egov November 2012 pdf

P Uma Shankar, Secretary, Ministry of Power, Govt. of India

Sanjay Jaju Secretary, IT & Communications Dept., Govt. of Andhra Pradesh

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

november 2012 | VOLUME 08

eGov Magazine

n ISSUE 11 n ISSN 0973-161X egov.eletsonline.com

the

change 15 - 16 November 2012 HICC, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India

Agents

Kerala O P Rawat Secretary, Dept. of Public Enterprises, Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises, Govt. of India

P H Kurian Principal Secretary (IT), Government of Kerala

Dr P V Ramesh Principal Secretary, Finance Dept (R&E), Govt. of Andhra Pradesh

Shailendra Kumar Joshi Principal Secretary Irrigation & Command Area Development, Govt. of Andhra Pradesh

B R Meena Vice Chairman & M.D., Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation

B Venkatesham M.D., Andhra Pradesh State Housing Corporation Ltd

Nagendra Nath Sinha Secretary IT, Government of Jharkhand

The Emerging IT Destination

Contents November 2012

grid grid name issue 11 second n  volume 08

62

interview Rajesh Aggarwal

64

42-51

interview S P S Bakshi

Kerala

The Emerging ICT destination

66

interview O P Rawat

14

interview Ponnala Lakshmaiah

17

interview Sanjay Kumar

30

interview Harpreet Singh

70

interview N Ravi Shanker

36 interview

B Venkatesham

72

interview A K Jain

18

interview Sanjay Jaju

24

interview Shailendra Kumar Joshi

26

52

interview Vimal Wakhlu

interview Nandan Nilekani

56

interview Hari Ranjan Rao

10 mee seva

The Remarkable Journey in e-Governance

58

interview Dr P V Ramesh

interview P Uma Shankar

28

61

interview B R Meena

76

interview U D Choubey

32

ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION CONTROLLING SYSTEM OPERATIONS OF POWER TRANSMISSION

54 UIDAI - AADHAAR

Aadhaar APPLICATIONS FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE

74 UIDAI

Aadhaar Making Service Delivery Efficient & Robust

4

Why India!

R

ecently Shri Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Minister for Information Technology and Communications, Government of Andhra Pradesh, launched the Mee Seva portal and Mee Seva-Airtel Money Services. While speaking at the launch ceremony, the Minister said, “Certificates and documents offered through Mee Seva are digitally signed, legally valid, printed on secured stationery and delivered across the counter or through post.” The launch of Mee Seva, the flagship e-Governance initiative of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, is an indication of the great change coming into the governance space.

Standing on the firmness of the present, with the experience of the past, the practitioners of ICT in India have been implementing new initiatives with long-term vision for development in the country. When it comes to the fields like governance, health, education and human resources, a remarkable amount of progress has been made. Several proactive policies, with commitment to inclusive development, sustainability and creation of an investor-friendly environment as the watchwords, have been started by the Governments in Centre and the States.

There is no doubt that the country is yet to be at par with the world’s most advanced countries, but a remarkable amount of progress has been made by the utilisation of resources in ICT. The process of urbanisation has gathered speed in all parts of the country, leading to both challenges and opportunities. These challenges and opportunities are nowhere more clearly palpable than in the great city of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh.

The State Government of Andhra Pradesh has realised that the basic amenities are the prerequisite for attracting investment and improving the standard of living. In the city of Hyderabad and in rest of the State, a major push is happening at using solutions from ICT for tackling all kinds of urban problems. In the current issue of eGov, we have covered the views of stakeholders who are engaged in the creation of quality infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh and beyond. Of particular interest is the interview of the CMD of Engineering Projects (India) Ltd, who speaks about developing a monorail project for Delhi.

In order to have an overview of the ICT implementations happening across India we have interviews and write-ups from the IT secretaries of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Kerala. We also have a comprehensive picture of the landmark initiatives being taken under the UIDAI project. The incorporation of views from a range of private companies and PSEs firmly completes the picture, and makes this issue truly special.

An interesting aspect of the issue is also the ways in which the State of Kerala is using ITC to improve the lives of people. ITC is making landmark changes not only in governance, but also in healthcare and education sectors. eINDIA 2012 has been conceived on the clear vision of the entire nation being able to achieve the objectives of development and growth. The two-day confluence in Hyderabad will announce Andhra Pradesh’s, and more importantly India’s, landmark achievements in using ICT for sustainable development. The eINDIA 2012 is going to be a platform for ideas, discussions and meetings on the subject of improving the fields of governance, healthcare and education through ICT deployments.

We hope to see you there at eINDIA 2012.

Email at subscription@elets.in to get previous issues

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November 2012 issue 11 n volume 08

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

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guest editorial

Effective e-Governance for Good Governance

G

ood governance, as we know, is the backbone of any society. If we seek to raise our economic standards to globally advanced levels, our basic infrastructure for governance also needs to improve in tandem. It is our firm belief that Mee Seva is going to be the beginning of the change that all of us want to see in governance in the State of Andhra Pradesh. Mee Seva, the flagship e-Governance initiative of the State Government, is by itself a proof of how Information and Communication Technology can be used to create efficient, hassle free and transparent interface for the citizens.

The State of Andhra Pradesh has always been on the forefront when it comes to leveraging IT for development. The State initiated the eSeva project in 2001 to provide bill payment services for various Government Departments and private organisations. One of the first such projects in the country, the eSeva project served as a single-window solution for the citizens in urban parts of the State. Subsequently Common Service Centres (CSCs) were established to extend similar benefits to the rural citizens of the State as part of National e-Governance Project (NeGP).

Though eSeva succeeded in reducing the drudgery of bill-payments at multiple counters, it was still serving as a ‘post-office’, accepting applications, sending by post to the concerned office, receiving back and then handing over to the citizens. In many ways the power of ICT was seen to being under-utilised in various government records like land records, Registration etc. Citizens had to make many rounds of the government departments in order to get hold of the much needed documents.

Mee Seva, which is Telugu for “At Your Service,” was evolved as the need was felt for a faster, easier and transparent mechanism for delivering various G2C services. The concept is unique and first-of-its kind in the country. It is the first time that the entire solution right from the collection of applications till the issue of final certificates has been turned electronic. It is also possible to track request through its life cycle at various stages and render it amenable for monitoring at Tehsil, Division or District level.

There is no requirement of physical interaction whatsoever between the user and the issuing authority thereby limiting the chances of corruption and other malpractices. There is no doubt that over the longer term, initiatives like Mee Seva will incentivise the economy of the state. We intend to leverage the support of public and private organisations to keep developing even better e-Governance systems. An event like the eINDIA 2012 is important, because it is a platform to highlight the power of ICT to usher seminal efficiencies in governance, health, education, agriculture and every other field.

The eINDIA 2012, which is being convened from 15-16 November, 2012, at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), Andhra Pradesh, will bring together leading thinkers, policymakers and industrialists from around the world to discuss ideas and strategies for the future. This event will also be a place to showcase potential and opportunities in various sectors in Andhra Pradesh. Our aim, at this juncture, is to showcase Andhra Pradesh’s inherent strengths, and the opportunities that exist here for industry and enterprise.

With open arms, we welcome the finest thinkers, policy makers and entrepreneurs, who are arriving for eINDIA 2012.

sanjay jaju

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / November 2012

M e s sag e

Andhra Pradesh has emerged as frontline State when it comes to the implementation of e-Governance projects in India. The State has been keenly focusing on growth and development of new and emerging technologies in the areas of healthcare and education. It has been active in using ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to offer government services at the citizen’s doorstep.

Such e-Governance projects improve the outreach, make services more transparent, and reduce response time.

Mee Seva, a citizen-centric facility, has been providing convenient access to citizens in an easier, faster and transparent manner. At present, 40 Government-to-Citizen (G2C) services are being availed and more than 100 services are planned to be delivered to the citizens across the state by December, 2012.

It gives me immense pleasure to share that the Government of Andhra Pradesh is the Partner State for the eighth edition of eINDIA 2012, which is being organised at the prestigious Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad, India, on 15th and 16th November, 2012. The Anniversary Celebrations of Mee Seva project will be held along with the eINDIA 2012.

I welcome all the thought leaders, think tanks and private players, who possess the necessary technological and social expertise to facilitate change and make society better. Let us all participate in eINDIA 2012, which is a celebration of e-Governance and be a part of the change revolution that the state of Andhra Pradesh has proudly entered into.

I warmly welcome all delegates and look forward to their participation in what promises to be an immensely enriching event.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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cover story

mee seva

The Remarkable Journey in e-Governance From eSeva to Mee Seva...

Sanjay Jaju, Secretary, Information Technology & Communications Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh

W

ith the intention of leveraging ICT for bringing better governance and development, the Government of Andhra Pradesh initiated the eSeva project in 2001. The eSeva project was devoted to serve as a single-window solution to citizens residing in the urban areas citizens of the State. After that the Common Service Centres (CSCs) came into being to extend similar benefits to the rural citizens of the state as a part of the National e-Governance Project (NeGP) of Government of India.

Even though eSeva succeeded in reducing the drudgery of bill-payments at multiple counters, it was still serving as a ‘post-office’, accepting applications, sending by post to the concerned office, receiving back and then handing over to the citizens.

The realisation dawned that the power of IT was being grossly under-utilised in various government departments. New initiatives were needed to create a single window online interface for facilitating interactions between the government and the people. A solution was needed to help citizens who were being forced to run around various government offices several times to get information and were falling prey to the touts. A system that could ensure a stipulated time-frame of delivery was essential.

Mee Seva ends the tyranny of ink signatures Eventually eSeva initiative evolved into the Mee Seva, which is a Telugu term meaning ‘at your service.’ The Mee Seva initiative has been concep-

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / November 2012

Strategies adopted The following strategy was adopted for implementing the Mee Seva Project • Inter departmental coordination meetings - Once Mee Seva was conceptualised, meetings were conducted with key Departments to describe the entire concept, its impact and take them on board at the very inception.

• Categorisation of services - Those services that are high volume and high impact and most desired by the citizens have been prioritized to be delivered across the counter.

These services are classified as Cat. A and are delivered across the counter by accessing the departmental databases. Cat. B are services that cannot be delivered across the counter as they involve workflow and physical verification.

• Establishing delivery channels - Delivery channels like eSeva centers, CSCs etc. have been established to cater to the citizens. More than 6000 Mee Seva counters are made available across the State, both in rural and urban areas with a uniform look and feel. All these counters are established as per certain specifications and guidelines issued by the State.

• Development of web-based Mee seva application - Mee Seva is a web-based application and has been developed to offer the highest level of transparency in extending G2C services.

• Improving/establishing

connectivity - Since many of the transactions require substantial flow of data, connectivity is provided or improved to all the Government departments as well as the kiosk. The Horizontal Connectivity scheme of the GOI is used for this purpose.

• Digitisation of records Records are digitised, wherever digital databases are not available.

• Centralising databases Databases, containing the information are purified and ported to the central departmental database server co-located at the State Data Centre.

• Establishing Backend hardware - Backend hardware is procured, wherever required to support centralised databases and high transaction applications.

• Creation of District e-Governance Society - District e-Governance Societies are created and made the nodal agencies for the implementation of Mee Seva. All the operational and technical issues in the district are being taken by the DeGS. The departmental user charges for the transactions are being sent to them.

• Capacity building of various stakeholders - Several training programmes, workshops are conducted for various levels of people for effective implementation of project.

• District Mee Seva Resource team - A District Mee Seva Resource team is created to assist in capacity building and

day-to-day implementation of this program.

• Secured stationery - Secured stationery with 8 security features is being used to deliver the certificates, to make duplication difficult. Online Verification, of course is possible by using the SECR. • Publicity - Participation by public representatives during the inaugurations have attracted wide media publicity. Wide publicity has also been given via electronic and print media, so that people know of the changed mechanism and do not revert to the old system.

• Call centre for receiving feedback/grievances/complaints 24X7 Call center is active to get feedback from the citizen.

• Customised SMS - Customised SMS for different level of administrative officers in their own area of jurisdiction are sent daily to make them aware of the transactions taking place in their jurisdiction and their pendency within and beyond SLA. • Automatic Payment Gateway - The payment collected from the applicant at the kiosk is distributed online automatically to the various stakeholders in real-time. This solves the problem of reconciliations, late-payments, embezzlements and audit paras.

• Reward/Penalty for nondelivery - A system of awarding positive marks for good performance and vice versa has been evolved.

cover story

mee seva

Mee Seva at the heart of the NeGPs SDC (Infrastrcuture)

CSC

APSWAN

(Mee Seva centres, common look & feel, etc.)

(Horizontal Connectivity)

e-District (Infrastructure, Data Digitisation, Services)

tualised and developed in Andhra Pradesh. The Project entails delivery of various G2C services in a user-friendly format by bringing in a digital PKI enabled integrated architecture through multiple service delivery points by fusing in the various pre-existing state initiatives with the NeGP MMPs. The Mee Seva project brings in strict adherence to citizen charter time limits and ushers in a whole new paradigm of across the counter

SSDG (Infrastructure and Services)

services to ostensibly work flow services through massive porting and bulk signing of databases.

Mee Seva adopted the concept of central pooling of all these records, digitally signing them with the digital signature certificates of the authorized officer, storing them in the database and rendering them using a web-service.

All the documents rendered are digitally signed and electronically verifiable. Mee Seva leverages to fullest extent, the IT infrastructure like State

Data Centre (SDC), State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Service Centres (CSCs) created under NeGP initiative of Government of India.

Today Mee Seva has ended the ‘tyranny of ink signatures’. It created a silent wave and with its sweep allowed many moribund processes and approaches to be revamped. Its effectiveness can be measured in the satisfied eyes of the citizens strengthening the democratic foundations of our country and bringing citizen centricity to the forefront. With Mee Seva in place, the stage is all set to implement and monitor the Right to Services Act, which is in the offing.

Operational in entire state Mee Seva is operational across all the districts of Andhra Pradesh covering the length and breadth of the state. With the centralised architecture, any service can be accessed from anywhere. Large numbers of “Mee Seva” delivery channels are situated in the Districts covering all mandals in the state. There are more than 100 centres in every District. It has been mandated to the service providers of the Mee Seva Centres to establish the centres as per specific norms (Min. infrastructure required for a centre along with colour schemes) for common look and feel.

Glimpses of the launch of Mee Seva services in Andhra Pradesh…

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / November 2012

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Leader Speak

emerging andhra

Ponnala Lakshmaiah

Hon’ble Minister for Information Technology & Communications, Government of Andhra Pradesh

“e-Governance Means Government at Your Service”

Ponnala Lakshmaiaha is a veteran politician hailing from Telangana with strong technical and academic background. He is currently a cabinet rank minister in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

He has held key portfolios in the Andhra Pradesh cabinet including Information Technology & Communications, Endowments, Major & Medium Irrigation, Aqua Culture and Fisheries. He has been in politics since the late 70’s and has contributed his share as a cabinet member to the growth of AP state.

He has helped pave way for irrigating hundreds of thousands of acres of under-cultivated lands into today’s bountiful crop-yielding arable lands as Minister for Major Irrigation. He has contributed in the areas of policy formulation for hardware, animal husbandry, dairy development, poultry, and allied industries in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Ponnala Lakshmaiah’s political career that spans over three decades is focused on service to the socially and economically challenged sections in the state of Andhra Pradesh

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T

here is no doubt that a great progress has been made in the e-Governance space in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Please share with us your vision for further improving the governance structure through ICT in Andhra Pradesh?

As far as government is concerned, we are committed to good governance. This good governance has two components, one is human element and the second is the infrastructure or the technological element. To reach out to maximum number of people we need the help of technology, but this technology must be handled by sensitive and competent people, only then it will lead to best possible results. The e-Governance systems are a result of both, the human element and the technology. It always results in better systems of governance. We are going all out to create more efficient e-Governance systems, as we are motivated by the desire of serving people in better ways. That is our vision; whatever we do should bring maximum possible advantage to the people. The research and the technological implementation that is happening in name of e-Governance should benefit the common man and raise his standards of living.

The IT industry in the state has been growing at a healthy rate. What kind of contributions, in terms of enacting new policies, has the government in the state made for the development of the IT industry?

The ICT industry has always been the main driver behind the jobs creation and fostering of regional development in the country. The Government of Andhra Pradesh is committed to the development of a more competitive industrial environment. There are large numbers of initiatives that we have taken to develop the IT industry. In order to promote sustained growth of ICT sector, not only to enhance the balanced regional socio-economic development but also to spread the usage of IT to the last mile of the State, for the benefit of common man, Government has announced the ICT Policy 2010-2015. If I may say so, the IT Policy in the state is far more effective as compared to that in any other state in the country. As a matter of fact, it is well known that in the world one out of every three IT professionals is from India, and one out of every three Indian IT professionals is from Andhra Pradesh. This by itself is a proof of the fact that the state is blessed with abundant talent in the field of IT. There are more than 700 institutions in the state that are engaged in churning out highly competent IT professionals. These talented professionals coming out of our institutions serve the

Leader Speak

“Good governance has two components, one is human element and the second is the infrastructure or the technological element,” says Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Hon’ble Minister for Information Technology & Communications, Government of Andhra Pradesh, in conversation with Nayana Singh

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

15

Leader Speak

emerging andhra

manpower needs of not just the Andhra based IT industry, but the entire world. It is a result of work done by the government on the policy and infrastructure front that we have so many institutes capable of providing world class training in IT related subjects.

A decision to set up Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) around the city of Hyderabad has also been taken. Will this also lead to improvement in the size and scope of IT industry?

I was about to come to ITIR. The Centre has finally gave “in principle” approval to the Andhra Pradesh government’s proposal for setting up an Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) around the city. This will give a muchneeded boost to the state’s efforts to attract fresh investments into the industry. The ITIR will be developed in an area of 202 sq km (50,000 acres) in two phases over a period of 25 years. The ITIR is aimed at attracting an investment of Rs 2.19 lakh crore in the ITITES sectors and create direct employment for 15 lakh youths. ITIR is a combination of production units, public utilities, logistic, environment protection mechanism, residential areas and administrative services.

ITIRs will include Special Economic Zones, Industrial Parks, Free Trade Zones, Warehousing zones, Export-Oriented Units, growth centres, existing settlements and estates.

The most important e-Governance programme in Andhra Pradesh is the Mee Seva. Tell us about Mee Seva. What are the ways by which Mee Seva is benefitting the people in the state?

Government of Andhra Pradesh has always been at the forefront of leveraging IT for development and governance. The Mee Seva means “At Your Service.” It is an all-inclusive programme, and has vastly benefitted all sections of the society, and especially the poor section, who rely heavily on welfare schemes for their well-being. Mee Seva leveraged creation of Centralised Land Records database, its purification, digital signing and a web-based application that allows functionaries to take up necessary updation etc. The unique feature of this application and database is that it is in Telugu. Through this system lakhs of citizens in the state are able to access crucial documents and certificates through common

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kiosks. Crucial documents get issued to the citizens across the counter.

When we talk about G2C services in the e-Governance space, we are basically talking about putting governance in the online pace. But this kind of process also leads to a lot of crucial information pertaining to the citizen being put in online mediums. So what kind of security measures are we taking to protect the privacy of the individual?

The intention behind our e-Governance initiatives is very clear; we want to reach out to the people. The manual systems do not reach to the people in the ways in which we would want to. So we are using technology to improve the system of interaction between the government and the people. As far as the security systems are concerned, they are in place. There is latest technology being used to provide most convenient and secure gateways for conducting transactions.

We also have laws to give strict punishments to people who target government websites.

It is an accepted belief that IT industry is concentrated mainly in the urban areas, so what steps you are taking to develop IT industry in smaller towns?

The government is taking many new initiatives to ensure that IT industry can also move into our tier 2 towns. Many new institutions have been allowed to come up in the towns. In fact 5 years ago, hardly any IT industry was located in the town of Vizag, but now the same place generates revenues of more than `1,000 crore. Similarly things are going to pick up at other towns also.

You have been associated with many rural development projects.

In your opinion what kind of impact ICT can have on rural industries and on agriculture?

Modern technology has a role to play in every sector, including agriculture. For instance, in agriculture you need to know the nature of the soil, you need to know what kind of fertilizers will be most suitable. You will need information on transplantation of the produce post harvesting. The thing is that such information can be more easily accessed through the use of tech-

nology. Nowadays we have computer systems that can be accessed in Telgu language. This has brought computing and Internet close to many farmers. In fact, I would like to tell you that we are one of the first Unicode members along with IBM, Honeywell and Microsoft. Only 9 entities are the permanent members, Andhra Pradesh is 10th member. We are taking active measures to ensure that Telgu becomes one of the premier languages for conducting business on the web.

Mee Seva initiative has become very popular among the people and many other states in the country are planning to launch their own versions of Mee Seva.

At a ground level, what kind of impact is the Mee Seva initiative having on the people?

In the past, for issue of Caste, Residence, Income certificates of students, the applications were physically submitted at Tahsildar Office. This was followed by field verification by concerned VRA/VRO and after receiving the report, Tahsildar used to issue physically ink signed certificates. During the high demand months of June-August / admission closing dates, Tahsildar office used to receive more than 1,000 applications in a day, which resulted in inordinate delays or issue of certificates without verification. Mee Seva has really made service delivery very convenient for the citizen. Prior to the launch of Mee Seva project, applicants used to visit the respective departments to avail services, many a times applicants were forced to visit these offices to get their certificates. Under the revised process, Mee Seva is able to issue certificates across the counter within 15 minutes in 90 percent of the cases.

Given the fact that the technology keeps evolving at a very rapid pace, where do you see the governance in the next 10 years?

I see paperless, cashless, transparent, hassle free, instantaneous governance becoming a reality.

One thing I believe certainly, with the talent we have in Andhra Pradesh, a major revolution in governance is bound to happen. The state has been on the forefront when it comes to the implementation of Aadhaar. In times to come the Aadhaar system will start playing a central role in the management of government benefits and subsidies.

emerging andhra

In Person

Sanjay Kumar Transport Commissioner, Government of Andhra Pradesh

ICT for efficiency in Transportation

“By early 2014, full automation of the department will be accomplished leading to the services becoming more citizen-friendly,” says Sanjay Kumar, Transport Commissioner, Government of Andhra Pradesh

W

hat ICT initiatives have been taken by the State Transport Department to make the services citizen -friendly?

The Transport Department has taken up many new initiatives to make the services citizen-

centric. There has been a computerisation of almost 70 percent services; The notable among them is the license booking service.

You need not go to District Transport Office for getting a learning or regular licence. Just go to the website, book a slot, pay the required fees. Then you will be given a time slot to appear for a test. After the test, results are couriered to your registered address within three days. We have also enabled online payment of taxes. For making a tax payment, you need not to come to our office. The issuance of All India Permit will be computerised in the next one month.

For vehicles with Hydraulic axles, we are taking a special initiative. They need permission of various departments to get a clearance.

This takes days and needs lot of manual work.

So we are trying to computerise the process. In fact, 90 percent of the work has already been completed. We are also working on an online system for generating temporary registration numbers of vehicles at dealer point.

