Roadmap for Interoperability Are we really OPEN for it?: October 2006 Issue

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Volume II issue 10, October 2006

ISSN 0973-161X

O pportunities for

D igital A sia

The e-Government magazine for Asia and the Middle East

Roadmap for Interoperability

Are we really

OPEN for it?

Open Standards based e-Governance

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31 e-Government uses the intelligent road

A grand show amidst acclaim

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Do you know an innovator or a creative project that is unknown or little known to the media?

We need your help in identifying nominations for ICT Innovation Awards in the fields of i4d, egov and Digital Learning

write to info@csdms.in

IN THIS ISSUE COVER FEATURE

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Model Public Policy Framework on Interoperatibility

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Michael R K Mudd

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Venkatesh Hariharan

Open Standards based e-Governance Jaijit Bhattacharya

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The importance of (truly) Open Standards

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eGov Framework: A development approach toward an application prototype implementation

Reshaping ICT ecosystems, reengineer government, rewriting business models Interview: Jeff Kaplan

R K Senthil Kumar and B S Bindhumadhava

NEWS REVIEW

IN PRACTICE

7 29 36 38

31

Asia Middle East

Reiner DĂślger

Business

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India

Citizen participation in the era of digital development Valeria Betancourt

EVENT DIARY

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Finland: Perfect lab for developing road maintenance solutions Sampo Hietanen and Ville Virtanen

COMMENTARY

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Delivering Traffic Management and Traffic Information solutions

egov India 2006: A grand show amidst acclaim

REGULAR FEATURES

44 45 46

Facts and Data numbers What’s On

Prachi Shirur and Danish A Khan Read all the articles online at www.egovonline.net | October 2006

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Editorial Guidelines egov is a monthly magazine providing a much needed platform to the voices of various stakeholders in the arena of e-Government, apart from being a repository of valuable information and meaningful discussion on issues of e-governance in general, and e-Government in particular – both to the specialist and the generalist.

Contributions to egov magazine should be in the form of articles, case studies, book reviews, event report and news related to e-Government project and initiatives, which are of immense value for practitioners, professionals, corporate and academicians.

We would like the contributors to follow these guidelines, while submitting their material for publication.

• Articles/ Case studies should not

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•

•

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exceed 2500 words. For book reviews and event report, the word limit is 800.

An abstract of the article/case study not exceeding 200 words should be submitted along with the article/case study.

All articles/ case studies should provide proper references. Authors should give in writing stating that the work is new and has not been published in any form so far.

Book reviews should include details of the book like the title, name of the author(s), publisher, year of publication, price and number of pages and also send the cover photograph of the book in JPEG/ TIFF (resolution 300 dpi).

Book reviews of books on e-Governance related themes, published from year 2002 onwards, are preferable. In case of website, provide the URL.

•

The manuscripts should be typed in a standard printable font (Times New Roman 12 font size, titles in bold) and submitted either through mail or post.

• Relevant figures of adequate quality (300 dpi) should be submitted in JPEG/ TIFF format.

• A brief bio-data and passport size photograph(s) of the author(s) must be enclosed.

• All contributions are subject to approval by the publisher.

Please send in your papers/articles/ comments to: The Editor G-4, Sector 39 NOIDA (UP) 201 301, India Tel +91 120 2502180-87 Fax +91 120 2500060 Email: info@egovonline.net

Editorial Calendar 2006-07 Solution Focus

Application Focus

October

Interoperability (Open Standards, Open Source Software)

Transport

November

eForms

Police

December

Information and Network Security

Passport Visa

January

Metadata and Data Standards

Income Tax

February

e-Governance Architecture

Courts

March

WiMAX

Posts

Have your daily cup of hot morning tea with hot ee-- Government news!

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EDITORIAL Vol. II, Issue 10

October 2006

President Dr. M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta Sr. Assistant Editor Danish A. Khan Sub Editor Prachi Shirur Research Associate Sanjeev Kumar Shrivastav Marketing Gautam Navin Mobile: +91-9818125257 email: gautam@csdms.in Designed by Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Web Zia Salahuddin Ramakant Sahu Circulation Lipika Dutta

Open Standards could promote Unity in Diversity As the e-Governance ecosystem players across numerous developing countries get excited by the possibilities of improving government services and delivery, promote transparency and efficiency, a number of enthusiastic and mushrooming of projects are being undertaken by governments. In the absence of an e-Governance action plan or policy, these projects often begin just as setting up of websites or electronic announcements of the departments/ ministries or governments. e-Governance is much more than that. It is conceptualised as a seamless interface of a dynamic electronic governance mechanism put in place to make every citizen, whether they reside in a far flung rural village or are in the centre of a high-end business metropolis, to access and benefit from the Governments. Currently, more robust database driven eGovernance projects are being undertaken. The critical factor that drives the engine of a robust e-Governance framework is that it needs to be interoperable and be built on open standards.

Countries like India have to tackle problems of a diversity of languages, address problems of citizen illiteracy, and disability questions for developing effective platforms and frameworks. New technologies have to be developed, adapted or customised to be effective. India, being a federal governance structure, has some State (provincial) subjects and some Central (federal) subjects, and often ministries like finance, policing, railways, etc. have to talk to each state/ regions frequently.

The lessons learnt here could be transferred to other countries or even to EU.

Editorial and marketing correspondence eGov G-4 Sector 39 NOIDA 201301, India Tel: +91 120 2502181-87 Fax: +91 120 2500060 Email: info@egovonline.net

The fundamental arguments for promoting open standards, open content and open systems are primarily to ensure universal accessibility and not encourage a vendor tie-in. As globalisation provides opportunities for more vendors and software and technology providers to plunge into the emerging opportunities, there is a need for a better understanding amongst the decision makers and implementers for promoting open standards. In this issue, we have attempted to provide updates on the current debate.

Printed by Yashi Media Works Pvt Ltd New Delhi, India

The reasons for adopting open standards is that it reduces costs, makes projects seamless and interoperable, even if different vendors (be it proprietary or open source) build them. The success of e-Governance programmes lies in designing a framework for implementation arguably based on open standards. When resources are scarce, they must last longer. Replication of a successful pilot in other states, is also possible if these projects are designed to conform to open standards.

egov does not neccesarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors. egov is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided. egov is published in collaboration with GIS Development (www.GISdevelopment.net) Š Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2006 www.csdms.in

| October 2006

Moreover, when governments adopt an open standards technology for their G2C (Government-to-Citizen) solutions, the citizens do not have to purchase expensive proprietary software to access government services. The need of the hour is to evolve pragmatic ways to promote adoption and use of truly open standards and how to build an open ICT ecosystem in order take the e-Government movement forward in earnest. But, are we really open for it?

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

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IN BOX English-Bengali bilingual website of Govt. of Tripura Dear Editor, I am Barun Kumar Sahu, IAS, Additional Secretary (IT) with independent charge, Government of Tripura, India. I am glad to inform that the official website (http:/ /www.tripura.nic.in) of the state government is now in Bengali also. At present, only the homepage is bilingual:

Enjoy reading egov Just to say that I enjoy reading every issue of your magazine.

Bajramovic Kemal Head of Information Technology Group Civil Service Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina kemal.bajramovic@ads.gov.ba English and Bengali. Other pages will be made available in Bengali subsequently.

One can switch from Bengali to English and vice versa. Homepage will shortly be available in Kokborok (a tribal, and the second official language of the state) also.

What is new about this Bengali?

Gramodaya webpages of the state government (http://www.tripura.nic.in/

Taking e-Government onto a fast track This refers to the cover feature “Taking e-Government onto a fast track” by Amit Kumar Jain and Surbhi Jain in September 2006 egov issue. A well researched and immensely informative article. The einitiatives taken by Indian railways have gone a long way in transforming the public sector monolith to a customer friendly organisation. This would have certainly contributed to the amazing turnaround it has achieved over the recent years in terms of both revenue and traffic.

Jithesh John jithujo@gmail.com Excellent article showcasing the various IT projects of Indian Railways. What is the next level to be achieved by IR on the IT front?

R. Gopalakrishnan scmuts@wr.railnet.gov.in A very good article by Amit and Surbhi.

The importance of e-governance is reflected in our daily walk of life associated with Indian Railway in terms of passenger enquiry, ticketing and other information related database. E governance in railway is a classic case of irreversible reforms that have percolated down with the benefits of transparency, efficiency, profits and reduction in wastage of resources.

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Gopal Prasad gopalkv@rediffmail.com Great article! Lucid and with wonderful insight.

Konain A. Khan konaink@yahoo.com Congrats!! The whole effort will go a long way to get accolades from all over the world. Of late, I read an article on rediff on how Indian railways has bounced back from a loss making public sector to a second largest profit-making sector in 2005-06 just after ONGC. I believe this initiative of e-Government, which has brought services of railway at a click distance from everyone, has turned out to be the backbone for resurrection of railway sector. Congrats again for all the success.

Siddharth Jain siddharth.jain1@ge.com

gramoday/) were also in “Bengali,” so what is new about this “homepage in Bengali” I am talking about? The web pages on Gramodaya etc were and are still in “Bengali” only in visual look; but internally it uses codes meant for English/ Latin texts. Consequently, the text could not be searched, sorted, grammarchecked, Internet-searched or transmitted electronically etc; only the printout look being in Bengali and that too only in certain non-standard fonts.

In contrast, the present Bengali web page of our official website uses the Bengali Unicode character sets. This means that the texts are internally and electronically in Bengali, and can be processed just like English texts, including Internet search etc. (Unicode is worldwide standard for all languages of the world, and is used by all operating systems throughout the world for representation of texts in all languages, including Indic and East Asian languages.)

Possibly this is the FIRST EVER website under any GOVERNMENT to be in Unicode-compliant BENGALI format. I have not come across Unicode-complaint Bengali websites even of Bangladesh government, Government of India, and West Bengal/Assam governments.

However, there are plenty of international websites in Bengali in Unicode-compliant technology – http://www. bbc.co.uk/ bengali; http://bn.wikipedia. org etc.

Switching over to Unicode-compliant technology is an important milestone in the information technology sector of the state government.

PS: I had personally designed possibly the first ever Unicode compliant web page in Hindi under government set up in September 2003. It is still available at http://northtripura.nic.in/hwelcome.htm.

Moreover, I had also designed Unicode compliant Hindi web page under Government of Jharkhand in March 2004.

However, it is no longer available.

Barun Kumar Sahu barun_sahu@yahoo.com www.egovonline.net |

A SIA

NEWS REVIEW

In global e-Govt, Brunei e-Governance South Korea adjudged plans on the move the best The e-Government Implementation Review

Asian countries once again dominate eGovernment ratings, taking three of the top five spots in a global e-Government study undertaken by researchers at Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy.

South Korea, which ranked 86 last year, emerged at the top, followed by Taiwan, Singapore, the United States and Canada. The study shows that currently 29% of government agencies worldwide are offering online services as compared to 19% in 2005. This year’s study reviewed 1,782 government websites in 198 countries during June and July 2006. A variety of different sites were analysed, which included executive, legislative and judicial offices as well as such departments and ministries of the government as health, education, foreign affairs, interior, finance, natural resources, foreign investment, transportation, military, tourism and telecommunications.

In another study conducted by the eGovernance Institute at Rutgers (State University of New Jersey) and the Global ePolicy eGovernment Institute at Sungkyunkwan University (South Korea), the city of Seoul in South Korea has been recognised as the top-performing city for digital governance. New York came second in the survey, followed by Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sydney. The report concluded: “There appears to be a continued divide in terms of digital governance between the developed and the developing world. It is very important for international organisations such as the UN and cities in advanced countries to attempt to bridge the digital divide.” | October 2006

Report August 2006 compiled by a team of consultants from Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) Company Sdn Bhd was recently handed over to Pehin Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Abu Bakar bin Haji Apong, Minister of Communications cum Chairman of Brunei Information Technology (BIT) Council. Dr Grahaeme Henderson, Managing Director of BSP, handed over the report. The objective of the review was to study the key factors and issues driving the e-Government programme, inventory the current status and draw up recommendations for improvements. The review began at the end of May 2006 and was completed in mid-August. The government has allocated US$900mn in the 8th National Development Plan for the implementation of the e-Government programme.

agreement with Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad to enable online payment of Zakaat to the council. The service would now be available through three Internet banking

facilities – bankislam.biz, SMS banking (bankislam.sms) and financial process exchange (FPX). Card acceptance terminals at selected Maidam counters would also be installed by Bank Islam to facilitate customers pay their zakat via debit or MEPS Cash.

Taiwan to improve e-Competitiveness ranking Meanwhile, in another development according to the Treasury Accounting and Financial Information Systems (TAFIS) sources 15 Department Purchase Order (DPO) clerks from the Brunei government underwent a 3-day course on Purchase Order Processing (PO Processing). An e-Government flagship initiative, TAFIS is led by the Ministry of Finance to improve the efficiency of government financial transaction processes. ‘

Bank Islam’s e-Zakat payment services extended in Malaysia Terengganu Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council (Maidam) recently signed and

Taiwan has decided to launch a new initiative “Ubiquitous Networks Society” (UNS) to challenge the top five rank holders in eCompetitiveness. Taiwan is reportedly discontent with its current 7 th ranking in the world for e-Competitiveness. As per its decision, Taiwan has now decided to move from “e-Taiwan” initiative to “M-Taiwan” (mobile Taiwan), which was launched in 2005. The UNS aims to accomplish four goal which includes establishing a highspeed Internet network, establishing basic laws to regulate an Internet society, developing killer applications to promote an IT-enabled service industry, and challenging the top five countries in e-Readiness. The World Economic Forum ranked Taiwan 7th among 115 countries in the 2006 Network Readiness Index.

