of progress in ‘mainstreaming ICT in judicial administration and management’, through the efforts of National Informatics Centre (NIC). Computerisation of courts was initiated during the latter part of 1980s in association with the NIC. During the last two decades, the Supreme Court of India, high courts, city courts, district courts, sub-district courts and fast track courts have witnessed ‘informatisation’ in their administrative and management process, and ushered in ‘transparency’ to the ‘common public’ to a certain extent. Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore), in its report pertaining to ‘IT in Court Work’, suggested installing Legal Assistance Kiosks (LAK) at court premises to provide assistance to public, in respect of guidance on basic procedures, information on availability of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) schemes and legal assistance. In addition to this, computerisation efforts have been taken up in land tribunals, industrial tribunals, tax tribunals, service tribunals, company law board, water pollution tribunals, air pollution tribunals, family courts, consumer affairs courts, mobile courts and Lok Adalats etc. The Government of India launched its ‘ICT Enablement for Indian Judiciary’ programme on 5th October 2005, on the basis of the recommendations of the e-Committee of the Supreme Court of India, which submitted its report titled ‘National Policy and Action Plan’ for implementation of Information and Communication Technology in the Indian Judiciary. Hansraj Bhardwaj (Cabinet Minister in Ministry of Law and Justice) said that INR 100,000 million would be spent to strengthen the basic infrastructure of judicial courts in the country by providing computers, modern technology and facility of data and video conferencing. About 6000 ‘mobile courts’ would also be set up to ensure justice to the rural people economically and easily. At the same time, ‘legal enablement of ICT system’ is required to achieve consumer protection over e-Governance programme of both the central government and state governments. The issue of legal enablement is being addressed by the Working Group on e-Governance Standards, constituted by the NIC, for the National e-Governance Programme (NeGP) of the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. All the courts across the country need to have a data centre connected through the high bandwidth broadband connectivity with G2G (government to government) eGovernance application with interoperable messaging system in a secured environment. This will ensure detection of certain litigants filing cases in multiple courts on the same subject. This system should have connectivity to citizens (G2C – government to citizen), businesses (G2B – government to business), and employees (G2E – government to employee) for a speedy delivery of justice. From the time the case is registered (i.e. in police station), till it is disposed off with final judgment, the entire processing must take place electronically, as envisioned by the former President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. That means that there shall be a Value-Chain Model (VCM) linking police stations, jails, and all courts across the country through e-Form technology architecture as given in the figure above. e-Forms based on open standards are necessary for 14

increased interoperability, faster time to market and reduced development costs, reusable components and multi-platform support. e-Form + e-Document + Workflow + Web services, over Intranet / Internet / Extranet / e-Mail, form a complete business process. This e-Form should also be accessible to people with disability. Initiatives such as issuance of digital signature and legal acceptance of electronically submitted documents may create a correct ground for implementation of e-Form technology. The e-Forms may be accessed through post offices and e-Form: Solution To Bridge Paper-Digital Divide in e-Governance for Reaching the Unreached through Localisation

CSCs (Community Service Centers), information kiosks, internet cafes, etc. Hybrid models may be introduced for seamless switching between modes using paper-based and electronic based forms to increase the comfort level of user. Awareness programmes may be carried out to educate the user for technology. e-Form is a solution to share knowledge globally and to bridge ‘paper-digital divide’ in e-Governance / e-Government programme, which will result in: • Increase visibility to the status of on-line forms submission; • Enhance access to crucial, relevant government department information; • Improved government compliance • Address compliance concerns of the governments (central, state and local bodies) • Reduce costs through improved automation of information collection, retrieval and storage • Reduce error introduced through hand-processing of paper forms • More easily shared information • Fewer resources spent on administration of information and data; multi-agency communication and • Improve collaboration; • Reduce costs by requiring fewer people to process paperbased forms. • Integration with back-end systems and processes; • Encourage development, delivery and take-up of new services • Encourage Private-Public-Partnership (PPP) model • Achieve data interoperability • Higher productivity www.egovonline.net

The Court modernisation programme, as categorised below, requires adoption of e-Form technology, to usher in profound impact on return on investment in terms of people, process and knowledge:• Court case management; • Workflow charts; • Document management/imaging; • Office automation; • Internet access; and • Electronic case filing.

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• HOW TO MAKE EFFICIENT JUSTICE DELIVERY SYSTEM: RECOMMENDATIONS

Design and development of Indian Court Operating System (ICOS) to be made functional in all 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages; Digital preservation and Information life cycle management policy; Judicial library automation and networking through eGranthalaya software; Submission of information using e-Forms technology within the Legal System (Client – Police – Jail – Court – Lawyer – Government) Knowledge management and sharing among the stakeholders through Intranet and Internet Solutions (e.g. IntraNIC), which shall include about 4.5 million lawyers who are regulated by the Advocates Act of 1961, research and educational institutions, law universities etc; e-Court to be equipped with e-Form, e-Document, workflow management, portals based on framework architecture and digital signature; Knowledge portals (judges, lawyers, cases, judgments, research information systems, judicial commissions reports) using W3C standards; Court network to be a dedicated giga bit network facilitating data, video, and audio transfer; video conferencing from any node to node for all stakeholders of the legal proceedings; All the courts (supreme court, high courts and district

• • • • •

• • •

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courts) across the country need to have a data centre connected through the high bandwidth broadband connectivity with G2G (government to government) eGovernance application with interoperable messaging system in a secured environment; Legal enablement of ICT systems for consumer protection; Adoption of expert systems and knowledge bases for all rules and procedures; application of text based data mining tools to facilitate “knowledge discovery” in advancing judgment delivery; Establishment of a ‘Centre of Excellence on Judicial Informatics Research and Training’; Change in curriculum of graduate and post-graduate law studies by introducing computer science and technology and information science and technology;

OUTCOME:

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Poor man’s access to judicial justice - a reality; Village-level decentralisation of judicial delivery system.

REFERENCES:

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Bibek Debroy : ‘Some Issues In Law Reform In India’, Chapter 12 in “Governance, Decentralisation and Reform in China, India and Russia”, Jean-Jacques Dethier (ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 339 – 368. Bhardwaj Hans Raj (2006): “Rural Mobile Courts to be set up”, as published in The Hindu dated 30 August 2006 Abdul Kalam (2005): H.E. Dr. Abdul Kalam, President of Republic of India, in his Address at the Inauguration of the All India Seminar on Judicial Reforms with Special reference to Arrears of Court Cases”, 29th April 2005 at Rashtrapati Bhawan (New Delhi) : “Evolution : National Litigation Pendency Clearance Mission”.

Madaswamy Moni, is the Deputy Director General in the National Informatics Centre, New Delhi. He may be reached at moni@nic.in

National Informatics Centre and Computerisation of Courts The National Informatics Centre (NIC, www.nic.in) took the initiative of computerisation of Supreme Courts in 1990, many applications have been computerised. This has been successfully implemented in Supreme Court and 18 High Court; these applications have laid either direct or indirect impact on the masses. In 1997, NIC took up the Computerisation of all 430 District courts on the lines of High Courts Computerisation project. The basic objective of the project are transparency of information, streamlining judicial administration and creating judicial and legal database of the district judges. The NIC provided three level training programme to the district court officials viz computer awareness programme for the district judges, supervisory level training at NIC state centres and in-house training to the district court officials working on computer terminal.

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November 2007

COVER FEATURE: E-COURTS

e-Courts Around the World Federal Court of Australia The federal court of Australia (www.fedcourt.gov.au) have started a programme called ‘e-Courts’ to integrate Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the daily functioning of the courts with two fold objective to bring the court system on fast track and to improve user accessibility. The e-Court strategy adopted by the Australian government is an holistic approach, which is technically and administratively sound in bringing futuristic changes to the court’s business. In 2004, the court completed the implementation of casetrack, a management system that records case events, manage court list and record order and outcomes. It assist the judges in management of their dockets. There are three important services run under the e-Court initiatives:1.e-Search: It allows the general public to search information pertaining to matters related to participants in

the case, dates that matter, text of orders. The data is updated and updated in the real-time and include information on all cases that have been committed since 1 January 1984. 2.e-Filling: The electronically filling system (EFS) allows credit card filling fees for lodging of applications and supporting documentation. The EFS system was introduced in two stages, stage I was introduced in October 2000 and enabled paying of fees via the court’s website, the second stage was introduced in 2001, it enabled filling, processing and return of document electronically. 3.e-Courtroom: It provides a virtual courtroom that provides assistance in under-trail matters. Through using the e courtroom, the court may receive submission and affidavit and make orders. The e-Courtroom user manual provide a guideline that explain how to use the e-Courtrooms and record all the messages posted by the presiding judge and parties. The other features of e-Court include e-Case administration, electronic trials, electronic appeals, electronic courtroom and hearing, document management system and video-conferencing.

District of Columbia Courts

The Supreme Court of Singapore

The District court of Columbia (www.dccourts.gov) consists of the Court of Appeals and the Superior Court. The Court of Appeals reviews decisions of the Superior Court and the District of Columbia’s administrative agencies while the Superior court handles all local trials court matters, including civil, criminal, family court, probate, tax, landlord and tenant, traffic and other functions. The mission of District court of Columbia states to protect rights, and liberties, uphold and interpret the law, and resolve dispute peacefully, fairly and effectively in the nation’s capital. The vision of District court of Columbia states three fold objective, open to all, trusted by all and justice for all. The IT division of the superior court and court system offer Integrated Justice Information System (IJIS). The important online services of superior court include private contractor e-Filing for civil, juror services and a child support calculator.

The Supreme court of Singapore (www.supcourt.gov.sg) is established with an vision to establish and maintain a world class judiciary, its mission states to superintend the administration of justice. The supreme court of Singapore is ranked as the number one website in top 10 court websites in the world. The various e-Services of Supreme Court of Singapore are as follows: 1. Justice Transcription System: It facilitates the digital audio recording of court hearing and perform near real-time transcription. Since 1 August 2005, the DTS has been made available in all courtrooms in the supreme court building. 2. Electronic Hearing: This system facilitates in ensuring that parties and witnesses attend hearing in the correct courtroom and chambers. The electric signages are put up outside each courtroom and hearing chambers. Through this system the counsel may also bring their notebook computers to court, access electronic case files and present their cases using appropriate technology. 4. Electronic Queue Management System (EQMS): This system facilitates the management of queue system in the supreme court. The EQMS, notifies lawyers of when their cases is going to be heard through display screen. 5. Information Kiosks: These information kiosks facilitate the lawyers and public to obtain up-to-date hearing lists and other court schedules. The information kiosks interface is integrated with the supreme court websites and users can access all sorts of information pertaining to the court functioning. 6. Mobile Technology Facility Services: This service facilitates and encourages lawyers to take advantage of advancements in technology. Mobile technology facilities are available for use in non-technology courtrooms and chambers. Mobile audio-visual equipments are available in use in both the non-technology courtrooms and hearing chambers. The other e-Services of supreme court of Singapore include Internet videophone services, Internet wireless hotspots, justice online system and technology courts.