Can you tell me about the concept behind the settingup one stop shop model for RTO’s? Please elaborate on the various service deliveries that are being offered by Transport Department. How is it benefiting the citizens?

Earlier the RTO’s had a counter-based service mechanism where numerous counters catered to different activities like issue of license, certificates, taxes, etc. We felt we were under-utilising our manpower. So we tried to bring in ‘any service at any counter’ model to provide flexibility in service delivery. In this system, one can approach a Help Desk, which gives out forms for stating the nature of work.

The tokens for the queue are also issued. And once your turn comes, you can approach any counter for getting your work done. This is a time saving measure, as we can avoid the

problem of some counters getting crowded while others are free. It also makes our staff more efficient as they are trained to handle all types of queries unlike the previous system.

What steps the Transport Department is taking up to automate toll collection system in the state?

We have already started the process for automating the toll systems. For this purpose we have set up two check posts — one at Tamil Nadu border and other at Orissa border. We are going to modernise the check posts, and as a first move, installing electronic weighing machine there. The fully mechanised processes at the toll points are likely to become operational in next 6-8 months. Our next step will be the installation of RFID devices. The idea is to have RFID tags in all the number plates and at every check post readers will be installed. The toll will be collected automatically; the vehicle does not need to stop. The system is likely to be installed by 2014.

In your opinion how important ICT solutions are, for managing the collection of different kinds of transport related payments?

It is extremely important, primarily because the Traffic Police and Transport Departments have to work in sync. Our job is at two fronts – we have to look after the public convenience and we also need to ensure a timely payment of taxes and fines. With manual system what happens is that the vehicle is stopped for traffic violations and the papers are verified and then a challan is issued to the violator.

Often the manual systems lead to all sorts of controversies. That is why we are introducing the system of e-Challans in Hyderabad. We have cameras at the selected junctions that can record the number plate details of the vehicles that are not following the law. The e-Challans get issued automatically.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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in person

emerging andhra

Sanjay Jaju, Secretary, Information Technology & Communications Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh

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emerging andhra

in person

Sanjay Jaju

Secretary, Information Technology & Communications Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh

Mee Seva

The Silent Revolution

O

ver the years a large number of e-Governance initiatives have been taken by the state of Andhra Pradesh. One of the most outstanding initiatives is the Mee Seva. Please provide us with your view on how the Mee Seva initiative has developed?

“The entire concept of Mee Seva is unique and firstof-its kind in the

The eSeva and AP Online were started in 2001, and over the years they have developed synergies with various MMPs like CSCs, SDC, APSWAN, SSDG and others, and have evolved into the modern ‘Mee Seva’ initiative for governance. The first ‘Mee Seva’ programme was launched in Chittoor District on pilot basis in November 2011. At present about 40 Government to Citizen (G2C) services are being provided under the Mee Seva umbrella. By December 2012, we plan to make more than 100 G2C services available in Mee Seva. The popularity of the programme can be judged from the fact that close to six lakh transactions have been initiated by the citizens.

The people living in the rural areas in the country are not that comfortable with digital technologies. What kind of response is Mee Seva getting from rural areas?

country. This is the first time, when the entire solution, right from the collection of applications, till the issue of final certificates is being handled electronically”

The Mee Seva programme is getting great response from rural areas. The people in rural areas use the Common Service Centres to avail of Mee Seva services. Earlier people in rural areas used to to access services like Community, Income, Birth and Death Certificates. The copies of Pahani/ Adangal, etc., were also difficult to come by. The process followed by the Department was manual, and the citizens were required to submit physical application and collect physical signed copies at the office for getting any certificate. The citizens living in remote rural areas had to travel long distances for reaching the Taluq headquarters or the District headquarters where such services could be accessed. Thus it was a time-consuming and costly affair for a common man to access citizen services. The Mee Seva programme has taken the entire process of availing government certificates online. The rural folks can get hold of documents and certificates through the Web-based system on an anytime, anywhere basis. Even people who are not comfortable with digital technologies can avail of the services by visiting the Common Service Centres (CSCs). The bottom line is that the Mee Seva is a system, by which documents and certificates, pertaining to individuals, are issued by the Government through a common kiosk. There is no waiting time, no multiple visits to the offices, no pleading, no frustration - it’s a genuine silent revolution.

What are the key features of the Mee Seva programme? Provide us with an overview of the infrastructure that is being used for delivery of the services.

The Mee Seva programme uses advanced solutions for enabling secure and transparent transactions. There is PKI integration for digitally signing the certificates or documents. The legal validity of the digitally signed certificates is ensured through Andhra Pradesh IT Rules (Electronic SerNovember 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

19

in person

emerging andhra

system can be scaled up horizontally or vertically based on future needs and requirements of Government as well as Departments. At the Kiosk or SCAs the citizen’s request for services are collected. These requests are routed through the web services to the respective departments.

So how do the respective departments process the citizen requests that come in through the Mee Seva web interface?

In order to the process the citizen requests that have been received by any department, the department user has to log into Mee Seva programme with secured user ID, password and digital certificate. Once logged in, the department user can see all the requests submitted by the citizens at various kiosks like APOnline, eSeva or the CSC centres. The department user processes all the requests by conducting field verification

mental staff and following up with the progress of Mee Seva and adhering to the timelines. However, the IT&C Department has played the role of the key catalyst in the entire process. The IT&C Department convinced all other departments of the utility of this concept and got their processes re-engineered to suit the technology.

The department evolved the concept, became the main implementer and technology partner. It developed the project, got the necessary approvals and budget, and grounded it.

Important components of the Project such as creation and updation of databases, developing of front-end and back-end applications, strengthening of connectivity, procurement of digital signatures and training of fieldfunctionaries in their usage were identified,.

The establishment of additional CSCs was also an important target. The role played by the media in popularising the initiative must

“In democracy citizens should have access to necessary services from the government in a transparent, fast, hassle-free and painless manner� vice Delivery), 2011. There is integration with Cyber treasury for seamless transfer of transaction fees collected. The success of Mee Seva is mainly due to the fact that this programme is designed to make the best use of IT infrastructure like State Data Center (SDC), State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Service centres (CSCs) created under NeGP initiative of Government of India. Mee Seva is a true convergence of all these NeGP initiatives in rendering G2C services in a transparent, fast and secure way.

Tell us about the technology and security related features that are being used in Mee Seva.

The entire solution is hosted in a state-of-art State Data Centre with a robust infrastructure. As the developed system is a web based one, deployed at a central location, it is easily accessible by all the stakeholders, anytime and any where. The entire web-based solution has been developed on Microsoft. NET (Framework 4.0) technology using ASP.NET for application development with MS SQL. Server 2008 R2 as the database platform. It is incorporated with PKI Engine and Payment Processing systems. Current

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and updates the status and remarks accordingly on Mee Seva portal. This application for implementation of these kinds of programs reduces lot of manual efforts in consolidating the data and makes decision making fast and easy. The thing is that you should not see Mee Seva as a purely IT initiative. It is, in fact, a multi-departmental, multi-location, technology-rich initiative, in which Department of Revenue, Registration, Municipal administration, Education and service delivery channels are deeply involved. The scope of the Mee Seva programme is so vast only because of the involvement of large number of key departments.

But the nodal role in getting the Mee Seva implemented has been played by IT&C Department.

What is the crucial role that the Department of IT&C has played in development of Mee Seva?

As I already said, the main reason behind the success of the Mee Seva is the involvement of large number participating departments. The participating departments have supported well in delivering their departmental service through Mee Seva by organising trainings for their depart-

also be recognised. Posters, hoardings, advertisements pro-active reporting have all played a role in stabilising this initiative in urban as well as rural Andhra Pradesh.

Mee Seva is an example of a very effective e-Governance programme. What is your vision for e-Governance in general? In your opinion, why is e-Governance important?

I think the essence of democracy lies in the fact that the citizens should have access to all the necessary services from the government in a transparent, fast, hassle-free and painless manner. After all, governance is all about providing better services to deserving citizens. The manual methods of service delivery have lot of drawbacks, all of which need to be summarily removed. Efficiency in matters of service delivery should be taken as an essential duty by the Government servants rather than as a burden.

While it is true that these certificates and documents issued by the Government authorities are very useful for the citizen, it is also true that these have been mandated by the Government itself, hence the citizen has no choice but to approach

emerging andhra

the Government officers for their issuance - and this situation should not be exploited. e-Governance programmes like Mee Seva have had the effect of making services easily accessible to the citizens. Our analysis shows that in 90 percent of the cases, the certificates can be issued within 15 minutes of request being filed on Mee Seva. This is undoubtedly a great achievement and possible only under e-Governance.

Can you give us some idea of the cost that is being incurred by the user in availing of Mee Seva services?

We have endeavoured to put minimum amount of burden on the shoulders of our users. There are two broad category of services being provided under Mee Seva – the Category A services, and the Category B services. The Category A services are those for which the databases are already available, and all that the CSC operator needs to do is access the databases and pull out the information; which then gets printed and given to the user. The cost to the user in Category A service is Rupees 25. The Category B services are those in which some kind of work-flow is required at the level of issuing authority. This work-flow might include field inquiries, etc. The cost to the user for availing Category B services is Rupees 35 only. For Printing of more than 1 page an amount of Rupees 2/ per page is charged. The cost for the Application Form is Rupees 2. The manual systems for service delivery cost much more and also take much more time. The citizen is also forced to waste time and money in travel costs and other areas.

You will agree that even the best created systems can prove to be difficult for some citizens to access. What systems have you developed to provide more information to the citizens or to provide them guidance in case they are unable to take full advantage of the Mee Seva due to any reason?

We do have a comprehensive system in place for problem resolution. The citizens who are facing any problem can call at the Mee Seva call centre number at 1100 and register their complaints or seek information. The Mee Seva website also has a comprehensive FAQ sec-

in person

Work-flow in Mee Seva Citizen comes to Common Service Centres (CSC) for submission of application for certificates • Applicant purchases and fills up a Physical Application Form • CSC Operator enters the details in the Online Application Software and issues a receipt to the applicant • There may be a need to submit supporting documents as per the checklist. These paper documents are digitised by adding a scanner and uploading the scanned documents • Tahsildars/Sub-Registrar/ authorised officer logs on Online Portal with his User ID /password/ Digital Certificate and •

downloads the Applications and carries out Field/Office verification • If the record is not available as a hard copy, the record shall be created following the due process and digitally signed and uploaded by Tahsildars • Most of the records have already been scanned/ entered and digitally signed by the authorised officer and placed in the respective databases for access. However, if the record is not available, the record has to be physically digitally signed

by Tahsildars uploaded in the online portal • All the digitally signed certified copies are stored in the SECR • Kiosks take printouts and deliver the Certifi-

tion, where all kinds of information is listed in an easy to understand format. The Mee Seva website also has a Help Desk. Users can directly send mails to this help desk for suggestions, complaints and grievances. There is an easy to use tracking system for all the requests that have been filed at Mee Seva. Request Tracker is easy to use, as one screen records all information about a single request. Extensive search capabilities allow users to use the program’s database to identify similar problems or requests that were handled in the past, making the solutions instantly available.

As citizens are using the Mee Seva service to download important personal documents, so security can be an area of concern. What kind of security measures have you implemented on the Mee Seva website to safeguard the privacy of the citizens?

The entire ownership of the data vests with the Department itself. All the data is located in co-located servers owned by the Department and located in a highly secured environment in SDC. Additional hardware has been provided

cates to the applicant’s address through courier and update the delivery details in the online portal. An SMS is then sent to the Applicant’s mobile number with the certificate delivery details • In case if the application is rejected due some reasons, Tahsildar has to enter the reasons for rejection and change the status of the application to closed status in the online portal • Kiosks take printouts of all the Memos of the rejected Applications and deliver the Memos to the applicants address through courier and update the delivery details in the online portal.

to some Departments from IT&C Department on need-basis. NMS is in place and firewalls are functional. At the application level, Mee Seva application has been security-audited initially by a Cert–in certified Agency and by STQC and the deficiencies have been rectified. Class-3 digital signatures have been issued to all the Departmental officers and kiosk operators for accessing Mee Seva portal for delivery of services. All the certificates issued are being stored at the SECR for future on-line verification through the portal. SECR also serves as a repository, where certificates issued under Category B, which involve Departmental work-flow and field level verification, are stored and can be reissued second time across the Counter. The Mee Seva Portal is integrated with PKI components for authenticating the respective individual for accessing the portal as well as for processing the requests through digital signatures. Mee Seva Portal uses standard Web technologies and techniques such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), HTTP redirects, cookies, JavaScript, and strong symmetric key encryption to deliver the single sign-in service. The sign-in, sign-out, and registration pages are centrally hosted in the Mee Seva Portal.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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special feature

Spanco Ltd

Spanco

Initiatives in e-Governance

“Spanco’s e-Governance business unit is focused on citizen services and government modernisation programmes that create an efficient Government-to-Citizen Interface. The business unit brings rich experience in managing complete lifecycle of the project by working in close association with the government” Please shed light on the e-Governance landscape in the country?

A key concern for the government is to enforce systems that will streamline inefficient and cumbersome governance process. One of the major breakthroughs in the last few decades is the shift in vision from government-centric governance to Citizen-centric governance. The ICT industry has played a critical role in shaping the citizen-centric model to reach out to a billion people. The effective use of ICT services in government administration has significantly enhanced existing efficiencies, driven down communication costs and increased transparency in various departments. The ambitious National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) has laid the foundation to provide the impetus for long-term growth of e-Governance in the country. The core infrastructure and Mission Mode Projects under NeGP is to ready the mechanism for modernisation of government departments.

You have been working with Government of Andhra Pradesh in running and managing the eSeva, now called Mee Seva, since 2008. How has your experience been?

Andhra Pradesh has been a frontrunner in executing ICT solution at grassroot level. It is one of the first states in the country to set up citizen service

22

Five points that will drive e-Governance success in next phase • • • • •

Actualisation of e-Governance benefits Robust and scalable infrastructure Awareness about programme amongst citizens Capacity building and manpower training Mobile based service delivery

delivery centres providing multiple citizen services under one roof. It is the first state in India to design a state-wide computerisation programme covering all levels of the administrative spectrum from the smallest (the Mandal Revenue Offices) to the largest and most complex offices. It is this relentless and untiring effort which makes Mee Seva service delivery a benchmark in citizen-centric governance in the country. An integrated technology solution for better governance can be successful only if it delivers results to citizens and the state government has achieved this distinction. A wider acceptability and higher IT adoption level makes Andhra Pradesh an attractive destination for executing ambitious and large scale projects.

Tell us about Spanco’s competencies in e-Governance?

Spanco has built an independent business unit focused on creating, managing, operating and delivering citizen-centric services. The competency lies in creating an efficient Government-to-Citizen Interface by delivering citizen-centric solutions, providing technol-

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / November 2012

ogy infrastructure services, developing web and mobile based application along with citizen enrolment and telemedicine. Besides extensive domain expertise, we bring rich experience in managing end-to-end projects by working in close coordination with the government. We have developed expertise for implementation of citizen-centric initiatives which will allow successful integration with other government initiatives including NREGA, UIDAI, Financial Inclusion, Healthcare and Education. Spanco has grown in leaps and bounds over the last decade and truly mirrors the Indian growth story.

Some of our landmark projects include Mee Seva in AP, CSCs in Maharashtra and Punjab, UIDAI in MP, Haryana, Maharashtra and Punjab, Modernisation of Transport Department in Punjab and Mobile Banking for SBI, Canara Bank and J&K Bank.

efficient delivery model, flexibility to add several services at a given time, deliver short-term and long-term government initiatives in the state and manage citizens that throng these centres for availing critical G2C and B2C services under one roof.

The solution adopted by Spanco was to create infrastructure that can scale the service portfolio, add new requirement, meet the increasing demand of the citizens, reduction on transaction time, improve counter efficiency, increase capability of revenue collection, efficient payment gateway for the citizens and business to state government and manage immediate rollout of government plans anytime in the year. The innovation applied

by Spanco for success of Mee Seva is a result of constant feedback collected internally and externally as well as creating delivery system with futuristic approach. Spanco’s solution platform has been successful enough to provide uninterrupted service to the masses.

How has Spanco contributed in improving the scale, size and citizen expectations at Mee Seva Centres?

Spanco, which took over the operations in the year 2008, has improved service delivery by way of bringing better technology solution, connectivity, uptime,

Kaustubh Dhavse CEO-eGov, Spanco Ltd

In Person

emerging andhra

Shailendra Kumar Joshi

Principal Secretary, Irrigation and Command Area Development Department, Govenment of Andhra Pradesh

Efficient

irrigation systems through technology is your vision for improving agriculture sector in the state of Andhra Pradesh?

As of now about one lakh acre area is being irrigated in Andhra Pradesh. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has taken up a massive programme called ‘Jalayagnam’ for improving irrigation in the State. Once this project is completed, about one lakh acre will be added to the existing acreage. 84 projects have been taken up at a cost of `1,85000 crore. In the last six years, we have spent `65,000 crore in completing 21 projects partially, while 12 projects have been fully completed. It is one of the largest investments in rural infrastructure which will bring lots of benefit to the farmers and rural economy.

“Better irrigation systems in the state are leading to vast improvements in farmer incomes,” says Dr Shailendra Kumar Joshi in conversation with Nayana Singh

W

hile urban areas in the country continue to progress, the rural areas where most farmers reside are mired in poverty. What

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In many western countries IT technology is being used to monitor and optimise the flow of water for irrigation. To what extent are we using ICT to optimise irrigation for farmlands in Andhra Pradesh?

We may not have started using ICT directly in irrigation and for flow monitoring, but we are using technology in a number of ways. For instance, we are now getting the inputs regarding reservoir status through SMS. We are also using technology for managing RNR (Rehabilitation and Resettlement). RNR is a very important component of irrigation projects.

Technology is being used to bring efficiency to the process by which the social survey is done for identifying the beneficiaries of RNR. The entire information is kept online, to have more transparency and efficiency. The thing is that ICT technologies require very little maintenance and are very cost effective. As of now we

have not started implementing technologies like flow metres, but in a few years, we will be having all that in place.

At the ground level what kind of impact is happening from the improvements in the agriculture sector? Are we seeing any rise in farmers’ incomes?

Better irrigation systems in the state are leading to vast improvements in farmer incomes.

Two small projects in Nizamabad district have led to `2,500 crore additional income coming to the farmers. By this only we can judge how well the impact will be if all the irrigation projects get implemented. Irrigation has to be given importance as about 60-65 percent of the nation’s population depends on agriculture.

In your opinion, if we can have more efficient irrigation in the state then what sort of improvement it will lead to agricultural output of the state?

See water is the most basic human need. It is not only required for agriculture or irrigation.

It is, in fact, a pre-requisite for overall development of the state. From drinking water, to irrigation water, agricultural industry, for generating power, it is difficult to conceive of life without water.

We have to learn to conserve water. In agriculture also, water must be used efficiently.

We have to develop better ways of cultivation, there have to be shifting crop patterns. We are doing all we can to provide water at lowest possible rates to our farmers. Water rates are already quite low in the State of Andhra Pradesh.

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In Person

emerging andhra

Dr P V Ramesh

Principal Secretary, Finance Department (R&E) Government of Andhra Pradesh

e-Governance

delivers by reducing redundancy

I

n your opinion what are the reform measures that should be undertaken to bring further improvement in the economy of Andhra Pradesh?

In my view, Andhra Pradesh is consistently growing at a rate that is higher than the national average. In the past seven years, the growth rate has been averaging between 8.9 percent and 9.2 percent. About 50 percent of the state GDP comes from the service sector while manufacturing and other industries and agriculture sector contribute rest of the revenue. In our state, a substantial part of the population lives in rural areas, and majority of the rural population is dependent on agriculture and on sustainable husbandry, fisheries, etc.

We have a big opportunity for harnessing agriculture and fisheries both in land and coastal areas. The growth in these areas is fairly fast. Recently the state launched a big milk mission which we hope will give boost to the livestock. There are big opportunities in agro processing industry and creation of value added services in the rural areas. We welcome investments better storage facilities and food

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“Andhra Pradesh has been registering fairly impressive amount of growth in manufacturing, mines and construction sectors and the growth can be sustained and to a certain extent enhanced as the state has good policies regarding investments,� says Dr P V Ramesh, Principal Secretary, Finance Department (R&E), Government of Andhra Pradesh, Government of Andhra Pradesh, in conversation with Nayana Singh

emerging andhra

preservation because almost 20-30 percent of food, in terms of agriculture products and horticulture products get wasted at different parts of the value chain.

So can we say that agriculture is the next big industry in the state?

I would say that agriculture is already the biggest industry. There exists ample potential for improving returns from agriculture. But the other sectors of the economy, as I already said, are also growing at a healthy pace. The services sector as you know has also been growing fairly at very comfortable pace. The demand for services is expanding continuously, so we need a steady expansion in the industry to meet the demand.

Overall, the state of Andhra Pradesh has about seven percent of the nation’s population, but it has only 13 percent wealth. We definitely have the potential to sustain what we have been doing and increasing productivity and efficiency in every sector, so the state has the potential for all round growth. There exist certain regional inequities and those need to be corrected.

Andhra Pradesh is known for its remarkable achievements in the e-Governance space. Mee Seva is already very popular with the masses. Tell us about the e-Governance initiatives that you have undertaken in the finance department to bring efficiency and transparency?

We have done a lot and we are in process of doing lot more. During the past one year, we have initiated measures for online budgeting.

The annual budget for this year was basically prepared using online system. Each department in the state actually put forth its claim based on the data and then that was reviewed jointly. Eventually the budget got released online. With such processes we are able to avoid the delays and redundancy is reduced.

Budget release orders and transfer order of funds can be done automatically. We are now in the process of introducing a comprehensive financial management system which we believe can lead to the transformation of the entire financial eco-system of the state. There will be a much better real time management of finances for inflows and outflows, bor-

rowings and remittances. Such a system will be conducive for providing us with real time management of finances. We are currently looking at many different avenues for developing such a system.

Do you think that proper implementation of e-Governance will lead to improvement of the entire economy?

Yes because there is huge opportunity in every sense. e-Governance does not only lead to development of more convenient ways of interaction between government departments and the citizens, it is also conducive for more evidence based policy making. With e-Governance, the flow of information is more streamlined, and that leads to faster and more evidence empowered decisions. It is also a fact that e-Governance brings greater transparency in the financial management space.

In Person

However, the finance department is also quite important as it involves the management of the finances of the entire state. There has to be an alignment of resources, which must be synchronised with demands, requirements making the system more transparent, more efficient. So I think it is just an exciting opportunity for me.

What landmark initiatives have you undertaken while you were in the health department? Can these initiatives be replicated in all the other states?