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Model Public Policy Framework on Interoperatibility

Michael R K Mudd

One of the many promises of technology is its ability to improve interaction and provision of services to a country’s citizens. Targeting interoperability as a goal in computer procurement can bring benefits to governments and to civil society as a whole

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he world’s IT sector now consists of 1.1 million businesses that support 11 million high-paying IT jobs, generating US$900bn in taxes and US$1.7trn per year to the global economy (IDC 2005). The economic and productivity benefits resulting from information technology use positively impact individual economies and individual citizens. Therefore, growth of the technology sector and increased use of technology is a useful goal for policymakers. A steady stream of studies suggests that a proven means of promoting IT growth is through a combination of choice in adopting technical standards combined with strong intellectual property protection to inspire the private sector and the smooth functioning of government and business IT systems.

IT sector investments have been shown to directly increase a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and productivity. In an international study commissioned by NASSCOM, India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies, researchers found that a 10% increase in IT capital investments increases GDP by 3.6%, and a 10% increase in labour hours can increase GDP by up to 4%. By contrast, in economies with less IT capital (economies that are underinvested in IT), a 10% increase in IT capital yields only a 1.6% increase in GDP, and a 10% increase in labour hours has no statistically significant impact on GDP. The conclusion to be 8

reached is that the more a country invests in IT, the more overall economic and productivity benefits will be gained.

There also appears to be a link between economic growth and software investment. The NASSCOM study compared countries that invested more in IT, those gaining greater GDP and productivity benefits, against those less invested countries. The study found that the countries that invested more in IT capital were proportionally more invested in software. The average IT investment in economies more invested in IT was 38.7% in 2003 and is expected to increase to 40.2% in 2007. In contrast, the average annual software share of IT investment in economies less invested in IT was only 17.2% in 2003, and is expected to be virtually unchanged at 17.7% in 2007.

Why do technology standards matter?

Technical Standards for IT have been around as far back as the 19th century with the adoption of the Morse code, the world’s first ‘digital’ standard. Craig Barrett, Intel’s Chairman of the Board said it best: “The world is getting smaller on a daily basis. Hardware, software and content move independent of, and irrespective of, international boundaries.

As that increasingly happens, the need to have commonality and interoperability grows. You need standards so that the movie made in China or India plays in the equipment delivered in the United States, or the Web site supporting Intel in the United States plays on the computer in China.”

More efficient delivery of eGovernment: One of the many promises of technology is its ability to improve interaction and provision of services to a country’s citizens. In an effort to stem costs and speed efficiencies, the decentralization of procurement has in some cases led to absence of interoperable computer systems. Targeting interoperability as a goal in computer procurement can bring benefits to governments and to civil society as a whole. For example, because of technical standards devices that

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implement the 802.11 WiFi standard, any device that uses the standard can communicate over a wireless network.

Another example is that documents implementing the HTML and HTTP standards can be incorporated seamlessly into Internet web pages.

Standards defined: A standard is a technical specification that is widely used.

It may be a formal specification developed or approved by a formal or industry standards body like the International Standards Organisation (ISO), or a de facto or “proprietary” standard that is widely adopted in the market place without formal standardisation. Any type of standard, including formal standards, may require the licensing of intellectual property rights.

Interoperability defined: The ability of software and hardware on different machines from different vendors to share data. Interoperability is not a requirement for use of the same products or a single source of products: Interoperability does not involve making different types of products and technology homogeneous, but rather enabling effective communication of data between very different products and technology implementations. Interoperability can be achieved through one or more of the following. This includes implementation of market driven standards through market competition; development of software that is “interoperable by design”; voluntary publication and licensing of proprietary technologies and intellectual property; and, formal collaborations among businesses and governments to create interoperable systems, and use of standards developed in international standards bodies.

Open standards: ‘Open’ describes the adoption, not the content or use, of standards. Open standards are a set of technical specifications, developed or approved through a consensus process, that are widely reviewed and agreed upon, published in sufficient detail to permit a variety of implementations, and publicly available for use on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms.

Open standards may contain intellectual property, licensed at reasonable license fees. Another common misperception is that ‘open’ standards | October 2006

cannot include specifications covered by intellectual property protections. Quite on the contrary; many of the most popular consumer and IT products worldwide, including the DVD video disc and the GSM mobile telephone, are based on open standards that incorporate the technology of numerous commercial companies that is patented or otherwise protected by intellectual property. Such technology is included in the open standard with the agreement that affected rights owners will license their intellectual property on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms to those using the standard.

The word “open” is sometimes used erroneously to characterise the nature of the license or intellectual property used to distribute the standard. In most cases, the erroneous use centres on whether the technology specifications described in the standard may be implemented or exploited royalty free, a concept that can equate to open source-like licensing.

Importantly, o p e n standards are not the same as open source.

O p e n standards does not necessarily mean open s o u r c e .

These two terms are often – mistakenly – used interchangeably. Open standards are technical specifications. Open source is a type of software (open source software or OSS) governed by a particular type of intellectual property license approved by the Open Source Initiative (about 50 different forms of the license) that can be used to implement an open standard.

There are three very common mistakes. First, some assume that open source means open standards. Just because a product is distributed under an open source license does not necessarily mean that it implements the same open standards as any other open source software program. Also, since OSS code

can be freely modified a product that is initially open standards conformant may be altered by a user in a way that breaks its interoperability.

Second, there is an assumption that non-open-source software does not use open standards. Again, this is false.

Proprietary products can and do incorporate open standards to assist in interoperability development.

Third, there is the misconception that implementation of a standard must be ‘free’ in order for standard to be ‘open’.

As described above, open standards regularly require intellectual property licenses or contain other requirements that require a reasonable and nondiscriminatory fee.

Proprietary or de facto standards are a viable alternative. As noted above, the result of the various efforts of achieving interoperability can result in a specific standard.

How these standards are shared is often a result of the economic decisions, business terms, legal structures, a n d practicalities of research methods governing t h e collaboration or research.

In addition, it is important to acknowledge that each of these factors may determine whether or not the interoperability effort is ever pursued. Therefore, as with innovation and creativity in the IT space generally, incentives to develop interoperable technologies can be governed by market demand, by potential for profit, and a number of other practicalities.

How can interoperability be achieved?

Just as interoperability is a goal of government and the private sector, it is also a business imperative for the IT sector.

As demand for interoperability has increased, the IT sector has responded.

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Numerous national and international bodies – formal and informal – have developed in the market to help promote interoperability.

The goals of interoperability can be accomplished through a variety of independent and interdependent means, which have already been discussed above.

However, it is important to note that the said methods of achieving interoperability often evolve over time. As industry and consumer needs change, the nature of the interoperable element or “standard” may evolve. For example, the pursuit of a proprietary standard by a group of companies may make the most sense under certain circumstances because the standard can be adopted more quickly and because it is likely that only a few organisations will rely on the standard to achieve interoperability. Later, if that proprietary standard becomes more broadly known and implemented by other organisations, it may rise to the status of a de facto market standard. At that point, the standard may also be contributed to an open standards organization, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) or the International Standards Organisation (ISO), for ratification as a formal open standard in order to achieve wider implementation, for example Microsoft’s OpenXML, a proprietary technology that has gained broad popularity, has been submitted to the European Computer Manufacturer’s Association (ECMA) for formal open standardisation.

Implementation of market driven standards: Consumer choice is a powerful tool to drive interoperability. The market place has delivered a number of de facto technology standards. For example, Adobe’s market strategy to give away its PDF reader coupled with the product’s ability to maintain document integrity on the worldwide web drove consumer choice to PDF. Today, this is a globally accepted file format for transfer of electronic documents. The IT sector depends heavily on market-driven development of such de facto standards, given the speed of technological development and the relatively slow pace of formal standards proceedings.

As governments consider policies to achieve interoperability, they should keep 10

in mind that the marketplace has been an important force in selecting technology winners and losers. Indeed, consumers and not government are the best judge of how and if technology works for them.

For example, consumers chose the VHS Video format over the Betamax format.

Similarly the proprietary MP3 compression format is the preferred choice of consumers today for portable music. In each of the listed means of achieving interoperability, there is a necessary element of market testing required to ensure the success of an interoperability effort.

Seamless provision of business services: While the primary purpose of this article is to focus on government interoperability through the adoption of technical standards that are ubiquitous and its relationship to the industry, it is important to note that businesses are equally impacted by interoperability issues. As with government, the technology sector is responding. On a daily basis, technology companies reach out to customers in all segments of the economy - finance, education, healthcare, manufacturing, retail - any business with multiple destinations, multiple computers or multiple data points that need to be able to speak to one another. These issues often are addressed on a case-by-case basis, building these solutions to the interoperability needs of the user.

Government can help advance interoperability by embracing technology neutrality, promoting industry driven standards, and promoting strong intellectual property protection.

Three principles of model public policy framework A Model Public Policy Framework as such is based on three principles – Technology Neutrality, Promote Industry Driven Standards, and Foster Strong Intellectual Property Protection.

Principle (1) Technology neutrality: Avoid policies that would mandate or prefer specific technology solutions, standards implementations, platforms or business models.

Hong Kong, one of the world’s most successful economies, maintains strict technical neutrality in government procurement of IT assets using an open

and transparent bidding process.

Similarly, in July 2004, the US Office of Management and Budget issued a circular reminding agencies that procurement efforts were intentionally technology neutral.

It must be ensured that government policies aimed at promoting interoperability remain objective and performance-based.

Procurement acquisitions should incorporate criteria that include the following – embrace a definition of interoperability focused on the goal – interoperability – rather than on the means to obtaining the goal; review total cost of ownership; secure competitive and fully loaded service plans as a condition of government purchase of IT; consider ease of use as purchasing criteria; and, review security and seek assurances from vendors as to the integrity of their products.

Principle (2) Promote industry driven standards: This includes allowing industry to lead in promoting interoperability including by developing voluntary, industry-driven, consensusbased standards; ensuring that government interoperability programs are based on a clear set of publicly accessible technical standards; letting the market work in the standards-setting process; and, providing a legal framework and regulatory framework that supports an industry-driven open standards process. Where government is the representative to a standards setting body, ensure there is a strong consultative process in place, open to all potential industry participants.

Principle (3) Foster strong intellectual property protection: This includes supporting the role of intellectual property both in promoting and developing technology, and in promoting interoperability; avoiding policies that impose compulsory licensing requirements in procurement practices; and, respecting IPR and encourage this as a tool for innovation.

About the author Michael R. K. Mudd is Director for Publiic Policy, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), Asia-Pacific. The author can be reached at Mmudd@comptia.org

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COVER FEATURE

Open Standards based e-Governance

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hy has Open Standards become critical for the success of e-Governance? To answer that question, let us understand the world of “Open Technologies”. So to say, “Open Technologies” are relevant to three different aspects of information technology that are referred to as Open Source, Open Standards and Open Formats. Open Source pertains to how software is developed and made available to the world. Open Standards pertain to how each piece of technology interacts with another technology so that they are “interoperable”. Open Formats define how the data is stored so that it can be retrieved by any application.

In traditional techniques of software development, software is developed behind closed doors by a set of program-mers duly hired by an entity to develop the software. The software code is never shared with the government or even if it is shared, it is of little value since the government does not have the where-withal to manage the software.

This technique poses several problems, the foremost being the cost of maintenance of the software. Since the software was developed by one single entity, the government has to go back to the same entity to make any future changes or to get future upgrades at whatever price that is quoted by the developer. This makes software maintenance a very expensive proposition. Second, since no one has seen the software code except the developers, the possibility of malicious code being injected into the software is relatively high.

Open Source software provides a solution to these problems by allowing the software to be developed by a larger community, with the software code being visible to a very large number of people.

This also reduces the cost of maintenance, | October 2006

Jaijit Bhattacharya

For the success of e-Governance initiatives, the adoption of Open Standards has become critical. It has therefore become pertinent now to understand the world of “Open Technologies” as there will be more number of people who can do the necessary modifications to the source code, when needed. The best examples of open source software are operating systems such as Solaris, OpenOffice and Linux.

It is absolutely undeniable that Open Source software has a very important role to play in e-Governance in India, especially when we are envisioning a large and complex solution such as NeGP that would be worth over Rs 23,000 crores.

Consequently, the cost of maintaining such a complex system will also be extremely high and unless we judiciously

adopt open source software such as Solaris and OpenOffice, the government will get burdened by solutions that are unsustainable.

Having laid out the benefits of Open Source, we must be careful in not falling for the myth that Open Source software is free. Open Source software merely means that the development process of the software followed an open source methodology and that the source code is available to the public. Although Open Source may not be free, in most cases it turns out to be far cheaper than proprietary solutions.

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Impact of Open Source software To get a quick understanding of the potential impact that Open Source software can have on India let us analyse the impact that Open Source Software would have on the cost of the 5 million PCs and laptops that were sold in India last year. On an average, each of these PCs and laptops would have at least US$100 of proprietary software in the form of operating system and office productivity solution. If they were to be replaced by the equivalent Open Source solution (in fact the Open Source OpenOffice adheres to the ODF standard whereas the equivalent proprietary office solution that is pushed in the market is not even fully ODF compliant), the country would have saved half a billion dollars per year from going out of the economy!