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COVER FEATURE: E-COURTS

Production of Under-trial Prisoners through the Video-conferencing System Efficiency Vs Access to Justice The delays in trials in courts has also taken menacing dimensions, leading to the overcrowding of prisons. By the early eighties, the situation had become alarming, the array of public interest litigations that have clogged the courts since then, is an indicator of the seriousness of the problem at hand. A system that was designed to handle a speciﬁc target group i.e. convicts had now been taken over by another, for which the system was poorly prepared i.e. under-trials. Vijay Raghavan THE STATE OF UNDER-TRIALS IN INDIA

The system of prison welfare in the country was set in the context of reformation and rehabilitation of the convicted prisoner. Prisons were originally meant to house those who had been convicted by the law for the offences they were charged with. A minor focus of prisons was the housing of the untried or the under-trial prisoners – those awaiting trial and kept in judicial custody, till the completion of their cases in courts. They were in prison either because they were unable to produce suitable sureties or because they had been denied bail due to the nature of the offence they were charged with. The basic duty of the prison and judicial authorities towards this population was to ensure their physical and mental health and safety and access to their legal rights. However, one fact that the authorities and civil society did not take note of was the rising numbers of under-trials in prisons. The number of prisons has not increased post-independence, thus resulting in overcrowding and non-classification of prisoners according to correctional principles. As per Prison Statistics India 2002 report published by the National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 2004, New Delhi, there are a total of 1,135 prisons in the country, housing a total population of 3,22,357 prisoners as against a stipulated capacity of 2,29,874 prisoners. Out of this number, as of 2002, 25.5% were convicts, 69.2% were under-trials and the balance 5.3 percent being detainee and others. As far as the sex ratio is concerned, 96.3% were males and 3.7% were females. The average occupancy of prisons in the country was 140.2%. This implies an overcrowding of 40.2% against ov

November 2007

the stipulated / authorised capacity. The worst scenario in terms of overcrowding was found in Delhi (331.1% i.e. overcrowding of 231%) and the most manageable was found to be in Daman and Diu (27.5% i.e. almost two-thirds empty). The Maharashtra figure on overcrowding was less than the national average, at 135.5% (i.e., overcrowding of 35.5%). The delays in trials in courts has also taken menacing dimensions, leading to the overcrowding of prisons. By the early eighties, the situation had become alarming, the array of public interest litigations that have clogged the courts since then, is an indicator of the seriousness of the problem at hand. A system that was designed to handle a specific target group i.e. convicts had now been taken over by another, for which the system was poorly prepared i.e. under-trials. The prison system has come to be crushed under the weight of petty offenders, ticketless travelers, those arrested for ‘loitering’ in suspicious circumstances, or drunken behaviour, hawkers, those arrested under the forest act, theft of railway property, petty theft, and a host of other property crimes which could be linked to the overall lack of employment options and social security benefits that any ‘caring’ State should have. These cases in turn clogged the courts of the country, crippling the criminal justice system in the process. As per the Prison Statistics India 2002 report (India 2004), out of a total of 2,23038 under-trial prisoners in the country, the pendency of cases in the courts are as follows: Pending for 6 months - 1,41,370 cases (63.38%) Pending for 6 months to 1 year – 37, 645 cases (16.87%) Pending for 1 to 2 years – 26,319 cases (11.8%) Pending for 2 to 3 years – 11,898 cases (5.33%) Pending for 3 to 5 years - 4780 cases (2.14) Pending above 5 years – 1026 cases (0.46%) 17

COVER FEATURE

As against these figures, the Maharashtra situation, out of total 14,527 under-trial prisoners, is as follows: Pending for 6 months - 8964 cases (61.70%) Pending for 6 months to 1 year – 2366 cases (16.28%) Pending for 1 to 2 years – 2786 cases (19.17%) Pending for 2 to 3 years – 235 cases (1.61%) Pending for 3 to 5 years - 101 cases (0.69%) Pending above 5 years – 65 cases (0.44%) The above comparison, as far as under-trial prisoners languishing in prison (due to delays in trials in courts) is concerned, shows that the Maharashtra situation is marginally better than the national situation. The situation, however is far better than states like Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, but does not compare well with the southern states like Tamil Nadu, A.P. and Karnataka.

IMAGE SOURCE: HTTP://CMS.IWI.UNI-SB.DE/UPLOADS/RTEMAGICC_LOGO_ EJUSTICE.JPG.JPG

The situation of interminable delays in the justice delivery system in turn, led to a very poor conviction rate. Collection of evidence, summoning of witnesses, ensuring they do not turn hostile at the trial stage and retaining the interest of the complainant in convicting the offender became a huge task for the prosecuting agencies. Most persons arrested (the average conviction rate in the country is less than ten percent!) finally get either acquitted or discharged in their cases. The police machinery routinely arrests people rather than use their discretion of arrest (the power of arrest is a discretionary power given to the police by the law, to be selectively used by them only in cases where they apprehend the accused may abscond or tamper with evidence or commit another offence if allowed to roam free) and courts remand them to judicial custody after police investigation is over, thus increasing the load on the prisons, which has no choice but to keep them as under-trials till they go out on bail or their cases in court end up in a discharge, acquittal, release on probation or a sentence of imprisonment. We are now faced with a situation whereby as far as the higher judiciary and enlightened forces within the system is concerned, the system should be accessible to the marginalised, whereas in practice, the rights and facilities offered by the system somehow eludes those who are most 18

in need. The major reason why it functions thus is that the structures and investments required to implement the court judgements, and reform committee reports simply do not exist. In consonance with the changing realities there have been little or no investments made to increase trained manpower, ensure to legal rights, create rehabilitation structures and reduce overload on the system.

THE RATIONALE FOR INTRODUCTION OF THE VIDEOCONFERENCING SYSTEM

One of the long pending bottlenecks in the system with regard to delays in trials of under-trial prisoners and increasing pendency of cases has been the non-production of undertrial prisoners on their court dates due to non-availability of police escorts to take the under-trial prisoners (UTPs) from the prison to their court. As per the Criminal Penal Code (Cr. P.C.), it is the duty of the police to perform this function. However, as the number of UTPs has assumed alarming proportions over the years, the police has been hard pressed to provide the requisite manpower to do this job. Escorting prisoners to court or to hospital is hardly a priority area as far as the police is concerned. They are overburdened with law and order, crime control, VIP security and bandobast (preparation) duties, and escorting prisoners to court/hospital always comes last on their list of duties. Prison officers and judges have been grappling over this issue for many years. The system has tried to come out with a practical solution to deal with the issue, which is however totally in-consonant with the legal provisions. The UTP’s remand warrant is sent to the court and the magistrate/judge authorises his/her remand for the next 14 days by giving the next date and ordering that he/she be physically produced the next time! When this problem repeats itself, the presiding judge may ask the Superintendent of the prison to present him/herself before the court and give reason why the UTP has not been physically produced. The Superintendent’s explanation to this ‘show cause’ notice is usually to prove that he made all necessary efforts to ask for police escort but the police did not do so. Thus, depending on the amount of pressure the prison or the court authorities are able to put on the police, the escort may be provided at a subsequent date. Various adhoc solutions have been suggested by the judiciary and criminal justice experts to overcome this problem. The idea of setting up of remand courts in prisons has been suggested. Based on a Supreme Court order, Jail Courts have been set up in prisons to ‘dispose off’ petty offences – this system, whereby the magistrate comes to prison once a week to hear petty matters, usually ends up in almost all such accused persons being ‘persuaded’ to plead guilty and get a set off sentence i.e the period already spent in prison by the UTP is considered as his sentence and he/she is set free. That such a practice leads to a systematic criminalisation of persons primarily coming from poverty and marginalised backgrounds does not seem to be a matter of concern for criminal justice administration. In continuation of this adhocism that our criminal justice system has unfortunately come to be identified with, the www.egovonline.net

Apex and High Courts as well as the State governments have been suggesting the setting up of Video-conferencing facility to deal with the problem of production of UTPs in courts on their dates (during their remand periods). Some arguments in favour of introducing this practice are: • It will save human power, time and financial resources. • During the remand period, UTPs are anyway produced only to extend their remand by a further period. • The UTP can freely communicate with the presiding judge. • Existing human power can be used to produce those UTPs whose trials have commenced leading to expedition of cases and reduction of overcrowding of prisons. • Technology should be used to ‘modernise’ our archaic criminal justice system. Such systems have consequently been introduced in prisons in many states such as Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, Gujarat, etc.

•

EFFICIENCY AT THE COST OF JUSTICE?

However, ground realities as always, are never in tune with arguments propounded by ‘experts’. UTPs being produced through the video-conferencing system are facing a range of problems, which could be summarised as follows: • The video-conferencing system may be a good option for the criminal justice administration and judicial procedure, but the main problem is that presiding judge usually hears the remand application at great speed, since he/she has to to finish off the process within one or two hours, as opposed to the earlier system whereby UTP cases would be heard first before taking up cases of those out on bail. In such a situation, the under-trial prisoner is not able to properly communicate with the judge. • The procedure is artificial not natural. There is no natural communication and proper time given to under-trial accused. This must be understood in the light of the fact that a large number of the UTPs come from marginalised and poverty backgrounds and do not have access to ‘modern’ technology. • There is frustration among the under-trials who were produced through this system. Most of them felt that “nothing happens here; we are just given a next date tarikh pe tarikh!”. Some were also upset because they wanted to communicate some of their problems to the magistrate/judge but could not do so (observation made by a student social worker from TISS placed in a prison in Mumbai) • Legal aid is a Fundamental Right under the Constitution. This is especially true for accused persons, where the

•

offence is punishable with imprisonment. Further, counsel for the accused must be given sufficient time and facility for preparing the defense. In prison, many of the prisoners are deprived of their legal rights due to illiteracy and ignorance about the law. Many prisoners could be released on surety bail, cash bail or P.R. bond, but they are not able to avail of such facilities due to lack of proper legal aid. In the earlier system, the accused were taken out, and were exposed to the outside world, and this provided them psychological relief from the stress of being an under-trial. They could also meet their family members and their relatives for a while in court. They could make a request before the magistrate with regard to problems being faced, plead guilty (in petty matters), etc. With the introduction of this new system, such possibilities have been greatly reduced. The chances of being able to get a lawyer of one’s choice when physically produced in court are higher as compared to being produced through video-conferencing, as the prisoner remains in prison and lawyers do not usually come to prison, unless it a ‘high profile’ prisoner. Chances of problems faced in prison being brought to the notice of the presiding judge are less as the UTP may feel ‘uncomfortable’ to bring them to the notice of the judge, while remaining in prison.

CONCLUSION

Use of technology should certainly be welcomed in increasing the efficiency of the criminal justice system. For example, digitisation of court documents, e-Linking of courts, computerization of records, communication within the system via e-Mail– these are all developments which should be introduced on a priority basis. However, when it comes to use of technology where people who are in custody, is concerned, one must caution against unbridled use of technology. The pros and cons of use of such technology should be weighed not in the context of whether is it ‘convenient’ or efficient’ alone, but rather on what are its implications on access to justice, especially for those sections of the population who are already marginalised within the system. It is in this context that the rising concerns of critics of the video-conferencing system, need to be heard, rather than dismissed. Vijay Raghavan is the Asst Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for Criminal and Justice, School of Social Work, in Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Prof. Raghavan is also associated as faculty-in-charge of PRAYAS, the field action research project of the Department of Criminology and Correctional Administration, TISS. He may be reached at vijayr@tiss.edu

E-Lock Digital Signature Products Deployed at the High Courts E-Lock, the leading providers of data security solutions, has deployed multiple licenses of its Digital Signature product to the high court of India. The high courts in a pursuit to move to a paperless mode, selected PKS#7 compliant E-Lock product- DeskSeal Desktop. The Indian IT Act 2000 provides a legal recognition of electronic transaction and digital signature. The E-lock Desk Seal Desktop is a desktop based digital signing utility that signs files of any format. As it is wizard based, it enables even a novice user to digitally sign and verify files with ease.

November 2007

PRODUCT NEWS

Business

IBM SET TO LAUNCH VIRTUALISATION-READY SERVER IBM will soon launch its latest generation chipset, X4. The launch will signiﬁcantly advance performance, availability and processing efﬁciencies for its X86 line of enterprise servers. The new system X3950 M2 server will enable clients to easily deploy virtualised server applications right out of the box. According to IBM spokesperson, the new system will be ready for virtualisation right out of the box, eliminating the software setup and installation time and will also offer double memory slot capacity. Through the new system the memory space will also be increased. More than four times the amount of memory can be hosted on a single chassis compared system, enabling more virtualisation workload.

HP LAUNCHES PROLIANT 580 G5 AND BL680C G5 SERVERS HP has launched ProLiant 580 G5 and BL680c G5 as an expansion of quad-core server portfolio. The new servers are designed to improve performance and cut costs. According to the company, the new servers are energy-efﬁcient and designed to run data-intensive business applications such as data-base, business intelligence, enterprise resource planning and large mail and messaging platform in virtualised environment.

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT MATURITY MODEL (IM3) BY SUN MICROSYSTEMS Storing the information is the biggest challenge for down the cost of information, Sun has developed any business organisation. In the initial years when Information Management Maturity Model (IMR3) storage became a part of computing paradigm, which comprises five steps to greater financial people paid little attention to storage. As a result accountability. The new model helps you to the storage was poorly utilised and the cost was understand which type data information you have relatively high. According to Joe Heel, senior vice President of Sun’s and organising the architecture that best matches the way you want global storage practice, storing all types of information in the same to use that data information. The five major steps of IMR3 model are way make little sense to the business and increase costs of storage namely defining business requirement, assessing present situation, for a company. tier, consolidating and simplifying, defining catalogue of service To provide solution to the these storage challenges and lowering levels, monitoring, managing and provisioning.

NEWGEN LAUNCHES NEW VERSION OF OMNI EXTRACT 6.1.4 Newgen Software launched their new version of Omni Extract solution. The new version comes in more user friendly form that enables customers to adapt to changing business conditions and react to market opportunities. The new software enable users to integrate external applications for image preprocessing and gives more flexibility in form designing and printing. Omni Extract 6.1.4 is supported by automatic identification of data zones for better form definition. AMD LAUNCHES BARCELONA CHIP AMD has launched Opteron quad-core server chip which comprises of four processing cores on a single piece of silicon. The new quad- core server guarantee performance and power efficiencies. Commenting on the launch AMD chairmen and chief executive officer said We’ve worked closely with the customers and developed the design to meet the demands of the new generation of processing solutions.