I think in the health sector we have initiated a range of transformational initiatives. The first one is the revitalisation of primary health system. We have established a community called Health & Nutrition clusters. There are new institutions that bring together better synergy, better integration in health & nutri-

“We are in the process of introducing a financial management system which shall transform the state’s financial ecosystem” It will also lead to improvements in overall management of the state’s economy. e-Governance delivers by reducing redundancy, and improving cost effectiveness. Overall it has huge potential for improving citizens’ services, which the government is meant to provide to its citizens. So the services become more citizen-friendly and responsive. This leads to phenomenal improvements in the levels of citizen satisfaction. In Andhra Pradesh we have the example of Mee Seva, which has become very popular with the citizens.

Before coming to finance you were in the health department, so please tell us about your journey from health to finance?

What assignment do you find more challenging, health or finance?

Every assignment is full of challenges, the health department and also the finance. There are so many different areas for improvement, for innovation, for transformations that are possible in each and every department.

tion sectors than what we have introduced.

We have the initiatives for strengthening the mother and child healthcare services, we have introduced a range of initiatives for strengthening secondary hospitals and particularly establishing the sick newborn care units, intensive care units for newborns, and quite a few nutrition rehabilitation centres. We have ensured that there is much better human resource deployment in the health department. The services are better rationalised.

All of this can be replicated in all parts of the country.

What drives you in the work that you do? Kindly share your mantra as a government servant.

I believe that one must approach one’s work with passion and commitment. For a government official it is important to meet the gap between expectations and capacity. Nearly every other challenge can be managed better, if we have the passion for doing good work and the right amount of the right talent.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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In Person

B R Meena Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation

Creating World

Class Infrastructure area. We have been instrumental in providing such infrastructure requirement for the industrial set up in Andhra Pradesh.

Your organisation has developed more than 300 industrial parks throughout Andhra Pradesh.

What sort of challenges have you come across while constructing these and what solutions have you developed in order to overcome these challenges?

“Hi-tech city, which has proved to be the backbone of IT industry in Andhra Pradesh, particularly around Hyderabad, is to my mind the most outstanding project,” says B R Meena, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation

A

ndhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation has been formed with the objective of creating new Industrial Infrastructure for the state. To what extent have you been successful in doing so?

Basically ours is demand driven approach. So whenever there is requirement for industries to have a place in Andhra Pradesh, then we come into play and provide them infrastructure requirements consisting of things like land, water, power, waste management and in some cases build-up

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We have different types of industrial parks—there are multi products industrial parks, product specific industrial parks and the other types. Some basic requirements must be met in managing the industrial parks. You need to have land, you need to have water supply, you need electricity, you need to have waste management, etc. So over a period of time, we have to develop a system that allows us to come up with a product specific park, so that you can address the problem of all the industries and all the units. Managing such diverse infrastructure needs is a challenge, but with our expertise, we are managing.

So how was your experience while constructing the special economic zones? Please share with us?

We as an industrial infrastructure corporation don’t see much of a difference between Special Economic Zones and Non Special Economic Zones because we perform the same kind of task in both cases. We continue to own the land, we only lease out the land as per the Government of India guidelines.

You have also created hi-tech city, so what are the features of this hi-tech city that you have created and financially how viable is the hi-tech city?

The hi-tech city was basically contemplated to attract the IT companies. It got conceptualised 15 years ago, when there was hardly any IT sector in state of Andhra Pradesh, particularly in Hyder-

abad. So we took the help of private player and we created a special purpose joint venture company, through which we managed to develop the hightech city, which has now become the more nodal point for development of IT in Andhra Pradesh.

Do you think this sort of projects should be replicated in other states where IT industry is not fully developed?

It is not as if you can replicate everything everywhere. Every place is unique in its own way; it has its unique needs. The strong point for Andhra Pradesh is that it has lot of talented IT professionals. The IT companies want set base here not only because of the infrastructure, but also because of the talented professionals who are working here.

Despite lot of investments being made in infrastructure, India is still lagging behind as compared to rest of the world. In your opinion how do we overcome the infrastructure deficit?

See the infrastructure is the requirement of the economy. In industrial perception it is called Core infrastructure and this means the basic utilities like big national companies, railways, airports, ports etc. Then there is the sector specific infrastructure like Infrastructure in Industries, in tourism and in the associate sectors. All these sectors lie at the core of any economic development. However, much more important are the infrastructure like education institutions, health facilities, and the human development. If we are lagging in human development, then the world class towers are of no use.

In your opinion what has been the most outstanding projects that you have executed?

Hi-tech city, which has proved to be the backbone of IT industry in Andhra Pradesh, particularly around Hyderabad, is to my mind the most outstanding project. Now we are also developing the aero space and defence parks, which are also going to be of world-class ambience.

In Person

emerging andhra

Harpreet Singh

Secretary, Civil Supplies, Government of Andhra Pradesh

Using Aadhaar to streamline PDS in Andhra Pradesh

W

hat is your vision for Civil Supplies Department in Andhra Pradesh?

We have a very large database of beneficiaries; 2.2 crore ration card holders covering 80 percent population of the state come under PDS. The state government is giving subsidy of `3,000 crore. This is in addition to subsidy given by the central government. The Civil Supplies Department is taking many steps for removing ghost and duplicates. Verification camps and other measures are being taken. We have identified Aadhaar as a suitable platform for managing PDS. It is a matter of pride for us that Andhra Pradesh is number one in the country in Aadhaar enrolment.

Out of a population of about eight crore, we have already covered five crore. The enrolment drive is ongoing, and we plan to cover the balance population by the end of December or by early January.

Can you elaborate on the ways by which Aadhaar will lead to better systems in the Civil Supplies Department?

The best thing about Aadhaar is that it gives you access to the biometric data of people. We already have the ration card database, which can be seamlessly linked to the Aadhaar database. So the new ration cards that will be issued will have the unique Aadhaar numbers in them.

This exercise is called seeding and it is currently underway. Seeding is being done inorganically and organically.

In case of inorganic seeding, at the time of enrolment the beneficiary can be asked for ration cards. In organic seeding, people furnish Aadhaar number for getting their ration cards made.

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“The Andhra Pradesh Government has identified Aadhaar as a suitable platform for plugging the loopholes in the PDS system,� says Harpreet Singh, Secretary, Civil Supplies, Government of Andhra Pradesh, in conversation with Nayana Singh

emerging andhra

How does the Aadhaar database bring about an improvement in the level of interaction that is happening between the ration card holders and the PDS shops?

When the customer comes to ration shops, he gives his fingerprint and ration card number.

His identity is authenticated and transaction is done. This is called authentication enabled service and it is being made available to everyone in the state.

In the management of food grains, a lot of deficiency is visible. Often large amounts of grains can be seen rotting in rain.

What is your achievement in the management of food grains?

Right now we are doing what is called end-toend computerisation, from farmers to the card holders. Once the end-to-end computerisation is completed, losses, if any, can be quantified and fixed. We had very large number of card holders and the demand for new cards is on the rise. Under these circumstances, we have to focus on managing the cards first of all. Now we have come to the next stage of shops where authentication based sale service is being delivered. Next service is godown. Once godowns have been computerised, we will come to procurement centres and farmers.

What steps is the state government taking to ensure that farmers get optimum price for grains?

The Government of India has set Minimum Support Price (MSP) facility. No one can buy grains from farmers at prices lower than MSP. In Andhra Pradesh millers were also procuring grains from farmers traditionally, but for the last two years, the agency of the Civil Supply Corporation of the state government has also been buying paddy from farmers.

This happens because we found that the millers were facing problem in procuring paddy from farmers due to slump in the market.

Therefore we stepped into buying the paddy directly. About eight months back the centre allowed the export of rice, so millers have again come in the market in a big way and are buying the paddy at above the MSP. In situation where there is bumper crop, the price tends to fall, and the MSP pressure is there, leading to a situation where intervention of

state agency becomes very important to support the price and we have to buy the crop in large quantity.

Tell us about your Deepam Scheme for the distribution of LPG? This is also a government scheme. It is more than 10 years old. It is a scheme to encourage the people of poor households towards the safe cooking gas and to discourage for use of bonfire. The cost is borne by the state government. Suppose the oil company has to issue 15 lakh connections in a year, about 5 lakh connections will go to Deepam people. The cost of the connection will be remitted to the oil company directly. This is very popular scheme

In Person

fair price shop and if that is the only medium for his survival, then margin can’t allow him to run his family. It is not viable. We have to think of new ways of converting these shops into general goods shops. The shops must be upgraded so that the shop owners can sustain themselves.

What are the key challenges that you are facing in the distribution of food and supplies? What are the ways by which Aadhaar is leading to more transparency in distribution?

In Aadhaar, which is an online authentication service, connectivity is a big challenge. This problem especially crops up in shops located

“The major challenge in food grains handling is related to the inadequate storage capacity�

among the rural people and rural women and its demand is very high in the state.

What challenges are you facing in equitable storage and distribution of food grains? What are you doing to tackle these challenges?

The major challenge in handling of food grains is related to the inadequate storage capacity, particularly in a bumper year. Due to non-availability of adequate storage capacity, the food grains tend to rot. To tackle this challenge, we have tried to increase the storage capacity in our basic godowns, which are at mandal level points. Earlier we used to stock food grains for about one month, but now we have increased the stock for four months. For four months stock, we will have to have a storage capacity of almost 15 lakh tonnes of food grains. Thus we have to enhance the storage capacity for at least 10 lakh tonnes of grains at mandal level points.

At times the Fair Price Shops face a problem as they are earning very low margins. How do we rectify this problem?

The low margin that the fair price shopkeepers make is indeed a challenge. If a person runs

in remote areas. When we talk to the operators, they say that in 75 percent shops there is no problem, but in rest of the shops the connectivity is not good enough. We need to have broadband or antenna based systems for managing the connectivity work of these shops. We are already looking into the matter, and it will be done soon.

Aadhaar based delivery systems have been linked with a lot of digital devices in the country.

How will you integrate these devices for yielding the proper result?

I can answer this question with an example. I was Secretary of AP Public Service Commission. When we started the online process for recruitments, we were worried that this would not yield proper results, but later on we realised that this was not a problem. We found that the candidates in each and every area of the state were eager to apply online.

The penetration of the Internet and mobile apps is so extensive that online system is not a problem. Of course, some pockets in the country pose a lot of problems regarding connectivity, but we are sure that this problem will get resolved. The operators will reach that area too, whenever the demand goes high.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Electricity Transmission

emerging andhra

Controlling System Operations

of Power Transmission The Indian power sector has the third largest transmission network in the world. APTRANSCO is the second largest T&D network in the country Hiralal Samariya, Chairman & Managing Director, APTRANSCO

I

mproving network performance is the key priority of APTRANSCO. Post reforms transmission losses have reduced from 9 percent to 4.22 percent during 2011-12 and the lowest amongst state utilities in the country. Transmission losses during 2012-13 up to July 2012 is 4.02 percent.

Transmission system availability (99.89 percent) in Andhra Pradsh is the highest among transmission utilities in the country. The failure rate of Power Transformers is 1.53 percent. This has been achieved by continuous monitoring of power transformers. APTRANSCO is using latest technologies like Multi Circuit Towers, INVAR Conductor, Monopole, Gas Insulated Substations and UG Cables to increase the transmission capability.

APTRANSCO is currently responsible for strengthening, expanding and controlling the state’s transmission infrastructure at voltage levels of 132 kV and above. It also handles load dispatching operations.

Honours and awards In recognition of excellent performance, Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Ministry of Power (MoP), New Delhi, has conferred on

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APTRANSCO the award of “Gold Shield for the year 2010-11” in the category of “Early Completion of Transmission Projects” for the fastest completion of Transmission project of 400 KV Double Circuit (DC) line from Kothagudem Thermal Power Station (Stage-VI) to Khammam Substation in a record time of 17 months as against the CEA norm of 24 months.

CEA has hailed APTRANSCO as one of the best power utilities in the Country.

APTRANSCO was chosen for excellence in “Cost Management Award” by a Jury headed

by Justice S. Varma, Former Chief Justice of Hon’ble Supreme Court for achieving various economic and efficiency measures.

APTRANSCO adjudged as the Joint winner of prestigious “5th Enertia Award under Best Performance Utility – State Category” for its continuous excellence in the areas of loss reduction and transmission system availability.

APTRANSCO awarded “National Vigilance Excellence Award” for the year 2011 at all India level among various banks, PSUs and other ministries for vigilance activity under preventive vigilance by the Vigilance Commissioner, Central Vigilance Commission.

Hiralal Samariya

emerging andhra

IT initiatives Various IT initiatives have been taken up to improve the performance and bring in transparency and accountability. These include CAT (Consumer Analysis Tool), MATS (Monitoring and Tracking System), TIMS (Transformer Information Management System), PMRS (Performance Monitoring and Reporting System), Book consolidation Module and Remote Meter Reading (RMR) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). e-Vaaradhi, an electronic way to reach electricity consumers for passing the messages relating to billing information, power shutdown information, etc. through SMS is introduced.

Present infrastructure of APTRANSCO 400 KV SS

10 Nos.

220 KV SS

112 Nos.

132 KV SS

310 Nos.

Total EHT SS

432 Nos.

Total Length of EHT Lines 32983 CKM

The Department is in the process of having charters and service standards for all the services rendered at all levels. APTRANSCO has also adopted many technologies for minimising losses in the transmission system. These include: • Erection of Reactors at 400 KV Substation • Reduction in the length of the transmission line • Conducting Study Flow wherever the power factor is less than 0.95 and erecting Capacitor Banks at the Substation to improve the power factor • Conducting Energy Auditing regularly to reduce losses like replacing struck meters,

Infrastructure proposed to be added during 12th plan period

Electricity Transmission

Policies adopted by Andhra Pradesh Government to make the state self-sufficient in electricity

• Additional power is tied up and flowing in to the grid.

• Power is being purchased through power exchanges as and when available at a reasonable rate.

• Synchronisation to private power plants are given immediately to add additional capacity to the grid.

• Government of India has been requested to consider the allocation of additional power till end of May 2013 to meet the present critical power crisis.

• Government of India has been requested to arrange additional natural gas of 4.5 MMSCMD, so that gas plants can operate at least 75 percent PLF as decided

by EGoM. • Government of India has been requested to allocate power from unallocated share of Central Generating Stations of Southern Region upto 500 MW.

Against this, Ministry of Power, Government of India allocated 100 MW of power from Central Generating Stations of Eastern Region from 30.07.2012 to 31.10.2012.

• Government of India has been requested to allocate power from unallocated Power of 300 MW from the Kundankulam Atomic Power Plant and 75 MW from 2nd expansion of Neyveli Lignite Corporation of firm basis to Andhra Pradesh.

• AP discoms are not in a position to purchase any quantum of power other than already tied up due to severe transmission corridor constraint between NEW (North, East, West) Grid and Southern Grid. PGCIL was requested to expedite the laying of transmission corridor and to get the lines completed by the end of 2013.

• Government of India has

“APTRANSCO has implemented an efficient e-Procurement System, which connects buyers and sellers in an open and transparent online market”

400 KV SS

15 Nos.

220 KV SS

26 Nos.

132 KV SS

86 Nos.

curbing theft of energy, requesting discoms to install Capacitor Banks • Strengthening the transmission system

Total EHT SS

127 Nos.

e-Governance system

Total Length of EHT lines

12000 CKM

e-Governance system links development goals, policies, priorities, plans, programmes, projects,

been requested to ensure that firm coal supply should be maintained to all units of Simhadri as per Fuel Supply Agreement to operate at 100 percent PLF. • NTPC has been requested to start generation of Simhadri 4th unit at the earliest so that another 210 MW power can be supplied to Andhra Pradesh as per obligations.

• Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has proposed to fund 40 percent of the expenditure to be borne for creating transmission, evacuation network for wind and solar energy. In this connection proposals were already submitted for transmission and evacuation scheme of 3,150 MW of power costing about `1,830 crore out of which 40 percent amount i.e. `732 crore is to be released by MNRE.

budgets, action plans and performance towards achieving the desired objectives. The system involves performance indicators, performance monitoring, performance measurement, performance-based evaluation, performance-based review and evidence-based policy-making.

Performance monitoring is a continuous process of collecting and analysing data to compare how well a project, programme or policy is being implemented with reference to expected results.

APTRANSCO has implemented an efficient e-Procurement System, which connects buyers and suppliers through electronic exchange of tenders, catalogues, contracts, POs, invoices, etc.

Through e-Procurement, APTRANSCO can include on-contract and off-contract buying. It can also include a variety of techniques such as RFPs, quotes, auctions and reverse auctions. Notification of tenders can be received, bids can be submitted online and the status of the different bids can be tracked seamlessly.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

33

viewpoint

Are the TSPs and VAS developers getting ready.…. for the NOFN ?

S

ince declared by the former President Smt Pratibha Devisingh Patil in the Joint Session of the Parliament on June 4th 2009, on government’s commitment to expanding broadband coverage to connect every panchayat to a broadband network in three years, the Telecom Service Providers and the Application Developers have been waiting for the government to launch this mega initiative of providing broadband connectivity to every panchayat village.

After a series of As-Is and To-Be study and recommendations by TRAI and an Inter-departmental Committee presided by USOF Administrator, in October 2011 the government had approved the ‘National Optical Fibre Network’ (NOFN) project, for providing broadband connectivity to all 2,50,000 Panchayat villages at an initial cost of over `20,000 crore.

To execute NOFN project, a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), named Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), has been established as the nodal agency, BSNL, PGCIL and RailTel would be BBNL’s partner implementing agencies, to connect all 2,50,000 Panchayat villages of the country through optical fibre cable, within an ambitious time line of 2013-14. Under NOFN, a pre-identified location in every Panchayat village, would become a bandwidth aggregation node, with a back-haul bandwidth speed of maximum 100 Mbps at every node. Excluding the ‘technically not feasible’ sites (TNF sites are in the parlance of BSNL where OFC cables cannot be laid due to various reasons), OFC has now reached almost all 6000+ Block headquarter villages in the country.

BBNL will execute incremental laying of OFC beyond these Blocks, to reach the next level of Village Panchayats, in addition to the existing cables up to Block level, which may run into a million

34

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / November 2012

route-km for the entire country. Besides the tight timeline, it is expected that BBNL has to resolve many other pertinent issues, like, RoW, Business Model, OFC safety and security in the hinterland, Capacity Building, in course of implementation of this mega project.

NOFN will thus end at the 2,50,000 Village Panchayat (VP) level whereas mathematically 2.5 to 3 villages exist below each VP. How the Access Network will be created around the end-point of the NOFN? TSPs will be the sole customers of last mile bandwidth for the BBNL or its partner Agencies. Therefore the objective of this massive project will not be fulfilled if the industry (read telecom service providers) does not come up, in an equally fitting manner, to provide access network around those Panchayat level nodes, to reach the 6,40,000 villages down the Panchayats. The TSPs have to gear up, to embrace this new opportunity of extending their network up to the remotest corner of rural India.

There is another vital stakeholder to play an important role in the forthcoming broadband eco-system being created by NOFN project. It is expected that this high capacity bandwidth pipe of NOFN would create a paradigm shift in the bandwidth-intensive social sector services in the areas of telemedicine, animated education, secured financial applications and so on. It is further expected that the economy of scale in respect of various commercially viable citizen services and value-added services will prevail, by bringing in 700 Mn rural people in to the main stream of telecom connectivity. The Application Developer community needs to appreciate the unprecedented potential of this 100 Mbps village level back-haul network and needs to go back to their software laboratory to produce variety of applications on static and mobile platform.

The Government of India is very keen that NOFN is implemented on time, fulfilling its stated objectives. NOFN pilots in three Blocks, one each in Rajasthan, Tripura and Andhra Pradesh, are

expected to be complete by November 2012. To oversee the implementation and proper utilisation of the infrastructure and to gear up the government departments to initiate development and nationally rolling out e-services and e-applications (remember Electronic Delivery of Services Bill is waiting in the corner) up to Panchayat level, a high level coordination committee is already constituted with Secretary DoT as the Chairman, USOF Administrator as the Convenor and Secretaries of I&B, IT,H&FW, PR, RD, F&PDS, School & Higher Education, CMD BSNL, CMD BBNL as members. The committee would assess the G2C/C2G service requirements of the ministries, departments and PSUs for both central and state governments and would evolve a design and implementation framework so that by the time of next two years when the NOFN is ready, all those entities in the central and states can readily roll out their services on NOFN. The government has cast its dice to create an information highway of unprecedented bandwidth capacity to reach every VP of the country.

The issue of free RoW has been solved for most of the states and UTs. Although the government’s focus is on all round government-citizen service delivery, all the stakeholders outside the government should appreciate the tremendous commercial potential of this network with 100Mbps bandwidth at the VP level. To avoid the ‘cart before the horse’ syndrome, all the stakeholders, especially the TSPs and the application developers, have to invest time, effort and money asap, in their core areas of expertise, to get ready for NOFN on time. They cannot afford to miss this bus…for sure.

Ashis Sanyal Consulting Editor, egov

In Person

emerging andhra

B Venkatesham

Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh State Housing Corporation Ltd (APSHCL)

Building

on technology

P

lease tell us about the initiatives from Andhra Pradesh State Housing Corporation Limited (APSHCL) to provide housing facilities to needy families?

Set up in 1979, the APSHCL started building houses from 1983 onwards and till now we have completed 1.7 crore housing units across the state.

In the recent years especially from 2004 onwards, the construction work gained momentum and around 60 lakh units were completed in eight years during 2004-12. Work on another 11 lakh houses are in progress currently. Still there is a need to build around another 22 lakh houses to provide shelter to all and make Andhra Pradesh a hut-free state.

Andhra Pradesh will be the first state which would achieve shelter for all in times to come.

Can you tell us about the sector specific housing projects which have been implemented in rural areas?

Under this ‘Housing For All’ or ‘Shelter For All’ scheme, we are also

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“We have a comprehensive portal called HOMES. Technology utilisation is done through this software and everything can be seen online,” says B Venkatesham, Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh State Housing Corporation Ltd (APSHCL), Government of Andhra Pradesh, in conversation with Sunil Kumar and Nayana Singh

emerging andhra

concentrating on specific segments like bidi workers, SC, STs , weavers, fisherman, and those who cannot afford to construct their houses. So these segments are being concentrated and also extra provisions are made for them over and above what others get. For example, we are getting `15,000 more for constructing work-sheds apart from regular housing, fishermen getting `20,000 more than others, SC/ST persons in rural areas get `20,000 more and in urban areas they get `30,000 more than the other beneficiaries. So, that is how we are supporting these segments.

How many people in the state have been benefited with the APSHCL initiative—directly or indirectly?

As I told earlier about 1.7 crore houses have already been completed. So, apart from these direct beneficiaries quite a good number of others have benefited from the scheme indirectly. They include people engaged in brick making units, centering units, door making units.

What are the technologies that you are using to construct stronger houses at much cheaper rates?

Basically Andhra Pradesh Government created a concept called Nivritri Kendra, way back in 1980’s. The Nivritri Kendra develops cost-effective technologies. It also develops eco-friendly technologies using steel and other items to minimise use of wood and other items to reduce the cost of construction.