Such savings from Open Source software adoption can be channelled back into social sectors such as education, health etc. In fact, a study from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, shows that the Delhi government can save 78% of its annual software spend by adopting Open Source solutions.

Even more important than Open Source software is Open Standards for information technology. Today, we have the Internet existing only because Open Standards for the Internet protocol was used. Standards such as TCP/IP, HTML etc have allowed the Internet and the web to flourish in such a short time. Similarly, we are able to send and receive faxes because Open Standards are used. For that matter, even the city’s sewerage lines 12

are replete with examples of how open standards have brought down the cost of laying out sewerage lines and reduced the cost of maintenance of such lines.

Open Standards defined Open Standards are specifications that define and describe interfaces, file formats, protocols etc. The standards outline agreed-upon conventions and allow and encourage multiple competing implementations without undue constraints. Therefore, a State Information Officer sitting in Bomdila in Arunachal Pradesh can freely download the specifications and create an Open Standards based implementation for the district administration of Bomdila, without any royalty payments to any entity.

Open Standards enable diverse

programs to work together (interoperability). The most critical aspect of Open Standards is that the standards themselves are developed and managed in an open process and is subject to extensive public review. This is critical since many firms or group of firms get together and create a standard and then publish it claiming it to be an Open Standard. A classic example is the Open XML standard for documents that is anything but “Open” since it has not been developed in a truly participative manner.

On the other hand Open Document Format or ODF that has been developed in a truly participative manner over a period of over 4 years, is a true Open Standard for documents. This has been reiterated by the adoption of ODF as a standard by ISO.

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The reason that the manner of determining the standards is crucial is that standards have a far-reaching impact on the users and the economy and very large investments are made on development made on those standards. However, if the standards have not been created in a participative manner with the involvement of all stakeholders, then the standards can be arbitrarily changed frequently to benefit a clutch of commercial entities.

A good way of appreciating the issue is if we draw an analogy with the Indian railways. Let’s say a couple of companies get together to determine the gauge of a railway track, which is a crucial Open Standard for railways. Now if the Indian

economic and environmental harm (the PCs and laptops junked have poisonous components that have an extremely harmful effect on the environment).

We must keep in mind that unlike corporate, governments are not here for a few years or a few decades, as in the case of most businesses, but are here for centuries. Hence the systems that are replacing the government processes that have evolved over thousands of years, must be strengthened through adoption of open standards so that they can support the government for centuries to come and should not require to be “upgraded” ever so often, just because the IT company that sold the software has changed the underlying standard.

This clause is necessary since many standards are being brought in as so called “Open Standards” for a limited number of years so as to encourage an economy to form around these standards and when the given number of years of license-free standard is over, the users who have invested in solutions around the given standard, are forced to pay a royalty. Hence it is necessary to ensure that the adopted Open Standards are license free in perpetuity.

Open Standards enable and enhance interoperability, which consequently drives competition and lowers prices by disrupting vendor lock-in. It also enables substitutability by lowering or eliminating cost of exit (switching)

Railways themselves are not involved in the setting of this standard, then every year the gauge standard body can potentially come out with a different standard for the rail gauge and force Indian Railways to rip apart the old railway tracks and to buy new engines from the companies that would manipulate the standards setting. We have witnessed something similar in the IT industry where different versions of office productivity solutions and operating systems keep coming in almost every couple of years, forcing the users to junk their old systems. In a resourceconstrained economy like that of India it is definitely not advisable to allow such proprietary software to cause so much

Another important characteristic of Open Standards is that the standards themselves should not require any royalty payments from the user. So the standards should be freely available. Also, the standards must not require monitoring or auditing of the distribution of licensed products. Any such restriction undermines the technological sovereignty of the country.

The standards must allow for automatic (sub)licensing of technology to works derived from the products developed under the first license, without royalty requirements, in order to be a truly Open Standard. And finally, from a licensing perspective, the license should be irrevocable for perpetuity.

thereby allowing the government to be free to replace the technology vendor without incurring a cost of redeveloping the solutions. In fact, if solutions in the government need to be audited, the primary parameter for auditing should be to ensure that every component in the solution is Open Standard based.

If one specifically examines the National e-Governance Program, one observes that the program is a very complex and capital-intensive infrastructure initiative. Complexities and costs can be managed only by adopting Open Standards for all aspects of NeGP. This is precisely what the government is doing through its e-Governance standards initiative that is being led by NIC.

| October 2006

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Open Formats We finally come to the issue of Open Formats. As mentioned earlier, Open Formats define how the data is stored so that it can be retrieved by any application.

Since Open Formats also essentially standardise the formats, so very often Open Formats are also referred to as part of Open Standards. The most well known Open Format is the Open Document Format (ODF) that has been adopted globally as the only standard for documents, presentations and spreadsheets.

The Open Document Format is an open XML-based document file format for saving and exchanging editable documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, charts, and presentations. Open Document was developed as an application-independent file format by a vendor-neutral standards developing organisation OASIS, with the participation of multiple office application vendors. On 4th May 2006, the International Electrotecnical Commission (IEC) approved ODF as international standard ISO/IEC 26300.

Open Document Format is the only standard for editable documents that has been vetted by an independent recog-nised standards body, has been imple- mented by multiple vendors, and can be implemented by any supplier (including proprietary software vendors and deve-lopers using open source software licenses such as the GNU LGPL or GNU GPL).

Why Open Standards critical for e-Governance?

So coming back to our original question on why Open Standards have become critical for e-Governance, it is now clear as to why e-Governance will fail without Open Standards. Open Standards ensure that different components of a large project can be built independently.

They can be built in geographically different places, at different times, by different agencies and yet the components can interface, interact and transact in a consistent and robust manner, without loss of information.

Open Standards ensure that many vendors can provide each component and hence commoditize the component and reduce complexity.

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Open Standards ensure that different components of a large project can be built independently. They can be built in geographically different places, at different times, by different agencies and yet the components can interface, interact and transact in a consistent and robust manner, without loss of information Open Standards reduce cost by ensuring that more vendors can participate. A participatory economy reduces the cost of all goods and services through higher competition.

Open Standards also increases the shelf life of IT assets, thus reducing the rate of obsolescence. Open Standards based systems also have lower maintenance costs.

From a mission criticality of the core business perspective, a cornerstone of

Governance is to maintain records and documents. Such records need to stay for hundreds of years. Therefore, IT must be able to address the basic requirement of maintaining records and documents for long periods of time without arbitrary “expiry of licenses” and “need for version upgrades”. Government should be able to exercise its sovereignty on its records and documents without dependence on other governments or companies that can arbitrarily block access to the documents. Since its imperative for the government to adopt Open Standards and it is imperative for the government to maintain records and documents, therefore it is natural for the government to adopt Open Standards such as Open Document Format.

Needless to say, Open Standards also contribute towards reduction in the digital divide and increase in IT penetration in the country. It also ensures that when the government adopts an Open Standards technology for its G2C solutions, the citizens do not have to purchase expensive proprietary software to access the government services. In a nutshell, no e-Governance initiative can be considered to be a success unless it is based on Open Standards.

About the author Jaijit Bhattacharya is Country Director – Government Strategy, Sun Microsystems India. The author can be reached at jaijit.bhattacharya@sun.com

www.egovonline.net |

eGov Framework

A development approach toward an application prototype implementation R K Senthil Kumar and B S Bindhumadhava

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n e-Governance solutions, information technology is used for both back-end office automation and automating the communications with the stakeholders (citizens and business).

The implementations are mostly in islands, which creates a great deal of problems reminiscent of integrability, scalability, and interoperability. These problems pose a challenge to the designer to conceive the complete framework during planning stage itself such that the complete framework operates in a collaborative environment. The recent

research areas approach a more standard based, open, integrable and interoperable framework for e-Governance. The framework caters for department specific workflow and common functions of the government. The domain service oriented framework and smart integrated services are some of the outcome of the practitioners.

The existing application frameworks focus on only the basic function of the department workflow having many versions, using many technological frameworks and do not support the basic

State governments are adopting e-Governance in a very big way. However, there are problems abound because of investment on proprietary solutions that do not support interoperable, integration with legacy systems and scalable architecture. There is a need for a technological framework that seamlessly integrates the legacy systems

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issues of integrated services systems. The existing frameworks are very cumbersome and the limitations of various existing frameworks are again in terms of integration, scalability, and interoperability.

Current emphasis is to design, develop, and deploy a lightweight, open, interoperable, reusable and scalable framework that provides the basic building blocks needed to build applications using SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) with adapters for integrating the existing Legacy applications thereby to facilitate effective e-Governance by integrated governance between G2G, G2B, G2C, C2C.

Need for Open Source eGov Framework Attempts by various government departments in the Centre and States at computerisation and exploiting the advantages of technology have led to a set of solutions resulting in redundancy in information collection and storage, varying standards in data formatting and solution implementation, lack of interoperability in the data flows, and various departments having developed same software applications to meet particular needs with varying standards.

The solution for the above is an Open Source eGov Framework that will provide the basic building blocks needed to build applications using SOA with adapters for integrating the existing Legacy applications. The XML Open Database Connect is the intermediary connector for connecting with various www.egovonline.net |

Legacy application integration using the SOAP server

types of database. The Framework will capitalise the benefits of existing legacy applications, which are in use in various Government departments and assist in agile development of newer applications.

eGov framework The eGov Framework is an Open Source SOA based interoperable framework.

The various layers in the eGov Framework include the Access layer which provides the interface for the end user to access the various applications using the various access methods such as the web portal, WAP, IVRS etc. Below this is the Management layer consisting of the Agent Service Router, Multilingual manager and the Access management, then the integration layer provides the necessary assistance for Choreography and Orchestration of the web services of various applications. The Quality of Service layer consists of the Transaction management, Security management, Policy management and Coordination management. Discovery services are provided by the UDDI registry and all the Business services are done using web services, the Database Transaction Management layer acts as a open database connect to connect to various databases.

Agent service router: The agent service router defines the way in which the various services are invoked based on the requirement. The agent service router performs the necessary search for a particular service and invokes the same.

The client sends the request for the service to the agent service router, and then the agent service router invokes the service for the client. Benefits of using agent | October 2006

service router are as follows – It acts as an entry point to access the various services; It can be configured to access services in alternate server in case of shutdown of the main server hosting the service; and, Access permissions can be set at the Agent Service Router to access the services to enhance security.

Multilingual manager: The role of the multilingual manager is to localise the applications in the local languages to have a wide impact on implementation. The tasks performed by the multilingual manager include providing dynamic language display change in user labels based on language selection; supporting data input in any language based on language selection; assisting in data translation for retrieval in other languages; and, providing the data search in any language.

Access management: This provides the various adapters used to integrate the legacy applications, which in this case include even the various client server applications. The adapter is an API that can help in communicating by understanding the way in which messages are sent by legacy application and then converting them to SOAP based messages so that the new applications can understand them and the two incompatible applications could communicate.

The SOAP servers serve the purpose of an adapter. The SOAP server translates the host messages into SOAP messages and communicates with other applications in the framework using the standard SOAP protocol over HTTP. Legacy application integration using the

SOAP server shows the communication between a soap based web service application and legacy application. Also, two different legacy applications can communicate and can call each other remotely. The adapter resides on the calling application server and takes care of all remote communication with the legacy application. Here the business services communicate with multiple legacy adapters. The Wrapper services are used to expose specific parts of legacy applications through a service interface.

Policy management: The WS-Policy Attachments specification offers a flexible way to associate policy expressions with Web services. The WS-Policy specification defines a common framework for services to annotate their interface definitions to describe their service assurance qualities and requirements in the form of a machine-readable expression containing combinations of individual assertions. The WS-Policy framework also allows the use of algorithms to determine which concrete policies to apply when the requester, provider, and container support multiple options. WS-Policy is critical to achieving interoperability at the higher-level functional operation of the service.

Security, transactions, reliable messaging, and other specifications require concrete WS-Policy schema. This allows services to describe the functional assurance that they expect from and provide to callers. jUDDI registry: The Universal Description, Discovery & Integration (UDDI) specification provides a platformindependent way of describing and discovering Web services and Web service 17

providers. The focus of UDDI is the definition of a set of services supporting the description and discovery of businesses, organisations, and other Web services providers; the Web services they make available; and, the technical interfaces, which may be used to access those services. Based on a common set of industry standards, including HTTP, XML, XML Schema, and SOAP, UDDI provides an interoperable, foundational infrastructure for a Web services-based software environment for both publicly available services and services only exposed internally within an organisation.

The various departments in the government are a separate entity by themselves, therefore instead of relying on some huge public UDDI repository to expose the Web services having the department specific functionalities each Government at the state level would maintain a separate UDDI registry using jUDDI for Publishing/Inquiring the web services adhering the OASIS standards and interconnected with other state UDDI registries.

Business services: BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) is used to achieve universal interoperability between applications. BPEL enables easy and flexible composition of services into business processes. Web services use loosely coupled integration model to allow flexible integration of heterogeneous system in a variety of domains including business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) and enterprise application integration. System integration requires more than the ability to conduct simple interactions by using standards protocols, the full potential of web services as an achieved only when applications and business processes are able to integrate their complex interactions by using standard process integration model.