EMC EXPANDS SOLUTION SET FOR MANAGING IT SERVICE DELIVERY EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure “IT is facing a perfect storm of information explosion, from VoIP to solutions, further strengthened the company’s IT service delivery IPTV to secure content, and management fragmentation. This has put management offerings with key additions to its software portfolio. tremendous stress on IT’s ability to ensure the delivery of key information, Aimed at helping customers better business, and infrastructure services—both new and existing,” said automate their data center operations, Chris Gahagan, EMC’s Senior Vice President, Resource Management the company recently announced EMC Software. EMC offers advanced solutions helping customers automate IT Compliance Analyzer—Application their data center operations. With a unique set of products enabling Edition, EMC Smarts IPv6 Availability closed-loop automation, EMC’s products conduct comprehensive Manager, EMC IT Process Centre, and EMC IT Performance Reporter- discovery, compliance, analysis, automation and visualisation across Network Edition. the IT infrastructure. This automation process enables companies The solutions are key pieces of EMC’s IT service delivery portfolio, to discover what IT resources they have, check for compliance to a comprehensive set of management software based on EMC Smarts policies, isolate root-cause problems, and immediately ﬁx any issues. and EMC ControlCenter technologies. Aimed at helping customers Leveraging this model-based, intelligent software, customers are achieve higher degrees of automation for their data center operations, now able to take a service-centric approach to IT management and EMC provides customers with end-to-end service visibility and control gain insight into how their information infrastructures support key across their complex IT information infrastructures. business services.

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About Conference The International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2007) will take place in Macao during 10-13 December 2007. The conference will bring together practitioners, developers and researchers from government, academia, industry and non-governmental organizations to share the latest findings in the theory and practice of Electronic Governance. In a diverse international setting for networking and community-building, ICEGOV2007 will foster a multi-disciplinary and multistakeholder approach to addressing the challenges of Electronic Governance. The conference and the future annual series will establish the state-of-the-art in practice, technology and research on various aspects of Electronic Governance.

Opportunities For You The conference will provide a unique opportunity for close interactions between the three categories of participants: From Government - Government participants will describe concrete initiatives, lessons learnt and the remaining challenges. In return, they will learn about the latest research results, and how such results are implemented by industry, non-governmental organizations and other governments to address the challenges they face. From Industry and Non-Governmental Organizations- Industry and non-governmental participants will demonstrate concrete technological, organizational and societal solutions for governments. In return, they will learn about the real challenges governments face and the latest research findings available for their use in crafting solutions. From Academia - Academic participants will present models, theories and frameworks which extend the understanding of Electronic Governance and upon which concrete solutions for governments can be built. In turn, they will learn about problems faced by governments, gain access to concrete cases, and identify opportunities to implement and deploy research prototypes.

Media Partner

Contact: Center for Electronic Governance P.O. Box 3058, Macao SAR, China, Tel: +853 28712930 Fax: +853 28712940 icegov@iist.unu.edu www.icegov.org

COVER FEATURE: E-GOVERNANCE ARCHITECTURE

Service Oriented Architecture for Government www.sun.com

Jaijit Bhattacharya and Ajay Ahuja

As governments move forward in their adoption of Information Technology (IT) for delivery of better governance, governments would need advanced systems, software, storage, and services that are designed to give transparent, cost effective, efficient and secure citizen centric solutions. These solutions range from entry level to enterprise class solutions, including the following: • Government administration including web hosting, portal and mail messaging • Secure work flow management • Defence and Intelligence • Criminal justice /public safety • Health, human and social services • Administrative computing (ERP, databases) • Virtualisation, consolidation solutions • Energy and space efficient data center solutions The IT infrastructure of governments need to be extremely reliable, highly available, serviceable and robust. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is all about software systems which require interoperability and flexibility. It provides common interface to applications, enabling flexible and efficient integration and reusability of already available functionalities of applications running on different platforms across different organisations or different departments. SOA is the next generation computing infrastructure for enterprise integration, including government organisations. The Service Oriented Architecture can guarantee flexibility in a co-operative way. It forms the basis of Governments’ vision of IT enabled citizen services geared towards ease of use, ease of administration, management, profitability, transparency and easy reachability. The SOA includes a service provider (who publishes the services along with service description), service consumer (who uses the service), and service registry (location for publishing and locating services). Various government centric web services can be implemented as SOA to achieve flexible and interoperable dynamic, modular infrastructure. Web services designed as a part of SOA, need to be interoperable, flexible and should support platform neutral communications. They should be implemented based on 22 }

standards to provide flexible integration. The following standards and technologies are used to achieve standards based architectures, involving multiple parties, which may include multiple government departments on different platforms. The open standards Java Business Integration (JBI) / Open Service Oriented Architecture (OSOA) / Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standard (OASIS) SOA • Support for e-Business Extensible Markup Language (ebXML) messaging. • Support for standards based business process management using BPMN (Business Process Modelling Notation) and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) or BPEL4WS (BPEL for Web Services). • Support for WS-I protocols. • Support for WSS (WS Security) as per IT ACT 2000 • Support for Universal Description, Discourse and Integration (UDDI), Web Service Definition Language (WSDL), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), PKIX standards Hence to manage such complex SOA requirements, governments need to adopt a completely integrated software suite to build a service-oriented architecture and composite applications for increasing information visibility, improving business agility, and making smarter Government-to-Citizen (G2C) and Citizen-to-Government (C2G) decisions. Such an approach to integration of government services helps in evolving to an integrated and flexible SOA which can be useful in: • Gaining Complete Visibility of Information across the Government Enterprise: This allows for integration of systems and aggregation of data for a consistent, accurate view of citizen services. It also helps in providing latest, accurate information for increased customer satisfaction leading to cross departmental integration and information for one to one activities across various departments. This also leads to faster and effective decisions. •

www.egovonline.net

Optimising G2C and C2G services and processes across the Government organisations. Involvement of multiple departments requiring high degree of interoperation. Creating an Integrated, Agile Technical Infrastructure: This leads to rapid delivery of new web services, reduced impact of business, political and technology changes and protects investments while creating new services as on need basis. Streamline, Automate and Enable Better Reporting, Tracking and Visibility of Workflow Processes: This leads to seamless, secure sharing of processes within and outside the government enterprise, integrating silos of data at the same time ensuring data integrity.

• • •

•

implementing provisional electronic health and record system using energy efficient systems. This solution will transform the way laboratory results and other essential patient information is securely shared amongst health care practitioners across the province. The systems will provide faster access to patient information, reducing wait times for procedures and saving health care costs by reducing the occurrence of re-tests. One of the best SOA platforms is the Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS). Java CAPS includes the runtimes and tools an organisation needs to build and deploy enterprise SOA applications. Java CAPS delivers true SOA infrastructure with strong foundation of an application server, identity support and a portal interface providing flexible integration and interoperation across various organizations or departments.

IMPACT OF SOA ON A TRADITIONAL GOVERNMENT ENTERPRISE THE JAVA CAPS INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING:

In traditional IT architectures, business process activities, applications, and data are locked in independent, oftenincompatible ‘silos.’ Users have to navigate separate networks, applications, and databases to conduct the chain of activities that complete a business process. Independent silos absorb an inordinate amount of IT budget and staff time to maintain. A Services-Oriented Architecture delivers the data needed for business process activities as an integrated service. Users no longer have to log into multiple systems, search for relevant data, and integrate the results manually. The information appears as a single application, delivered on a single screen, all with a single login. The figure below shows an example of using a SOA for ePurchase system. Implementing SOA for e-Purchase can lead to shared collaborative services, which are integrated and interoperable.

SOA implementations globally have also been focusing on energy efficiency. As technology gets more complex, power consumption of IT infrastructure becomes a significant part of the total cost of ownership. In such circumstances, it is critical to focus on energy efficiency to reduce the total cost of ownership of IT. The second focus area is also reduction in the real estate footprint of the infrastructure, given the fact that real estate is a very important cost consideration. One of the best examples of SOA implementation is the province of British Columbia, who have built and are ov

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• • • • • • • • • • • •

Application-to-application integration B2B (translated to G2C, C2G) integration Business process management Workflow Composite application creation capabilities Single customer view (Single Citizen Portal) Enterprise connectors Portal server Application server Extract/transform and load (ETL) Directory server Access management. Java CAPS is a comprehensive platform based on open standards and can help government enterprises to develop and deploy SOA with flexibility and re-useabiliy of existing applications, new web services, integrating new and existing applications. It is also critical to have proper expertise to guide the SOA adoption process for governments. The skills required include assessing the environment for adopting an SOA, creating a detailed plan that meets the business and technical requirements, and help one achieve implementation success. A judicious choice of correct technology platform, appropriate SOA skills and proper government policies will ensure that governments are able to build SOA solutions that will ensure a better value of services delivered to the citizens and IT assets that have a longer productive life.

Jaijit Bhattacharya is Country Director, Government Strategy at Sun Microsystems and also an Adjunct Faculty at IIT Delhi. He is responsible for the creation of the next generation of solutions for the governments, based on open standards. Dr. Bhattacharya also advises governments on e-Governance strategies. He may be reached at Jaijit. Bhattacharya@Sun.com Ajay Ahuja works as Senior IT Architect and Technologist with Sun Microsystems India Pvt. Ltd. He has been involved in technology enablement initiatives along with designing and architecting solutions for various enterprises across Government, Education and Defence segments. He may be reached at Ajay.Ahuja@Sun.COM

COVER FEATURE: E-GOVERNANCE ARCHITECTURE

Relevance of IPV6 in e-Governance The Indian Scenario Nitin Gupta

e-Governance in India is still in nascent stages in comparison to developed nations. However it is going to come up in a big way. Government of India has ambitious plans for it. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recently asked the government to amend ISP licence definition IP addresses (to include 128-bit binary code, from 32-bit at present); to mandate the use of IPv6 in e-Governance, procurement and IT systems/ networks; set up National Internet Registry (NIR) and various test beds to help transition to new technologies.

PROBLEMS WITH IPV4

The major weakness of IPv4 (Internet Protocol Version 4) is its limited addressing space, as in this an address consists of just 32 bits. Address space is limited to 4 billion hosts in 167 million networks. The limitation is severed furthermore by classification of IP addresses into A-. B-, C-, D- and E-Class nets. The net classes define the ratio of subnets (e.g. enterprise networks, university networks) to hosts in the subnets. There is no resource (bandwidth) reservation (for timecritical data transmissions as audio and video). Also, there is the missing support for mobile servers. Mobile servers change IP address every time they connect to the internet. Estimated growth for Broadband and Internet subscribers in India envisaged through various technologies is as follows: Year ending

Internet subscribers

Broadband subscribers

2007

18 million

9 million

2010

40 million

20 million

Source: Broadband Policy 2004, Government of India, Department of Telecommunications

The above data shows that in the coming years IPv4 might not support the subscriber base efficiently.

WHAT IS IPV6

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer standard used by electronic devices to exchange data across a packetswitched internetwork. It follows IPv4 as the second version 24 }

of the Internet Protocol to be formally adopted for general use. Invented by Steve Deering and Craig Mudge at Xerox PARC, IPv6 was adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force in 1994, when it was called ‘IP Next Generation’ (IPng). (Incidentally, IPv5 was not a successor to IPv4, but an experimental flow-oriented streaming protocol intended to support video and audio.) IPv6 is intended to provide more addresses for networked devices, allowing, for example, each cell phone and mobile electronic device to have its own address. IPv4 supports 4.3×109 (4.3 billion) addresses, which is inadequate to give one (or more if they possess more than one device) to every living person. IPv6 supports 3.4×1038 addresses, or 5×1028 for each of the roughly 6.5 billion people alive today. Features of IPv6: • Larger address space (128 bits long) • Stateless autoconfiguration of hosts Multicast (both on the local link and across routers) is part of the base protocol suite in IPv6. This is in opposition to IPv4, where multicast is optional and only rarely deployed across routers. • Faster routing • Network-layer security

WHAT IS NEW IN IPV6?