Key Achievements •

Andhra Pradesh is the first state in the country which has established an exclusive organisation to achieve the objective of providing shelter to all

•

APSHCL Mobilises loans from various financial institutions for implementation of housing programmes

•

APSHCL Plays the role of facilitator in the construction of houses by providing technical and financial assistance

•

Since 1979 as on 31.03.2007, 65.22 lakhs houses have been constructed in the state under differ-

The various schemes being implemented by APSHCL are as follows: • INDIRAMMA • Rachabanda • Flood Housing • Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) in rural areas • Beedi Workers Housing in Rural and urban areas • Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) • Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) • Weavers Work Sheds • Other schemes, as and when sanctioned by the state government

brief history Andhra Pradesh State Housing Corporation Limited (APSHCL) was incorporated on 5th July 1979 under Companies Act. APSHCL aims to bring dignity to each and every BPL family by assisting them, both financially and technically, for construction of permanent (Pucca) houses.

The financial assistance is provided as per the various schemes of state government and the Government of India.

In Person

The technical assistance is provided by the staff of APSHCL in the form the Technical Work Inspectors, Assistant Engineers, Deputy Executive Engineers and Executive Engineers. In addition, APSHCL brings innovative technologies in house construction. Further, the APSHCL also supplies cost-effective building material to the beneficiaries, produced through the Nirmithi Kendras, and also certain material like cement at subsidised prices.

ent central & state fully and partially subsidised schemes •

APSHCL propagates cost-effective and ecofriendly construction materials and technologies in the construction of houses

•

APSHCL Imparts training for skills upgradation through Nirmithi Kendras

•

APSHCL encourages institutional production of alternative construction materials.

•

Recovers loans from beneficiaries in instalments by motivation

Will you elaborate about the Nivritri Kendras, which supplies building materials at subsidised rates?

At Nivritri Kendras, we supply false brick, walls, door frames, window frames and also give the roof panels and any other support that people want. Basically Andhra Government has a facilitator approach rather than a provider approach. We assist people in constructing their own homes.

Tell us about the e-Governance initiatives that the organisation has adopted to bring efficiency in its working?

AP Housing Corporation has been using ICT in a very big way. We have a comprehensive portal called HOMES. Technology utilisation is done through software called HOMES and there everything can be seen online— the beneficiary, the stages of houses, how the house would look like and data about each and every individual beneficiary is available there.

All the payments are done online. The beneficiary opens the bank account and we transfer the amount in their accounts online.

We have now started more ICT initiatives like SMS system wherein the beneficiary will get the payment released from the APSHCL after every stage of construction without routine inspection of the site. Besides, we are also thinking of using geo tagging of the photographs so that any mischievous works and activities can be reduced to negligible level.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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techno brain

Technology Revolutionises and Enables Change...

The enablers use it for smart e-Governance to make a difference.

Techno Brain is the company to watch out for…

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his new paradigm has brought about a revolution in the quality of service delivered to the citizens. It has ushered in transparency in the governing process; saving of time due to provision of services through single window; simplification of procedures; better office and record management; reduction in corruption; and improved attitude, behaviour and job handling capacity of the personnel.

Various Private Players are contributing greatly to bring in e-Gov in the best possible way.

Techno Brain is one of the companies where e-Governance is a very large focused initiative.

They provide a suite of modern, innovative and comprehensive e-Government solutions that provide services for effective and smart governance.

Techno Brain works with Governments and departments to come up with effective solutions and behaves as a single-window solution provider.

Typical solutions are for different departments and services of government namely: Public Grievances, Police, Biometric security, Social Services, Public Information, Land Registration, Financial Manage-

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ment, Enrolment processes, Automation of day to day operations ,Utility Payments / Billing, Commercial, and typical Government requirements such as e- Procurements, tender managements.

Large overlays, clarity in governance vision and commitment characterise the success parameters of e-Governance projects. One such project which enhanced transparency and accountability is Techno Brain’s Financial Management System for a Municipal Corporation.

A Municipal Corporation was facing challenges in streamlining its financial operations.

Their original financial systems were developed at a time when department accountability was the primary focus. But over the years, incompatible and disconnected applications led to a whole host of operational inefficiencies.

To overcome these challenges, this municipal corporation engaged Techno Brain India to implement a Financial System that integrated systems across all of its different departments, including finance, revenues, engineering, public health, treasuries, town planning and audit.

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After implementing the new system for financial management, the corporation is now well-positioned for future growth and provide better citizen-centric services.

Thus, e-Governance is a huge opportunity to re-invent how governments can work to reach every section of the society and companies like Techno Brain leave no stones unturned to make a difference.

The company’s core focus since inception remains providing solutions to enable local and state governments to deliver better citizen-centric services.

In addition, Techno Brain is also offering customised solutions to NGOs and other private organisations.

In a candid conversation with company’s Managing Director Anand Mohan said, “We, at Techno Brain believe that e-Governance is about understanding government domain, bringing about a cultural change and using technology as an enabler to help governments achieve better performance.” He also added, “I am proud of what we have achieved so far, but we have a long way to go.”

Our primary objective is to provide solutions that will

Anand Mohan, Managing Director, Techno Brain help governments to bring in transparency and value addition to the citizens.”

Besides customized solutions, Techno Brain India has also developed various IT products, such as: MEsure: This is Certified for Microsoft Dynamics product for project monitoring and evaluation and can be used for both public sectors and NGOs. InspireHRM: This is also Certified for Microsoft Dynamics product and can be used for Human Resource and Payroll functions by any organization.

SecuRegister: This is a multi-modal biometric system to manage data and associated identity functions.

A CMMI Level 3 Company

mpowering the nation Our e-Governance solutions enable “smart governance” in areas that matter most to citizens and businesses.

Treasury Management Solution for Budgeting & Financial Management

Clinic Management Solution for Better Health Care

Performance Monitoring & Evaluation System for Policy Effectiveness

Electronic Public Distribution System for Food Security

Biometric Smart Card Systems for Identification and Verification

Digitization of Government Records for Effective Service Delivery

Citizen Service Portals for Single Window Public Information Access

Managed Infrastructure Services for Enhancing Operational Efficiencies

S.V.Square, Road No.36, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad – 500 033, Tel: +91 40 30990202, Fax: +91 40 30990201 info.india@technobrainltd.com, www.technobraingroup.com Global Presence

Ethiopia | Ghana | India | Kenya | Malawi | Mozambique | Rwanda | South Africa | South Sudan | Tanzania | UAE | Uganda | UK | USA | Zambia

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Kerala

Transparency & Efficiency from ICT “Kerala IT Vision 2020 is focussed on cornering 5 percent of India’s IT market, and creating 5 lakh new jobs in IT,” says P K Kunhalikutty, Hon’ble Minister for Industries and Information Technology, Government of Kerala The IT industry in the state has been growing at a healthy rate, but Kerala is yet to achieve the kind of success in IT that the states like Karnataka have achieved.

Please share with us the key achievements of your department in developing in IT industry in the state?

The Kerala IT industry had a humble beginning in the early nineties with the establishment of Technopark at Thiruvananthapuram, over 20 years back. That was a unique experiment and the first of its kind in the country. It may be remembered that this was before India opened up.

The setting up of Technopark opened up a completely new paradigm in industrial culture and the opportunities for the educated young people.

Greatly inspired by the success of Technopark, Infopark at Kochi was established in 2003, which was also proved to be a great success. These successes gave us the confidence to spread the wings further north with the establishment of Cyber Park at Kozhikode.

These three Parks act as the hubs of IT development of the State. Today, we have in Kerala around 600 small, medium

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and large IT firms employing over 80,000 professionals directly and nearly three times that number indirectly. Kerala is blessed with high quality educated human resources that is needed for IT/ITES industry. Kerala’s achievements in education, healthcare, religious tolerance, peaceful co – existence of all classes and communities makes it further suitable for substantial growth of IT/ITES industry. The highly secular and cosmopolitan atmosphere in Kerala combined with an excellent law and order situation attracts the professionals as a place to settle. The low cost of living compared to the metros and the facilities similar to those being available makes the State a high value for money to reside and work.

Kerala IT Vision 2020 is set to focussed on cornering 5 percent of India’s IT market, which requires development of around 50 Million Sq.ft. of built up area. This would provide 5 lakhs new job opportunities.

The three major IT Parks in Kerala together with Smart City have about 1000 acres of land that needs to be developed, along with a few forthcoming Private IT Parks to fulfil the vision. The Government, in

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its new IT policy has catered to this requirement of the sector by allowing private IT parks and also bringing the concept of IT townships wherein all facilities are provided in the vicinity of the Parks.

In Kerala, the state government has taken lots of new initiatives in the e-Governance space. Please share with us your vision for further improving the governance structure through ICT? The Moto of Government of Kerala, under the leadership of Oomman Chandy has been “Transparency, Efficiency, Responsiveness and Accountability to people.” Keeping in line with the same we have been formulating an e-governance strategy for the state which would enable the convergence of the various governance initiatives in the state to an integrated, optimised and unified framework.

Essentially this means a citizen focussed approach to government services Kerala has launched an innovative system like the Chief Minister’s Online Public Grievance Lodging and

Monitoring System, which permits Citizens to lodge their grievances related to any department/sector in Government of Kerala. The grievance can be forwarded to the concerned authorities for needful action. What kind of response is this system seeing from the citizens in the state?

Kerala has introduced IT in Government-citizen interaction, way ahead of many other states in India and the growth or absorption has been successful. We have developed a sustainable model of IT adoption in governance initially by introducing the usage or application in individual departments and allowing them to make their own success stories.

Today the e-governance scene of Kerala has Web based services, ICT based Call Centres, mobile governance and the technological advances are fuelling the Government citizen relations further.

The transparency measures adopted by this government have been its single differentiating factor from any Government. The public is free to lodge their complains through all channels and this facility is available through the

Kerala

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P K Kunhalikutty, Hon’ble Minister for Industries and Information Technology, Government of Kerala; Chairman, Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM) November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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Kerala

Citizen Call Centres also . The complaint is then followed up to a logical conclusion. The IDEAS software deployed by the IT department within Secretariat helps the citizen as well as the employees to track the status of files in the Secretariat, thus increasing transparency. The citizens have a confidence that they will be heard and they can also monitor the progress of their grievance or application.

At times common citizens are unable to take full advantage of e-Governance systems as they have not been adequately informed. What steps are you taking to popularise the e-Governance systems?

Considerable strategic investments have been made in the e-Governance infrastructure front like the first State Data Centre in the country, Kerala State Wide Area Network for connectivity, and Akshaya, the Common Service Centres which act to bridge the “digital divide� by successfully carrying out e-literacy campaign for the common man. We are now in the process of consolidation and integration of the core IT infrastructure with the applications developed by different departments to provide e-enabled Government to Citizen, Citizen to Government and Business to Consumer services to all the citizens of the State.

Along with IT, you are also looking after the portfolios of Mining and Geology, Handlooms and Textiles. What kind of ICT initiatives have you brought in the Mining and Geology, Handlooms and Textiles sectors? Tell us about new e-Governance ideas that you might be planning to launch in these sectors.

An ICT application in all

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sectors is a focus of the Government policy and these Departments have already embarked upon their IT initiatives in a large way. This varies from information dissemination websites to interactive portals to transactions across the web.

Government of Kerala have decided to introduce electronic pass system (e-pass) in the mining sector for transportation of minerals. The system / software developed have the features of computer networking and GPRS. Introduction of this system will stop the illegal mining and transportation of minerals in the State.

Government have introduced e-procurement and e-payment systems in Government Departments and Public Sector undertakings under the Industries Department.

These days there is lot of talk about anti-national and antisocial content being put on blogs and social networks? In your opinion should government have a monitoring mechanism for the websites?

There are so many websites and blogs, so is it possible for any government agency to monitor all of them?

The web is a large space and regulating the web is near to impossible with the advent of social networking sites. The possibility here is to create awareness among people about cyber laws and the impacts of their actions.

Many a times the youngsters who upload content or share it merely out of curiosity or just for the sake of fun. This cannot be regulated by law or by policing. Awareness of better uses of the web and the need to maintain a clean and sober web profile etc need to be educated to the youth. They

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should also be made aware that today you can be traced out to your system in case of a requirement and that even employer’s look though web profiles of their prospective employees before recruitment.

These factors will make people responsible in these aspects and I see self-restriction is the only way. Having said that when things go beyond certain limits then law would take its own course.

Kerala

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Envisioning a Wholly Digital Kerala “To a large extent the state of Kerala has managed to bridge the digital divide; a high percentage of the state’s population has access to personal computers and the Internet,” says P H Kurian, Principal Secretary (IT), Government of Kerala What are your plans for bringing technological advancements in the state of Kerala? What major policy initiatives should be taken at the state or central level to bring about growth in the IT sector in Kerala?

I am glad to say that Kerala has been one of the pioneers in developing IT infrastructure and in enhancing the scope of IT industry. We started a Technopark in 1991, when there was very little understanding of the importance of IT industry.

Due to various reasons, we were unable to create a world class IT industry. Cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon and Noida have raced ahead of us.

However, we continue to be of the opinion that the state of Kerala is blessed with the human resources and the basic infrastructure that are needed to attract IT industries. We continue with our efforts for developing the IT industry.

We have plans to ensure that by the year 2020, about five percent of India’s IT industry should be located in Kerala. Five percent of Indian IT industry means about $300 billion of new investments. We will have an export $15 billion. There will be a huge boost to the state’s economy.

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This will lead to the generation of almost five lakh new jobs in the state. Currently the state boasts of about 80,000 IT related jobs.

To implement this plan of having rapid growth in the IT industry, we will need at least 600 acres of land. The government is trying to make the land available. There are two or three entities within the government to create the IT infrastructure and lease it out to the interested parties. A lot of private companies will also be participating in the creation of infrastructure.

What about the development of human resource? The IT professionals play the most important role in the IT industry. So what steps are being taken to train adequate number of professionals?

We are talking a number of steps to train our young men and women. Our ICT academy will become operational by December with the participation of three private companies. Many other institutions in the state are also engaged in providing IT related education.

The state of Kerala has made a name for itself in the e-Governance space. What is your vision for e-Governance?

When it comes to the imple-

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P H Kurian Principal Secretary (IT), Government of Kerala mentation of e-Governance initiatives, we are one of the top states in the country. We have ensured the implementation of the best CSC model right from the beginning. To a large extent we have managed to bridge the digital divide; people from

all sections of society in Kerala are IT-savvy. A high percentage of the state’s population has access to personal computers and the Internet. If you take into account the increase in the number of smartphones, we can easily reach the conclusion

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Kerala

that by 2020, a majority of our population will be IT-enabled.

There is no doubt that by 2020, every citizen in the state will have at least a computer or a smartphone or both. We foresee that in times to come many G2C, C2G, B2C services will move into the mobile platform.

To a large extent e-Governance will become m-Governance.

What is your dream e-Governance project? Also tell us about one e-Governance project that you think has the power of being replicated across other states in the country.

My dream e-Governance project would be the one that brings maximum benefits to the people. e-Governance can play a very crucial role in the management of land. The ownership details and other information can be digitised and made available online. This is already happening. Many initiatives have been taken in Kerala to bring e-Governance to the level of panchayats.

Birth and death certificates can be availed online. Since 2001, more than 80 percent of panchayats have been offering online facility for certificates to citizens. A copy of the certificate is stored on the panchayat’s server to enable people to take digitally-signed certificates whenever one is needed. Many other wings of the government have also developed the facility for providing digital certificates.

We have also started a system in the state to enable all kinds of regulatory clearances to be delivered electronically. For instance, there is a building permit from the municipality. The e-Municipality system is there to facilitate the application of building permits. Another hugely

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beneficial system is the one that allows citizens to track their files and applications. Until now, people had to run around, call and follow. Now it is easy to track the files. In the secretariat, we have started the Secretariat File Tracking System. So if anyone has applied for a certificate or sent a petition to the minister, he or she will be able to track its movement—when it goes to the minister, and when it goes down to the next person.

The main purpose of e-Governance is to make the governance structure accountable, transparent and efficient. How far do you think the e-Governance system in Kerala has succeeded in these endeavours?

The most important thing in e-Governance is accountability.

With online systems in place, the officials can’t act in an arbitrary manner and there is better service delivery. The government of India has selected a few departments where maximum citizen interaction is happening. But the situation in regards to citizen interaction varies from state to state. In Kerala, for instance, it is the Labour Department that has maximum number of citizens interacting. This department is engaged in distribution of labour welfare fund and unemployment pensions to almost 300,000 unemployed youth in Kerala. In five to six months we will have a system that can disburse monthly payments to all these individuals automatically. The 40 lakh citizens, who are members of our Welfare Fund Boards, will also avail of the system of electronic payments. Similarly, the benefits that are being given as pensions, scholarships or medical benefits will go direct to the beneficiary account through electronic means. Currently we

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are populating all the data with bank accounts, and linking the information with Aadhaar so that duplication, if any, is avoided.

In your opinion, to what extent has e-Governance achieved its potential in India?

I would say that by now, e-Governance has already achieved 10-20 percent of its potential in India. To a large extent, there has been a great improvement in the life of citizens with the e-Governance systems. However, we still need to enter a number of new areas, to reach out to still larger sections of the population. The Chief Minister of Kerala has a very important vision. He intends to make entire state go digital by providing connectivity in all districts and panchayats.

Once the BBNL project gets implemented in the state, this vision of seamless connectivity in every part of the state will get achieved. In fact, I would like to point out that about 50 percent of the panchayats in the state are already connected; the remaining will get connected in the next six months. With seamless connectivity there will be great improvement in the role that is being played by the CSCs in the state. The Chief Minister of the state also envisions that every citizen should have an email address, which has been provided by the state. In the initial stages we will ensure that at least one family member in every state has an email ID. The state provided email ID will be linked to Aadhaar number and will be for the purpose of providing a secure system for the citizens to communicate with their government. The moment any government department receives an email from the citizen, the government officials will be able to find information on his background through

Aadhaar database. If he or she is a BPL person, then he will be providing the adequate facilities.

How effective will this system of emails be in a country where many people are still unable to read or write?

There is high amount of literacy in the state of Kerala.

The state is ranked amongst one of the most literate in the country. In days to come the situation will improve further and more people will be able to read and write emails. Every citizen will be able to read and write emails at least in Malayalam. If there is the problem of connectivity, the citizen can go to the CSC and have his mails sent from there.

Is this something that the other states are also doing?

As of now the states in the country are not doing it.

However, such systems have been implemented in th USA and in some European countries.

In these countries, it is possible for citizens to vote for project proposals by using their secure online identities. We need to implement such systems in India.

The thing is that the true benefits of digital ecosystem cannot be availed until the citizens are fully conversant with the digital technologies for interaction. In the long run, we are certainly going to achieve a flawless digital system for interaction between government departments and citizens. In Kerala we now have about three crore mobile phones for a population of about 3.3 crore people. If every citizen in the state starts to use an Internet connected smartphone, then there is no need for a computer.

He or she can send and receive emails through the smartphone itself. This is going to happen in the next 10 years.

Kerala

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KSITM

e-Governance Projects The Government of Kerala acknowledges the critical importance of Information Technology as an instrument for the state’s overall development and remains deeply committed to its dissemination, both as a crucial engine of economic growth and as a tool for increasing productivity, speed and transparency in governance

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erala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM) is a Society registered under the Travancore Cochin Literary Scientific & Charitable Societies Registration Act (Act 12 of 1955). It is an autonomous nodal IT implementation agency for the Department of Information Technology, Government of Kerala, which provides managerial support to various initiatives of the department.

The state information infrastructure The Kerala State IT mission has tried to cover all aspects of IT Infrastructure required for a seamless rollout of e-Governance initiatives viz. connectivity, data centres and citizen service centres. To host various e-Gov applications of the government safely and securely two State Data Centres have been established. As on date, more than 300 websites

The integrated e-Governance framework of the state consists of the following components: • Information Infrastructure (network connectivity, data centres, service centres) • Service Platforms (service delivery gateways, portal, service delivery projects) • Common/Shared Applications (for transparency, efficiency, security, etc.)

P K Kunhalikutty, Hon’ble Minister for Industries and Information Technology, Government of Kerala; Chairman, Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM)

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Kerala

of various departments have been co-hosted and more than 350 servers, SAN, etc. of various Departments has been co-located at the State Data Centres.

The Kerala State Wide Area Network (KSWAN) is one of the top SWANs in the country reaching out to the remotest field offices. This government network acts as the backbone for the states e-Governance applications.

KSWAN was set up to serve as the backbone of the State Information Infrastructure (SII), connecting the NoCs at Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode and extending to 14 districts and 152 blocks of the state. The network connects more than 2,500 offices of government departments through Wireless and an even larger number through Leased Lines.

Citizen service delivery frameworks Once the infrastructure is in place the next critical factor for successful rollout of e-Governance is the service delivery frameworks. The state

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has successfully rolled out the e-district project in two of its districts and is all set for a statewide rollout shortly. This will be a window for all G2C services for the citizens. The project focuses on the district level services.

The State Services Delivery Gateway and Services Portal (SSDG) are being rolled out and this will create a middle layer between a unified citizen services portal and the departmental applications.

One of the earliest attempts in citizen service delivery is the project called FRIENDS (Fast Reliable Instant Effective Network for Disbursement of Services).

This is a single-window facility where citizens can deposit their bills and taxes without any hassle. This was later followed up with an entrepreneur-driven model called AKSHAYA, which is one of its kinds, and is considered a model worth emulating nationally and internationally.

Common applications for government There are various initiatives like the e-procurement, SPARK (a government HRMS and

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payroll), IDEAS (file tracking system), Secretariat Workflow automation System, etc. which are common applications created for usage by all departments under government.

The Government of Kerala has implemented the e-Government Procurement System to enhance transparency and efficiency in public procurement activities and monitor the same on a real-time basis.

KSITM is the implementing agency for e-Procurement System across the state. NIC is the service provider.

SPARK-Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala is an Integrated Personnel, Payroll and Accounts information system.

This web based application has been implemented for all the employees in Kerala. The system has been developed with a view of catering to the administration, payroll and other accounts activities of government establishments.

Every employee is allotted with a unique Permanent Employee Number (PEN) through the system.

Mobile governance The state has pioneered the m-Gov initiatives in the country and today text-based and voice-based messages are supplementing the various e-Governance initiatives in departments. An encapsulated and comprehensive integrated Service Delivery Platform was created and integrated with the e-Governance infrastructure, for enabling m-Services of various departments in a “Plug and Play” fashion.

The m-Governance Service Delivery Platform (SDP) includes the uniquely branded, easy-to-remember Short Code 537252 (KERALA).

The citizen has to remember the spelling of Kerala and type it in non-QWERTY mobile keypad. This is the single touch point for availing many m-services from 90 state government departments. The three channels of mobile communication (voice, signalling and data) and a wide range of technologies (voice applications, applications using signalling channel and data service based applications) are being used for this purpose.

Currently over 40 ‘PULL’ and also over 100 ‘PUSH’ based m-services are provided to the citizens.

Aadhaar enabled services Kerala is targeting a 100 percent Aadhaar enrolment by the end of this financial year. The primary objective is to deliver government services through Aadhaar enabled systems.