BPEL defines such process integration model; it is an XML-based language standardised by the OASIS consortium for formally describing business processes. A BPEL process specifies how to orchestrate existing web services by defining interactions among them to reach a given business goal, which creates a platform for creating new services by composing and integrating existing 18

services. This is used to develop processes quickly by defining the order in which services will be invoked. This way, applications (and information systems) become more flexible and can better adapt to the changes in business processes. Here the ActiveBPEL Engine, which is an open source BPEL server is used.

Messaging services: The messaging services component of the framework contains the most fundamental Web services specifications and technologies including eXtensible Markup Language (XML), SOAP and WS-Addressing. Collectively, these specifications form the basis of interoperable messaging between Web services. XML provides the interoperable format to describe message content between Web services and is the basic language in which the Web services specifications are defined.

Open database connect: Database Transaction Management Layer provides the necessary assistance for connecting to various database of various applications, the Open database connect uses XML database as intermediary connector for connecting with various types of database. Once the database is available as XML data, any application will be able to access and use the data.

The use of XML as intermediary serves two purposes, first it assists in interoperability for various applications and secondly the rich features of various databases such the security, transaction management etc. are not lost.

Prototype application: The prototype application is developed to demonstrate the inter service communication between two different services of two different departments (the property registration service and the water supply connection service), here the dependency is that for allotment of water supply connection, the service should check for the existence of the property (PID property ID) and any change in communication address in either the property register or the water supply connection register should be reflected in both the registers.

The Water Connection Registration Screen is used to register for a water connection on a particular property, the user enters the connection id and property id, this service calls the property registration service to see for the existence of the property and if available the corresponding details such as owner name, owner address, communication address are retrieved from the property register. In case of change in communica-tion address of the owner the change once made in any of the register is reflected instantly in the other register also.

Conclusion The above framework uses open source technologies including the JBoss application server, the AXIS soap server, XML, to configure the business process the ActiveBPEL engine is used. The key benefit of the eGov framework is the conglomeration of complex interagency processes to the user as a single integrated service. This will deliver huge benefits, which, includes the enabling of co-operation between independent Govt. agencies, and transform the way citizens’ access and interact with the Government.

About the authors R. K. Senthil Kumar is Project Leader – Advanced Business Computing Group at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Bangalore, India. He can be reached at senthil@cdac.in.

B. S. Bindhumadhava is Group Coordinator in Real Time Systems Group at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Bangalore, India. He can be reached at bindhu@cdac.in.

www.egovonline.net |

The importance of (truly) Open Standards Venkatesh Hariharan

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standard truly becomes great when we stop thinking about it and take it for granted. When we wake up in the morning and drive to work, we don’t spend time wondering which side of the road we should drive on. Standards eliminate the friction from routine activities and enable us to focus on more important priorities in our life. When we surf the web, send emails to each other or drive a car, an enormous amount of open standards enable us to accomplish what we set out to achieve.

Open Standards defined In the world of software ‘Open Standards’ is a term that is freely used but loosely defined. Many companies try to push proprietary standards as “open” standards and try to convert the term into an oxymoron. The Open Source Initiative (www.opensource.org) has proposed a draft definition aimed at keeping open standards truly open. The definition reads thus: “There should be no secrets. The standard must include all details necessary for interoperable implementation. There should be availability. The standard must be freely and publicly available (e.g., from a stable website) under royalty-free terms. All Patents essential to implementation of the standard must be licensed under royaltyfree terms for unrestricted use, or be covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced by open source software.

There must not be any require-ment for execution of a license agreement, NDA, grant, click-through, or any other form of paperwork to deploy conforming implementations of the standard. There should be no OSR-Incompatible Dependencies. Implementation of the standard must not require any other technology that fails to meet the criteria of this requirement.”

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Establishing a standard Clear documentation is the basic starting point for establishing a standard.

However, this is not enough that a standard be clearly documented to enable interoperable implementation.The standard must be clear of encumbrances like copyright, patents etc. that could prevent users from making full use of the standard. For example, when we buy a house, we seek a document from the builder or the seller, certifying that the property is free of all encumbrances and has a clear and marketable title and that the seller agrees to indemnify the buyer against any claims on the property being sold. No bank would sanction a home loan without such a document. In the world of software, the consequences of encumbrances can be enormous, as can be seen from the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) patent case.

JPEG, as most users of digital photographs know, is a popular format for saving photographic images that has been widely adopted by makers of digital cameras, camcorders, PDA, cellphones and other devices. In 2002, Forgent, a company that owned Patent No. 4,698,672 in the US, ambushed the industry by suing 31 major hardware and software vendors, including Dell and Apple Computers. The company alleged that these companies infringed on its claim to an algorithm used in the popular JPEG picture file format. It is reported that Forgent’s legal assault earned it US$105mn before it was brought to its heels by the Public Patent Foundation that challenged and overturned Forgent’s claims.

Dan Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation who fought the JPEG patent case points out that every week 900 patents are issued and fifty-five patent lawsuits are filed. While it costs only

39 cents to send a postcard with a cease and desist notice to an alleged patent infringer, the defendant would have to spend US$40,000 to get a lawyer’s opinion and anywhere from US$2-4mn to defend a case.

The indiscriminate manner in which software patents are granted hang like the proverbial Damocles sword over open standards. Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and a great champion of open standards told Wired magazine in an interview on web services that, “My fear is that significant standards will be covered with patents, and if so it’ll just kill development. A lot of these [proposed] vendor patents are ridiculous, but the fear and uncertainty over them is there.”

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that Berners Lee leads says that, “In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together. W3C refers to this goal as “Web interoperability.” By publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for Web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web fragmentation.” Imagine where the web would be without open standards!”

Open standards are the foundation of our IT infrastructure and it is therefore important that these standards are truly open, free of encumbrances and freely available to all – now and well into the future.

About the author Venkatesh Hariharan is Heads Open Source Affairs at Red Hat India Pvt. Ltd. He can be reached at venky@redhat.com

www.egovonline.net |

INTERVIEW

Open ePolicy

Reshaping ICT ecosystems, reengineer government, rewriting business models “The Open ePolicy Group believes that there is a new dynamic at play in our globalised world called “Openness.” This is essentially revolutionising the way we communicate, connect and compete.

It is reshaping ICT ecosystems, making possible to reengineer governments, rewrite business models, accelerate innovation, and create truly user-centric enterprises,” says Jeff Kaplan, International Technology Consultant, & Founder, Open ePolicy Group, USA, in an interview to Prachi Shirur of egov | October 2006

X Please tell us about Open ePolicy Group and some of the key initiatives of your group.

The Open ePolicy Group (OeG) is an unprecedented global collaboration among senior officials from 13 nations, thought leaders from 5 global organisations, experts from 2 leading technology companies and academics from one of the world’s most respected universities. They came together to share their experiences in building open ICT ecosystems. The OeG’s first product, the ‘Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems’, presents a new vision for technology to the world based on open technologies.

We are now organising a phase-II of the OeG, which will take our work one step 21

further, focusing on how open technologies and new types of collaboration can drive business transformation of enterprises and government.

X Open ePolicy Group talks about open ICT ecosystems. Can you please briefly tell us about them.

In its roadmap, the OeG focuses attention on open information and communications (ICT) ecosystems. An ICT eco- system encompasses the policies, strate-gies, processes, information, technolo- gies, applications and stakeholders that together make up a technology environ-ment for a country, government or an enterprise. The most important element of an ICT ecosystem, however, is people – the diverse individuals who create, buy, sell, regulate, manage and use technology.

The OeG believes that there is a new dynamic at play in our globalised world called “openness.” Openness – a synthesis of collaborative creativity, connectivity, access and transparency – is revolutionising how we communicate, connect and compete. It reshapes ICT ecosystems, and makes it possible to reengineer government, rewrite business models, accelerate innovation, and create truly user-centric enterprises.

For the OeG, the goal is to “openize” an ICT ecosystem, meaning to make it more capable of incorporating and sustaining interoperability, collaborative development, innovation and transpa-rency. This roadmap focuses on the transformative impact of increasing openness across an entire ICT ecosystem.

X How wide is the usage of open-source documents? Are closed source more secure and protects against security breakers?

If we are speaking about software, there is no doubt that the use of open source software globally is increasing sharply.

It represents a powerfully disruptive approach to technology. Although most people tend to focus on the access to code that open source offers, I see its greatest long-term impact is proving anew the developmental power of collaboration.

Collaboration, not code, is the true power of open source.

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X It is often thought that open source movement is opposed to intellectual proprietary rights. What is your opinion about this?

Anyone who thinks that open source is by nature inconsistent with intellectual property rights either misunderstands what open source is or is intentionally spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Intellectual property rights always represent a balance between initial creators and users (and later modifiers) of innovation. Open source simply weighs that balance differently than the traditional IPR regimes that were built in the 19th century. Open source proponents see that the world has changed, and IPR needs to adapt.

In a world where ICT can dramatically increase the speed and lower the costs of collaboration, development, supply chains and distribution, open source soft-ware and open standards demonstrate that shifting the IPR balance more in fav-our of users and later innovators creates new avenues of innovation.

The Internet is only the latest, greatest exam-ple of this trend. Open source is a vision based less on things and more on services; it is less about monopolies and more about collaborative creation.

Innovation today is more about networks than labs, and IPR needs to better accommodate this.

X Open ePolicy Group stresses on usability of open source documents in disaster rehabilitation efforts. Please elaborate on the same.

The Open ePolicy Group consistently tries to ground its work in practical, real life situations. Our work is not meant to be an academic exercise. It is meant to be used. Unfortunately, the failings of existing approaches to ICT are proven again and again during disasters.

In our roadmap, we used Thailand’s experience during the 2005 tsunami to highlight the costs of not having information and IT systems that are open, interoperable and interchangeable. We could have pointed to India or even the United States during the hurricane that destroyed New Orleans. Disaster management is only one painful example of how open standards, open data formats and less reliance on proprietary

ICT can offer tangible benefits, in this case to aid relief efforts. It is not a magic solution, but it might have helped.

X How, in your view, is the progress of Asian countries in open source movement? Which are the countries that are leading this movement in Asia and how could countries like India learn from their experiences?

Asia is clearly a leader in open source.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Certain governments, in China and Korea for example, were quick to recognise the value proposition offered by open source.

They want more control over their ICT decisions. They see great value in an approach to technology development that gives their citizens and companies more access to the tools of innovation – standards, code, computers and collaborative networks.

Especially in developing countries, the protectionist instincts common to all governments are less potent because they have fewer entrenched, domestic IT industries to protect. This is actually a tremendous advantage for them. They are able to quickly capitalise on new approaches to technology, like the open source model. The next step is to see if any governments in Asia will take a similar leadership position in promoting open standards and business transforma-tion. This will really level the playing field for their entrepreneurs and engineers.

I see India as a microcosm for tomorrow’s ICT ecosystem. It is a dynamic, fast-changing mix of innovation, open technologies, digital divides, political complexity, hypermodern companies and antiquated infrastructure. It is experiencing all the challenges and promise of technology and development, all at the same time.

One thing that India (indeed all us) should consider is the experience of other countries and companies with new types of partnerships. It is not only a question of new forms of public – private partnerships but also new ways to involve users in the development of content and services. Re-imaging relationships among government, businesses and consumers, as with all things, requires vision and leadership. www.egovonline.net |

The Asian ICTD Platform

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5 events : 1 venue Improved communication and information services are directly related to social and economic development of nations. Internet and modern communication platforms offer immense potential as multipurpose tools through which information and services can be delivered anytime and anywhere. However, upon delivery, the uptake of information and online services depends on the capacity of people and organisations. Again, of prime importance is service access points such as telecentres and boderless technologies like mobile technology as an way to address the 'reaching the unreached' and empowering the rural community. In the emerging global knowledge economy, it is imperative for countries, communities and enterprises to strategise towards adoption and use of information and communication technologies and enhance their overall capacities.

Asian countries are increasingly realising these critical factors of success and are becoming proactive in improving existing conditions.

A lot of collaborative efforts are required between governments, industry, academia and civil society across nations to materialise these objectives of balanced development in a digital era. eASiA 2007 is an open ICT for development co-operation platform for Asian countries for discussing opportunities and challenges for promoting growth of ICT for development in Asia through consultative dialoguing, strategic planning, knowledge networking and business partnering. eASiA, through its five seminal conferences, will focus on five emerging application domains of ICT for Development - e-Government, ICT in Education, ICT and Rural Development, ICT-enabled Health services and Mobile application and services for development. The five conferences - namely egov Asia 2007, Digital Learning Asia 2007, Telecentre Forum 2007, eHealth 2007 and mServe 2007 will address the issues of digital divide and identify and explore opportunities for Digital Asia.

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Asian nations are emerging as most promising global economies; traditional governments and their ways of governance surely need to be redefined. With a plethora of public management and administrative challenges facing most Asian nations, coupled with heightened expectations of rapid socioeconomic development, the need for efficient government is higher than ever before.

Today Asian countries are competing with each other to be the frontrunner in technology-enabled education. While most countries do not want to miss the opportunity to connect to this ‘connected world’, the struggle to close the existing divides continues.

Research and practices have confirmed that a holistic approach that integrates and emphasises process, be it capacity building of the educators or transforming pedagogy or creating localised and relevant ICT-based content, has substantial impact and sustainable and effective integration.