The protocol adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network auto-configuration. A provision is included to allow easier auto-configuration of hosts and renumbering of the IP addresses in networks and sub-networks as needed without the need for manual configuration or DHCP. IPv6 improves scalability of multicast routing by adding a ‘scope’ field to multicast addresses. It also offers a new type of address, the ‘anycast addressing’ which improves the support for multicasting. This new kind of addressing basically says, ‘deliver this message to the easiest-to-reach member of this group,’ and potentially enables new types of messaging functionality. The new IP datagram format has been redefined and given new capabilities. The main header of each IP datagram has been streamlined, and support added for easily extending the header for datagrams requiring more controlled information. www.egovonline.net

IPv6 datagrams include Quality of Control (QoS) features, allowing better support for multimedia and other applications requiring QoS. Security support is designed into IPv6 using the authentication and encryption extension headers and other features. The way that fragmentation and reassembly of datagrams works has been changed in IPv6 to improve efficiency of routing and better reflect the realities of today’s networks. The IPv6 protocol is designed to support modern routing systems, and to allow expansion as the Internet grows.

and the region will soon run short of addresses. With the explosive growth of 3G devices in the region, it will have to look for options other than IPv4. The rest of the world is already much in action to implement IPV6. In Europe, two projects - 6NET and Euro61X - as well as 40 research projects are being conducted to test interoperability, and initiate deployment of advanced network services. Japan has allocated the equivalent of $70 million for IPv6 research and development, and South Korea is working on policies. Hence it is high time India must intensify its efforts in this line.

CONCLUSION

THE STRUCTURE OF AN IPV6 PACKET HEADER.

MAIN ADVANTAGES OF IPV6

Expand addressing capabilities; Server-less auto-configuration (plug-n-play) and e-Configuration; More efficient and robust mobility mechanisms; Built-in, strong IP-layer encryption and authentication; Streamlined header format and flow identification, and; Improved support for options/extensions The structure of an IPv6 packet header.

• • • • • • •

The existing version IPv4 with over 4-million 32-bit addresses is not sufficient to handle the enormous growth of Internet users, wireless subscribers, mobile devices, portable computers and wide range of IP-enabled devices that would be come to the market. The IPv6, Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF), solution to overcome the limitations of IPv4 comes with 128-bit address and many new and useful features. At present the Asia-Pacific region including India has not run out of IPv4 addresses. But the region will soon run short of addresses in comparison to the western world. It is high time that efforts (logistics, R&D etc.) are made out for transition from IPv4 to IPv6. The pervasiveness and development of the Internet, coupled with the emergence of mobile connectivity devices, is a phenomenon that has revolutionised communication. IPv6 as an emerging technology will change the way networking works, and will become the standard on which networking the Internet and communication will rest.

REFERENCES •

Sean Convery, Darrin Miller, “IPv6 and IPv4 Threat Comparison and Best Practice Evaluation (v1.0)” at http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/security_services/ciag/ documents/v6-v4-threats.pdf

TRANSITION MECHANISMS FOR IPV6

•

To coexist with an IPv4 infrastructure and to provide an eventual transition to an IPv6-only infrastructure, generally following mechanisms are used: • Dual IP layer • IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling and • Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure.

•

Press release from Press Information Bureau, India dated 28.02.2006

•

Consultation paper on Issues relating to Transition from IPV6 to IPV6 in India dated

Marc E. Fiuczynski, Vincent K. Lam Brian N. Bershad, “The Design and Implementation of an IPv6/IPv4 Network Address and Protocol Translator”

26.08.2005 by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) •

The article in The Times of India, New Delhi titled “TRAI wants Ipv6 usage in egovernance” dated 21.12.2005

•

Thorsten Brikey “Security Measures to couple mixed IPv4/IPv6 Networks over a pure IPv6 Infrastructure by making Use of NAT-PT”. SANS Institute (01.08.2003)

•

IS TRANSITION REALLY URGENT?

(http://www.dotindia.com/broadbandpolicy2004.htm) •

North America has enough IPv4 addresses to take them through many years compared to the Asia-Pacific region. The IPv4 addresses in Stanford University are more than those in China. This shows that the Asia-Pacific region has a shortage, as the US had taken a bulk of the capacity much earlier. This is the main reason for choosing the Asia-Pacific region ov

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Broadband Policy 2004, Government of India, Department of Telecommunications “IPv6: changing the way networking works”: Article in Network Magazine (July 2005) (www.networkmagazineindia.com)

Nitin Gupta (nitin1160@rediffmail.com / ngupta@iimidr.ac.in) is a Research Associate at Indian Institute of Management, Indore. His research interests are data mining, business intelligence and e-Commerce applications.

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Helping Build Information Infrastructure EMC

www.emc.com Please tell us about EMC and its growth and operations in India? EMC Corporation is the world’s leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organisations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. EMC is the 9th largest technology company in the world and 6th largest software company around the globe. EMC started its operation in India in October 2000 with a liaison office, which was converted into a wholly owned subsidiary in the year 2003. EMC has played a pivotal role in driving the growth of network storage market in India. EMC plans to invest USD 500 million by 2010, for the following areas: expanding storage market; research and development; and expanding marketing and sales operations. In the last quarter a lot of reception and business came from the government vertical.

janey_rajesh@emc.com

“EMC revolves around a very basic concept that information is the basic key for any government, private sector, etc. Information is the key; technology is only a piece or a way of using that information, processing that information, providing that information to somebody,” says Rajesh Janey, Vice President, North and East, EMC Data Storage (India) Private Limited, in coversation with egov magazine ov

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Please tell us about the vision of your company and your technology solutions? EMC helps customers in building information infrastructure. It revolves around a very basic concept that information is the basic key for any government, private sector, etc. Information is the key; technology is only a piece or a way of using that information, processing that information, providing that information to somebody. There are four main key ingredients in the information infrastructure:• Storage (allows you to share): It should match with the cost of information. • Protection against loss and against misuse • Optimisation of information • Leverage for sharing and linking information Store: Information infrastructure starts with storing information intelligently, and that’s what we do best. Its all about storing the right information at the right service level at the right cost. We have created the industry’s broadest range of tiered storage platforms, each a leader in its category. We have shown customers how to cost-optimise, how they use storage to meet their business requirements at the lowest overall cost. And we back it with the most comprehensive offering of services in the industry. We think that storage is the foundation of anyone’s information infrastructure. Protect: Information needs to be accessible at all times. A good information infrastructure should protect information availability at the right service level at the right time. We have built out the industry’s broadest array of technologies to do just 27

that. Whether its a single application, or your entire enterprise, thousands of customers depend on EMC to protect their information. We have gone farther than most vendors, by integrating our protection products to work well with the applications you use, like databases and emails. And we have gone even farther, and shown customers how to save money by archiving information, so there’s less to protect. Some of these technologies, like SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility), are tried and true. Others are newer. As an example, we believe that - over time – you will want to put more replication functions in the network. So we acquired a company-Kashya - that does all different kinds of protectionsynchronous, asynchronous, even continuous data protection- and does it in the network. Its now the new RecoverPoint product. Our goal here is simple - give you a wide range of capabilities to ensure access to information, and do it at the right cost. Optimise: We have talked about storing information, and protecting it - lets dig in to how we would like to help you optimise your information infrastructure. The first big idea is intelligent information management - its using the information to tell the infrastructure what to do. Imagine you are FedEx, and someone has taken the labels off all your packages. It would be a mess to manage, wouldn’t it? But that’s exactly what we ask IT to do - manage information without labels. So, we have been building technology that can look at a piece of information, and figure out what to do - automatically Some of our tools are for specific environments - things like EmailXtender, which can look at an email and automatically figure out what to do. We have got tools for large content repositories, like Documentum’s content storage services, which can use the metadata to figure out how to store and protect information during its lifecycle. Our latest tool in this category is Infoscape. It goes a step further by automatically discovering all the files in your environment, and looking at each one individually using a very powerful engine. 28

EMC STORAGE SOLUTION

Why look at every file, or every email, or every database record? Sometimes, there’s an opportunity to save money, by either deleting it, or at least moving it to another service level. Or add value, by making it searchable. But sometimes there’s a risk in that piece of information - a risk that needs to be managed. And you can not manage what you don’t know about. Another area where we think we can help is in optimising resources. We think virtualisation is the big news here, and we have been very busy assembling the core technologies we think customers will need. Virtualisation is what we call a ‘two-fer’. There’s two big payoffs with one investment. The first payoff is increased utilisation - get more work out of your application servers, or file servers, or storage arrays. But the bigger payoff is flexibility - the ability to move an application, or a file system, or a large database, and do it right in the middle of the production day without anyone

noticing. For IT guys, that’s huge. You are probably familiar with our VMware acquisition - it virtualises servers. We acquired Rainfinity to do the same thing with file systems. Instead of multiple, small file systems, you have now one big one, and you are free to move things around behind the scenes without users noticing. And we developed Invista working with our switch partners to do the same sorts of things with storage arrays. We have introduced two key pieces of technology that are changing the game for many of our customers. The first is nLayers, which is now the Smarts Application Discovery Manager. It sits on a network port, looks at every packet, and creates a high-definition real-time picture of your IT landscape. Every application, every server, every device and every relationship. What your world looks like, in real time, and without agents. Leverage: How can we use all this technology to give something back www.egovonline.net

to the business? How do we help IT leverage information in new ways? That is where Documentum fits in. It is one framework for unlocking the value of information you already own, and putting it to work in new ways. If you look under the covers, you will find a complete set of tools for capturing and classifying information - all types, and from all applications. You will find a powerful repository that organises metadata and helps manage access to information. And, most importantly, you will find a robust set of tools for creating new value from your information, such as • Create new applications, like a 360 degree view of customers. • Or help your company with enterprise-wide compliance and discovery. • Or manage workflow and collaboration to help get new products to market faster. • Or simply making everything intelligently searchable Any way you look at it, there’s a huge opportunity to create new value from the information you already own, and we have been investing to build the world’s best capabilities to help you do just that. Thus, EMC information infrastructure is a shared set of products, services, and best practices for storing, protecting, optimising, and leveraging information so that people can avoid the potentially serious risks and reduce the significant costs associated with managing information, while fully exploiting its value for business advantage. How do you protect information against unauthorised use? Up to now, the answer was usually to lock down the infrastructure. Lock down the PC, lock the network, lock the server, lock the database and so on. But that approach is reaching its limits, in today’s world, its not enough. Here’s why: The first problem is users – they are not tied to one location any more. They move. They use multiple devices from multiple locations. The second problem is information - its not tied to a single application anymore. It moves from place to place and use to use. We think that in a world where users and information are constantly moving, a new kind of ov

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security will be needed -informationcentric security -that protects sensitive information wherever it goes. To do this, we needed two key technologies: The first is identity and access management - the ability to have users prove who they are: authenticate, no matter where they are, and then, based on that unique identity, authorise what they can do and what information they have access to. That’s where RSA fits in - its the market leader. The second was data encryption, and technologies which use it, like digital rights management - to encrypt the information and wrap it in a secure envelope, no matter where it goes. Thats where other technologies from RSA, Authentica and Documentum fit in.

EMC information infrastructure is a shared set of products, services, and best practices for storing, protecting, optimising, and leveraging information so that people can avoid the potentially serious risks and reduce the signiﬁcant costs associated with managing information, while fully exploiting its value for business advantage

Together, you have got core capability that’s needed as information security evolves - being able to protect the information directly. And we think this will be extremely important in the future. How can one government department leverage information from some other government department ? In some of the cases it is happening, if you see, ministry of finance, bank will track your transaction. Some sort of information consolidation is thus, happening. I would say how you put that information together, is important. In that case a feedback search helps you, we need to move with the needs. Please elaborate a bit more on your other security solutions? Our security focus is not on parameters

(security from outside) but threat within that, where RSA protects you. Network intelligence does something called logs, today what is changing on the server whose keeping a track, each system is capable of generating network intelligence capture log and put it across as a common repository of logs. We have various products in this regard, but the fact remain that we are focused on security from within and not just from outside. This is a part, which is called Information Rights Management (IRM) and Digital Rights Mangement (DRM) and also part of our society. For example, I have a confidential presentation and you can only take one slide to show it to somebody and if you breach it. Here our products like IRM and DRM stops that, it would not allow it to happen (would not allow to copy). If I forward that mail, it will forward the mail without attachment. Similarly, if I want to send you a link which is not allowed to be sent, the mail will go without the link, so it’s a network security. Various other key technologies are deployed to protect this information like there are mails. Today there is an option to edit a forwarded mail. Through the products like IRM you can not edit the message or forward a PDF. It only restricts you, you cannot forward it. So those are the various things, RSA enable that. What are the goverment requirement for storage and how far they have interacted? Few of the government departments have brought our solutions, those have been mainly our protection platform, right and backup. In few cases, the government has focused on storage and protection (in the form of business continuity) or a back-up requirement and also in some cases security requirement. Recently in large government cases our security products have been acquired by our name. EMC is also very relevant for the e-Court Mission Mode Project in India, as there is a huge requirement of storing information in a format which is tamper proof. That is where our platforms like Centera come into force which complies to all regulatory guidelines. 29

EVENT DIARY

India Telecommunications Summit 2007 ‘The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will issue fresh guidelines for giving telecom licences to new applicants and additional spectrum to the existing telecom operators before 15th October 2007’, said Minister for Communcations and Information Technology, A Raja, while inaugurating the India Telecommunication Sumeet.