In the first phase, the integration and service delivery is proposed to be rolled out in Welfare Boards. KSITM, as the nodal agency, has initiated necessary steps for digitalising the Welfare Board database, integrate this database with AADHAAR, remove duplicate, fake and ghost IDs in the Welfare Boards, and ensure that pensions and other welfare schemes reach the targeted beneficiaries through their bank accounts. Hon’ble Chief Minister has announced that this project will be rolled out by March 2013.

Government is planning to utilise this service in the Rajiv Avas Yojana (RAY) schemes, PDS, NREGS, LPG subsidy, etc.

For implementing AADHAAR based services in all these departments, the database of these departments are required for seeding the UIDAI number.

Kerala

State resident data hub The state is piloting a project for creating a citizen database linked to central UIDAI database. This would then act as a hub for citizen data for all departmental applications.

Spatial data infrastructure The Kerala government is trying to bring the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) to state level, by setting up a State Spatial Data Infrastructure, on the model of NSDI. This SDI shall act as a state level repository of spatial data, collected or acquired by various agencies.

Citizen’s Call Centre The Citizen’s Call Centre (CCC) is a single window, IT enabled, facility of the government that enables citizens and government to interact effectively. Envisaged as a Government to Citizen (G2C) interface, the call centre enables the quick delivery of critical information, which is otherwise either inaccessible or difficult for the citizens to trace. The relevance of a government/public call centre is more important in the context of increased focus on e-Governance.

Departmental initiatives Almost all the departments in Kerala are geared up for service delivery through the electronic system. There are pioneering efforts being made in terms of treasury computerisation, local self-government computerisation, education department related (exams and results) computerisation, motor vehicles departmental initiatives and commercial taxes automation, etc. All such initiatives have won accolades at various prestigious forums.

Motor vehicles enforcement automation project To enhance road safety by ensur-

ing that the rules and regulations mentioned in the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, are strictly being adhered to by the drivers and vehicles on road this project was launched. If a citizen is found offending any rule like driving without license/ permit or breaking traffic rules, applicable penalty is enforced on the driver of the vehicle.

Going Digital For a state which created the first 100 percent e-literate district, the vision set is for creating a 100 percent digital state and achieving the highest level of transparency and service delivery standards through technology enablement

The Enforcement Automation project enables the enforcement of road rules by means of automatic capture of traffic offences like red light violation, over speeding and wrong direction driving in addition to the 24X7 surveillance using “virtual loop” - Video Analytics solution with Automatic Number Plate Recognition and utilising mobile-wireless technologies, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies.

Capacity building and inclusive development Kerala is at the forefront in providing relevant education to meet the needs and challenges of today. IIITM-K (Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala) launched a post-graduate Diploma in e-Governance (PGDeG) to fulfil its mission of producing leaders in the areas of science, technology, and management information. The state government is also looking at setting up

IIT in the Kottayam district under N-PPP Model.

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of one year. The scheme shall be open to all government employees

SPEED-IT In the context of promoting Kerala as an IT destination, availability of skilled manpower is very vital. The recent recessionary tendencies and associated job cuts and lay-offs have only accentuated the skill factor.

At a time when the job market is facing a situation of supply exceeding demand (in terms of quantity), finding a job is all the more challenging in this situation of heightened competition. To address this, the Government of Kerala has introduced a new scheme called, Special Postgraduate Education Expansion Drive in IT (SPEED-IT) for post graduates and PhD holders.

Implemented by the Kerala State IT Mission, the main objective of the SPEED-IT programme is to expand the existing base of post graduates in IT and IT related disciplines.

Capacity building among government departments is the most important requirement for successful implementation of e-Gov programmes. Based on the recommendation of the Administrative Reforms Commission on promoting e-Gov, the state has proposed Capacity Building in the individual level by starting a Diploma/ Degree programme on e-Governance. In this regard, Institute of Management in Government (IMG) and Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management - Kerala (IIITM-K) decided to jointly conduct a Post Graduate Diploma in e-Governance. The objective of the course is to help the participants to understand how to manage e-Governance projects implemented in the state.

The course is spread over two semester with a total duration

Chief Minister’s Sutharya Keralam Sutharya Keralam, the innovative initiative of the Government of Kerala, helps to bring the complaints and grievances of citizens directly to the notice of the Chief Minister, thereby ensuring transparency and efficiency in the functions of the Government. This is achieved through the automation of Chief Minister’s Grievance Redressal Cell and convergence of all the available forms of communication to redress the grievances of the citizens.

Insight is a joint initiative of KSITM (Kerala State Information Technology Mission) and SPACE (Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment). Insight focusses on developing/making available accessible technology for the differently abled and strives to make it available to them at very low/zero costs.

The screen reader software called ORCA is a perfect example of this, it is freely available as against its high proceed counterparts. The primary focus of Insight is to give training to the visually challenged in the accessible technologies available today. Any visually challenged person is free to walk in to the Insight Centre and get trained. Apart from trainings, he is also eligible to use the resources at the centre, which include, web browsing, listening to music, burning CDs, etc.

An audio magazine called Swaram is being released bimonthly for the benefit of the visually challenged. Swaram, the first of its kind in Kerala includes educational and informative content.

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Kerala

Building

e-Governance Infrastructure “The long term focus of KSITM will be on creating an integrated e-Gov platform wherein the services provided by various government departments and agencies will get integrated into an unified system,” says Dr Jayasankar Prasad, Director, Kerala State IT Mission

Please give us an overview of the ways by which KSITM is facilitating the development of e-Governance in the state of Kerala. What is the vision under which KSITM has been created by the state government?

Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM) was formed as a nodal agency for implementation of the various initiatives under the IT department. KSITM has been piloting various IT related and IT enabled services /projects in the state since its inception in 1999.

The mission has successfully undertaken the e-Governance initiatives in the state and has kept the state at par with other states in India.

In your opinion what are the most landmark projects undertaken

by KSITM? What kind of response are your

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Dr Jayasankar Prasad

e-Governance projects seeing from the common citizens?

The most prominent of the project undertaken by KSITM over the years are the State Data Centre, Kerala State Wide Area Network (KSWAN), e-Krishi, e-Procurement, State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG), Mobile Service Delivery Platform, Sutharya Keralam, Digital Workflow System, Entegramam - My Village, Fast Reliable Instant Effective Network for Disbursement of Services (FRIENDS), Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for

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Kerala (SPARK), etc.

Though the efforts made in e-Enabling the government departments have resulted in the creation of standalone back-ends, digital work flows and service delivery channels, the expectations of the citizens, connected with e-Government, a “one government view” has not been met fully. KSITM today focusses on consolidating and integrating the various applications and systems across the government to ensure a seamless delivery of services to the citizen.

The long-term focus of KSITM will be on creating an integrated e-Gov platform wherein the services provided by various government departments and agencies will get integrated into an unified system. The intention is to make all government interactions, information and transaction services, available electronically through a single

access point, for all the users (citizens, CSC operators, government employees, resident and non resident Keralites, visitors and business). The integration and standardisation and consolidation of all government systems, infrastructure and processes is a vital step in that direction. This in turn will lead to increased availability, accessibility, productivity and effectiveness of electronic delivery of public services, increases the efficiency of the government and also trustworthiness, transparency, traceability, security and privacy of data.

The state of Kerala has implemented Akshaya for bridging the digital divide. How effective is this initiative being at the ground level? What is the situation of digital divide in the state?

Akshaya is acting as an agency to bridge the digital divide and

Kerala

provide requisite information and services using the official language led to the project called Malayalam computing.

This is an initiative for creating capacity and content in the local language, Malayalam.

The broad objectives of the project are to strengthen local language, Malayalam, using the possibilities provided by Information and Communication Technologies and to address the linguistic barrier which prevents the people of Kerala from tapping the new technologies. Government departments are encouraged to use the Malayalam fonts/ language for communication even through the digital media, interfaces for the same are available in the digital file flow systems and applications.

Further developments in the area of mobile based Malayalam computing, etc. are in the pipeline.

Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM) was established in 1999, as an autonomous organisation under the umbrella of the state’s Information Technology department. The main functions of KSITM includes: • Effective implementation of e-Governance in the state industries in the state

and standardisation of procedure for tasks • Coordinating the activities of various

• Effective utilisation of core and support infrastructure

agencies and government departments • Successful rollout of Mission Mode Projects

• Development of Human Resources in IT and related areas

under the aegis of National e-Governance Plan in the state

• Interaction in Information Technology related matters with international agencies and bodies

• Coordinating various IT based initiatives of the centre and state governments • Providing techno-managerial support for

• Taking initiatives to bridge the digital divide • Promotion of standardisation, testing and quality in Information Technology

for delivery of services to the door step of the citizen as a friendly face of the government. Akshaya network with more than 2000+ Akshaya Centres is available all across the state at the rate of two per panchayat. It is ubiquitous, networked, competent and

Security is an area of concern for every online system, with incidences of hacking being on the rise. What steps is KSITM taking to ensure that the e-Governance systems, where lots of private information on the citizens are stored, are being kept up to date?

Information Technology application and

• Facilitating development of IT and ITES

the various ICT based activities in the state • All matters relating to personnel under the control of the department

scalable to deliver all sorts of citizen services.

Kerala with its high literacy and ICT penetration has bridged the divide to a great extent and the well spread out Akshaya centres which is a unique network of local entrepreneurs is playing its part in the scheme of things.

Majority of India still speaks in local languages.

What steps are you taking to ensure that there is support for Malayalam language in e-Governance systems?

The flavour of the mother tongue and the need to

special feature

Government of Kerala felt the need for setting up of Computer Emergency Response Team-Kerala (CERTK) to actively coordinate with CERT-India (CERT-IN) to ensure cyber security in the state and the team works as a special project of the KSITM. The team looks into awareness creation, security audits and proactive and reactive measures with respect to cyber threats on the government websites and applications.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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In Person

telecom

Vimal Wakhlu

Chairman and Managing Director, Telecommunications Consultants India Limited

Capturing the Promises of Tele-Consultations

G

ive us a brief overview of TCIL’s role in the ongoing Pan African e-Network Project?

TCIL was formed 35 years back and primarily it was supposed to be operating in international markets. The company takes technology and expertise in the field of telecom and IT to other developing nations. Gradually we entered the Indian market, because we have realised that people can give us work abroad only if we have solid credentials in the home country. Till about 6-7 years back, our main focus was on telecom sector. But with the advent of wireless communication, our focus shifted from wire line to wireless communication and e-network. We were one of the first operators to get license in Rajasthan through a joint venture with Bharti Hexacom. At the same time we were lucky to bag the Pan African e-network project by the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. It is considered to be the biggest project of distance education and tele-medicine ever undertaken in Africa and one of the finest examples of the growing partnership between India and Africa. TCIL has been designated as the turnkey implementing agency. It is providing technological and consultancy services to the Ministry of External Affairs for the project.

What is the objective behind the Pan African e-Network Project?

“Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) is in a league of its own.

The company has created a large e-Network and is currently engaged in supplying world-class technology in the areas of telecom and information technology,” says Vimal Wakhlu, Chairman & Managing Director, Telecommunications Consultants India Limited

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Started in 2009, the main objective of the project is to assist Africa in capacity building by imparting quality education to 10,000 students in Africa over a five-year period in some of the best Indian educational institutions. Also the objective is to provide tele-medicine services through online medical consultation to patients located in remote corners of Africa by medical experts based in India.

telecom

What are the funding sources for the e-network project? Also, how did this project came into being.

Being funded by the Government of India, the `542 crore Pan African e-network Project was conceived by Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. In his address during the Pan-African Parliament session, held in Johannesburg in 2004, Dr Kalam proposed a network that would connect all 53 nations of African Union by a satellite and fibre optic network that would provide effective communication for tele-education, tele-medicine, Internet, video conferencing and VoIP services.

Besides distance education and tele-medicine, the project is also equipped to support e-Governance, e-commerce, infotainment, resource mapping and meteorological and other services in the African countries, besides providing VVIP connectivity among the Heads of State of the African countries through a highly secure closed satellite network. The project was inaugurated in 2009 and so far 47 out of 53 countries of the African Union have come under its ambit. It is expected to be implemented in Sudan during this financial year. Some of the countries that haven’t participated so far and are not likely to join soon include South Africa, Angola, Tunisia, Morroco, etc.

Tell us about the tele-education services being provided under the project?

TCIL has established the network with a Data Centre in TCIL Bhawan, New Delhi. This place acts as a gateway to the Hub Station in Dakar for connectivity of Indian institutions on the African side. The tele-education services are being provided by the Indian universities to the participating countries in the educational programmes in various disciplines. These universities and educational institutions have been selected by the African Union. So far more than 6,600 students from 31 countries in Africa have been enrolled in 18 programmes of five top universities in India. These include various disciplines such as MBA, MA in Finance Control, PG diploma courses in IT, MSc in IT and BA in Finance & Investment Analysis and so on. That is a big achievement as initially we had planned to include 10,000 students over a period of five years but in three years itself we have achieved a significant part of our target. Also regular tele-education live sessions are conducted from India and students have shown

great interest in the courses. This is especially beneficial for working professionals who are undertaking some course as this network offers them flexibility and easy access to educational experts at the same time.

What about post-production facilities?

The Data Centre in Delhi has a web portal (www.panafricanenetwork.com). This portal incorporates e-learning, content management and digital library solutions for each university as an integrated package. Teachers are thus able to interact with selected students. The audio, video and data connectivity offered by the link to university studios enables students to have live interactions. The top five universities in India have studios that are managed by the central Hub while the 53 learning centres in Africa act as virtual classrooms.

In Person

Suppose, if somebody complains of chest pain and local doctor are not able to diagnose it whether it is due to heart or any other issue, he sent abroad for treatment along with one assistant or a family member. The entire cost is born by the government. In almost 70 percent of such cases it is found that there is no heart problem after reaching the destination, and hence it ends up as waste of money. Now with this network that problem has been addressed.

Second advantage of medical network has been for medical tourists. Patients come from Africa and even from developed countries like the USA and the UK to India for medical treatment as it is far cheaper. Patients mostly come for surgeries after which there has to be regular follow-ups with the doctor for which they need to keep re-visiting the country, hence adding to their expenses. Now this network is coming handy because all the leading hospitals

“Pan African e-network Project will connect 53 nations of african union by a satellite & fibre optic network�

What has been the progress regarding tele-medicine services in the project?

At present, the tele-medicine consultations are regularly being conducted from 12 superspecialty hospitals from India to the African countries on need basis. The network offers online medical consultations on the basis of one hour per country per day. This shall continue for 5-year period. Besides, off-line medical consultations are also offered. Moreover, regular Continued Medical Education (CME) sessions have been started with effect from 22nd April, 2009 from Indian super-specialty hospitals. This education is imparted to doctors and nursing staff with the objective to enhance their knowledge and skills. So far 1475 CME sessions have been conducted on this network.

What have been some of the advantages of setting up a medical network?

This project has been quite useful for many countries in the African Union, especially those where medical facilities are part of state welfare. In such countries if somebody falls sick, he is totally on government expenditure.

of India, such as AIIMS and Apollo, are in the network. So they are able to address most issues with foreign patients through the network itself. Imagine the big relief this has brought to the people of Africa. They are getting world class medical services without having to spend their life savings. Thirdly, this network has also helped in setting benchmarks and achievements in the field of medicine.

The project seems to be growing at a good pace and moving in the right direction. How do you foresee its growth?

Our vision is that after the completion of the project, which is expected to be over by 2014, five regional leading universities and five regional super-specialty hospitals in Africa shall be able to provide tele-education and telemedicine services in their respective regions in Africa. These regions and institutions shall be selected by the African Union. All the 5 selected Indian Universities and 12 super specialty hospitals are connected to the Data Centre, New Delhi, which further connects to Satellite Hub Earth Station, Senegal, through Submarine Cable Landing Stations.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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uidai

aadhaar

Aadhaar Applications for Good Governance UIDAI (Aadhaar) is a unique national experiment to provide identity for Indian citizens. It is one of the largest such exercises in the history of mankind and has the potential of altering the governance roadmap of the country. Jharkhand is deeply involved with this bold initiative Nagendra Nath Sinha, Secretary IT, Government of Jharkhand

T

he Government of Jharkhand was among the first five states to sign an MoU with the UIDAI for implementing Aadhaar project as early as 25th June 2010.

The enrolments in the rural areas began on 1st November 2010 while the same commenced from 6th May 2011 in urban areas. Till date, 1.09 crore residents have been enrolled which constitutes about 35 percent of the population

of Jharkhand as per 2011 Census. The state has not only mobilised the enrolment agencies through the State Registrars, but also roped in the Non State Registrars for rapid coverage of the entire population by March 2013. In this regard, many innovative decisions such as relaxation of the stipulation of enrolment stations of the Non State Registrars being at least 500 meters away, enlisting of Gramin Dak Sewaks (Village Post Masters) as verifiers, inclusion of Common Service Centres as enrolment centres were taken.

Nagendra Nath Sinha It is expected that with these Jharkhand will quickly forge its way to universal enrolment of its residents. The real challenge lies in using this wonderful infrastructure in sharpening the edge of governance.

Aadhaar based governance initiatives The areas in which Aadhaar can be applied is limitless, given the need for identification and

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aadhaar

authentication in multifarious transaction in our daily life. The growing penetration of Internet and explosive growth of mobile networks make it possible to bring different services/ applications closer to citizens and its linkage to Aadhaar make it possible to conduct transactions in far away locations without the need to compel the citizen to present himself in government offices or to bring an identifier, often a tout.

Aadhaar not only adds to convenience, it also reduces transaction costs lower and in turn facilitates economic and social development.

Aadhaar enabled payment services Jharkhand is the state surrounded by forests and villages are located in remote areas. The residents have limited access to financial services due to higher cost of banking transactions in rural areas.. Therefore there is tendency to keep cash reserves at their residence. The resident is required to travel long distances to visit the bank branch for payment or transactions.

The Government of Jharkhand decided to partner with UIDAI to undertake a Financial Inclusion and Welfare Payments pilot project in 12 blocks in order to provide ease of access to financial services in remote villages. Thereafter the state government started mapping work in rural villages with the help of UIDAI Regional Office in Ranchi. In mapping work UIDAI Regional Office, Ranchi, provided necessary training, ensured availability of databases and technical support to the Jharkhand Government.

Jharkhand is the first state in India where Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) has been implemented in four Pilot districts. In the pilot for online authentication, AEPS was rolled out in respect of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS),

Process of payment

The following process was followed for AEPS in Jharkhand: Part I. Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) The Government. of Jharkhand and the Block Administration were required to prepare an e-payment file containing Aadhaar Number, Bank Reference Number, Amount and Benefit Reference Number.

The e-payment file was then

transferred to Sponsor Bank for onward transmission to NPCI. NPCI then used the APB infrastructure to transfer the payment instructions to the respective beneficiary banks.

The banks then credited them into the beneficiary Aadhaar enabled bank account.

and Social Security Schemes i.e. pensions and scholarships.

Benefits to citizens • Availability of micro ATM devices closer to their villages will reduce travel cost and save time. microATM standards were defined by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) appointed committee comprising of Indian Banks Association (IBA), UIDAI, NPCI, Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) and banks.

• Typically, visit to a bank branch costs the beneficiary a day’s wage. A microATM in the village will save travelling time consumed to the bank and in turn the beneficiary can earn an extra day’s wage.

• Use of Aadhar Payment Bridge (APB) and AEPS means payments available on the same day when they are credited by the government.

• A microATM closer to the beneficiary’s village will mean that the account is active,

Stakeholders and their role • Government of Jharkhand for mapping/seeding of Aadhaar Numbers in databases and initiation of funds.

• Banks with their Business Correspondents (BC) for opening of accounts,

uidai

deployment of microATMs and making Banking transactions: • Union Bank of India with BC M/s FINO • Bank of India with BC M/s UTL • ICICI Bank with BC M/s FINO

• National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for transaction routing, • Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for online biometric authentication.

Part II: Aadhaar Enabled Payments System (AEPS) Once the payment was successfully credited to beneficiaries’ account, banks (Bank of India, ICICI Bank and Union Bank of India) deployed Aadhaar enabled microATMs at panchayat level for the disbursement of money.

and can be used for saving money, borrowing from the bank and achieving financial inclusion.

• Due to the online nature of the microATM, the beneficiary may access his their funds from any microATM from any village.

• Beneficiaries can change their account any time from one bank to another (like mobile number portability) and start receiving funds in that account.

• The beneficiaries who have mobile phones can receive SMS alerts when funds arrive and can even avail mobile banking facilities.

Benefits to government • Application of Aadhaar means that the database of beneficiaries is cleaned and ghosts, duplicates, and fakes are removed.

• Government does not have to maintain a list of bank account numbers for every beneficiary. The Aadhaar number is a permanent way to route payments to the beneficiary, into any bank account of the beneficiary’s choice.

• The process is fully electronic, as various stakeholders such as NPCI, Banks, and BCs can provide a full audit trail of the money.

• Beneficiaries can access their funds on the same day.

• Aadhaar authentication ensures that funds reach the intended beneficiary.

• Rich analytics are generated that can be used for monitoring fraud and discrepancies, and increase the level of service.

• These payments can be transferred from the state government’s treasury into the beneficiary’s account, leading to higher liquidity and lower cost of funds for the government.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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In Person

csc

Hari Ranjan Rao

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

digital inclusion through CSC

P “Beyond a delivery channel, the CSC can play a role of an effective change agent that would provide a structured platform for socially inclusive community participation for collective developmental activities,” says Hari Ranjan Rao, Secretary to Chief Minister and Department of Information Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh

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lease provide us with an overview of the Common Service Centres (CSCs) that have been opened in the State of Madhya Pradesh.

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 envisages a three pillar model for delivery of “Web-enabled Anytime, Anywhere Access” to information and services in rural India. The CSC Scheme is an enormous step towards making the government accessible to citizens, in ways that can not only save huge costs to the government but also make it more transparent and efficient in its day-to-day interactions with the common man. Beyond a delivery channel, the CSC can play a role of an effective “change agent” that would provide a structured platform for socially inclusive community participation for collective developmental activities.

In Madhya Pradesh, the CSC Scheme is being implemented through four Service Centre Agencies (SCAs).

Madhya Pradesh has achieved 100 percent of the target in establishing CSCs. At present MP has rolled out more than 9,232 CSCs and about 5 crore population of Madhya Pradesh is enjoying the benefit from various services under the CSC scheme. In Madhya Pradesh, MPOnline has also been a successful model for the urban areas having kiosks for delivery of services. Recently, Lok Seva Kendras have been launched to cater to Madhya Pradesh Public Services Guarantee Act, 2010. Therefore, all the kiosks based models like CSC, MPOnline Urban Kiosk, Lok Seva Kendras have been able to provide a bouquet of services to the citizens.

csc

What kinds of services are now being provided at the CSCs? What new services will be launched in future?