Telecentres are increasingly emerging as one of the most important equalizers of digital divide among urban and rural citizens.

Telecentres or common service centers are aimed at expanding access to information and communication technologies. Telecentres as sustainable, multi-purpose service centres are emerging as a tool for empowerment of the community, enabling their access through ICTs to relevant information and common services.

There is a significant action happening in the sphere of e-Health globally led by experts in healthcare and hi-tech industries with a an aim to fully harness the benefits available through convergence of the Internet and health care. e-Health is today’s tool for substantial productivity gains, while providing tomorrow’s instrument for restructured, citizen-centred health care.

The lack of adequate connectively has been one of the biggest cause of the limited impact of ICT to bridge the digital divide.

Mobile phones have spread throughout much of the developing world more quickly and deeply than any previous technologybased as rolling out a mobile phone network is far cheaper than building a fixed-line systems and Internet networks for computers.

There are many examples of successful eHealth developments taking place in Asia including health information networks, electronic health records, telemedicine services, portable monitoring systems, and health portals. However, there are challenges to overcome in access, technology and the right practices. There are much more to gain from sharing knowledge on the existing practices and deliberating on the opportunities and possibilities that ICT use for healthcare delivery.

Mobiles offer a lot more services than phones and entertainment (Games, Screensaver, Ring tones, Movie clips). These include: News, Stock Prices; Location tracking; Telephone directory; Mobile banking; Ticket reservation; Trading and so forth.

Modern ICTs provide boundless potential with proven credibility in transforming organisations and economies; governments across the world are increasingly getting active to embrace technology and leap-frog administrative reform.

With a purpose of creating an invaluable Asian platform for consultative dialoguing, strategic planning, knowledge networking and business partnering in the field of eGovernment, egov Asia 2007 is will bring together some of the best minds from the highest echelons of government, industry, academia and civil society to discuss and deliberate on the key strategies for eGovernment.

Asia has geared up to this challenge. Within these countries, while the private sector and the civil society has assumed leadership in some countries, governments in others are drawing the roadmap for a systematic integration of technologies in education.

Highlights:

Digital Learning Asia 2007 will bring some of the key drivers from the leading countries of technology-enabled education to deliberate on the pressing challenges of technology enabled education from capacity building to reengineering pedagogy, change management to providing digital access.

• National e-Government strategies

Highlights

• International and regional projects, case studies and best practices • Policy reforms for ICT-enabled governments

• National strategies on ICT in education • Localisation, customisation and content development • Educating the educators

The Asian Telecentre Forum 2007 aims to bring the Asian practitioners on a platform for learning and sharing the experiences.

Experts will be engaged in close assessment of issues relating to project monitoring steered by external financial support, from international development agencies and governments in Asia. Stakeholders from various sectors, viz., NGOs, Governments, Private sector, Donor agencies, Research organisations etc. will participate in this conference. There will be opportunity to showcase key project work and experiences through presentation sessions and/or panel discussions and through an exposition of products and projects.

Highlights • Telecentre movement in Asia: Road ahead • Partnerships for developing telecentre networks

• Models of e-Service delivery

• Re-engineering pedagogy

• Financing mechanism and sustainability factors of rural telecentres: A reality check

• Emerging technology solutions for eGovernment

• e-Learning trend and practices in higher education and school education

• Service delivery and capacity building through telecentres

• Public private partnerships in eGovernment

• Education technology trends in Asia.

eASiA2007 EXHIBITION The eASiA 2007 conference will host an exhibition of latest e-solutions, services, initiatives and case studies from across Asia and beyond. Professional service providers, IT vendors, telecom venders, satellite providers, consulting firms, government agencies and national/ international development organisations involved in the domains of ICT for Development, education, governance and health, are participating in the exhibition.

Highlights

mServe Asia aims to discuss and showcase the different aspects of mobile services, technologies, implementation and implications, developments on the public administration and tie them to the existing and future m-Government, education, agriculture and other applications. The conference will provide a platform to share local and international developments, experiences and lessons learned for knowledge sharing, and promote networking and business opportunity development.

• e-Health in developing countries

Highlights

• e-Health administration and management

• Mobile government

• Rural telemedicine

• m-Learn

• Emerging technologies in e-Health

• m-Agriculture

• Challenges and opportunities for collaborative action in e-Health

• m4development

eHealth Asia 2007 aims to provide a platform to discuss the recent trends and emerging issues in the development of Information & communication science and technology and its integration in healthcare systems.

• m-Health • m-Infrastructure • m-Services

Important Date Last date for receipt of abstracts: 25th November 2006

For any information/enquiry contact: Himanshu Kalra himanshu@csdms.in Tel: +60166852201

Conference Secretariat Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), G-4, Sector - 39, Noida - 201301, India Tel. : +91-120-2502181- 87 Fax: +91-120-2500060 Web: www.csdms.in Email: info@csdms.in

The who’s who of ICTD Sector is part of our journey Kraisorn Pornsutee Aminata Maiga Afrilinks, Mali

Peter Moore

Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, MoCIT), Government of Thailand

Region Managing Director -Asia Pacific Public Sector, Microsoft, Singapore

R. Chandrashekhar Karl Harmsen Senior Advisor, e-Strategies, World Bank, United States of America

Director, United Nations University Institute of Natural Resource in Africa, UNU INRA Accra, Ghana

Additional Secretary, eGovernance, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India

Chaturon Chaisang

Kunying Kasama Varavarn

Suchai Charoenratanakul

Minister of Education, Royal Thai Government, Thailand

Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Govt. of Thailand

Minister of ICT, Royal Thai Government, Thailand

Bruno Lavin

Lars H. Bestle Dennis Pamlin Policy Advisor WWF, Sweden

Subhash Bhatnagar

Programme Specialist - Policy, Asia Pacific Development Information Programme UNDP - Regional Centre in Bangkok, Thailand

eGov Practice Group, World Bank, on leave from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India

Susanne Ornager Dorothy Gordon

Mark Surman

Director Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in IT, Ghana

IDRC, telecentre.org, Canada

Devindra Ramnarine

Manoo Ordeedolchest

Advisor Public Sector Informatics, Governance Institutional Development Division, Commonwealth Sectt., UK

President, Software Industry Promotion Agency, Public Organization, Ministry of ICT, Thailand

Advisor for Communications and Information in Asia and Pacific, UNESCO, Bangkok, Thailand

San Ng The Asia Foundation, United States of America

Edilberto de Jesus Director, South East Asian Ministers of Education Organisation, SEAMEO,Thailand

Dr Morten Falch

Teresa Maria Camba

Danish Technological Institute, Denmark

Director, National Computer Centre, Govt. of Philippines

Dr Hyunjung Lee

Minja Yang

Asian Development Bank, Philippines

Director and Representative UNESCO, India

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT - USA, Advisor to the Knowledge Commission, India

Michael Gurstein

Prof Yin Cheong Cheng

Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training, Canada

President, Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association, APERA Hong Kong

M V Rajasekharan

Walter Fust

Director, National Computerization Agency, Republic of Korea

Hon'ble Minister of State for Planning, Planning Commission, Govt. of India

Director -General, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Switzerland

Kenneth Keniston

Nagy Hanna

Andrew Mellon Professor of Human Development, MIT, United States of America

e-Leadership Academy University of Maryland, United States of America

Prof Vijay Kumar

Jeremy Millard Head, eGovernance Program, Danish Technological Institute, Denmark

Jeongwon Yoon

W W W. C S D M S . I N / E A S I A

Are You?

COMMENTARY

Citizen participation in the era of digital development Valeria Betancourt

I

nformation and communication tech nologies (ICTs) have revolutionised multiple facets of human life in a variety of ways. Many of the most visible types of organic impact undoubtedly take place in the domain of government, where the use of ICTs have led to the modernisation of public administration, improved governability, and the stimulation of local ICT industry development. However, this has also offered the opportunity to redefine traditional concepts and methods of citizen and democratic participation.

Many things can be said about e-Government and the new roles played by governments in the digital development.

However, there is a need to concentrate on two aspects. On the one hand, the possibilities that arise as a result of e-Government strategies to broaden and strengthen democracy and facilitate the reclaiming of the public sphere by citizens.

On the other hand, the role of government in addressing the unequal access, use and impact of ICTs.

e-Government initiatives in Latin America Most Latin American countries have begun e-Government initiatives. All of them place notable emphasis on improving state managerial and administrative processes and the quality of online services offered.

Improving methods for citizen interaction has taken the back seat. This has nothing to do with transferring the movement and participation of people to the virtual realm, but rather, essentially involves improving the ability of citizens to participate in the administration of the state and make informed decisions regarding their own development. In short, it has little to do with increasing citizen participation in democratic processes. | October 2006

In Latin America, the initiatives adopted to improve e-Government primarily focus on improving online services and state administration. However, ICT and e-Government initiatives do not generate greater participation in and of themselves The characteristics that stand out in this approach are access to information, transparency, accountability, increased communication channels and direct dialogue between citizens and civil servants and parliamentarians, among others.

Improving administrative processes such as electronic voting is often mistaken for electronic democracy processes, thus overlooking the components of e-Government that really generate conditions for more effective citizen participation.

ICTs and e-Government initiatives do not automatically imply participation. It is first necessary to ensure democratic participation mechanisms in the real life, which will later be strengthened in the virtual realm.

No e-Government initiative will be as successful as expected in a democratically deficient environment. In this sense, an electronic government can create spaces and mechanisms that would enable different social actors to debate issues – in a transparent environment and on an equal footing – that impact their conditions.

Regardless of the existence of e-Government projects that emphasise electronic democracy or the lack thereof, Ecuador has witnessed how ICTs are transforming citizen political participation. An example of this is the massive use of mobile phones and email on behalf of citizens who organised the mobilizations that deposed President Lucio Gutierrez in April 2005. e-Government initiatives should or-

ganically and systematically open spaces for the voices of citizens to be heard and their proposals channelled into solutions that are appropriate for the majority. Instead of confronting the government’s power, effective citizen participation supported by electronic democracy initiatives can open channels to jointly build fairer development conditions as well as an environment conducive to the full enjoyment of human, social, political and economic rights.

Clearly, the promotion of access to information, transparency, accountability, and the battle against governmental and institutional corruption through the use of ICTs provides opportunities for a more active, intentional, prepared and participative citizenship. This also fosters participation in individual and state decisionmaking processes.

Internet and e-Government Despite the well-known fact that the Internet is the most powerful medium to implement an e-Government, it is neither the only medium nor the most suited for all communities, groups and social sectors and their respective contexts and needs. It is important to be aware of this. It is particularly true in countries like Ecuador, where the majority of the population is still unable to benefit from Internet access, not to mention broadband, specifically).

The design and implementation of eGovernment projects based solely on the 27

Internet and cutting-edge technology can deepen inequalities, limit the quality of participation, the improvement of living conditions and increase the already existing distance between the government and the population. Furthermore, the more complex and sophisticated an initiative becomes, the greater are the costs. This neither guarantees its positive impact nor ensures its sustainability in terms of the generation of profits and interests. Many of the resources that would be wasted on complicated initiatives could be used to improve ICT infrastructure, establish capacity building programmes etc.

There is currently a broad array of technological and electronic options and alternatives that can overcome the immense structural, resource-based and usability barriers that persist in developing nations.

An example worth citing is the Internal Collection Agency’s e-Broadcasting initiative in the Philippines. Taking advantage of the high level of mobile telephony penetration, a state agency implemented a system to confirm electronic tax payments using text messaging. This was done to counteract the emission of false receipts.

Within 38 hours, the system provided taxpayers with a confirmation that the payment had been deposited in the banks that are authorised by the Collection Office.

Some experts maintain that developing nations that expect using ICTs to succeed in making governability progress need to choose ‘intelligent intermediaries’ during the early phases of the implementation of the e-Government. Intelligent intermediaries are nothing other than models of government – administrative and managerial – that include individuals as intermediaries between citizens and the electronic application, service or infrastructure, in order to facilitate access and its broadest and most effective use possible.

The intermediaries can be both civil servants and specialised professionals or even non-governmental organisations. Interesting examples are one-stop shop offices and call centres as well as the telecentres in which members of the community have been trained to support the supply of electronic services and the use of ICTs for participation in the public sphere. Another example, in Ecuador and other countries in the region is the use of radio – commu28

nity radio in particular – in rural areas to provide Internet access.

In great measure, ICTs facilitate the inclusion of populations, groups and communities that are marginalised and isolated from public life. e-Government initiatives directed towards rural and marginal urban areas, and towards groups that have been traditionally disadvantaged, such as indigenous populations and women, should aim at improving their quality of life and work. They should also be directed at reducing poverty by providing the incentive of participating in political processes, the design of effective mechanisms to attend the most pressing needs and opening-up of spaces for the insertion in the labour and productive sphere.

The government plays a fundamental role in the definition of adequate strategies targeted at reducing gaps in access to ICTs. It is also in a central position to broaden ICT infrastructure with public resources, identify the most adequate and viable options for its national and local circumstances, and to incorporate capacity and skill building as an essential component of its strategies and initiatives for the management and effective use of the electronic tools and services it puts forward.