Fueled by the demand to meet the growing needs of the Indian telecoms industry, Beacon Events in Collaboration with Assocham (The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India), organised the 13th International Telecommunications Summit between 4-5th October 2007, Shangri-La Hotel, New Delhi, India. egov magazine was the media partner for the summit. The 2 day Summit was designed to address the requirements of telecom operators in India both local and international: • Competitively growing and expanding their networks in terms of coverage and capacity expansion • Increasing subscribers whilst ensuring profitable voice and data for the mass market in India • How much spectrum is really available and how it will be allocated • What are the new policies and regulations from the top that affect the Indian operators in terms of rural penetration, 3G and beyond, increase in FDI amongst other issues • What other revenue streams can operators look at The summit was inaugurated by both the Minister of Communications and IT, Shri A Raja and the Secretary, Department of Telecoms, Mr D S Mathur. During his 30 }

presentation, the Minister emphasised that his ministry was committed to creating infrastructure for mobile services in rural and remote areas through public-private partnership and announced that the government had targeted to reduce the urban-rural digital divide from current 25:1 to 5:1 by 2010. The Minister also said the government would provide connectivity to more than 14,000 villages in the remote areas through satellite phone terminals in which USO fund would be used for meeting operational expenditure on this initiative. The Minister added that the share of private sector in the telecom industry had increased from 57% in March 2006 to 65% in December 2006 – this jump shows the significant role of the private sector bringing about substantial dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit in the growth of the telecom sector. The summit attracted over 200 participants from local operators including Bharti Airtel, Bharat Sanchar Nigam, BT Global Services, Cable and Wireless, IDEA Cellular, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam, TATA Teleservices, VSNL, as well as senior executives from leading international companies

like Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, IBM, Nokia Siemens Networks, Intel, Motorola etc. For event details and full participant list, please visit www.India-Telecoms.com. www.egovonline.net

Understanding the Mobile Ecosystem

Image courtsey: www.fuzzyopinions.com

Broadband: Technology for High Speed Internet Access

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Leveraging Wireless Broadband for Accessibility Motorola

“Motorola in India has been closely involved with the Telecom Industry for over 20 years. Through our Home and Networks Mobility business, we are engaged with customers by offering network solutions to serve any technology path which customers may choose for delivery of wireless broadband services,” says Tarvinder Singh, HeadMarketing and Product Management, Home and Networks Mobility, Motorola India, in conversation with egov magazine 32

www.motorola.com/in

Motorola is the world leader in wireless and broadband communications. How is Motorola set to tap the huge demand for wireless broadband in India? Motorola is playing a leading role in commercialising WiMAX technology. We are presently engaged in executing over 12 commercial contracts and have in excess of 25 WiMAX trials running worldwide. We see WiMAX as an ideally suited technology for rapid proliferation of affordable broadband services particularly in emreging markets such as India. Motorola offers a complete WiMAX solution covering the network infrastructure needed in the core and access network, backhaul and a wide variety of fixed, nomadic and mobile end user devices. Motorola in India has been closely involved with the telecom industry for over 20 years. Through our home and networks mobility business, we are engaged with customers by offering network solutions to serve any technology path which customers may choose for delivery of wireless broadband services. In addition, Motorola mobile devices business provides handsets and other end user devices for delivering the broadband experience to end users regardless of whether an operator is evolving his business from CDMA2000 1X, 2G GSM or planning to build a comprehensive WiMAX network. Motorola also has partnerships with the leading industry players for delivering customised applications and content to enable an Operator’s business case and generate returns from investments made on wireless broadband access. Motorola globally has been amongst the pioneers in developing solutions based on next generation OFDM/OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access) technology. We believe our technological capabilities in new wireless technologies coupled with our keen understanding of the Indian market will help position Motorola as a strong contender for new technology wireless rollouts in 3G, WiMAX and LTE (long term evolution) over the years to come. Please tell us about some of the enterprise mobility solutions of Motorola. How is it helping government and enterprises to integrate, optimise and manage the networks to seamlessly stay connected? Motorola’s enterprise mobility business addresses the entire spectrum of enterprise mobility needs from the shop floor to the www.egovonline.net

How is Motorola capitalising the current trend to provide integrated end-to-end network systems? Motorola offers solutions for each part of an operator’s network. We have IP core network solutions such as IMS as well solutions for the access network and end user devices across the entire range of 3GPP, 3GPP2 and now WiMAX technologies. We also offer OSS and NMS solutions as well as customised applications and content. This gives us the unique ability to address the end to end requirements of our customers. Motorola continues to drive commercialisation of WiMAX technology by delivering end to end product solutions and deploying networks that meet the diverse needs of many types of operators worldwide. From the nationwide 802-16e network deployed in Pakistan to connect the previously unconnected, to the network it is building for Sprint to deliver a whole new personal mobile broadband experience, Motorola has proven itself to be a leading supplier of end-to-end WiMAX solutions. Motorola is also taking leadership in providing an array of multi-function broadband devices, some of which were showcased during the recent WiMAX World event in Chicago in September 2007 like Motorola’s trial WiMAX mobile handset developed for high speed video telephony and laptops enabled with Motorola’s WiMAX PC cards.

MOTOwi4 includes WiMAX, fixed-canopy, WiFi mesh, and indoor broadband solutions for private and public networks. All of the MOTOwi4 solutions complement each other and can be deployed to meet the specific requirements for public and private networks. Understanding the diverse market requirements, Motorola has launched complete suite of broadband solutions under MotoWi4 in India. The main components of the MotoWi4 solution are as follows: Wi4 WiMAX solutions, which include both mobile and fixed capabilities, and utilise a high performance, standards-based broadband access portfolio that operates in licensed frequencies. Motorola offers end to end solution based on the latest 802.16e standards including the multi-function user devices like outdoor CPE, ondoor CPE, PC cards and going forward will also be offering multi-mode mobile handsets. Wi4 Fixed solutions include Point-to-Point solutions that provide cost-effective network bridges and extensions, transmitting data with maximum reliability even under the harshest conditions; and point-to-multipoint solutions that deliver scalable, interferenceresistant, high-speed connectivity to multiple residential, business, institutional or municipal locations. Motorola provides globally proven canopy solutions for unlicensed frequencies and advanced expedience solutions for licensed spectrum. The canopy solution has been widely deployed in India to serve many requirements including delivery of e-Governance services. Wi4 Mesh solutions provide for un-licensed spectrum deployment based on 802.11b/g standards to enable the operators to offer cost-effective citywide and enterprise-wide wireless broadband connectivity. Wi4 Mesh networks also offers high-speed fixed and mobile coverage for all types of enterprise environments. They also help municipalities provide high-speed wireless connectivity that enables universal public access, stronger public safety systems and increased public works productivity. We are presently deploying such solutions in leading university campus environment in India. Wi4 Indoor solutions consist of enterprise WLAN solutions that deliver high-speed indoor connectivity and mobility, and Broadband-over-Powerline (BPL) solutions that serve multi-unit sites by delivering cost-effective broadband connectivity over a building’s electrical system with access as close as the nearest electrical outlet. In summary, the MOTOwi4 portfolio of integrated wireless broadband solutions empowers service providers to capture, connect, communicate and control IP-based end-to-end voice, video and data in real time both indoors and outdoors. It enables services for fixed, portable, nomadic and mobile deployments. All of these solutions come with support from Motorola services, one of the industry’s comprehensive support services to help the operators in maximising the returns from the network investments.

What are some of your solutions for wireless broadband? Which are the regions in India where these solutions are being deployed? Motorola’s MOTOwi4 is a comprehensive portfolio of wireless broadband solutions and services that delivers and extends coverage. With this unique portfolio comes innovative end-toend solutions and delivery of IP coverage to virtually all spaces.

Motorola has established WiMax ecosystem for creating a city-wide broadband network in Taiwan and Bahrain, among others. Does your company has similar plans for Indian cities? Please provide an update on this. We have commercially available 16e products available for deployments in a wide range of frequency bands and profiles identified by the WiMAX forum for WiMAX services. Motorola

corner office, providing workers with access to information out in the field, in the factory, at cash registers, at a patient’s bedside and throughout the supply chain. The end result is seamless information exchange across functions, geographies and devices that allows employees to make more informed decisions, be more productive and gain a competitive edge. The enterprise mobility business offers a device portfolio ranging from mobile office devices like the Motorola Q to rugged mobile and wearable computers. In this business Motorola is a leader in enterprise wireless infrastructure (WLAN), field network solutions, bar code scanning, radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions and network design and management software, including security applications. A comprehensive mobility management platform enables CIOs and IT leaders to secure and manage mobile devices across the enterprise, delivering a platform to rapidly deploy applications and collaboration tools to increase worker productivity and efficiency. In India verticals like retail, airlines, airports, railways etc., are currently the users of Motorola enterprise mobility products and solutions. In addition, Motorola enterprise mobility devices utilises capabilities gained through Motorola’s recently completed acquisition of ‘Good Technology’. Good technology’s wireless messaging, data access and handheld security offerings provide intuitive and advanced productivity solutions for mobile professionals with enterprise-level device security and management.

November 2007

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

is already playing a leading role globally with early adopters of WiMAX technology such as Sprint in the US, Wateen in Pakistan and are engaged with deploying these systems worldwide having bagged over 12 commercial contracts and presently involved with over 25 trials. In India, Motorola is engaged with potential operators and industry stakeholders. We are confident that the government will soon announce the policy and spectrum allocation guidelines for large scale deployment and adoption of wireless broadband services. Motorola is well equipped to play a significant role in shaping the Indian broadband wireless access landscape by serving the needs of both urban and rural markets. While spectrum allocations are awaited for large scale standards based WiMAX deployments in India, Motorola’s unlicensed band canopy solution is being widely deployed in country both for urban and rural market applications. Canopy point-to-point solutions are being used by enterprise and service providers for providing high capacity, reliable links in unlicensed bands. Canopy point to multipoint deployments and WiFi mesh solutions are increasingly becoming popular for cost effective last mile connectivity in various SWAN projects and enterprise campus locations across the country. Motorola is in collaboration with ITC e-Chaupal for mobile phones. How is this partnership working in the direction of realising the goal of government of India’ to connect the unreached? Motorola is partnering with ITC e-Chaupal for the distribution of low and mid-tier mobile phones and through this partnership enabling the communication connectivity in the rural India. Please tell us some of your future plans in providing wireless broadband and WiMax deployment in India. As a corporation, Motorola has chosen WiMAX as a technology of strategic importance. We believe WiMAX will be an important

vehicel for the delivery of cost effective wireless broadband services in all user segments and environments. Broadband services in India will evolve with time from fixed, to nomadic to full mobility personal broadband over time. Motorola is well positioned to serve it’s target customers with business planning and consulting services as well as with the products and solutions needed to execute their foray into wireless broadband services using WiMAX technology. We see a wide variety of applications being delivered over WiMAX technology in both urban and rural markets with each having their own identity. In the urban markets, we anticipate the focus of operators will be on serving enterprise and residential users with a much enhanced user experience and set of applications to serve their communication, information and entertainment requirements. In the rural market segment, broadband services can be an effective tool for connecting the unconnected where presently there is very limited or no access to broadband services. We believe the initial thrust will be on delivering health, education, information and governance related services so as to better connect these large segments of our population and equip them with a means to better their awareness and economic livelyhood. Existing cellular service providers planning to upgrade to 3G networks in urban cities can also benefit from WiMAX solutions. Upgrades to 3G will predominantly yield the much needed capacity for adding more voice susbcribers onto their networks. By leveraging the spectrum efficient radio access and IP-core networks of WiMAX, operators will be able to cost-effectively dedicate their 3G spectrum for analog voice and medium-end data services, while using WiMAX to deliver large broadband IP-based multimedia to improve profitability. In summary, it is our view that WiMAX renders itself as a promising way forward to help emerging markets like India unleash the true potential of affordable wireless broadband access for all.