Madhya Pradesh has been very innovative in launching MPOnline portal in collaboration with Tata Consultancy Services. MPOnline offers services like Educational Services, Financial Inclusion, Online B2C services, and Telecom and Insurance Services. For various Offline and Online services, the State Government has fixed rates. Some of the G2C services and B2C services being offered to citizens are Applications, Various Bill Payments, Counseling, Municipal Corporation, Online Assessment, Reservation, University, etc. In future, Government of Madhya Pradesh is planning to offer “across the counter” services by integrating all the services like Birth & Death Certificate, details of Land Records, depositing LIC Premiums, PFRDA Scheme etc. through CSCs so that the citizens get their services at their doorstep.

Please also tell us about the kind of response that the CSCs are having from the citizens of the state.

The services provided through CSCs are well appreciated by the citizens as they are enjoying the benefits of such services almost at their doorstep. Such facilities at close proximity are not only saving their time but also their money.

Recently, online registration of farmers for procurement of food grains (e-Uparjan) has received tremendous response as more than 15 lakh farmers themselves registered through CSC network in a record span of two months.

Without CSCs such a tremendous task would not have been possible.

How financially viable are the CSCs? Are you taking any special steps to improve the financial outlook of the CSCs? After successful integration of CSCs with MPOnline, CSCs are doing exceptional job in providing various services to the citizens and it has tremendously added to their income.

Government of Madhya Pradesh is getting mass acceptance of the CSC Scheme. Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) are demanding to increase the government services in order to increase the facility to citizens as well as to increase their source of income.

Tell us about your policy for having online examination for Patwaris recruitment.

The end-to-end Online Assessment Examinations conducted by MPOnline is a solution that offers a reliable, transparent, efficient and effortless way to conduct assessments for recruitments procedure, predominantly in the government machinery. It also eliminates manual intervention and security risks arising out of printing and distributing test content.

The initiative commenced after lot of

In Person

The State wide rollout of e-District Scheme has been approved by the Department of Information Technology, Government of India. The main objective of the scheme is to undertake backend computerisation of District and Tehsil level offices, make efficient delivery of services any time any where at citizen Door Step with improved Service Levels by Process Re-engineering, extensive Capacity Building and training of field level functionaries, delivery of services through CSCs/LSKs by leveraging the SWAN, SDC, and SSDG, delivery of

“MPOnline offers services like Educational Services, Financial

Inclusion, Online B2C services

Telecom and Insurance Services” research and several strategies are implemented and modified from time to time according to the need of the hour. The initiative is different and innovative since the very first time in the country such Online Assessment for recruitments in the government machinery is being conducted.

The Department is given G2G login id and passwords for performing online verification and approvals, downloading MIS reports etc.

I am pleased to inform you that the entire Patwari recruitment processes in which almost 85,000 candidates participated were conducted in a record span of two months without a single complaint in the State whereas in the past, manual Patwari recruitment processes have always been mired with controversies, litigation and charges of corruption.

Tell us about the work that is being done in Madhya Pradesh on the e-district project.

The Public Service Management Department is the nodal agency for e-District Scheme in the State. Pilot e-District rolled out successfully through 38 Lok Seva Kendras in five districts namely, Sagar, Guna, Gwalior, Shivpuri and Indore on 27th July, 2012. Presently, Lok Seva Kendras are being used for the roll out under this scheme. As on 31st October 2012, 43,067 applications were received out of which 28,855 applications were disposed in the five pilot Districts.

all public services in electronic form through State Portals by using the SSDG, reducing number of visits of citizens to a Government office/Department for availing the services and thereby eliminating harassment.

Please shed some light on the progress of UIDAI scheme in your State. In what ways do you think the UIDAI will be beneficial to the people in the state? Are you developing some applications based on Aadhaar numbers?

Ten major Districts have been covered in Phase-I with total enrolments of 121.96 lakhs.

In Phase-II, the target fixed for UIDAI enrolments is 2.12 crore. In this regard, Additional Registrars have been appointed to increase UID coverage in the State. We have floated tenders for new Enrolment Agencies.

UIDAI would facilitate banking frameworks and allow citizens to avail subsidies.

E-Payments would receive boost owing to UIDAI. We look forward to integrating State user Department databases with AADHAAR in order to bring our citizen centric services at par with NeGP guidelines.

We are in the process of rolling out citizen centric services under “e-District” and “Lok Seva Guarantee Act, 2010” where UIDAI would be a major primary application reference from end-user stand point.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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in person

power

P Uma Shankar

Secretary, Ministry of Power Government of India

Electricity the catalyst for

socio-economic development The Uttar Pradesh cadre officer of the 1976 batch of the Indian Administrative Service, P Uma Shankar holds Master’s degree in Mathematics from IITMadras and in Social Policy & Planning in Developing Countries from the London School of Economics.

He has held various significant assignments in different sectors in the Government of India and the Government of Uttar Pradesh. Before taking over as Secretary, Ministry of Power, Government of India, he was the CMD, REC. Before that he was the MD, National Cooperative Development Corporation

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power

W

hat are the key achievements of the ministry in ensuring power in the rural areas?

The ministry has a programme called the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) for ensuring availability of power in the rural areas.

The RGGVY was launched in 2005 after merging all the ongoing schemes. Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) is the nodal agency for implementation of RGGVY, under which 90 percent grant is provided by Government of India and 10 percent as loan by REC to the State Governments.

This programme is basically for electrifying villages that are hitherto un-electrified, for intensifying electrification in already electrified villages and for providing free connections to Below Poverty Line (BPL) households. In the seven years since the programme started, we have managed to electrify 105,000 un-electrified villages. According to project reports prepared by various state governments, there were around 110,000 un-electrified villages in the country, out of these 105,000 have been covered, and the remaining will get covered by the end of this year. Electricity can act as a catalyst for socio-economic development, and the government is fully focussed on providing Indians everywhere access to power.

Does this mean that entire India will be electrified in the next one or two years?

To a large extent that is going to be the case. The number of un-electrified villages in the country is now very small; it could be in the range of 5000 to 7000. These villages can easily be covered towards the end of this year or next year. The next phase of the RGGVY will concentrate on going beyond the villages. This has also been announced by the Prime Minister that we must provide electricity to all the households in the country. So while almost all the villages in the country have been covered in the electrification programme, there are habitations that have not been fully covered. Around the villages we typically have a few habitations where fewer numbers of families live. The next five years of the electrification programme will focus on covering all these habitations. We will also be providing free connections to the BPL families who are residing in these habitations.

But the electricity bills will be collected from the villagers as per their consumption patterns.

Isn’t that the case?

That is true. The BPL connection that I have mentioned will be given free of cost. This means that only the connection is for free, the users are to pay the bills as per their consumption.

To ensure financial sustainability of RGGVY, it has also been stipulated that there will be franchises at the village level. The franchises will be responsible for reading the metre, getting the bill made, giving the bill to the consumer and collecting payment from them. The franchisee will get remuneration for this work.

in person

got some independent studies done, all of which reached the conclusion that this is being more or less supplied. Three different independent organisations had done the studies in different parts of the country. Connections have also been released free of cost to more than 2 crore BPL families.

What kind of new technologies are we having in these bigger power plants?

We have moved to Super Critical technology power plants. These plants are much more efficient as compared to the plants that had been setup earlier. This means that they will use less coal to generate the same amount of electricity. This efficiency will also ensure that the carbon emis-

“The government is taking several measures to increase the generation of solar power”

The Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) is primarily an electricity distribution organisation. In India, there are huge losses due to pilferage and other things. Can the RGGVY become financially viable?

RGGVY is not an organisation. It is a scheme to increase access to electricity. The scheme has been so designed as to reduce technical and commercial losses. It is a high voltage distribution system (HVDS) under which distribution transformer is brought closer to the consumer. This increases high voltage line length and reduces low voltage line length thereby reducing technical losses.

Aerial bunched cables are used which prevents unauthorised withdrawal of electricity from the line. To increase the financial sustainability of the scheme, village-level franchises are mandated under the scheme. RGGVY scheme has thus to be seen in an overall context, not just by itself, in so far as financial viability is concerned.

How many hours of electricity are being supplied to the villages that have been newly electrified?

The supply of electricity is in the domain of the State Distribution Companies. However, the RGGVY programme stipulates that the states should make 6 to 8 hours of electricity available to the electrified villages. The Ministry of Power has

sions come down, and so the concerns related to climate change get mitigated to an extent. We have already commissioned about 8000 – 9000 megawatts of Super Critical Power Plants. In the12th Five Year Plan we have plans to build additional capacity of around 85000 megawatts, out of which 60000 megawatts would be coal based and from this around 35 percent will be Super-Critical.

And when we go to the 13th Five Year Plan, the Government of India will only like to encourage power plants using Super Critical technology.

That was basically about the electricity distribution plans for the rural sector. But if we look at power sector in the country as a whole, we find that the demand outstrips supply to a really large extent. What are the Ministry’s plans for bridging the electricity deficit?

The first thing that we need to do is to ensure that there is enough electricity being generated in the country to meet the demands of the consumers. So an exercise is conducted to determine what will be the demand for electricity at the end of every Plan Period. The estimate of the demand is made for two kinds of factors – what will be demand in general, and what will be the peak demand. Keeping these two estimates in mind, the target for increasing the generation capacity in the November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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power

country is calculated. The overall generation in the country has increased from about 810 billion units (BU) during 2010-11 to 880 BU during the year 2011-12. By the year 1217 the demand is expected to go up to 1400 BU. So it is clear that a huge amount of new generation capacity has to be created to keep up with the demand. The attempt of the government will be to ensure that this much of new generation capacity is commissioned, so that there is no large scale electricity shortage. It is also necessary that the transmission capacity should keep pace with the generation. There has to be a good capacity addition in the areas of laying of power lines, building of sub-stations and other such activities. The government is trying to ensure that such transmission capacities are also created in these five years.

It is the hydro projects in the country that seem to face maximum amount of delays. Why is that so?

There are lots of challenges in the hydro sector that lead to delays. The environmental clearances for hydro projects are difficult to obtain.

Then there are the concerns related to people getting displaced. The hydro projects are typically located in remote locations, reaching these locations is difficult. Another problem that is often faced in hydro projects is that before a project is started you do a survey and investigation to find out nature of the geology in the area and thus to understand the kind of tunnelling that needs to be done. Quite often what happens is that the actual site conditions are completely different from what the survey and investigation revealed. This is called “geological surprise.� So when you go to do the work on the site, you find that the actual conditions are quite different. This leads to disputes with the contractor and that also contributes to the delays.

We are forced to make changes in the scope of work and the quantum of work. However, in order to safeguard our environment and make cheaper electricity available to all, we have to continue to develop our capacity in hydro and other non-fossil fuel based systems for electricity generation. The government is taking several measures to increase generation of solar power.

Currently the price of solar panels is too high, but we are hopeful that with increase in demand, many manufacturers will set up their solar plant units in the country, and with increased production the price will come down.

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But with all these initiatives do you anticipate that we will be able to match the demand?

I mean demand for electricity has the habit of outstripping the actual supply.

This is because the demand tends to be extremely elastic in nature. You project the electricity demand on the basis of a person living in a newly electrified village using one or two points for light and fan, but he/she may soon start using more points, for TV etc. So the demand can grow rapidly once access is established. However, the government is taking intensive steps to ensure that there is adequate increase in electricity generation. In the earlier Five Year Plans the additional generation capacity that used to be created was in the order of about 20000 MW, but in the last Five Year Plan the additional capacity that was commissioned was about 55000 MW. This is an increase of more than 2.5 times. By the end of the 12th Plan period we hope to add about 85000 megawatt of generating capacity. This will be a huge increase.

A big change that is happening in the power generation setup is that now we are looking at power plants with much bigger generating capacity. Earlier we used to have plants of the size of 250 MW. Now we are generally looking at plants with unit size of 660 MW.

What are the key challenges that you face in developing the power infrastructure in the country?

What are the solutions to these challenges?

The delay that happens in the execution of power projects is a cause for concern. A power project is dependent on many different factors that are at times difficult to resolve. You have to get large tracts of land for setting up of the plant. Many clearances from different departments have to be taken. However, the fact that we could commis-

sion 55000 megawatts of new capacity in the 11th Five Year Plan shows that we are capable of achieving much bigger targets.

Earlier we used to face difficulty due to constraints in supply of equipment. Majority of the equipments needed to be imported from foreign countries. Now in most of the cases they are available domestically. BHEL, one of the largest suppliers of equipment for the power industry, has also ramped up their capacity to meet the demands of the power industry.

Till some time ago mega power projects could import equipment from other countries and get duty exemption on that.

Power utilities in the country are making losses as there is ineffective system of distribution, especially in urban areas. What can be done to improve the quality of power distribution in congested urban centres?

In fact, I would say that AT&C losses in distribution have come down in some of our cities. For instance, in Delhi we used to have distribution losses of up to 50 percent. Now it has come down to less than15 percent. The national average is about 27 percent. The distribution related losses are mainly due to inefficient metering, billing, collection, theft and pilferages. This may be eliminated by improving metering efficiency, proper energy accounting and auditing and improved billing and collection efficiency. The Accelerated Power Development & Reform Programme (APDRP) was launched by Government of India in 2001, for the strengthening the distribution network. The Restructured APDRP(R-APDRP) was launched by the Government in July 2008.

This programme aims at ensuring that there is proper energy accounting through an IT based system. This will enable utilities to bring down their AT&C losses to 15 percent.

public sector

In Person

U D Choubey Director General, SCOPE (Standing Conference of Public Enterprises)

Managing Challenges in Public Enterprises (CPSEs) in India and they have an investment of 6 lakh 61 thousand crore in the present day.

In your opinion, how far has SCOPE succeeded in fulfilling the mandate for which it was formed?

“Officials in PSEs don’t take their job as only a means of earning money, for them it is also a mission,” says U D Choubey, Director General, SCOPE (Standing Conference of Public Enterprises)

W

hat is the mandate of Scope? How did scope come into

being?

Standing Conference of Public Enterprises (SCOPE) was formed through a cabinet decision in 1973. It was formally recognised by the Government of India on 8th November 1976 by a decision of Union Cabinet. SCOPE is an apex professional organisation representing the Central Government Public Enterprises. It has also some state enterprises, banks, and other institutions as its members. SCOPE’s objective is to promote excellence in organisations where public investment is involved, in order to enable them to be globally competitive. Today, there are 248 Centre Public Sector Enterprises

I must say that given the mandate of the Government of India, SCOPE has been remarkably successful. In the last two–three years, the initiatives taken by SCOPE have resulted in lot of processes getting reformed for the Public Sector Enterprises. For instance, recently we met the Prime Minister of India. At the meeting 25 CPSE chiefs spoke about the issues that need to be tackled for bringing improvement in the operations of public sector enterprises.

What are the major challenges that the Public Sector Enterprises are facing?

There are a lot of challenges, but the Public Sector Enterprises are capable of facing all of them. Sometimes we face issues regarding the stressed targets that are fixed at such high levels that they are impossible to achieve. At times, the targets get fixed without taking into account the contingent factors. For instance, if BHEL doesn’t supply the turbine, NTPC will not be able to be able to get the plant commissioned.

We are discussing this issue, and it has been decided that the target setting must be on more realistic levels. SCOPE has also taken up issue of MoU. There should be a review of the MoU factors in every six months. The administrative ministry does the QPI, Quarterly performance, every three months. There should be an alignment to things in QPI and MoU.

At times questions regarding autonomy of the board have also been raised.

That is right. SCOPE is taking up the issue that there should be a separation between ownership and the management. The board should not be considered to be an extended arm of the Gov-

ernment. The management should be allowed to take all the decisions that are in the best interests of the PSE without any external interference.

There is also the issue of RTI. Now RTI is a good thing, people should have the right to information on every kind of subject. But the RTI initiative should not be allowed to become a tool in the hands of those who want to slow down the working of the PSEs. It is time we did some review of the RTI Act to ensure that continues to be advantageous to the common citizens.

What about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)? Should the PSEs be doing it by using the same kind of resources that the private companies use?

I can tell you that Public Sector Enterprises have willingly accepted that they will make a 2 percent CSR contribution. Currently the CSR contributions from PSEs is in the tune of Rs. 1500 crores.

In general, the PSEs are doing quite well in CSR. PSEs like NTPC, GAIL, IOCL, HPCL and others are contributing a lot in the area where they are located. They make lot of contribution in education, taking care of orphans, and in providing skills related training to people.

In the private sector the CMD’s and Directors tend to get fairly high salaries, while the salaries of CMDs in PSUs are quite less in comparison. Should something be done to bring the salaries of PSE leaders at par with what the private sector is paying?

SCOPE has taken up this point with the government. We want that there should be parity with private sector in the matters of salary and perks. However, we also realise that whatever the PSUs earn goes to the government and is finally used for the upliftment of the people.

The CMDs and other officials in PSEs don’t take their job as only a means of earning money, for them it is also a mission. They want to work for the betterment of all citizens.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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In Person

e-gov training

Rajesh Aggarwal

Secretary, DIT, Government of Maharashtra

Towards

Creating an e-Gov Army

P

lease brief us about the structure and nature of the e-Governance course.

This unique certification programme in e-Governance tests an individual’s skill and knowledge on e-Governance. It is mandatory for all DIT staff, SeMT staff, consultants and software developers (System Analysts, Business Analysts and Project Leads) working with the Government of Maharashtra. We also recommend this certification for all stakeholders working on e-Governance projects anywhere in India. The programme is open for all. Reading material and links of important sites are provided on the website, which facilitates learning of basic and fundamental concepts of e-Governance.

Another unique feature of the program is that it is an open book test.

The focus is not on mugging up definitions, but understanding concepts and being able to appreciate and apply in them real scenarios. The participants can read and search on the net, but are expected to articulate the responses in their own words. The course consists of two parts—the first part is an online written test which contains objective as well as subjective questions and the second part is an interview which will be held through Skype or Google Hangouts, or face-to-face.

Why did you feel the need of an e-Governance course?

“We have successfully launched the first-ever free online certification programme in e-Governance in India, which has been made mandatory for all DIT staff, SeMT members, consultants and other stakeholders working with the state government,” says Rajesh Aggarwa, Secretary, DIT, Government of Maharashtra, in conversation with Nikita Apraj

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I have been seeing the e-Governance programmes in the country for more than a decade. While in Delhi during 1998-2009, I was a frequent visitor to DIT of the Government of India. There I got opportunity to interact with many people from various walks of life. I felt that too many consultants have got into e-Governance programme and it has become more complicated than necessary. Last year, as Secretary, DIT, Government of Maharashtra, I attended a conference on e-Governance in another state.

Everybody there was talking about e-Gov 2.0. I said rather than 2.0, let’s talk about 0.0. Let’s begin from absolute fundamentals. After a few days, I wrote a paper called ‘e-Gov 0.0—Fundamentals of e-Governance’. It’s a 25-page document written in very simple language emphasising upon many important aspects of e-Governance. Many people across the coun-

e-gov training

try read it and found it more educating than websites and big books on the subject. From that point onwards, I wanted to train people, at least consultants working in Maharashtra, in aspects of e-Governance.

How did you decide on the syllabus and course content? What is the core objective of the course?

Though we all talk about recycling software, using common infrastructure and not reinventing the wheel, there is no formal mechanism to ensure that it is done. Many consultants across the country prepare huge reports and every time, when RFP (Request for Proposal) comes up, again emphasis is on new hardware and software. Rightly or wrongly, consultants have become pivotal point in all e-Governance programmes. It is they who define the scope of work. Thus it was necessary to start with them.

Even in Government of India mandated e-Governance programmes, e-Governance standards are not followed. In e-District project across the country, there is no uniformity in ways of writing a person’s name and gender or even writing days of week. The idea of e-Governance Training Programme emanates from all of this. If consultants and decision-makers from various departments are made aware of standards of e-Governance, it will result in huge savings by usage of common infra, and sharing of source code, database structures, and actual data. The objective of the programme is not to pass or fail.

It is to increase the level of awareness and skills in the field of e-Governance.

“The objective of the programme is not to pass or fail. It is to increase the level of awareness and skills”

How did the people respond to the course?

We have become the first and for now, the only state to offer virtual course on e-Governance.

Over a weekend, I prepared this online exam

“Even in the Govt. of India mandated e-Gov programmes, e-Gov standards are not followed”

which contains objective and subjective questions and an interview. We did not spend much on software, and instead took annual subscription to Classmarker and SurveyMonkey, and use free Skype and Google Hangout tools.

The response we got is phenomenal. We have created a special site for the course - ‘http:// egovtraining.maharashtra.gov.in’. So far we have received 472 registrations out of which 299 people appeared for the exam and 110 were able to clear the exam. Around 14 participants did outstandingly well and have been declared as mentors for future batches, while around 40 people have passed with distinction. The certificates are being sent through email to the successful candidates.

How was your experience of conducting the first batch?

The participants came from all walks of life.

There are government officers, consultants working with consultant firms and journalists as well. Of the 110 successful candidates, we have declared 14 people as mentors. In future batches, they will as a team help me to create the exam, check it and take interviews. Those who have not passed with distinction or have not passed can retake the test in future batches.

Almost all the leading consulting firms in the country like KPMG, PWC, and Accenture have said they will make it mandatory for all their consultants across the country to pass this exam. Now we have more than 100 people who have certified as ‘Good e-Gov Practitioners’.

I can guarantee that a person with a grade of distinction or mentor will do a great job in the field of e-Governance.

What are your plans about the course in near future?

Registrations for Batch 2 were opened last week, and exam is now on. We are slightly tweaking the procedure in Batch 2. We are increasing the question bank. In next two to three cycles,

In Person

we will mature further. The course will become more of self-evaluating type. Simultaneously, on the other hand, we are empanelling software vendors for small, medium and big jobs. It is very unfortunate that across the country, only few big firms have got most of e-Governance projects as terms in RFP favour only big firms.

Even small projects worth `5-10 crore have gone to big firms. Thus, over a decade, rather than developing a huge army of software programmers and hundreds of entrepreneurs working for e-Governance, we have only a handful of big firms getting all the projects, who on the sly hive off many parts to smaller firms. We are encouraging small and medium entrepreneurs with the help of NASSCOM. We are also encouraging individual entrepreneurs. We have started an

“We have started an online ‘always-on’ empanelment process through where small, new firms can start with small projects and grow big”

online ‘always-on’ empanelment process through which we offer small, new firms an opportunity to start with small project and grow big.

This registration or empanelment process will also have an element of mentoring programmers for e-Governance standards and framework. The training will be free for small and medium firms.

All firms irrespective of their size have to follow standards of e-Governance and get their resources certified in e-Governance. Only then they will be considered for e-Governance projects in Maharashtra. For government employees, we will have more of self-certification kind of courses.

I hope NISG and NeGD would officially adopt the programme. Within Maharashtra, we are rolling it out well and fast. We plan to roll out advanced modules specialised for programmers, consultants and other stakeholders. We will have special courses for different verticals. Team of mentors will come handy here. This team will make the course self-sustainable.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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in person

public sector

S P S Bakshi

Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Engineering Projects (India) Ltd

Enabling public Transportation in India

E

ngineering Projects (India) Ltd (EPI) has been consistently improving its performance. What is your vision for bringing more growth to the company?