Instead of confronting the government’s power, effective citizen participation supported by electronic democracy initiatives can open channels to jointly build fairer development conditions as well as an environment conducive to the full enjoyment of human, social, political and economic rights

Varying e-Government objectives in countries e-Government objectives vary in each country but in all cases should transcend the mere efficiency of governmental processes towards methods that allow social, political and economic changes, thereby furthering human development and social justice. Better, more efficient, services are not enough, and neither is reducing the bureaucratic load of public institutions and designing new architecture for state administrative processes. It is imperative to change the concepts of governability, representativity, participation, and ultimately, transform the relationship between the government and its citizens.

This should be done in such a way in which the state pursues its economic and social development in an environment respectful of cultural diversity and human rights.

Building a national vision of e-Government should be structured from the bottom up. In other words, it is based on the establishment of concrete multisectoral consultation and participation mechanisms, which formulate and implement a flexible strategy that is in sync with the political, economic, social and cultural realities of each country. It is a continued and slow process in which all the interested parties should join-up, drawing thus on small initiatives and lessons learned, and fomenting innovation and creativity.

The e-Government strategies adopted will not be effective if they are not directed towards supporting human and social development. They will also need to first cater to issues relating to ICT access and the ability to use ICTs effectively in an environment in which the security and privacy of citizens are guaranteed. They will also lack the desired impact if the use of ICTs in strategic development areas (education, health, agriculture, industry, etc.) is disregarded and if the legal and regulatory framework in place is not properly adjusted.

About the author Valeria Betancourt is LAC ICT Policy Monitor Project Coordinator for Association for Progressive Communications (APC). She can be reached at valeriab@apc.org. [See: http:// www.apc.org; http://lac.derechos.apc.org]

www.egovonline.net |

MIDDLE EAST HMC relaunches revamped website

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has relaunched its revamped website (www.hmc.org.qa) with many new advanced features. The new website contains information about all hospitals and healthcare centres under HMC, appointment checking facility, and Medical service fees for almost all treatments on offer. Besides, Medical library (accessible only to HMC staff) and medical journals (accessible to all) published

by HMC are also available online.

Tenders, daily health tips, and a map of Doha, and facility to list vacancies under HMC and receive applications online are available.

There is also special login facility for HMC staff on the homepage itself, with provisions for checking email; payslip and HMC phone directory are among the other features of the site. The website provides links to the sites of The Pan Arab Society of Trauma and Emergency Medicine, Qatar National Cancer Society, Hamad International Training Centre, and Qatar e-Government.

Saudi government to widen Internet access The Government of Saudi Arabia has decided to widen Internet access in the country for its citizens to have easy accessibility. The government would be setting up a fund enabling Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to share the cost of the project. A target to put 150 services online by 2010 has been planned. To develop e-Government services in the Kingdom, the government has already invested US$800mn.

According to Fahad Al Hoymany, Minister’s advisor for IT and head of the e-Government infrastructure department at the Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), the government is holding talks with service providers over proposals for them to share the cost of providing services. | October 2006

NEWS REVIEW

Al Hoymany said, “One of the obstacles that the Saudi Government could face in establishing e-Government across the country is that Internet penetration across the Kingdom is low. Currently, only 13-15% of the population is actually using the Internet.” It may be noted that the United Nations’ Global e-Government Readiness Report 2005 has ranked Saudi Arabia 80th out of the UN’s 191 member states.

Marketing (DTCM) has launched a new interactive Electronic Map of Dubai on its website, which is presently available in English, Arabic, German, French, Spanish and Japanese languages and receives an average of 1.5 million hits a day. According to Suhail Buhelaiba, DTCM Manager of Information Technology, the new facility provides a virtual tour of Dubai and significantly enhances the appeal of the DTCM website in the online community.

Kuwait e-Government implementation to hasten

Dubai e-Services to be increased As part of its e-Government initiatives, the Dubai Government would introduce several new electronic services. Salem Al Shair, Director of e-Services, Dubai eGovernment, said that 90% of Dubai’s government services would be handled electronically from 2007.

Currently, 85% of Dubai’s services are being conducted electronically. Al Shair said, “Revenues from Dubai’s e-Payment services would reach AED60mn (US$16.33mn) this year.

We have exceeded AED40mn (US$10.89mn) already in the first half of the year.”

In another development, the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce

Salem Al Shair

Dr. Ismail Al-Shatti, Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister for Cabinet Affairs of Kuwait, has said that the issuance of a decree for the establishment of an IT authority in Kuwait would compel the government to hasten remaining steps for the implementation of e-Government thus

enabling to bridge the gap with advanced countries of the world. “The establishment of the IT authority is one of the basic requirements allowing our Singaporean partners to help Kuwait in implementing the e-Government,” Al-Shatti said, and added that the structure of the IT authority would be the same as the one implemented in Singapore. Al-Shatti recently visited Singapore and met Lee Boon Yang, Singaporean Minister of Information, Communications and Arts, to discuss latest developments in Kuwait’s e-Government project.

29

E-GOVERNMENT BRUNEI CONGRESS Creating a Citizen-Centric Government to Achieve Excellence in Public Service 21 – 22 November 2006 • The Empire Hotel and Country Club, Brunei Darussalam

% 0 1 nt for u o c s Di lic Pub r Secto

MINISTERIAL ADDRESS

Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Abu Bakar Haji Apong ( Yang Berhormat Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Kerna ) Minister of Communications, Government of Brunei Darussalam

Featuring Case Studies, in-depth Analysis and Strategic Insights from our International Experts including: • • • • • • •

Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation, Denmark Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Australia Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Western Australia Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance, Canada Ministry of Manpower, Singapore National Heritage Board, Singapore National Library Board, Singapore

Congress Workshops

• • • • • • •

NCS Pte Ltd, Singapore Accenture Strategis Partners Pty Limited, Australia Brunei Darussalam Computer Society IDG Communications (S) Pte Ltd, Malaysia Joyce A. Tan & Partners, Singapore Rajah & Tann, Singapore

Organised by:

● Improving the Performance of Managed Services in e-Government ● From Vision to Reality: Adopting a Strategic Approach to Government Service Transformation ● Building the Foundation for Effective e-Government ● The Practice of Developing and Using Scenarios for Planning e-Government Initiatives

DZ HAMPTON Supported by:

Supporting Media:

REPLY SLIP For more inquiries and/or register for this Congress, please fax us your detail for Special Discount [ ] Yes, register me for this Congress [ ] Please send me more info [ ] Keep me posted of your future events.

To: DZ HAMPTON Tel: (65) 6473 3158 • Fax: (65) 6473 3098 Email: sales@dzhampton.com

Re: E-Government Brunei Congress.

Code: EG

Name : Job Title : Organisation : Email : Tel:

Fax:

IN PRACTICE e-Government uses the intelligent road

Delivering traffic management and traffic information solutions

A

ll over the globe road operators face the challenges of growing traffic, congestion and the need to improve safety for the road users. For the most densely settled areas, large conurbations and heavily charged motorways, these challenges are crucial for the economic outlook. Therefore, road operators look into new ways that can help to keep traffic flowing and reduce safety impacts. They developed and use a variety of systems and approaches to outpace traffic growth and often with very good results.

Traffic Management in the past used to be clearly separated between police forces and road authorities. Roads had been recognised as a passive infrastructure, provided to the public and controlled by fixed rules and regulations. This is still true for some rural areas where sufficient capacity | October 2006

Reiner Dölger New ways to cheaply and quickly add capacity and safety to existing road networks are needed. In Europe many road operators already rely heavily on systems like line control, variable message signs, electronic enforcement or traffic information services for running their network

is available and recurrent congestion is no matter of interest. However for most regions, active traffic management can deliver significant and much needed gains in network performance.

Obviously traffic varies within and between days, weeks or seasons. Peak traffic that recurrently occurs asks for different rules applied than less critical situations. Dynamic speed limits, prohibiting overtaking, swift automatic incident detection and traffic forecast can avoid traffic breakdowns and keep traffic flowing.

As with other public commodities, the vast amounts of public investment and taxpayer’s money that flow into the road networks ask for good balance between expanding, upkeep and managing. To make the most of one’s roads intelligent transport systems are indispensable in the 21st century. These systems work like a 31

chain of comprehensive monitoring, fast processing and exchanging information and finally choosing the measures best suited for a certain situation out of wide array of established instruments.

Monitoring the network Monitoring represents the first and crucial link in the ITS [Intelligent Transport System] chain. These activities consume almost 25% of overall ITS expenditure in a heavily used road network. In the last years the monitoring quality in terms of density and availability has improved largely thus opening the door for new technologies like travel time estimation and

forecast. Still inductive loops are the most common type of sensors, with radar, infrared, cameras or hybrid system following. Compared to motorways and interurban corridors hardly any monitoring can be found on the secondary road networks.

But the need for traffic managing and fast incident detection concerns the whole road system. Floating probe data, coming from vehicles or phones as they move around has been recognised as a cure to this unsatisfying situation of today. Studies show that equipment rates of 5-10% should be sufficient to cover all but the most remote roads with basic traffic monitoring. However up to now no viable business case has been found to cover telecommunication and hardware costs and therefore such data remains scarce.

Road’s brain: Traffic control centres Further on in the processing chain traffic control centres can be seen as the brain of 32

traffic management from the road operator’s point of view. Traffic centres have expanded their area and means of operation and taken up new tasks in traffic management. Camera based supervision of critical road segments, switching variable message sings, activating and executing cross-border management plans and running construction site information and planning systems are amongst the responsibilities of state-of-the art TCC and TIC (Traffic Information Centres).

In recent years many Traffic Control and Information Centres have been either established or upgraded. New and cheaper communication technology, enhanced

computer power and progress in traffic science have enabled proactive control and complete coverage. Despite the wide variety of organisational approaches, Traffic Centres are remarkably similar worldwide in terms of applications and technical requirements. Most of them are equipped 24/7, use large screens or video-walls for supervising, run traffic models to forecast or evaluate, keep close contact or are even manned by police forces and can react quickly on incidents or congestion.

Traffic Centres are the gateway to accurate and dynamic traffic message, travel times and traffic situation info for third parties like service providers. However while some road operators prefer to stay in the background when it comes to enduser-services others, many of them privately owned companies have made that field a focus area of their activities.

Restricted or piecemeal availability of data has been identified as a major obstacle to the much-wished growth of traf-

fic information services, especially on large and international scale. This has also been recognised by the European Commission leading to the issuing of the recommendation 551 of 2001 on the development of a legal and business framework.

Focus on traffic management vital Traffic management is the focus for road operators. It is often performed by use of variable message signs or by staff on the site. It includes quickly detecting incidents and traffic situation. It includes dynamic speed limits and enforcement to deter drivers from speeding and disregarding regulation. It includes giving advice for the best route to choose. And finally it includes numerous small-scale measures and installations to optimise road usage and to wipe out safety black spots.

Traffic Management must not stop at border between road operators, neither national nor merely organisational. Often drivers are not aware of alternatives in route choice when travelling foreign areas and suddenly traffic information is no longer available but in unknown languages and through unknown sources and distributors. Traffic management plans, involving two, three or more road operators offer a practical solution in case of recurrent network disturbance. The aim is to actually arrive at a seamless network operation where borders are no longer felt by the road user. Recurrent congestion and bottlenecks ask for the installation of fixed VMS-based systems whereas in other cases broadcast announcements and media base information might do.

Centrico, a partnership of road operators and road authorities in Western Europe, identified the most relevant traffic corridors in early stages of their cooperation and now organise their activities around those crucial links.

Integrating traffic management and traffic information The importance of access to dynamic traffic info is evident in the Information Society. Even if not all road operators regard operating traveller information services a core business of theirs, it is accepted that such services are of ever growing impact on traffic conditions. The Internet has multiplied the options for offering information to the general public without trewww.egovonline.net |

mendous cost. Thus, Europe has seen a good number of sites and services develop, which are, however, not always as harmonised and understandable as would be required from the international road user.

Progress in technology now empowers road operators to rather accurately estimate travel times, congestion length and duration as well as the actual effects of bottlenecks like construction sites. Partly such information can’t be transported by conventional radio broadcast and asks for using other media, like VMS, Telephone Services, Websites, dedicated radio, GSM broadcast, mobile services or other.

Advancements during recent years have been considerable in this area. In 2001 hardly any level-of-service information could have been obtained from the Internet, but now the majority of road authorities run websites with a common look and feel, which, however, are not yet fully integrated.

Road Operators pursue different strategies on dissemination of information.

Some prefer to act as a service provider in close parallel to traffic management; some rely on third parties to actually distribute information to the drivers. Yet, basic traffic information, and this includes traffic messages, level of service, travel times and construction site information and on “cheap” media like websites can be obtained for free almost everywhere. On top of that a growing number of commercial services have been established and offer personalised advice. However barriers still exist in getting and understanding the information for occasional and foreign drivers. Often they don’t know about the information on offer or don’t understand the language in which it is presented.

These obstacles could be overcome by a common Telephone number on traffic information similar to the 511 in the US. Centrico partners agreed to perform a scan on the potential benefits and the viewpoint of road operators to a European Traveller and Traffic Information Number, dubbed ETTIN. Such a service, if it is to be built up European-wide would rely on the set of 116xy numbers that are currently being reserved by the European Commission. Obviously Rod operators could only play a limited role in such a scheme but their engagement seems necessary to put the idea on tracks. | October 2006

However, today there are more than 100 operators of the Trans-European road network and they manage their network according to dozens of different national frameworks. In the past road network construction and operation has been basically a nationally – or regionally – focussed area whereas other sectors in ITS like the intelligent car developed in the highly international environment of the automotive industry.