Nokia Siemens Receives BSNL Rural Village Contract Nokia Siemens Networks has received a rural tender from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) to deploy broadband access across 7,000 Indian villages. Nokia Siemens Networks has signed a two year agreement with BSNL for supply, installation and commissioning, training, and annual maintenance of the project. The ﬁrst phase of new lines deployment would be completed by ﬁrst quarter of 2008. The new access network’s high bandwidth will allow BSNL to deliver high data and triple play intensive services such as video on

demand, video multi-cast, IPTV, video conferencing and VPN among others to its customers. The network will also enable BSNL to provide connectivity to Community Service Centres and other e-Governance locations. In parallel, the company is also deploying the urban broadband access for BSNL across 15 circles. The ﬁrst phase of that roll-out is in advance stages of completion for 800,000 ports.

GOOGLE LAUNCHES SMS SERVICE IN INDIA After acquiring Finland based ﬁrm Jaiku, which makes mobile phone applications for text messaging, Google is ready to provide SMS service for mobile phone users in India. The service would be available on Airtel, Aircel, BPL, BSNL and Reliance networks. With this service, users can search for business listings, movie show times and any other useful information while on the move. By selecting a standard location, users can also obtain location-speciﬁc data. It has relevant local data for mobile users in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. A text message will carry the query, and the search results will arrive at the mobile’s inbox in the form of an SMS. Aircel, Reliance and BPL users need to pay INR 3 for every message, while Airtel users pay INR 2. BSNL post-paid customers would be charged 80 paise and pre-paid users would need to pay INR 1.

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NEWS TRAI SEEKS LIBERALISATION OF TELECOM INFRA POLICY The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is further seeking for liberalisation of the Standing Advisory Committee on Radio Frequency Allocation (SACFA) policy to enhance tele-density in India. TRAI wants operators to start operating cell sites immediately after submitting their applications. TRAI also urged the government to accord clearance for new infrastructure within two months. In case, no communication is received within its stipulated time frame, TRAI needs permission to treat the application as ‘approved’. Simpliﬁed policy will help operators to double their existing infrastructure in the next 12-18 months. The mobile operators are also looking at the growing infrastructure in line with the government’s intention of offering 500 million connections in the next three years from the present around 200 million. Currently India has 17.3 percent wireless tele-density. There are around 120,000 towers in the country and it is expected to increase to 300,000 by the the end of 2010.

PTCL LAUNCHES INTERNET SERVICE ON LANDLINE NETWORK IN PAKISTAN The national telecom company of Pakistan, Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited (PTCL) has launched a metered Internet Service on its nationwide telephonic landline network at a ﬂat rate of INR 0.10 per minute operative in all Provincial Capitals of the country. PTCL is offering “phone-n-net” service as the most convenient landline Internet solution for its subscribers that converts a user’s phone into a basic Internet connection enabling no hassle, direct Internet access. Users can also enable code barring to restrict Internet access. The service is currently available in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad while it will be enabled on all landlines nationwide in a short span of time. Users may simply connect to the Internet by plugging their PTCL telephone lines into their computer’s modems and login to a generic usage account with the login id “PTCL” and password “ptcl” while dialing an ISP dial-up access number “13177777”. The billing appears on regular telephone utility bills distributed on a monthly basis to PTCL subscribers.

DoT PLANS TO OPEN 3G FOR FOREIGN PLAYERS The Department of Telecom (DoT) has declared that any operator, including foreign operators, will be eligible to bid for 3G spectrum when these frequencies are auctioned by the Government of India. The DoT has marked a change in TRAI’s (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) recommendation that only existing operators be allowed to bid for 3G spectrum during the auction. All the new applicants and foreign ﬁrms can bid for 3G spectrum during the auction. Since 3G spectrum can be used both for voice and high-speed data applications, so any new player who wins the bid for 3G spectrum can also enter the traditional voice and SMS market.

November 2007

SOLDIERS USE IPODS AS LANGUAGE LEARNING TOOL iPod is becoming a new tool for soldiers of Iraq. They are using iPods with Vcommunicator mobile to translate Arabic into English. The software of the iPod contains a few hundred words and phrases. It organises everything into various situations that a soldier in Iraq may face, including vehicle checkpoints, medical triage, and many others. The software then displays useful phrases, offers the phonetic spelling, and Arabic script for those phrases. The software can also speak the phrase through an attached speaker. Soldiers can also add their own phrases and can upload maps or other useful images. It runs on several different types of iPod.

OBREGON DEPLOYS FIRST CITY-WIDE WI-FI NETWORK IN MEXICO The Sonora Institute of Technology (ITSON) Public University is deploying a multi-user, multi-application Wi-Fi network covering 23 square miles of Obregon, Mexico. The wireless network, which uses the Tropos MetroMesh solution is part of the state and federally-owned university’s initiative to create a knowledgebased and more productive economy in the region. The university is investing in two technology parks in Obregon; one is a university-owned agri-business park and the other is a software park that is a partnership with state and local governments and in the city’s wireless network. The wireless network will cover the technology parks and most of Obregon to help improve the local economy and create

an attractive outsourcing opportunity for international technology companies. In the ﬁrst phase, the network is being deployed to support simultaneous services, applications and content offered from the city’s “Obregon Digital” portal accessible via laptops, PDAs and smart phones. Elementary schools will also be tied into the network for computer curriculum classes. In addition, the network will be used for public safety. The city’s Water Department will replace the current communication infrastructure system for the department’s branches. In addition, an automated water meter reading pilot is being implemented to evaluate telemetry for industrial, commercial and residential consumption. 35

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Towards Connectivity for All Hughes

proach@hughes.in “The National e-Governance Programme of India will help bring the benefits of ICT to rural citizens and enable to access digital services and eliminate the digital divide. Hughes’ objective is to not only provide basic connectivity to rural areas but also deliver value added services like interactive vocational education, telemedicine and e-Commerce services.” Read this and more in this exclusive interview with Pranav Roach, President, Hughes Network Systems India Ltd. What is the vision and objectives of Hughes endeavour of providing connectivity to cities and rural areas in India? How is it aligned to the goals of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of the government of India? Hughes is the world’s leading provider of broadband satellite services, products, and network soluions. Hughes provides 36

www.hughesindia.com broadband satellite networks and services for large enterprises, governments, small businesses, and consumers – in over 100 countries. HughesNet encompasses all broadband solutions and managed services, bringing the best of satellite and terrestrial technologies. Its broadband satellite products are based on the IpoS (IP over Satellite) global standard, approved by the TIA (Telecommunication Industry Association), ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), and ITU (International Telecommunication Union) standards organisations. Given some key factors like – the size of our country and lack of adequate communication infrastructure in the rural areas and problems (both from a technical perspective and cost) associated with building terrestrial infrastructure in rural areas; coupled with the ubiquitous nature of satellite coverage, Hughes believes that satellite technology is best suited to deliver communication services to rural India. The National e-Governance Programme of India will help bring the benefits of ICT to rural citizens and enable to access digital services and eliminate the digital divide. Hughes’ objective is to not only provide basic connectivity to rural areas but also deliver value added services like interactive vocational education, telemedicine and e-Commerce services. Hughes is participating in the NeGP program and expects to provide connectivity and more importantly also value added services to energise the rural India. Hughes is in partnership with government and other industry plays in establishing Internet kiosks as part of the common service centres core component of the NeGP. Please tell us about this initiative of yours. Hughes currently operates broadband kiosks or centres nationwide across 250 towns and provides interactive vocational education programs, internet access and other value added services such as pre-paid mobile top-ups, rail ticketing, low-cost air ticketing, etc. In addition, Hughes is participating in the NeGP and expects to enable e-Governance services over its network. In the next 6 –12 months we expect to connect over 10,000 centres across the country. Hughes is also working with several industry players to bring digital services and the benefits of ICT to rural markets and citizens. What are some of the unique features of the broadband services being provided by the Hughes Fusion? One key aspect is the ease of deployment across the country and availability of relevant services and applications in a cost effective manner. What this means is that the broadband centers can be set up quickly irrespective of location and offer users identical experience. Satellite technology is very good for multicast applications and as www.egovonline.net

such interactive or live learning is an excellent service. All services are integrated with service providers for enabling transactions, billing and payment settlement in a transparent manner. Hughes systems enable a variety of services including: • Broadband Internet access • VoIP (voice over Internet protocoal) telephony • Multicast data delivery • Multimedia, including MPEG video and digital video record capabilities How important do you think is the public-private-partnership (PPP) mode of implementation of e-Governance projects? What are some of your company’s government sector partnerships currently going on? Very important. PPP as a mode for implementation of eGovernance projects is the right way to ensure availability of ICT services to the underserved areas. The major difficulty associated with providing services in the underserved regions in the financial viability of delivering services which can be significantly overcome in this mode. Hughes has been in the Indian market for a decade now, being one of the first global telecom company to enter India. What edge does your company has over other market players in the field of network and communication technologies? Hughes has been operating in the Indian market for over two decades and has been successful in building several companies which have built infrastructure on the ground. Our services and solutions enable government networks, private networks like banks, stock exchanges and rural networks and now underserved areas in rural India. Hughes is a recognised brand and a trusted services provider. Please tell us how security of information is being achieved.

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Security is a very important aspect. Every Hughes HN System comes with standard DES encryption for data and Triple DES encryption for key distribution on the outroute carrier. The Hughes network today serves a variety of mission critical services for government departments, banks and stock exchanges and other large enterprises where security is a critical feature. Please tell us about the Hughes MobileSat system for global connectivity in realising the goal of any where, any time access. In a world of modern communications, staying connected to family, friends, or the office is no longer an option—it is a necessity. In today’s global business world, access to critical corporate information is essential for success. The challenge of global connectivity with anywhere, anytime access cannot be met by terrestrial solutions alone. Wherever people go, their need for instant access to voice communications and data must be addressed with 21st century technology. For more than 40 years, the HUGHES has been a pioneer in developing satellite technology and global satellite systems for businesses and consumers. Hughes Network Systems is a global market leader in transportable satellite networks and terminals. Hughes provides network solutions and user terminals to the world’s dominant operators in the mobile satellite business. From high-speed BGAN transportable voice and data terminals for Inmarsat, to dual-mode mobile handsets, Hughes is meeting the communications needs of the global community. The Indian telecommunications market is emerging to be a huge market. What are some of your future plans to expand in this market? We plan to bring access of digial services – interactive education, telemedicines and e-Commerce services in the underserved areas and the rural markets.

National Seminar on Knowledge Management & Enabling Technologies Saturday, November 17th, 2007, 09.30 Hrs. At Auditorium Institute of Technology & Science Mohan Nagar, Ghaziabad (U.P.), India Last Date of Registration: 14th Nov 2007 Hurry , Join now! For Registration details log on to http://www.itsgzb.ac.in/kmet/

November 2007

STATE FOCUS:MADHYA PRADESH

e-Governance Initiatives in Madhya Pradesh http://mp.gov.in Anurag Jain

Madhya Pradesh, India’s second largest state, lies across the very heart of the country, occupying an area of 3,08,144 sq. km. Surrounded by five states - Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan. Its central location in India, has remained a crucible of historical currents from North, South, East and West. Its central location makes the state a strategic hub with many logistical advantages. Easy reach, convenient travel and good connectivity make Madhya Pradesh a choice destination.

IT POLICY

Foreseeing the opportunity of growth in the Information Technology sector, Madhya Pradesh government had announced its IT policy way back in 1999. The policy ushered the state into the 21st century. The objectives of IT policy are as follows: • Improve the life of the common man leveraging the strengths of e-Governance • Attracting investment in the sector so that the educated youth is able to contribute to the development of the State • Create a pool of highly skilled professionals who are at par with the best in the country. • Transforming Resource Based Economy to Knowledge Based Economy.

E- GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES OF GOVERNMENT OF MADHYA PRADESH

Government of Madhya Pradesh in the last two to three years has implemented several e-governance projects. State’s IT policy emphasizes induction of IT in all walks of government functioning with focus on masses and aims to leverage IT for transparency and better governance. The following are major projects that have been undertaken; Commercial Tax Department: The department is the largest revenue-earning department of the government of Madhya Pradesh. A comprehensive computerisation project which offers instant information access of the dealers and also offers major processes of the department ‘on-line’ has been implemented. Department’s internal functions such as payroll, pension related activities, personal information processing has also been made on line. Treasury and Accounts: Integrated Treasuries 38 }

Computerization Project (ITCP) is a major e-Governance initiative by Government of Madhya Pradesh. While its coverage extends to entire state (229 locations), through 53 district treasuries, 159 sub-treasuries, serving almost 8000 drawing and disbursing officers belonging to all departments of the State Government the facility provided in this project. The project won Golden Icon Award for the exemplary Horizontal Transfer of ICT based Best Practice for the year 2007. Land Records: State of Madhya Pradesh has prepared a database of Land records in the country. In the State of M.P. the Land Records of all revenue villages have been computerized, i.e. the textual data of land records are 100% converted into electronic form. Computerised land records are updated on regular basis with the facility of automatic weekly backup. Thirty Five million Khasra (Plot/Survey) numbers comprising of 11 million Landowners have been computerized. Directorate of Technical Education: Directorate of Technical Education, Madhya Pradesh act as coordinating agency between Government, Industry and Institutions and to advice and assist the Government in the all round development of technical education. Letter entry system, Pay bill System, Admission Systems, Gradation System, Court System, MIS System and Budget System works towards the e-Governance initiative. Transport Department: This project aims to computerise transport department’s activities by issuing Smart Cards for Driving Licenses and Vehicle Registration. The project was implemented on BOO (Build Own Operate) basis by a service provider. MP is pioneer state in usage of IT for better service delivery on PPP model. Presently all activities of RTO offices are computerised. Information of vehicles registered in MP available via SMS & Internet. Citizen friendly site: www. mptransport.org. Mandi Board: The project is modeled on public private partnership basis. The project empowers the farmers with the latest information on the rates, arrivals etc. in the neighboring state / national Mandis. This not only improved the effectiveness of trading in the Mandis but also brought transparency in the Mandi operations Received several e-gov awards (Golden Icon, CSI, Development Gateway etc) Urban Administration and Development Department: In Madhya Pradesh following cities have taken initiatives in e-Governance and has resulted in improved public service delivery Indore, Bhopal, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Khandwa, , Ujjain Raisen, Dabra, Balaghat. Krishinet: Krishinet project is developed for strengthening www.egovonline.net

/ promotion of ICT at the State, District, Agricultural Block and grass root level and departments for faster information exchange / dissemination. e-Tendering in Madhya Pradesh: As part of its e - Governance plan for state of Madhya Pradesh and as an effort to standardize the procurement process, the State Government decided to implement an Electronic Tendering solution for use by all its departments/PSUs and authorized Madhya Pradesh Agency for Information Technology (MAP_IT) to select a suitable service provider for the implementation. Department of Registration & Stamps: This Department is responsible for the stamps and registration of various types of documents, mostly related to property transfer in the State. Mponline: The Government of Madhya Pradesh has developed its online citizen services portal by the Joint venture company of Government of Madhya Pradesh and TATA Consultancy Services Limited. MPOnline on the lines of the Vision of the GoMP, provides citizen services in the areas of health, education, agriculture, government services, and business to the majority masses in the Rural Madhya Pradesh. State’s ICT Initiatives in Education: The state strongly believes that information and communication technology can yield significant outcomes in improving the quality of education. Headstart – A Computer Aided Learning Program for Students and Teachers: Under the District Primary Education Programme, the State in the year 2000, initiated a computer-enabled education programme called “Headstart”. The programme uses computer as a teaching learning tool at elementary education level. Edusat - Connecting the Isolated: Edusat - the satellite launched by Indian Space Research Organisation, Ahmedabad, is full of communication technology potentials in terms of provision of video/data broadcast using the DVB-RCS technology. The State strongly believes that the potential of Edusat should be utilised at the optimum level in the school education sector. In collaboration with IGNOU and ISRO, Initiative for Edusat supported elementary education program was started on December 17th 2005. As of date, 700 schools in Sidhi district and 30 schools in Jabalpur district have been provided ROT facilities. Based on the research findings, the program shall be reviewed and modified accordingly. Common Services Center (Csc) Project: The Government of India has formulated the National E-Governance Plan with the vision of providing all government services in an integrated manner at the doorstep of the citizen, at an affordable cost. The NeGP envisions a three pillar model for delivery of “web-enabled Anytime, Anywhere access” to information and services in rural India. These are: Common Services Centers (CSCs), State Wide Area Networks (SWANs) , National Data Bank/ State Data Centres (SDCs). The CSC Scheme, as approved by the Government of India. CSCs operates as the front-end delivery points Madhya Pradesh State has about 55,000 villages. A total of 9232 CSCs is being set by January 2009, one for every six villages spread over entire 48 districts of the State, when the Scheme gets fully implemented. State Wide Area Network (SWAN) Project: The Deptt. of IT Govt. of India has approved the project for establishment ov

November 2007

of State Wide Area Network up to block level in MP at a cost of Rs.174.21 Crores. The establishment of SWAN will be extremely helpful in providing reliable connectivity for various e-Governance applications of different departments. The project envisages connecting all block headquarters to the State Capital through districts & commissionaires. M.P. State Electronics Dev. Corporation Ltd has been designated as the implementing agency of the project. The first installment of the grant has been received by MPSEDC. Swan will be in place by December 2008. Appointment of CIOs, Creation of Web sites by Deptts. & Training: With the efforts of IT Department, presently, around 30 departments/ agencies have appointed their Chief Information Officers (CIOs). This initiative is expected to contribute in having a nodal officer for IT activities in the department, making an IT Plan of the department, Sub head for IT- for allocation of resources etc. IT department is coordinating with various departments to have their websites/ portals for better delivery of information and services to citizens. Department also conducts seminars, workshops and organizes training programs to create awareness among senior officers of the Government about IT, its uses and how IT can improve governance. National e-governance Plan (NeGP): The capacity gaps are identified in the Capacity Building Roadmap and the amount of money required for sustaining these activities are elaborated in the Detailed Project Report.MAP_IT has been identified as the State e-Governance Mission Team [SeMT] which shall act as a catalyst for e-Governance projects. It is also expected to play the role of a friend philosopher and guide. National Informatics Centre [NIC]: NIC, Madhya Pradesh State Centre has played a big role in providing e-Governance solutions to the state. It provides State-Of-Art Networking Solutions for the establishment of Internet/Intranet/ Extranet and providing specialized services over specialized technologies such as LAN/WAN/Wireless/VSAT/Leased Line/ Dialup etc. NIC, Madhya Pradesh is connected over 2x4 Mbps Leased Line with Head Quarter (HQ) and 44 District locations are connected over 2 Mbps Leased Line with State HQ. Video Conferencing: Video Conferencing services are operational since September 2004. NIC has established Video Conferencing Studios at 48 District locations, Secretariat, CM Residence and State HQ. On an average 35 Video Conferencing sessions are held per month and Madhya Pradesh is the highest among all states in the utilization of VC Services. Utilization of Video Conferencing Services has been registered in the Limca Book of Records. Mail Messaging, Internet and VPN Services: NIC has provided approximate 5000 E-mail and 300 Internet accounts for the various Government Officials. NICNET/Internet services have also been extended to various Bhawans like M.P. Vidhan Sabha, Mantralaya, Satpura Bhawan, Academy of Administrations and Narmada Valley Development Authority over Wireless. e-PDMS (Public Distribution Monitoring System) for Directorate of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Protection, Bhopal: In order to strengthen the Public Distribution System, under government of India notification 39

STATE FOCUS: MADHYA PRADESH

for PDS (control), NIC, State Unit Bhopal has developed a Computer-based system for Directorate of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Protection, M.P. e-CCENAIS [Crop Cutting Experiments for National Agricultural Insurance Scheme]: National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) was introduced in the country from the 1999-2000 Rabi seasons, replacing the Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme (CCIS) which was in operation in the country since 1985. e-PROOFS (Electronic Processing of Firms & Societies) for Registrar, Firms and Societies, M.P., Bhopal: The system (e-PROOFS) deals with the computerization of the Registration process and other activities of Societies and Firms at the Registrar’s office, M.P. Agricultural Marketing Information System Network (Agmarknet): AGMARKNET caters to the availability of prompt and reliable market information about arrivals and prices of commodities which considerably improves the decision making capability of the farmers and strengthens their bargaining power. PANCHLEKHA: A Panchayat Raj Institution Accounting System Software (PRIAsoft). Designed, developed and implemented in most of the districts of Madhya Pradesh since 2005. The system is aimed at efficient management and monitoring of funds at Janpad Panchyat, Zilla Panchayat & State Head Quarters and is empowering the administrators to monitor the fund receipt, availability and expenditure at all four-tier administrative setup of PRIs. Result Processing System for Rajya Sikhsa Kendra, Bhopal: Designed and developed to Computerize basic students information, processing of results (for 5th and 8th class Board Examination) followed by subsequent dissemination of information on Internet and generation of Analytical Reports. Successfully implemented in 38 districts of Madhya Pradesh since September 2006. e-Gram Suvidha: Implemented in Collectorate / Zila Panchayats of 5 districts (Chhatarpur, Bhopal, Mandla, Dhar & Damoh). e-GRAM Suvidha is a Geomatics-based Decision Support System towards creation and management of facilities at village level in rural areas. It covers about 20 facilities organized under 10 major sectors like Education, Health, Communication and Roads etc. Departmental Monitoring System in Mantralaya, M.P.: It is the Intranet based System which allows all the Departments at Mantralaya, M.P. to access the information pertaining to CM letters, CS references, Cabinet Decisions, CM Announcements and other related information and update its status over the net. The information is retrieved by all the concerned for the monitoring purposes. G2G system, Information Retrieval, Updation of the Status and Speedy Disposal of Matters Computerisation of the Office of Chief Minister: Implemented in Office of Chief Minister , Govt. of MP. Lot of Computerisation is done in the office of the chief minister. This includes development of softwares for keeping track of mail received from Public & its representatives, monitoring of CM Announcements and implementation of Manifesto, Maintenance of C.M. Relief Fund , Monitoring of Announcements made by the Hon’ble CM and petitions received during Jan Darshan Programme. 40

Computerisation of Office of Chief Secretary: The office of the Chief Secretary being the office of head of administration deals with various important issues. The various softwares developed and implemented for the purpose of monitoring. These includes Mail Monitoring System, Cabinet Decision Monitoring System and File Monitoring System. PARAKH (Basic Services/Amenities Management System): Government of Madhya Pradesh, recognizing the fact that access to minimum level of social infrastructure facilities must be an integral part of a strategy for improving the quality of life of the people and for eradicating poverty. GoMP has introduced the Basic Services/Amenities Management System called “PARAKH” for improving the delivery of the Basic Services/Amenities in Rural Areas of the state. For this purpose, a computerized system for maintaining the Basic Services/Amenities is put into place. Web-based RuralSoft Monitoring System: RuralSoft is a computerized Web-based monitoring system for monthly progress of various developmental schemes of Department of Rural Development, Government of Madhya Pradesh. WaterSoft (PHEMIS): Watersoft (PHEMIS) is a Web-based solution for effective management of Water Resources , Schemes/Programmes (Rural/Urban Water Supply Schemes), Equipment Information, Water Quality, Contractor Information, Material & Stores, Total Sanitation Campaign, Finance & Works Accounting. There are some more projects in the pipeline awaiting its implementation by NIC.

OUTCOMES

Some of the major outcomes of adopting e-Governance are as follows: • The citizen benefits because there is transparency, efficiency and integrity in his dealings with the government; furthermore, there is easy information access. Convergence of services and delivery mechanism for deserving beneficiaries and vulnerable groups and extending outreach. • The government benefits because it reduces redundancy and duplication. The processes of data collection, analysis and audit are made much easier. Decision making gets expedited and there can be tremendous improvements in specialised areas such as criminal justice, transport etc. • The business community benefits because e-Governance can become a catalyst and a channel for e-Business, Furthermore a web-based government will enable tax paying online, reduce corruption and bending of laws. We at Madhya Pradesh envision the commitments made to the citizens and works for nurturing our dreams come true. Anurag Jain, Secretary to Chief Minister and Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh, He may be reached at jain.anurag@mp.nic.in

www.egovonline.net

COUNTRY FOCUS: UGANDA

DistrictNet

Decentralisation Process at the Local Government Level

www.iicd.org

Dr. Victor Van Reijswoud, Arjan De Jager

Governance operates at the cross roads between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and government processes. In order to be successful, eGovernance must be firmly embedded in the existing government processes, must be supported, both politically and technically, by the governments, and must provide users with reasons to use these services. In this article, we evaluate DistrictNet, an ongoing e-Governance programme in Uganda, which tries to support the decentralisation process at the local government level through the use of ICT. The achievements of the programme are presented and evaluated. On the basis of this evaluation, we elicit lessons that can be used to guide similar programmes at the local government levels in the developing world.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESSFUL E-GOVERNANCE

Governments in the developing world are under international pressure to increase transparency, support decentralisation, decrease corruption and participate in global digital information sharing, and national pressure from the private sector and citizens for better services and increased transparency. e-Governance programmes can be a powerful tool for bringing change to government processes in the developing world by using ICT’s to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of organisations and enabling developing nations to align their processes with best practices from the developed world. The United Nations defines eGovernment as “a government that applies ICT to transform its internal and external relationships” (United Nations, ov

November 2007

2003). ICT allows a government’s internal and external communications to gain speed, precision, simplicity, outreach and networking capacity, leading to reduced costs and increased effectiveness. In addition, it can equip people for genuine participation in an inclusive political process. Richard Heeks makes distinction between three domains of e-Governance: eAdministration, which focuses on improving the internal workings of the public sector; e-Services, which focus on improving the relationship between the government and its citizens; and e-Society, which extends to the other domains by focusing on

develop an on-line presence, (2) the ability that governments have to use ICTs and create that on-line presence, and (3) the reasons for people to use ICTs to communicate with the government.