The main factor contributing to the success of EPI in the execution of successful projects in India and overseas is our talented human resource. The company strength lies in its very talented and experienced professionals who are always motivated by the desire of giving their best performance. The infrastructure boom that we are currently seeing in India and many of our overseas markets is expected to continue during the next two or three decades. So the mandate of EPI would be to play a major role in the infrastructure space in India and also in the overseas market. I believe that EPI and other public sector units can play a very major role in the development of infrastructure for bringing seminal improvements in the lives of our people. If we don’t have developed infrastructure, we can’t expect all round development of the country. For the last three years at EPI we are doing very hard work in the infrastructure front. We are doing our best to diversify into many new areas not just in India, but in overseas markets as well. We are making aggressive moves to take advantage of the infrastructure boom happening in Africa, SAARC and GCC countries.

Can you tell us about the kind of infrastructure projects that you would be mostly interested in?

We are basically interested in the technology projects. We are currently eying projects that have to do with modernisation and construction of steel plants. Modernisation and construction of power plants and cement plants is also something we are interested in. Another area that is of interest to us is the multi-modal transportation systems. We have already drawn a MoU with a reputed Malaysian company, which has a wide experience in executing multi-modal transportation projects. There are lots of technologies that we are yet to develop within the country. For instance, we have very little experience in the mono-rail system. So our MoU with the Malaysian company is in tune with the technologies that go into the mono-rail project.

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“The biggest advantage of the mono-rail project is that it can go to the arteries of the city. This enables maximum number of people to leave behind their personal vehicles and start using public transportation. Thus with mono-rail system in

We already have the metro system in Delhi. How will mono-rail project fit into the metro system?

place, there will be much less congestion on the roads,” says

You will appreciate the fact that the roads in Delhi and in many other

Projects (India) Ltd

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / November 2012

S P S Bakshi, Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Engineering

public sector

cities in India are completely saturated with traffic. And the thing is that our traffic continues to grow day by day. Up to what extent can you expand the roads, it is very difficult. Unless people start using the Public Transportation System, we will not be able to manage our traffic. The mono-rail project is just one way of inspiring a larger section of the population to start using public transport. We can take inspiration from countries like Japan, a highly developed country, where there is hardly any congestion on the roads. Majority of the population in the country is only using Public Transportation Systems. In Delhi also the government has done a wonderful thing by creating the Delhi Metro. This has brought some kind of easing to the traffic problem, but much more needs to be done. Until and unless you go into the arteries of the city, you will not be able to enable maximum number of people to start using public transportation. What people want is a system of transportation that takes them from one point to their final destination.

The metro cannot go everywhere in the city, as it requires lot of space to lay the tracks and other infrastructure. However, the mono-rail system can go even in the most congested areas. In fact, Delhi government has already started planning for the mono-rail project. We have submitted a plan to the government that envisages integration between the metro rail and mono rail projects. The mono-rail system can act as a feeder service to the Delhi Metro.

In your opinion what are the routes where the mono-rail system in Delhi can be set up?

The actual routes where the mono-rail system can be set up are yet to be identified. But we are now planning to submit a plan for having the mono-rail in the entire Ring Road in Delhi.

At the spots where the mono-rail crosses the Delhi Metro, the two services can be integrated, enabling people to transfer from one to the other.

What kind of role will EPI be playing in this mono-rail project?

We would like to be part of the entire project.

We can construct the mono-rail system and we would also like to do the work on parking and the other infrastructure. Basically, we would like to implement all the structural work that goes with the mono-rail project. However, I would also like to point out that the project means a lot not only to us but to the entire nation. Whether

the Delhi government chooses us or someone else to execute the project is not that important.

What is important is that Delhi should have its own mono-rail system of transportation, which will surely benefit large number of commuters.

in person

Rahul Gandhi General Secretary of the Indian National Congress

What can be the approximate budget of the mono-rail system?

The approximate budget for the mono-rail system is around `150 to 160 crore per kilometre. So the cost is approximately 50 percent of what it costs to have a metro project. The mono-rail is a very efficient system of transportation. It can be set up into a narrow corridor of just 5 to 6 metres. It can go into the arteries of the city, climb over inclines and take sharp turns. It is completely noiseless as it can run on rubberised beams.

EPI has been very active in the overseas market. What are your strategies for bringing further growth in the overseas market?

We are involved in many prestigious overseas projects, which are related to infrastructure space. However, I must say that the growth in overseas market is also linked to availability of information. The public sector units like EPI have to know about the good projects so that they can bid for them. I have suggested at very high levels in the government that there should be a portal where all the foreign embassies can post the projects that are coming up in their nation. This will allow Indian companies to post their competitive bids for the projects and expand their reach into overseas economies.

If you were asked to identify one major advantage that India enjoys over other countries, what would that be?

I would say that the biggest advantage for our country is our human resource. In human resource lies our biggest strength as a nation.

In fact, recently when Rahul Gandhi had gone to Punjab, where he addressed a large group of youngsters, he said that in Saudi Arabia, their strength is Black Gold, which is crude, whereas in our country it is the young population, or the human resource that is our biggest strength. I am in total agreement with what Rahul Gandhi has said. In EPI, for example, we have the best technocrats, the best professionals. The kind of hardworking professionals that are available with us are not available elsewhere in the world.

Human Resource is India’s biggest Asset “The last century was dominated by Saudi Arabia, because of it being rich in oil, and this century belongs to India because the country is blessed with crores of youths and human resource is its biggest asset�

Our people are our strength and we have to provide them with best training so that they can execute world-class projects. There was a time when India was known only as a country from where lots of people were migrating to other countries for doing labour class jobs. But now things have changed. Now we are exporting IT and the people who out of the country are highly trained professionals.

In the infrastructure space, India does not seem to enjoy a very good reputation in the overseas markets. Yet EPI has been able to build a reputation for itself. How? Simply good governance and transparency in our operations have earned us great amount of respect amongst overseas clients. Ultimately the respect that you get is based on the successful execution of your projects. We have gathered the experience, expertise and the ability to execute many successful projects. We are constantly building on our success. Every project, big or small, is dear to us and we try our best to execute it with perfection.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

65

in person

public sector

O P Rawat

Secretary, Department of Public Enterprises, Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises, Government of India

Strengthening

the Public Sector in India “The Department of Public Enterprises sees the public sector becoming the prime mover in the industrial and social development of the country,� says O P Rawat, Secretary, Department of Public Enterprises, Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises, Government of India

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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / November 2012

public sector

T

he Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs) in the country have on the whole been performing well. But there are issues regarding the performance of some of the PSEs. What is the mandate or vision of the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE)? In what ways is DPE contributing to the better management of PSEs?

DPE has been set up to ensure uniformity across the Central Public Undertakings in areas like corporate governance guidelines, target settings, performance related pay, CSR, and reforms. This department serves as a catalyst for improving the performance of Public Sector Enterprises. It helps in evolving policies, reform programmes, guidelines and other mechanisms for establishment of a strong and effective public sector. The Department of Public Enterprises sees the public sector becoming the prime mover in the industrial and social development of the country. In order to enable our PSEs to achieve that kind of success we are coming up with initiatives that will help them to transform and reform. Over the years, the DPE has taking many new initiatives for improving the management of the Public Sector through a process of professionalising management, goal setting, reviewing performance and development of a comprehensive Management Information System (MIS). Considerable amount of work has also been done in the area of strengthening institutional mechanisms for revival of sick public sector units.

The requirement of the market place can change abruptly; even the most well managed companies are at times caught unawares by the vagaries of the market place.

How do you ensure that the public sector guidelines on corporate governance, targets and other aspects are in sync with what is happening in the market?

We have in place a system for constantly reviewing all guidelines to bring them in sync with the current requirements in the market.

The PSEs are a major contributor to the growth that we are currently witnessing in the Indian economy. The policies and guidelines that we

come up with are designed to bring seminal improvements in the competitiveness of the Public Sector.

Give us an overview of your plans for strengthening, re-organising and restructuring of the PSEs? There is maximum amount of autonomy given to the PSEs for managing their operations.

The areas of modernisation, re-organisation and other related aspects are being taken care of by the administrative departments of the concerned Public Sector Enterprises. The role played by the Department of Public Enterprises is limited to target setting, evaluating the performance on the basis of those targets, providing incentives and disincentives on the basis of performance and for coming up with a broad range of regulatory guidelines. We are focussed on enabling the Public Sector to come up with strategies that can lead to improvement in capacity utilisation, increase profitability, generate resources and lead to

in person

Disinvestment of government stake in PSEs always manages to raise a lot of conflicting opinions in the country. What is your view on the subject of selling government stake in PSEs? It is not the idea of selling the stakes. In my opinion it is the idea of making them listed in the stock exchange. Unless a certain part of the company’s shareholding is there in the public domain, there will not be transparency to a large extent in the operations of the organisation. So it is primarily for getting the PSEs listed on the stock exchange, and thus bringing in more transparency, accountability and efficiency, that the policy of small disinvestments is being encouraged.

What are the guidelines for corporate governance that you have developed for sick PSEs? We have published the corporate governance guidelines in a book form in the year 2010. Now

“The Department of Public enterprises serves as a catalyst for improving the performance of Public Sector Enterprises” the organisations becoming more efficient and competitive. The DPE also serves as an interface between the Public Sector and various government agencies and develops systems for long-term policy formulation. To make the operations competitive and viable on a long term and sustainable basis, the department also encourages restructuring of PSEs.

again we have started reviewing the guidelines in context of the new Schedule VI of the Companies Bill. The guidelines are developed by the DPE after taking into account policies enacted by SEBI and other regulatory authorities.

You spoke about giving incentives and disincentives to the PSEs based on their performance.

Please elaborate on this.

How effective is the corporate governance policy in the PSEs? Are the standards of corporate governance that we have in the PSEs at par with what we have in the well managed private sector companies?

The facility of performance related pay is already there. If a PSE achieves its targets, it receives excellent ratings, and the annual appraisal report of the CMD is also excellent, then he can get up to 200 percent of his basic salary as Performance Related Pay or PRP. So if the basic salary is `1 lakh per month, then the same can go up to `3 lakh per month. The company’s performance is calculated by taking into account parameters such as financial performance, corporate social responsibility, R&D, corporate governance and much else.

Absolutely. In fact, I would say that the corporate governance in PSEs is of much higher standard than what we have in other areas. In terms of peer review, all PSEs are impeccable in observing corporate governance. I would give them 10 out of 10 in the area of corporate governance. However, in absolute terms, there always exists enough scope for further improvement, more compliance and better mechanisms. We are constantly endeavouring to improve the systems that are in place in our Public Sector.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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in person

public sector

What about CSR activities of the PSEs? Many private companies that are highly profitable can afford CSR, but should we force PSEs to go into CSR? After all, many of our PSEs are not that profitable.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been there for ages. Our private sector has been doing CSR for many decades. I personally feel that CSR is a very important aspect of any businesses or enterprises. It is the responsibility of the private companies to use part of their profits to bring further benefits to the society where they operate. You should not think that our public sector is very small or that the profits are very small. The fact is that our public sector has earned a profit of above `100,000 crore last year.

But there are also those PSEs that are in the red.

As I already said, the total profit of the PSEs stands at `100,000 crore, whereas the accumulated loss stands at around `35,000 crores. So on the whole there is a positive balance of `65,000 crore in the PSE sector. It is also a fact that the PSEs are making huge contributions to the national exchequer by way of dividends. So the total contribution of the PSU sector to the exchequer is in the tune of `150,000 crore. With these kind of profits, the PSEs must do CSR. For that we already have the guidelines in place.

What steps are you taking to turn around the sick PSEs? The sick PSEs are those that have eroded their entire net worth. The DPE has taken several initiatives to ensure that these PSEs can be revived before their entire net worth is obliterated. When any PSE erodes 50 percent of its net worth, it gets referred to the Board of Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises (BRPSE).

The BRPSE takes an overview of the entire scale of operations of the unit and then takes the necessary steps for the revival. I am happy to say that of more than 60 cases of sick PSUs referred, the BRPSE intervention has resulted in the revival of almost 17 or 18 of them. The latest case of revival are Konkan Railway and Hindustan Copper Limited. These two companies have been making profits continuously for the last two or three years. Once a loss making CPSE has made profits continuously for three years, it is termed as a ‘Turned-around CPSE.’

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Trucks being ferried by Konkan Railway

What would be the biggest success story when it comes to the revival of sick PSEs? These would be the two names that I have already mentioned—Konkan Railway and Hindustan Copper Limited. These are very good companies that had started making losses due to some strategic issues. These have now been revived. The Konkan Railway has taken a very important initiative under which a truck can be carried to large distances on the rail, from Mumbai to Arunakualam.

This is a very profitable method of transportation.

Up to 30 to 40 trucks can be carried on one goods train. This method of transportation of trucks is making almost 25 percent of the revenues of Konkan Railway. It is a highly profitable enterprise.

Are you doing something to encourage the PSEs to make more usage of IT solutions for improving their efficiency?

Now it is well understood that IT and ICT are very useful for improving the efficiency of any organisation. PSEs are being encouraged to implement ICT so that their business process is more streamlined and transparent.

In fact, within the DPE we are now focussing on making more use of ICT. We have asked National Informatics Centre (NIC) to create the e-Office system, which is a paperless system.

By when will you be able to implement the e-Office system at DPE? We have just received a presentation from NIC. They will soon be presenting us with an offer about the kind of e-Office that will be most suitable for us. We will then evaluate the offer before giving them the go ahead for creating the e-Office solution. Once the work order has been issued it will take about six months for the project to be executed. There is a lot of work involved in bringing in the software and digitising the existing files and training the staff in use of the new system.

What are the biggest challenges that an organisation like DPE faces in reforming the Public Sector? What according to you are the solutions to these challenges?

The biggest challenge, to my mind, comes from the fast pace of modern society. All of a sudden the world has changed completely. The pace of change has been so abrupt that many individuals and even organisations are finding it difficult to keep up. What is good today, may be mediocre tomorrow – that is how fast we are moving. Therefore the guidelines under which the PSEs are structured have to be reviewed from time to time. The guidelines have to be geared to enable the public sector to meet the new challenges and keep growing in a changing market. We are also trying to revamp our CSR guidelines in order to improve their efficacy. The idea is to increase the visibility of the CSR projects and also ensure more benefits to society.

These days we have lot of negative news regarding Public Sector in our media. Do you think that media is generally unfair to the PSE space?

I would say that the media is media. The media feeds on information. It is the job of media to keep a watchful eye; they should report the facts as they are. Likewise, it is the job of government and private organisations to provide adequate information to the media. If such information is not provided, then that will give rise to rumours. If we want media to be fair to us, then we have to be proactive in coming forward and providing information. This is what we are telling all our PSEs. They have to reach out to the media and provide details of all their activities.

They have to openly discuss the problems they are facing with the media. Once a problem is out in the open, a solution is easier to discover.

This is a fact.

In Person

telecom

N Ravi Shanker

CMD, BBNL (Bharat Broadband Network Limited), Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India

Taking broadband to the villages

T

he Internet penetration in the country is quite low. While the voice segment has made great progress, the data segment is lagging behind.

Why is this so?

The telecom sector comprises of two broad segments-the voice segment and the data segment. The voice segment has seen a revolution in the last decade with the consumer base touching almost 900 million plus now. This is a very positive development. Today a significant portion of citizens have access to mobile phone services. But the mobile revolution really took off when the infrastructure got revamped in all parts of rural India. Ninety percent of the rural areas have telecom towers. The other factors that enabled the telecom revolution are competitive tariffs and the affordability of devices. When you look at the data sector, which is either the Internet or the broadband, as it is broadly understood, the penetration is very low. Hardly 14 million broadband connections are there, but at the same time if we look at the model of Internet usage, we find that there are approximately 100 million users in the country. So right now we are having a system where Internet is predominantly being used as a shared infrastructure, with many using the same connection. Common Service Centres (CSCs) have provided a new impetus to Internet usage in rural India. The role that the cyber cafes played in the urban areas during the early years of the Internet, the CSC are now playing in the rural areas.

What is the mandate of BBNL? The data sector needs stimulus like the one that has been seen in the voice sector. The government has entered into a dialogue with the telecom industry; it has been found that if they went about their business as usual, the penetration of telecom would take several years to complete. The single inhibiting factor is the cost of laying optical fibre. The cost is difficult to recover as there is not enough demand in the rural areas. So the government was pushed into thinking that it was a better idea to create a sophisticated infrastructure that could lead to better broadband penetration in rural areas. Once the recommendations of the tariff regulator arrived, the Government of India embarked upon setting up the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) that would bring connectivity to all 2,50,000 panchayats throughout the country. The underlying objective is to ensure that e-learning, telemedicine, e-Governance and e-commerce are made available to all the rural citizens. BBNL is a Special Purpose Vehicle, set up by the Government of India for the establishment, management and operation of NOFN.

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“The current information available on the Internet is predominantly anglo-centric. We need to create local content for the consumption of local masses,� says N Ravi Shanker, CMD, BBNL, Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India

telecom

In Person

Much of the telecom network of the recent years has been created by the private players. So why did the government decide for upfront investment in NOFN rather than providing incentives to private sectors for the work?

This model has emerged out of lengthy discussions with the private sector. The government has been deeply engaged in a dialogue with the entire telecom industry to ascertain the best model to go ahead with the implementation of National Optical Fibre Network. Non-discriminatory access to the NOFN will be provided to all the service providers. The Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), ISPs, cable TV operators and content providers can launch various services in rural areas. Various categories of applications like e-health, e-education and e-Governance etc. can be provided by these operators. The NOFN project is estimated to cost about `20,000 crore. It is proposed to be completed in two years time. The project will be funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).

Penetration of broadband in rural areas in the country is very low.

It is also true that Internet is not exactly on the priority list of our rural population. Do you think that there will be any issue regarding the shortage of demand of this massive infrastructure?

I would like to take the question into two parts.

Firstly there are targets which our government would like to achieve. As per the Telecom Policy announced this year, our target is to achieve 175 million broadband users by 2017, and take this to 600 million by 2020. Now we have to see as to what is needed to bring about improvements in the levels of broadband in rural areas. In the voice sector, it was the need to communicate that acted as a trigger, while in the data sector it is the relevance and benefit that Internet usage shall bring to the rural masses that can act as trigger. I think herein lies the key answer to the growth of broadband. Basically what we need is the content that is relevant and valued by the rural population; this shall form the cornerstone of development. The current information available on the Internet is predominantly anglo-centric and is not much targeted to the local masses. We need to move out of this and create local content for the consumption of local masses. In the project rural population will be the main focus.

What about the cost of devices?

India is a cost-sensitive nation, especially in the rural areas.

Of course, the cost of devices is an issue.

At this point of time, the rural population mainly makes use of shared infrastructure of the Common Services Network, to access the Internet. This is mainly because laptops, desktops, notebooks, net books, or any other tablets or Internet devices are quite highly priced. In order to have higher penetration of broadband and Internet in rural areas, it is necessary that we have an `5,000 tablet with all available features of a high-end tablet. Another factor that would drive the usage is the tariff. The 2G or voice sector has the most competitive tariff. A change needs to come in the data sector. The prices have to come down. And we also need to develop a fundamental ecosystem in which there is union of data and voice.

Digital literacy could also be a factor behind the lack of popularity of data services in rural areas. What can we do about it?

Now that you mention it, I was about to come to the issue of ITC literacy. The ITC literacy needs to be curbed in order to create a rise in demand in our rural areas. This is challenge that lies before several educational and IT companies. We have ITC literacy programmes in English, but there is a need to develop content in various Indian languages also. We also need to move out from text-based learning format to voice-based learning, audio-visual, animation

type of learning that has a better potential for engaging people from rural India. And I think an ecosystem has to be developed in order to make the broadband revolution a reality. There is no denying the fact that data is more complex than the voice sector, but with the right strategies we can make data usage popular. The National Optical Fibre Network infrastructure is the first of its kind. It will trigger the broadband revolution in rural areas, but we need to have the right ecosystem in place.

What kind of opportunity do you see in the NOFN project for the private sector?

Let me put it this way that NOFN project is a telecom infrastructure project. The three CPSUs will be adopting the most transparent tender mechanisms. The Department of Telecom has already issued the guidelines on the preferential market access to ensure that the NOFN network is built on the strength of goods and equipments manufactured within the country. So the in-country manufacturers of both the national optical fibre and electronic equipments will benefit from the project. The National Optical Fibre Network project was approved in October 2011. The Government of India envisages that the project will be completed in two years, so by 2013, we will be at the completion state. BBNL will be laying the incremental cable from wherever it exists today, (usually at the block level), to the gram panchayat level. This will involve laying about five lakh kilometres of optical fibre. BBNL is working at full speed to lay the network.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

71

In Person

public sector

A K Jain

Managing Director, Rajasthan Electronics & Instruments Ltd

Transforming

into an intelligent PSE

H

“The Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs) serve as the backbone of the Indian Economy. Over the years they have created world class infrastructure, including R&D centre, operating units, training centre, and a large pool of highly skilled and professional manpower,” says A K Jain, Managing Director, Rajasthan Electronics & Instruments Ltd

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ow critical is the role of innovation and technology supremacy in the growth of REIL? How does REIL use technology to carry its vision forward?

REIL perceives the role of innovation and technology supremacy, as something that is critical to survival and sustenance in the highly competitive market. We are committed to total customer satisfaction by identifying their specific needs, translating them into quality products and providing dependable after-sales services. This commitment is the cornerstone of our quality policy and we strive to achieve it by putting into place a quality system which adheres to the ISO 9001 quality standard and environment.

We are developing technology solutions in the areas of agro-dairy, renewable energy, information technology and industrial electronics, to develop and introduce innovative products to not only retain, but also expand our market. Over the past three decades, REIL has identified needs of the Dairy Vertical, through continuous interaction with customers and provides a full spectrum of Diary Electronics Systems and equipments ranging from the requirements of grassroot level milk co-operatives—which are in the initial stages of formation—right up to large and prosperous co-operative societies. Use of RFID technology for cattle identification, veterinary services terminals for cattle health, testing equipments at cooperative societies, e-sealing for transportation, RMRD docks at dairy plants, online hi-end milk analysis solutions to control and monitor hygiene and safety standards at dairy plants and product factories, ERP at dairy plant for business automation. All this has brought transparency and fairness in the milk procurement and remuneration process at every stage of the chain, from Cattle to Consumer (C2C).

Similarly, REIL has worked in the business area of renewable energy through use of SPV technology, to deliver products and applications, appropriate for the respective use. We also undertake in-house design, development and manufacturing of the electronic circuits and luminaries assemblies that go into SPV based domestic lighting system in rural areas, village street lighting system, solar lanterns, etc. Our products are deployed in over 100,000 villages across the country.

What would you say are some of the key milestones for REIL in recent years?

REIL has attained significant milestones in the various facets of business environment, namely financial, commercial, product development and

In Person

public sector

quality. We have grown by 282 percent over the past five years from `78.89 crore in 2007-08 to `231 crore in 2011-12.