No wonder that in terms of networkwide harmonization and coordination of roadside equipment Europe is lagging behind the US and Japan. Thus, ITS often can’t be used in the most effective manner, foreign drivers, who are more and more numerous in multi-lingual Europe, can’t be assisted properly and ITS industry is still confronted with segregated markets where investments in developing systems is hard to justify. This situation is most severely felt where cross-border traffic is heavy, where there is long distance traffic overlaying with local traffic and where both goods vehicles and private cars have to be served.

Outlook: How smart future roads will be The nineties saw acceleration in the usage of advanced technology to manage roads –decreasing costs for communication, monitoring, display technology and computer power coincided with advancements in knowledge and maturity of applications. Furthermore, drivers’ expectations have developed. The road operators are no longer regarded as remote engineers dealing with tarmac but are now expected to actively run the motorways to serve the public the best possible, disregarding actual borders in the spatial range of their remit.

Roads are expected to bear most of the growing traffic load in the coming decades. Even if the traffic growth tends to slow down in overall figures, the increases on crucial links and for freight traffic are unrelenting. Spatial developments, like the extension of the European Union, changes in industrial production and logistics and the shrinking effect of borders on mobility are causes that will keep their impact in the mid and long run. At the same time financial constraints lead into looking for cheaper and yet efficient ways to defend

the performance of the road network. Intelligent Traffic management and information services can be a remedy in this situation. New technologies will be proactively treated by the road operators – Galileo and In-car systems are assessed to be most prominent. Huge benefits sleep in the closer cooperation between motorways and urban road or public transport networks. Even if these are not strictly part of the Trans-European Road Network obviously they define the performance of the transport network.

Urban roads and motorway network traffic management today are almost nowhere connected, in terms of traffic management, as traffic’s requirements are.

Road User Charging is favoured by many cash stripped public road authorities to provide extra revenue. For heavy goods traffic many countries can be expected to introduce toll schemes in the years to come, some extending also to passenger cars. Obviously toll systems are closely connected to intelligent traffic management. Those systems can provide extra accurate data but also be used as incentives to pass by critical segments of the network if needed.

The accelerating developments of safety related technology in cars would lead to changed requirements for road operators. Some of today’s ITS applications might be rendered fall back solutions for the fleet of older cars. On the other hand already now we can make out new requirements like the support of databases on a variety of road-related information.

Again the international dimension has to be taken into account. Without active cooperation of road operators, which are closest to the road user, “island solutions” in ITS and a large assortment of VMS’s, data exchange systems, information services and procedural approaches will arise and some times be duplicated with but slight differences hampering the development of a truly Efficient Traffic Management for the world’s motorways.

About the author Reiner Dölger is Chairman of the Centrico project (www.centrico. org) on coordinated development and deployment of road telematics in Western Europe. The author can be reached at Reiner.Doelger@mwvwlw.rlp.de

33

IN PRACTICE Finland

Perfect lab for developing road maintenance solutions Sampo Hietanen and Ville Virtanen

I

n Finland, there are approximately 78,168 kms of state owned roads and 26,000 municipal streets. The main road network is 13,268 kms. With up to seven months of winter weather when daily average temperature could stay constantly below 0 C degree and go down to -40 C degree, it is an enormous challenge to keep the roads in driving condition.

Keeping the roads operational at all time has a great importance to the Finnish industry and trade. Besides extreme weather

conditions, Finland has a high level of utilisation of information technology and especially mobile solutions and is thus a perfect laboratory for developing road maintenance solutions.

The Finnish Road Enterprise (http:// www.tieliikelaitos.fi/english) is the market leader in road maintenance in Finland. It is in charge of the maintenance of 73% of the state owned roads in Finland. The Finnish Road Enterprise is a forerunner in development of weather sensitive road maintenance and traffic services. It provides solutions and services for the Finnish Road Administration, state authorities, industry and trade, municipalities, cities and citizens.

Services include the planning, develop| October 2006

ment, construction, management and maintenance of traffic routes, environment and services, as well as related products, solutions and consulting.

Traffic information services Traffic information services are an essential part of the functionality and the management of the transport systems. They promote safety, smoothness, use of public transport and incident management.

These services are usually splintered among many different actors and s e v e r a l organisations, for which reason they do not function very uniformly and efficiently from the standpoint of the user.

Traffic data gathering, aggregation and delivery suffers from problems caused by separate solutions and service providers. Furthermore, the current structure of traffic information service provisioning does not make it easy to development new commercial services.

Procurement model In order to overcome this problem the Finnish Road Enterprise developed a model for procurement of traffic information services jointly by public and private entities when developing a traffic information service for cities and municipalities. The service pilot took place in Oulu region, which is situated in the northern parts of Finland. Oulu is one of the biggest cities in Finland and the region has approximately 200,000 inhabitants. Oulu is

one of the most information technology oriented regions in Finland with a technical university and a largescale research and development site of Nokia, the leading mobile technology provider. The service pilot was funded by the local municipalities, Finnish Road Administration, the ministry of traffic and communications as well as the private sector. It covers all of the traffic information available and in the area provides the services on the Internet, on mobile phones and via data feeds to third party solutions for commercial use.

In the beginning of the project a consortium of public organisations and private companies was formed. They negotiated together the public funding for the public services thus avoiding the development of overlapping service offerings. The private sector defines the services, which are then approved by the public authorities. There is no division between public or private services. The public funding is shared according the share of customers and the efficacy of the each traffic information service.

The model has several benefits. These include the traffic data being provided to all service providers, private and public, with same terms; and the mixture and number of service providers provides as transparent and efficient traffic information as possible. However, all this depends on the availability of strong commercial players for guaranteeing the continuity of services.

About the authors Sampo Hietanen is Head of Unit, Traffic Information Services, The Finnish Road Enterprise. He can be reached at sampo.hietanen@tieliikelaitos.fi Ville Virtanen is Head of Sales, Traffic Information Service, The Finnish Road Enterprise. He can be reached at Ville.Virtanen@tieliikelaitos.fi

35

BUSINESS Microsoft pledges 50,000 kiosks for Indian villages Global software giant Microsoft would soon be setting up 50,000 kiosks in villages of India to enable delivery of several services to the villagers in their panchayats itself. Through these kiosks the villagers would be able to avail services such as bank loans, computer and English tutorials, the Internet, entertainment, digital photography, astrology and other desktopbased offline services. Besides, community discussions would also be made possible using audio and video chat. Microsoft is already running ‘Saksham’ – a rural computing initiative in India. Microsoft is significantly aiming to make the kiosks an integral part of the daily lives of people.

Currently, Microsoft Worldwide is holding discussions with the Union Minister for Panchayati Raj Mani Shankar Aiyer regarding this. According to Mr. Aiyer, people should gradually be able to lodge, track and resolve their grievances, monitor MP and MLA developmental activities and keep track of funds deployment through these kiosks.

Open source healthcare info exchange software by IBM

NEWS REVIEW In a major step in the drive toward a national electronic medical records system in the US, IBM recently announced the launching of a software technology that supports the exchange of healthcare information to the open source community. The software is part of the Interoperable Healthcare Information Infrastructure project launched by IBM Research in 2005. The system would enable doctors to access and view a patient’s electronic medical records even if those records originate in disparate systems.

According to Dan Pelino, General Manager, IBM healthcare and life sciences industry, the significant challenge in creating a national interoperable electronic healthcare information infrastructure had been the ability to access disparate health records stored in proprietary medical IT systems.

Takaful’s e-IKHLAS aims for MYR1mn premium this fiscal In the current fiscal, Malaysia’s premier insurance company Takaful Ikhlas has said

that it would be aiming for MYR1mn (US$) in premium for its Internet based takaful service ‘eIKHLAS’. Syed Moheeb Syed Kamarulzaman, Managing Director, said, “The scheme has received encouraging response since its launch at the end of 2005 as a pilot project under its e-Transactions or Internet based sales. Currently, e-IKHLAS is concentrating on potential or existing customers who want to obtain new or renew their motor policies. However, other policies such as personal accident and fire policies would also be introduced soon through the Internet channel.

We also planning to introduce other takaful products such as marine policies in the future.”

Since July 2003, Takaful Ikhlas has been in operations, and intends to become the preferred choice for clients seeking financial protection services guided by Islamic principles and values.

‘e-Ticket system not perfect’: Security expert “The security regime surrounding selfticketing for domestic travel is not perfect,” argued Neil Fergus, co-author of the Wheeler report on airport security, while commenting on concerns raised by a Sydney businessman whose credit card details were illegally used online to book five e-Tickets. Fergus, who now runs a company called Intelligent Risks, was the director of the intelligence for the Sydney Olympics and Paralympics.

According to Fergus, since there is not a perfect security regime surrounding self-ticketing, the single issue of concern is about the screening regime so that the risk is managed to the appropriate level. Earlier, it had been established that people committing such fraud were able to board planes without providing any form of identification. Fergus said, “Every change made to the aviation security regime has a major impact, not only on the efficiency of air travel, but on the costs of air travel.” It may be recalled that security flaw with airport eTicket was detected at Australian airports, with cases of credit card identity fraud being exposed in a big way. The perpetrators taking advantage of a loophole bought their seats over the Internet under false names and with no system to check their identities.

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wegf-egov-092006

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entral C d n a l a c Lo nts…: Governme

18, 19 AND 20 OCTOBER 2006 – ISSY LES MOULINEAUX (PARIS – FRANCE)

eal d l a i c e p s a for you…

Which connected society do we want?

Everything about e-Inclusion • 18, 19 and 20 October 2006 - Issy les Moulineaux (Paris-France) See www.worldegovforum.com for the full programme:

Elected representatives, territorial and public officials, central-government and local authorities · Tap into good practices from around the world

4 plenary sessions: • Inaugural • e-Inclusion • e-Administration • Participative democracy

RL

D PREM

e-GOV GOLDEN BOOK

RE •

The World Bank

O

IE

Experts, consultants and specialists · Talk to academics, researchers and visionaries serving in the local and worldwide arena

4 cycles, 20 round tables: • Politics and Society • Territories and Innovation • Partnerships and working Models • Technologies and Good Practices

•A W

This world forum is for you:

7 special events: Developers and consultants • 2 International territorial round tables: t.) · Meet the people looking for e-Government solutions «Competitiveness and Territorial Innovation» s s e «New Governance between state and local authorities» s ( aker r Citizens, associations and businesses o • Global Cities Dialogue general assembly m it s · Be part of the world’s biggest e-Government • Central e-Gov Agencies Working Group meeting vis sion tion nes) 0 o u i l think tank 0 c • The e-Democracy and Public Web awards o ral 4,5 0 de ov s cent s • Official e-Gov Golden Book launch d e 0 Guest of honor: e-Gial an ntri • ...

1,5

60 rritor

South Korea

(te

A SPECIAL DEAL FOR

u co 42

SUBSCRIBERS STATED PRICES ENTITLE YOU TO ACCESS:

You represent a local or central government, or a national or international government agency:

You are an e-gov solution provider, an expert, a consultant agency, a developer…:

Special offer: €125* incl. VAT

Special offer: €750* incl. VAT

Here is your special offer code : WEG-EGV-B-574 Register now: See www.worldegovforum.com for the programme and choose the sessions you want to book now!

All the meetings: • 4 plenary sessions • 20 round tables • Keynotes: CISCO, ADOBE, ORACLE, THALES… • International territorial conferences • ISOC meeting • The e-Democracy and Public Web awards •…

The exhibition: • Zap Solutions Theatre (presentations every 30 minutes) • 60 e-gov solutions

* Registration terms and conditions (extract): Stated prices apply for all conferences and the access to the exhibition as described but do not include transport, accommodation or meals . Local or central government, national or international agencies: €125 instead of €250 incl. VAT • Business firms: €750 instead of €1500 incl. VAT • Students and Issy locals: free of charge • Registration will be firm once we received payment or your order form (before 10 October). See www.worldegovforum.com for registration terms and conditions, directions to the venue and transport-discount vouchers.

& Cie, 19 bd des Nations Unies – 92190 Meudon - France • Fax +33 1 55 18 03 03 ¯ 3ème MillénaireInformation & Bookings: www.worldegovforum.com

INDIA Cabinet approval for 100,000 rural CSCs Some 100,000 rural Common Services Centres (CSCs) would be set up across India at a total cost of INR574.20bn (US$12.50bn). The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) recently gave its approval. The Government of India (GoI) would contribute INR85.60bn (US$1.86bn), the State Governments’ would contribute INR79.30bn (US$1.72bn) while the

NEWS REVIEW balance amount of INR409.30bn (US$8.91bn) would be coming from the private sector. The Department of Information Technology (DIT) would implement the project through a PublicPrivate Partnership (PPP). Proposed to be rolled out by March 2008, the CSCs are expected to substantially extend the reach of digital services and economic opportunities into the rural and remote areas of India. It may be noted that the creation of CSCs are a part of the National e-Governance Plan

Orissa wins 5th India-Tech excellence award The e-Governance initiatives in Orissa have been recognised. The state has won the 5th India-Tech Excellence Award for being one of the most progressive state government. Besides Orissa, the case studies to be shortlisted include those from Delhi, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and West Bengal. An eminent jury chaired

by Justice A. M. Ahmadi, former Chief Justice of India, selected Orissa for the award. The Award was judged on the criticality of IT usage, improvement in service, impact on quality and productivity, impact on society and innovation in terms of reach and replicability, tangible impact on efficiency, operational costs and decision making and demonstrating functionality of providing various information relating to e-Governance.