DISTRICTNET

Uganda’s DistrictNet programme began in 2002 and has completed its pilot cycle. The programme has officially been handed over to the four pilot districts in February 2007. DistrictNet’s goal was to improve the transparency of local government and to support decentralisation through the use of ICT. Until May 2005, the programme was fostered by Uganda’s Ministry of Local Government (MoLG), with financial support of Development Fund for International Development (DFID) and International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). The Districts became fully responsible for implementation of the programme from May 2005. DistrictNet emerged from a roundtable conference organised by IICD and Uganda Communications Commission FIGURE 1: OVERLAPPING DOMAINS OF E-GOVERNMENT (UCC) themed ‘ICT for Rural (ADAPTED FROM HEEKS, 2001) Development.’ DistrictNet aims to achieve five overall goals: increased availability of institutional stakeholders to build management information; increased durable partnerships and social and coordination between headquarters economic communities. e-Society was and sub-counties; reduced costs of not within the scope of the DistrictNet coordination between headquarters and sub-counties; improved IT skills programme. Successful e-Government depends among users; and increased availability on several principles, which can be of public information. The programme grouped, broadly, into (1) the reasons has been implemented in four districts that governments should use ICTs and (Mbarara, Lira, Mbale, and Kayunga) and 41

COUNTRY FOCUS: UGANDA

within these districts in eleven sub-counties. The programme was aligned with the plans of the Uganda Communications Commission to spread Internet connectivity to District centres. IICD supported the formulation and implementation of the programme via research, strategic advice, capacity development (in ICT skills and soft skills) and general programme management. Implementing DistrictNet was a major challenge from the start, and the rural setting and scale posed some new and unexpected problems. For instance, professional technical ICT knowledge and computer literacy levels were much lower than anticipated. And connections between headquarters and the sub-counties demanded some innovative strategies in terms of connectivity solutions and alternative energy sources.

DISTRICTNET AND E-ADMINISTRATION

DistrictNet has transformed the way important information is processed in the pilot districts. It has had an enormous impact on the government planning in the four pilot districts and can be considered as a unique example of e-Administration in East Africa. At the start of the programme, the basic data was collected at parish level (in hard-copy form) and forwarded to sub-county administration. The sub-countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s responsibility was to collect and compile all data from the parishes, and then forward it to District HQ (Head Quarter). Then, the District HQ, like the sub-county administration, checked the data for completeness and forwarded the hardcopy data to MoLG, where digital recording took place. All data was in hard-copy form, and was physically transported by road. The process is depicted in figure 2. Several problems occurred in this process. In the first place, the data which was collected at the parish level took a long time before reaching District HQ and MoLG. We observed information backlogs of three to six months. Secondly, data was lost in transport, never reaching the District HQ and MoLG. Indeed, some data was never collected properly in the first place. For example in one district less than 20% of the information required for budget and planning reached the MoLG. This implied that in 80% of the sub-counties, the planning and budgeting process was seriously undermined. These two problems guided the programme design. Currently, the basic data is still collected at the parish level and forwarded to sub-county administration using the same hard-copy standard forms. The first change was implemented at the sub-county level: the eleven pilot sub-counties are now responsible for the digitisation of data. After digitising the data and checking its completeness, the sub-counties then forward the data via email to District HQ, resulting in a timely delivery of the data needed for planning and budgeting purposes. The third change was implemented at District HQ, where District Planners (who were trained to use data analysis tools) now perform data analysis and provide timely feedback to the sub-county administration and the parishes. A fourth change is in the improvement in lead times for the dataâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arrival at MoLG, as the pilot districts are now able to 42

transfer their information electronically to MoLG. Moreover, MoLG can now work much more efficiently and effectively because it is no longer responsible for digital recording, thus allowing more time for analysis and informed decisionmaking. The process is depicted in figure 2.

FIGURE 2: BUSINESS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT IN DISTRICTNET

In the reverse feedback flow, the decision was made to send relatively little information, using low-end tools, to provide feedback from MoLG to the District HQ and from District HQ to lower local government levels. This feedback mechanism enables lower-level governments to finalise their planning and budgeting processes.

DISTRICTNET AND E-SERVICES

Efforts to offer direct information services to the citizens of the pilot districts began in 2004. In this respect it should be mentioned that Uganda is a strongly decentralised country and most governmental information services (e.g. business licenses, tax forms and information) are already available to the citizens in hard-copy form at the sub-county level. As a result, offering these types of services in electronic form was not among the priorities.

LESSONS LEARNT

To conclude this paper, we want to elicit some lessons learnt from the DistrictNet programme in Uganda. 1. Focus of ICT in government operations: DistrictNet presents a good example of embedding the introduction of e-Government in the larger context of priority development needs in a country (in this case, the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decentralisation programme). Improvement in efficiency and effectiveness may be important at a national level, but at an individual level it can also be considered as a threat and thus a reason to resist or even undermine the programme. However, the programme is most likely to achieve good results (i.e. improvements in efficiency and effectiveness) when it is part of the success of high priority development programmes in the country, and where results are benchmarked against national development goals. 2. Think big, but begin small: Gradual and phased implementation of the programme is the key to success. In other words: Think big, but begin small. DistrictNet has www.egovonline.net

been designed as a pilot programme. The main goal was to build knowledge and gain experience. New programmes should build on these experiences. It is important to integrate this goal in the design of the next phases of this pilot programme. 3. Create feedback loops in e-Governments programmes: In countries like Uganda, civil servants at the local levels are often asked to gather data but seldom receive feedback on the impact of their data-collecting activities. A good feedback mechanism in an e-Governance programme creates a tool to provide the local levels with information, and the improved information position of the officers at the local government levels enhances their commitment to the introduction of e-Governance. 4. Ability to use ICT in government: Our observations from the DistrictNet programme show that in a development context the ability of local governments to design, implement, use and maintain e-Governance in action should not be over-estimated. This might be an important difference with e-Governance programmes in the developed world. Training and capacity development is key to the success. 5. Stress capacity development as a key success factor: Five types of knowledge and skills are necessary for successful ICT implementation, as well as sustainable e-Governance: • Professional technical knowledge to implement and to maintain the technical infrastructure and to anticipate the upcoming of new technologies • Professional business knowledge to guide and check the quality of the suppliers implementing and maintaining the technical infrastructure (tendering, quality control, Service Level Agreements) and monitoring the investments in an e-Government programme • Computer literacy at the government level, such as basic knowledge about how to operate the computers and their applications, and an understanding of the role ICT can play in the improvement of work processes • Computer literacy among users, such as basic knowledge about how to operate the computers and e-Government applications • ICT change management skills among management and administrators 6. Recognise that fighting technology takes time: In DistrictNet’s initial stage of implementation, the primary focus was on developing the ICT infrastructure to enable e-Administration and e-Services. Often in e-Governance, the primary focus is on these technical aspects, and the organisational and social aspects are treated with less priority. It takes time to change this technology-focused attitude, and the issue needs to be addressed from the start of the implementation. 7. Strategies for connecting citizens: Connecting the citizens to the programme is probably the biggest challenge, especially with the local government in rural areas. One of the reasons for the success of DistrictNet is that it has been using traditional means combined with modern (ICT-enabled) strategies to distribute information to the citizens. In the excitement of the introduction of new technology, programmes tend to forget to include the traditional means for information distribution, such as radio, television, bulletins, bulletin boards, word-ofov

November 2007

mouth and the new channels offered by mobile telephony (e.g SMS). 8. Emphasise that information is a commodity: The success of e-Administration and e-Services programmes relies heavily on the quality of data and information. The availability of quality data and information is too often taken for granted. The quality of data should be monitored, while the quantity of data at higher levels has to reduced. DistrictNet experiences show that the content needs careful management in order to keep citizens attached to the project. We have noticed that centralised management of local information does not work, as the information is not in line with the local needs and is often outdated or arrives too late to be useful.

CONCLUSIONS

DistrictNet can serve a reference and learning model for other e-Governance programmes in a development context. The programme is designed to extend in all three domains of e-Government: e-Administration, e-Services and e-Society. Furthermore, the programme not only automates the existing processes, but also prompts the improvement of processes, notably in budgeting and planning, which have been restructured and optimised. Clearly, introducing ICT at the local government level can lead to major improvements in performance; however, the low penetration of ICT skills and equipment in countries like Uganda can set limitations. Governments need to continue their efforts to develop ICT infrastructure nationally and to increase the level of ICT skills among their citizens, and especially to concentrate in their efforts on the rural areas, while development partners should establish more research programmes to ensure the successful implementation and support of ICT.

REFERENCES •

United Nations, World Public Sector Report 2003: e-Government at the Crossroads. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, 2003.

•

Bitwayiki, C., de Jager, A., Building Capacity for Embedding: The DistrictNet Uganda Programme. IICD, 2004 (capacity.org-2004; download available at www. capacity.org and www.iicd.org).

•

Heeks, R., Understanding e-Governance for Development. I-Government Working Papers No. 11. Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, 2001a. (download available on www.man.ac.uk/idpm)

•

IICD, The ICT Roundtable Process: Lessons Learned from facilitating ICT-Enabled Development. International Institute for Communication and Development, The Hague, 2004. (download available on www.iicd.org)

Dr. Victor van Reijswoud is Professor of Information Systems and E-Commerce in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at Uganda Martyrs University – Nkozi in Uganda (www.umu. ac.ug). He can be reached at: victor@eacoss.org Dr. Arjan de Jager is country manager for Uganda at the International Institute of Communication and Development in Den Haag in the Netherlands (www.iicd.org). He has been actively involved as advisor in the DistrictNet programme. He can be reached at: AJager@iicd.org

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Executive Movements Dr Shivinder Singh Sidhu, Governor of Manipur, has been appointed as the Governor of Meghalaya. This is in addition to his own duties, until regular arrangements for the office of the Governor of Meghalaya are made. Dr Sidhu started his career by joining the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) in 1952. He was the Secretary to Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. V.S. Reddy has taken over as the Managing Director of the Lakshmi Vilas Bank. Reddy succeeds R.M. Nayak, who retired in June. B S Raman has been appointed Director of Brihanmumbai Suburban Electric Supply (BSES), a joint venture of Reliance Energy Limited and the Delhi Government. S V Joglekar is the Executive Director (Engineering) of the National Aviation Company of India Ltd (NACIL), the new company into which Air India and Indian have been merged. Dr. V K Garg, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of the Power Finance Corporation Ltd (PFC), is getting one year extension. R S Negi has been appointed as Managing Director (MD) of the Madhya Pradesh Forest Development Corporation. Hitherto Negi was a member in Narmada Valley Development

Authority (NVDA). He is an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre Manjeet Puri and Uttarakhand cadre IAS officer K R Desiraju, have been selected in the panel prepared for the post of Ambassador UNESCO in Paris. Vineet Bhatia has been appointed by Tata Teleservices Ltd as Regional Head-North and Chief Operating Officer for Delhi. Mr. Bhatia has over 25 years of experience and has worked with reputed companies like Xerox and Bright Point India. Sameer Sachdeva, Manager - Marketing and Customer Relations, National Institute of Smart Government (NISG), joins HCL Infosystems as Business Manager. S K Rahate has joined the Government of India as Director Rural Development. He is 1990 batch Jharkhand cadre IAS officer. Rajesh Bhushan has been given additional charge of Secretary Public Relations in Bihar. He is 1987 batch IAS officer. General Deepak Kapoor took over as the 23rd Chief of the Army Staff. General Deepak Kapoor, till recently the Vice Chief of the Army, has taken over the reins of the Indian Army from General JJ Singh, who retired recently.

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9 - 10 December 2007 Crowne Plaza Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Beyond the mainstream...

A GK3 Associated Event Its 2007! The mid-point of the goals set by the UN.

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Announcing the first film festival of its kind focussing on the Millennium Development Goals through the eyes of ICT4D. Films showing us the true picture of what has happened at the grassroots

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