We have also obtained certification of compliance to international standards: CEI/IEC 61215 (Design Qualification), IEC 61730-1 & 2 (Safety Qualification) and IEC 61701 (Salt Mist Corrosion testing) of Crystalline Silicon Terrestrial Photovoltaic (PV) Modules, popu¬larly known as UL certification. This is the most prestigious quality standard.

We have entered into a partnership arrangement with FOSS Denmark, the world leader in high-end milk testing equipments, for introducing and distributing products in India. In the renewable energy sector, a key milestone is the execution of 10MW decentralised power plant project in 9,400 locations across the country in a time-bound manner. REIL also successfully executed large Mega Watt Power Plants (5MW) in the state of Rajasthan.

These techno-commercial initiatives brought laurels to REIL in the form of National R & D Award, National Electronics Award, Best Employer Award, the ultimate Scope Award, “eWorld Forum Award–2011” for the Best Rural e-Governance Initiative, Rajasthan Energy Conservation Awards2011 and recently received “Best PSU” for Outstanding Performance in Mini Ratna category in BT Star PSU Excellence Award-2012.

What according to you are some of the core challenges affecting the PSEs in India and as a key player how are you addressing them?

Some of the key challenges faced by public sectors are global meltdown, bottomline performance, corporate fraud cases resulting in hefty penalties, defective products and recalls, and highly competitive market.

The government has issued a Corporate Governance code to be followed by all CPSEs, which means holistic good governance of the corporate business. In line with this, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between the Government and Management of CPSEs. The main purpose of the MoU is to ensure a level playing field to the PSE, visà-vis the private corporate sector.

To address these issues REIL is actively involved in the National Dairy Plan and the Jawaharlal National Solar Mission for implementation of safe & hygienic milk & milk products and acquiring energy security across the country.

Smart and effective use of technology for social,

Dairy Farm Cattle Monitoring through RFID Tag Veterinary Services Terminal

Village Milk Co-Operative Society

Chilling Centres Along with EMT/RMRD CC Society Accounts Management System (SAMS)

Electronic Milk Testing, Data Processing

(Cattle to Consurner) Digital Nervous System of Dairy Industry Milk Delivery Terminal Vehicle Tracking Monitoring System

Enterprise Resource Planning

Retailers/End Consumers Dairy Solutions Developed by REIL

SCADA

Tanker e-Sealing

Raw Milk Reception Dock (RMRD) Automation Milk Quality Analysis

Transportation through Milk Tankers

Milk Arrives at the Dairy Plants

Dairy Plants Dairy Solutions Under Development Stage at REIL

financial and digital inclusion, is bridging the digital divide between rural and urban India. REIL successfully provided 43 variants of electronics products and 23 variants of solar products across the country. This benefited 40 million milk producers and 100,000 villages, 140 towns, ensuring fair payment to farmers and safe milk to consumers. 125,000 villages are made kerosene-free and now use solar home lighting systems. This has contributed a lot in empowering the rural people and making the country proud as the world’s largest milk producer and a sustained growth of dairy sector for last one decade.

How do you view REIL’s transition to an intelligent PSE?

How are you using capability building as a way to bring about changes?

What are the future plans of REIL?

Changes are a way of life and business dynamics change very fast, making it necessary to build capability to quickly respond to them. Therefore, capability building is essential to carry out our business with growth, profitability and market share. We achieve this through regular upgradation of our infrastructure and training of our manpower.

For purposes of product development, REIL undertakes interaction with customers for identifying the needs for upgradation of our product solutions in the area of milk testing equipments, SPV products, and IT; and uses its Research & Development capability to translate these needs into products and services for its customers. We utilise technology to deliver quality products, which are robust, economical to operate, and easy to use for the rural people in the typically harsh rural environment. We also organise training for employees of all categories and levels.

REIL has adopted all the technologies, methods and processes that are contemporary and necessary to maintain and increase the presence in the market, enhance customer satisfaction and also deliver value for money to them. We use technology in communication, business processes, manufacturing, quality and delivery, such as computers, Internet, mobile telephony, manufacturing automation, etc. We rigorously follow our vision and mission in letter and spirit; strengthen the R&D infrastructure; and make strategic diversifications.

REIL is a profit making company with a rural mission. It has a prominent place amongst the electronics industry of Rajasthan. The company is a joint venture between the Government of India and the Government of Rajasthan, through their respective institutions. The company was conferred the status of a ‘MINI RATNA’ by the Department of Public Enterprises, Ministry of Industry, Government of India in 1997 on account of its good all round performance and excellent products and retaining the same for last 15 years.

REIL look at growing needs of its technology solution in rural market both for the dairy industry and renewable energy under the National Dairy Plan and the Jawaharlal National Solar Mission, while continuing with its current product range and the customer base across the country.

REIL aims to become the largest key player in “Off Grid Solar Solution” in renewable energy sector and retain its primacy as the largest milk analysis player in dairy industry.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

73

UIDAI

Aadhaar

Making Service Delivery Efficient & Robust Since Aadhaar was launched with the objective of providing residents with a pannation identity, thereby making it easy to verify an individual’s identity, it is only logical that government departments and even private entities utilise the Aadhaar identity platform to deliver benefits/services to residents R S Sharma, Director General & Mission Director, UIDAI, Government of India

T

he debate regarding plugging leakages in the existing service delivery mechanism has been a long-drawn one, with many options, including cash transfers being mulled as an alternative to the existing system.

Let us take the example of the subsidy regime that is prevalent at this time in our country to understand how Aadhaar can transform the way various services reach the common man.

The only way the first problem i.e. elimination of duplicates and fakes can be solved is to have a unique identifier for each person in databases of government agencies that administer respective schemes. If we can ensure that any person in these databases has only one number (Unique ID) that is not dependent on how he spells his name or address, but his biometric attributes, then we can ensure that there will be no duplicates and fakes – provided it is made mandatory that all such persons give their Unique IDs (Aadhaar).

Having established that the databases are clean, let us look at how Aadhaar can be used to route benefits into the hands of the correct beneficiaries. Let us examine the case of direct transfer of LPG subsidy—something which is under the active consideration of the government.

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A consumer needs to give only his Aadhaar number (and not the bank account details) to the LPG dealer. Also he will need to provide the Aadhaar number to his bank for linking it with the account in which he wants to receive the LPG subsidy. His bank links his Aadhaar number to his account. This will ensure that when a bank receives the subsidy to be provided to the holder of a given Aadhaar number, the bank will transfer it to this account.

The bank also sends this Aadhaar number to National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). NPCI, working under the RBI, functions as a hub in all electronic retail payment systems which is ever growing in terms of varieties of products, delivery channels, number of service providers and diverse technology solutions. NPCI maintains a table (called Mapper), which has Aadhaar number and the Bank ID (called BIN number). Now the direct transfer of subsidy operates as follows.

When a consumer receives the LPG cylinder and the receipt is authenticated, the subsidy transfer is triggered. As a first step, the sponsoring bank of the Oil Marketing Company (the bank which has the funds), sends the Aadhaar number and the amount to the NPCI. This happens only in respect of those consumers whose accounts are outside the sponsoring bank. For those whose Aadhaar linked bank accounts are in the sponsored bank, the subsidy transfer does not involve NPCI. NPCI, after receiving

R S Sharma the file from the sponsoring bank, sends the payment advice to the concerned bank where beneficiaries hold their accounts. As NPCI knows the bank ID for a given Aadhaar, it happens without any problem.

In case the bank to which the payment has gone finds that there is no corresponding bank account for a given Aadhaar, it returns the error message to the NPCI which, in turn provides the error details to the sponsoring bank. As all this happens electronically and automatically, there is no delay in these messaging systems. This method of funds transfer is described as Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) as it uses Aadhaar number and NPCI as a bridge to connect the two databases, the beneficiary database (with the

UIDAI

service provider – OMCs in our case) where the transaction is emanating and the bank accounts database which is kept with various banks.

Thus Aadhaar-based Service Delivery tackles the twin problems of duplicate/fake entries in databases and diversion of funds. Already many State Governments and Central ministries have shown keen interest in utilising the Aadhaar identity platform for delivery of services. Aadhaar Enabled Service Delivery initiatives have been launched by Hon’ble Prime Minister on October 20, 2012, in line with the budget speech of 2012-13 for rolling out the same in 51 districts across the country.

Some of the ongoing pilots that are being run to prove how Aadhaar can be used in bringing about a positive transformation in public service delivery are as below:

Financial Inclusion Pilot in Jharkhand The first Aadhaar application pilot was started in four districts of Jharkhand—Ranchi, Hazaribag, Ramgarh and Saraikela-Kharsawan in December 2011. Money was transferred by the Jharkhand Government directly to the beneficiaries’ Aadhaar-linked bank accounts under various programmes—MNREGS, Old Age Pensions and Student Scholarships, to avoid leakages happening due to intermediary involvement. In order to resolve the problem of access to last mile banking services, business correspondents (BCs) from three banks carried micro-ATM devices in the villages, which enabled the residents to make banking transactions, including withdrawal, deposit, balance enquiry, etc. after Aadhaar biometric authentication. Similar projects are in various stages of rollout process in 51 districts.

PDS Pilot in Andhra Pradesh This pilot was initiated by Consumer Affairs, Food and Civil Supplies Department of Andhra Pradesh in the East Godavari district on 1st September 2012. The objective of the pilot was to curb leakages in the Public Distribution System by using Aadhaar Biometric Authentication. The pilot was targeted for around 35,000 households with around 1.25 lakh target beneficiaries across 47 fair price shops (FPS) in the East Godavari district. The ration card numbers of beneficiaries were linked to their Aadhaar numbers. Under this pilot, subsidised ration (rice, palm oil, pulses, sugar) was provided to beneficiaries after Aadhaar biometric authentication. Around 45,000 ration deliveries made

key benefits of using Aadhaar for service delivery

•

•

Higher scalability of services with online authentication, allowing the service agencies to use multiple channels for service delivery.

Reduced beneficiary harassment and bribing due to reduced

•

•

dependency on manual processes.

More efficient service delivery process.

Reduced cost of identity establishment.

No need to submit physical copies of identity documents. Reduced risk

during the first month of the pilot. This pilot had very high biometric authentication accuracy, which was a positive indication regarding success of UIDAI’s authentication platform.

LPG Delivery Pilot in Mysore, Karnataka This pilot was initiated by the three Oil Marketing Companies—IOCL, and BPCL and HPCL in January 2012, in collaboration with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. The objective of this pilot was to use Aadhaar Biometric Authentication to minimise diversion of subsidised LPG cylinders. The target consumer base for the pilot was around 85,000 beneficiaries, across three LPG distributorships (gas agencies) in Mysore—one each for IOCL, BPCL and HPCL. Subsidised LPG cylinders were delivered by delivery boys after successful biometric authentication of any family member present in the household. Around 50000 deliveries have been made so far. The next phase of pilot would scale up operations in the entire district, as well as have the subsidy amount difference being transferred directly into banks accounts of

Common problems which currently exist in the subsidy domain • Existence of multiples and fakes in the beneficiary databases resulting in leakages of subsidies etc. (e.g. ghost ration cards in PDS) • Diversion of goods to unauthorised purposes (e.g. Diversions of domestic LPG cylinders for industrial usage) again resulting in leakages etc.

•

of identity theft associated with physical documents usage.

Electronic audit trail can be created allowing service agencies to audit their service delivery process more effectively.

beneficiaries, with the LPG cylinder operating at market price, thus eliminating the incentive to divert subsidised cylinders.

Pensions Pilot in Aurangabad, Maharashtra This pilot was initiated in Aurangabad in September 2012 for disbursing pensions under five special assistance schemes which are operational in Maharashtra—Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Anudan Yojna, Shravan Bal Old Age Pension, Indira Gandhi National Age Pension Scheme, Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme and Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme. The objective was to directly transfer monetary benefit into the bank account of pensioners using the Aadhaar Payments Bridge. Aadhaar number was linked to the list of beneficiaries to eliminate fake beneficiaries. Aadhaar Enabled Payment System was used by Banking Correspondents to disburse funds through microATMs. The savings of government funds due to this pilot is estimated to be `7.7 crore, and the estimation of probable savings to the Government of Maharashtra is estimated to be `350 crore.

Considering the fact that large percentage of people in India still depend on government benefits and services, it is imperative that a clear identification mechanism of beneficiaries is created. As we move towards a digitised service delivery scheme, need for an online verifiable identity is clear to ensure benefits are truly targeted to those who deserve. The ability to digitally establish individual unique identity and further authenticate the beneficiary during service delivery will be critical to achieve the expected result. Through the Aadhaar Identity Platform, the existing service delivery mechanism can indeed be reformed.

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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leader speak

uidai

Nandan Nilekani Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)

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uidai

leader speak

Nandan Nilekani

Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)

“Aadhaar A catalyst for efficient e-Governance”

Y

ou got into the government and became the driving force behind the UIDAI programme, but now you have expanded your footprint to GST, PDS and many other areas of the governance. How do you see your journey so far in the area of governance?

The time I have spent in the government has been very fulfilling and satisfying. We began with the UIDAI project, which is moving at good pace. Over 200 million people have been enrolled and they have been issued Aadhaar numbers. We are launching online applications; we are also starting the systems for electronic credit of money to bank accounts. A lot of developments are taking place. I have extended my footprint in other areas of governance, but that is also co-related to the UIDAI initiative. This is quite natural as the Aadhaar numbers are the basis for many government programmes. The whole idea behind this Unique ID drive is to enable people to easily access all kinds of public services like bank account, telephone connection, PDS, etc. That was the inclusion part of it. The other aim was to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of government departments. It is a fact that government expenditure on social welfare programme related to education, employment, healthcare, food distribution and others have gone up considerably in the last 10 years. Such programmes can only become effective when there is an effective framework that enables subsidies to be directly paid to the beneficiaries through electronic means. That is how the idea of having Aadhaar numbers originally came up.

You have also done some important work on electronic collection of toll taxes.

I headed a committee for automated collection of toll taxes and submitted the report two years back. The report stated

Born on 2nd June 1955, Nandan Nilekani is an Indian

that by using RFID based systems we could minimise the waiting time at toll stations. The system has already been implemented in many toll centres. Vehicles can simply breeze through the toll station and the charges get automatically deducted from the user’s account.

entrepreneur. After

Coming back to Aadhaar, what kind of response are you seeing from state governments, now that more than 20 crore enrolments have already been done?

Computer Systems.

The response so far has been very encouraging. From the onset, we had made this project very collaborative, with the result that we had a large base of stakeholders. The state governments are our principal partners, as they are instrumental in enrolling people into the Aadhaar system and they are also making usage of Aadhaar based authentication for a variety of applications like disbursement of social security, payments of pensions and in PDS.

graduating from IIT Bombay in 1978, he joined Mumbaibased Patni In 1981, he left Patni and co-founded Infosys.

Nilekani became the Chief Executive Officer of Infosys in March 2002, a post that he retained till April 2007.

In 2009, his book

There is a massive investment plan being made in UIDAI and other projects that entail significant usage of ICT. How do you see the process of governance evolving over the next few years?

Well I think we are situated at a very interesting point as far as governance is concerned. Lot of pioneering work is being done in India for making use of ICT to improve the quality and efficacy of governance. The National e-Governance Programme is underway. We have set up quality infrastructure like NICNET, the State Data Centres and few others. The Customer Service Centres are a great manifestation of the rising scope of e-Governance in the country. The CSCs are already very popular with the citizens. With all these developments we are reaching a point where we can really take governance to the next level. Technology is now ready to play the role of the backbone of governance.

‘Imagining India’ was published.

The book went on to become an international bestseller.

He currently serves as the Chairman of the new Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). He is also now heading Government of India’s technology committee, TAGUP

November 2012 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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leader speak

uidai

The government departments do not need large and cumbersome IT infrastructure to conduct their business; they can simply start using applications that are available in the cloud. This can be a very costeffective way of managing governance. The connectivity that is available through mobile phones is also a great boon. Soon we will have the entire country connected through fibre broadband. The seamless connectivity that we have can be deployed to enable people in rural areas to conduct tasks like inquiring about their PDS balance, making payments for electricity, mobile bills and doing much else. The emergence of low-cost, feature rich smartphones and tablets is also a very exciting development from governance point of view.

The USA and many countries in Europe have been leveraging ICT for many decades. They have now reached a stage where they have a lot of public services available online. How much time will it take for governance in India to reach a similar stage of development?

Actually in some sense India is unique in enjoying the benefits of not having any kind of legacy system. For instance, let us take the example of healthcare. We don’t have the electronic health record system that is a hallmark of the healthcare establishments in Europe and the USA. The Western countries are shackled with a massive electronic health record system, which in most cases is not interoperable. Some of these records are with hospitals, some with pharmacy, some with insurance companies, and so on. Now they are trying to bring interoperability to their healthcare records.

So the advantage that we in India have is that we can learn from the mistakes that have been made in the advanced countries, and from day one we can design a system that is interoperable, secure, private and user-friendly.

I actually see the lack of application penetration as a good thing because it facilitates the development of applications from the ground level. UIDAI is a good example in this area. Countries like the US have had the ID system as social security numbers since 1930’s. Since we are building the system in this decade, we can think of mobile applications, online system applications, and authentication systems like biometrics, all of which were unthinkable till 3-4 years back. So in some sense it is important to look at the trend of the technology and then intercept that trend at the right level of maturity so that it can be applied more effectively.

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The areas of health and education are of crucial concern to our nation. How do you see UIDAI contributing to these core areas?

UIDAI is basically an identity infrastructure; it provides a unique identity to every person in India.

In the field of healthcare, it will enable everyone to store his or her health records in the cloud.

The health related information will be completely secure and private, only some elements of it can be accessed by the concerned parties. For instance, if someone is allergic to certain medicine, he can, at the time of his check-up at the hospital, ask the medical staff to look into his health record in the cloud. With this information, the hospital staff will be able to prescribe the right kind of medication and they will also be able to further update the patient health record in the cloud. As far as education is concerned, large amount of content is already available online. Now we have to devise ways of leveraging all this content for bringing further improvement in the scope of education.

You have been quoted as saying that the Aadhaar cards could become the app store for e-Governance systems. What kind of e-Governance apps do you have in mind?

The UIDAI or the Aadhaar based identification system is highly conducive for building a whole range of apps, which make it easier for citizens and government agencies to interact with each other.

Many such apps have already become functional.

For instance, the system of paying the benefits to poor workers through electronic means, and enabling them to withdraw money through the help of Business Correspondents, can be seen as an app. The mobile verification system is also an app. The system of providing PDS benefits by using Aadhaar based online authentication is also an app.

Last three years have been the phase of enrolment. All of us are optimistic that the actual benefits from the UIDAI project will soon start appearing. How long, do you think it will take before we can start having active usage of Aadhaar cards?

In another two or three year period, the Aadhaar cards will be actively used. People will start having their benefits from government directly credited to their accounts electronically through Aadhaar based systems. Even PDS will use Aadhaar to

identify and compensate the beneficiaries. The telecom industry has already started pilot projects, which make use of Aadhaar number for KYC, and to even sell you a SIM card.

The advanced countries in the world have rather large budgets for managing their IT infrastructure.

In comparison, our spending on IT is quite small. Do you think that with our low IT budget, we will be able to take maximum advantage of Aadhaar based identification and delivery systems?

We should not be measuring the actual effectiveness of our IT systems by our budgets. The effectiveness comes from efficient planning and the deployment of optimal solutions. If we look at Aadhaar programme, it costs us between `100 to `150 per person for enrolment. This is actually quite reasonable, if we take into account the massive scale at which we are working. If such a project were to be implemented in any Western country, the costs would be a lot higher.

The government has set up a committee to frame a human resource (HR) policy for e-Governance projects that would enable the movement of private sector executives into government and vice-versa on an unprecedented scale, apart from leading to initiatives that will better harness bureaucratic talent.

You are part of that committee. So what kind of challenges do you see in its implementation?

Technology cannot be taken in isolation. We also need efficient manpower to implement the best technology. All this large amount of activity in e-governance requires deployment of sophisticated technology, which presents fairly complex challenges. They require some expertise which can be sourced from outside, but to manage them you need capacity inside. The HR committee aims to harness the manpower and the talent both within the government and in the private sector As it is being envisaged, the committee will also look at more outsourcing of government projects, which are not core, to private sector companies.

The truth is that the country is implementing massive technology projects, and inadequate technical skills were identified as one of the pain points for their successful implementation.

Now, align your data centre architecture to your business needs in just seconds 5 4

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1 3

2 Management 1 Cooling End-to-end monitoring Rack-, row-, and and management room-based cooling software for greater options for greater efficiency and availability. efficiency.

3 Physical security A single-seat view for monitoring and surveillance.

4 Power Modular power distribution and paralleling capabilities on UPS for loads from 10 kW to 2 MW.

Only InfraStruxure adapts quickly to your specific business needs Introducing Next Generation InfraStruxure

Whether you have just acquired a new company or must increase its ever-expanding customer or inventory database capacity, you’re most likely facing pressing demands on your company’s IT infrastructure. Your existing data centre infrastructure may not be able to handle these up-to-the-minute changes. That’s where Schneider Electric™ steps in with its proven high-performance, scalable data centre infrastructure. As the industry’s one-of-a-kind, truly modular, adaptable, and ‘on-demand’ data centre system, only InfraStruxure™ ensures that your data centre can adapt effectively, efficiently, and, perhaps most important, quickly, to business changes.

InfraStruxure data centres mean business!

A data centre means business when it is available 24/7/365 and performs at the highest level at all times, is able to adapt at breakneck speed, lets you add capacity without waiting on logistical delays (e.g., work orders), enables IT and facilities to keep pace with the business in a synchronised way, continues to achieve greater and greater energy efficiency — from planning through operations — and is able to grow with the business itself. What’s more, our comprehensive life cycle services help InfraStruxure data centres retain business value at all times.

5 Racks systems ‘Any-IT’ vendor-compatible rack enclosures and accessories for high densities.

The flexibility of the InfraStruxure architecture: Turn any room into a world-class data centre. InfraStruxure can be

deployed on its own as a modular, scalable, customised solution that’s easy to design, build, and install for small firsttime data centre environments.

Extend the life of your data centre. Existing data centres can add

on InfraStruxure components to existing architecture and, for increased value, use our management software.

Scale up with step-and-repeat modular architecture for large data centres. Medium/large environments can deploy InfraStruxure as a zoned, ‘pay-asyou-grow’, scalable architecture solution.

The triple promise of InfraStruxure deployment

InfraStruxure fulfills our triple promise of superior quality, which ensures highest availability; speed, which ensures easy and quick alignment of IT to business needs; and cost savings based on energy efficiency. What better way to mean business than to enable quality, speed, and cost savings — simultaneously?

Business-wise, Future-driven.™

APCTM by Schneider Electric is the pioneer of modular data centre infrastructure and innovative cooling technology. Its products and solutions, including InfraStruxure, are an integral part of the Schneider Electric IT portfolio.

Discover which physical infrastructure management tools you need to operate your data centre.

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