Orissa presented Project e-Shishu as a case study to demonstrate the use of ICT and involvement of the state and district administration in delivering governance. The e-Shishu project has been conceived to track each and every child in the age group of 0-14 years, which can ensure his/her fundamental right to education. It provides a technology framework in e-Governance. The project started in September 2005 with a vision to have a database of all children by name with 26 parameters. In Orissa, a core committee has been formed under the chairmanship of DC and ACS to find out ways to use the Child Tracking System data for other departments like Health and Family Welfare (H&FW), Women and Child Welfare (W&CD), SC&ST and Labour.

After the Project Validation of Child Database (continuing), the plan is to have unique child Code of all children from 0-14. The plan of scaling up has already started with W&CD, which is going to use the database of this child from 0-6 and 6-11 for their Supplementary Nutrition Program and Mid-day meal schemes. Further the plan is to add more indicators to the same database with mother and old age people information. Once this is achieved W&CD would be responsible to manage and update 0-6 yrs child database, mother information and old age beneficiary details. School and mass education department would manage and update the database of 6-14 yrs only. Similarly, other departments would start adding more parameters to the same database for there monitoring purpose. The Award is a morale boost for the state and its officers who have made this innovative project a success.

Dr. Pradeep Rout pradeep.rout@ocac.in 38

(NeGP),approved by the Government in May 2006 to introduce e-Governance on a massive scale.

The CSCs would cater to 600,000 villages (i.e. at least one CSC in a cluster of six villages) across the country. The CSCs would provide high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data content and services in the areas of e-Governance, education, health, telemedicine, and entertainment as well as other private services. The e-Governance services in rural areas include application forms, certificates, and utility payments such as electricity, telephone and water bills. Some 100,000 direct jobs and 2-3 lakh additional indirect jobs are likely to be created when the CSCs become fully operational.

IBM helps build National portal The Indian government recently unveiled plans to build a National portal for citizens to access thousands of services ranging from business permits to housing subsidies and tax advice. The portal would also act as a central repository for tech services contracts posted for tender by the central government. IT company IBM, which was awarded US$5mn contract, would help the government to build its new National portal. The site would be accessible through PCs, mobile devices, and the numerous CSCs (Common Service Centres) that the government would be setting up in India’s rural areas.

N. Vijayaditya

N. Vijayaditya, Director-General of India’s National Informatics Centre, said, “It will be much easier for foreign companies to find out what they need to know about doing business here.” and added, “The National Portal would rely on a range of IBM’s WebSphere middleware to link the system to websites already operated by Indian central and state governments. This couldn’t work without such open standards.” www.egovonline.net |

EVENT DIARY

A grand show amidst acclaim Prachi Shirur and Danish A Khan

e

gov India 2006 was third in the series of e-Government conferences organised by the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), following those in New Delhi in 2005 and Bangkok in 2006. The conference was held at Hotel Taj Palace, from 23-25 August 2006 in New Delhi, and was co-organised by the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India (GoI), and UNDP. The conference set out to address the emerging issues in e-Governance and debate on National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) in India. There was participation of a large conglome-ration of eGovernment experts and practitioners from government, private sector and academia. It brought together different stakeholders on one platform through keynotes, papers, special work-shops and exhibition, and provided an opportunity to interface with private sector players, practitioners, government executives, decision-makers and experts. egov India 2006 was supported by USAID, UNESCO, The Asia Foundation, American India Foundation, APERA, Bellanet, Gesci, ISPAI, International Academy of CIO (Thailand), Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity & Promotion, NASSCOM Foundation, NISG, NIC, CDAC, Plan International, Quest, SDC, SIDA, SEAMEO, Telecentre.org and Telecentres of the Americas. There was a good participation by private sector companies as sponsors, advertisers and exhibitors of the conference. These included NORTEL, Telelogic, HP, SAP, Symantec, SAS, ALCATEL, Adobe, NIIT, Canon, Sun, WIPRO, Cisco, Vidyatech, Liqvid, Remittag, Metalearn, Educomp, Learnet, SMART, Microsoft, IBM, Hiwel, TLS, 24X7 Learning, Inkroma, Yes Bank, Computer Associates, Tulip, Tally, Saksham, Gilat, Intel, Designmate, Spanco, Edurite and United Telecom.

The conference saw the participation | October 2006

Mani Shankar Aiyer, Union Minister, presenting ‘egov Innovation Award-2006’ to B. Dayananda, IPS, SP, Dakshina Kannada district (Karnataka), for setting up the first-ever police blog in India.

of more than 500 delegates, representing various key policy makers from government departments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, academic institutions, NGOs and the IT industry.

Among the government functionaries, the speakers included Mani Shankar Aiyer, Union Minister of Panchayati Raj and Youth Affairs and Sports; Jainder Singh, Secretary, DIT, GoI; Kraisorn Pornsutee, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Thailand; R. Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, DIT, GoI; Wajahat Habibullah, Chief Information Commissioner of India; besides other senior GoI officials from various ministries. IT Secretaries from different State Governments also participated.

Several NGOs also attended the conference, which included National Institute of Smart Government (NISG), International Development Research Cooperation (IDRC), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), eGovernments Foundation, Evangelical

Social Action Forum (Kerala) etc.

Jainder Singh, Secretary, DIT, GoI, inaugurated the conference. On the inaugural day, Mani Shankar Aiyer, Union Minister of Panchayati Raj and Youth Affairs & Sports (GoI) presented the ‘egov Award For Innovation - 2006’ to B. Dayananda, IPS, Superintendent of Police, Dakshina Kannada district from Mangalore, for his initiative in launching the first-ever police blog in India to keep public and media informed and provide access to police related information. The site features Kannada and English fonts in order to make the blog user-friendly and accessible. In his acceptance address Dayananda stated, “The initial plan was to help save time and resources involved in informing the media about cases and developments. Some of the details given on the blog, updated almost on a daily basis, include a drug bust and coverage of the recently concluded panchayat polls.

Even relevant photos are published on the blog. The blog is easily accessible to all. With this, authentic and official 39

Memoirs

Inauguration of the conference

Mani Shankar Aiyer, Union Minister of Panchayati Raj, Youth Affairs & Sports, Government of India addressing the auidence

Jainder Singh, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of India delevering keynote address

R Chandrashekhar, Addl. Secretary, DIT, Government of India replying to the audience query

Delegates going through CSDMS publications

Maxine Olson, Jainder Singh and Kriason Prosuntee at the exhibition

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www.egovonline.net |

Maxine Olson, UNDP India, Country Representative delevering keynote address

Adrian Marti, Deputy Country Head Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Geneva

Kraisorn Pornsutee, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information & Communication Technology, Thailand

Dr M P Narayanan, President CSDMS

Kiran Karnik, President NASSCOM

Ravi Gupta, Director CSDMS

Session in progress

Delegates at the conference

Memento presentation to a panelist

CSDMS team

| October 2006

41

information of the department can be given to the press and the people swiftly.

The blog is serving well as a medium to disseminate information on the recent findings and criminal cases.”

The conference comprised 3 days of plenary and parallel speaker sessions, including keynote speeches from Ministers, Chief Information Secretary and IT Secretaries. The conference was structured into plenary sessions, main sessions and parallel track. The first plenary session was titled ‘India’s eGovernment Journey: Where can India be in 2010’, aimed at framing an eGovernment vision session to provide a strong focus on what is to be achieved by India in five years. The objective of this session was to provide a high-level plan that will enable the government to realise its e-Government vision and attain a position of leadership in e-Governance by 2010. This is in the light of the recently approved National e-Governance Action Plan (NeGP) for implementation during the year 2003-2007.

R. Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, DIT (GoI), outlined 10 goals of e-Government in India. These include government information and services that can be delivered electronically are available through this mode for all high volume areas (say any service that involves more than 1,000 transactions a year); broadband access available in every village through OFC / wireless; community access points (assisted access) for all electronic services (government and private) are available in every village or at most, in the adjoining village; all services are available in the local language; call centers that can be accessed from any mobile telephone that provide information/ services 24/7; every individual in the country has a unique ID that is easily verifiable including biometric data; high quality digital educational content in regional languages accessible in all villages; reach of Health services extended to villages through use of the ICT platform; products and services of rural India have access to global markets; and, all rural residents have access to domestic and international telecommuting based employment opportunities.

Today, most government departments in India work as silos and when it 42

comes to computerisation and service delivery, there is lot of duplication of efforts. States or departments begin from scratch every time to develop their own applications, learning very less from other’s experiences. There is a major communication failure and lack of experience and knowledge sharing among different states and departments. Therefore the foremost question is how to break the silos and move towards standards and common processes so that the rollout of e-Government projects are faster and efficient.

The focus at this juncture should be to see how not to re-invent the wheel. This was the objective of the second plenary panel discussion. Another panel discussion was on how to harness Public-Private Partnerships. Besides, eminent speakers from government, industry and NGOs from India and abroad discussed and deliberated on issues such as: India’s eGovernment Journey: Way ahead, Publicprivate partnerships in e-Government, eGovernment in Municipalities, Standards and Interoperability, Central Mission Mode Projects and State initiatives in e-Governance, International Perspectives in e-Government, e-Procurement, Security and e-Government, Capacity building and e-Health. Their views and pers-pectives provided a great learning experience to the participants.

Through the exhibition, the conference provided an opportunity for updating on new advancements, solutions and services in the field of e-Governance. The event had different exhibitors from the government and industry, who showcased a wide range of products, services and initiatives in the domain of eGovernment. These included Adobe, Canon, HP, Intel, Nortel, SAP, Wipro, Telelogic, Wipro, Government of Delhi and Jharkhand, among others. There were two workshops (viz., UN Solution Exchange Workshop on Knowledge Management and Moving out of the “Pilot Syndrome” organised by UNDP and NISG) that provided an opportunity for delegates to interact and share with each other their viewpoints and experiences in various aspects of e-Government.

The conference concluded with the valedictory session, chaired by CSDMS Director, Ravi Gupta and co-chaired by

M P Narayanan, President, CSDMS. The panelists included Adrian Marti, Deputy Country Head, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Piti Premotedham, Managing Director, Asia South, Computer Associates, Subhash C Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development, GoI. There was an interactive discussion on the conference outputs among the participants and panelists.

During the concluding stage of the conference, the recommendations put forth by delegates for the government to take note of and include it while planning e-Government projects.

The recommendations are as follows: There should be a move towards joined-up government, and executives (CEOs) be made responsible for ensuring horizontal and vertical integration; Incubate and document best practices and critical success factors for projects. It should be a collective effort of government and private sector; Active involvement of the civil society is a must; Organisations for outreach of services to the citizens and content development; All services be made available in local languages; 80% of needs for rural citizens pertain to health, education and agriculture, which needs to be addressed primarily through Common Service Centres; Need for a national policy on Standards; Quantitative assessment of e-Government projects and outcomes is required; Adopt Enterprise Architecture as a process; Use of e-Forms should be made mandatory; There is a need to engage engineering and computer science students in e-Government projects and communicate to them about standards; Need to have a comprehensive plan against security threats; and, Establish whole-of-government IT Portfolio management.

The delegates unanimously lauded the organising of the conference. A delegate from Nepal said, “I congratulate for the superb egov India 2006 Conference. The conference was well thought-out and coordinated. I have been dedicating my time on e-Government for more than four years and have read many journals related to the subject. I think I have gained more practical information from this conference than in the last four years of my academic investigation.” www.egovonline.net |

State Govt. of Andhra pradesh

Government of India Department of Science & Technology

Global Forum on Business Incubation November 6-10, 2006 Hotel Taj Krishna, Hyderabad

The 2nd Global Forum on Business Incubation: Empowering Economies through ICT, Innovation and Entrepreneurship will gather organizations from around the globe to exchange knowledge and ideas on how the combination of information and communication technologies (ICT), innovation and entrepreneurship can drive competitiveness and wealth creation in developing country economies.

The event will draw more than 300 participants from 60 - 75 countries and including decision-makers of the public, private, academic and notfor-profit sectors. The event will provide an opportunity to: z

Network with other participants to informally exchange ideas and explore opportunities for partnership.

z

Learn from the achievements and lessons of infoDev's Global Network of Incubators.

z

Attend training sessions designed to increase the capacity of incubator managers, and

z

Initiate plans of action for regional and global networks of organizations seeking to promote ICT-enabled entrepreneurship and innovation.

The 2nd Global Forum is a joint initiative of DST, Govt. of India and infoDev programme of World Bank which is being organized by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The government of Andhra Pradesh is state partner of the event.

For Participation, Sponsorship and Exhibition Please Contact :

Mr. Nirankar Saxena Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi-110001 Phone : +91-11-23316542, 23738760-70, Extn. 451 Mobile : +91-9811839174 Fax : +91-11-23721504, 23320714, 23325158 Email : nirankar@incubatorsnetwork.com, nirankar@ficci.com

www.incubatorsnetwork.com

FACTS & DATA

U. K. leading in ‘Social Networking’ A ccording to study by mobile market research house M:Metrics, June 2006, British mobile users are more likely to use their cellphones’ so called “social networking” applications – essentially such as wireless data applications like uploading video, using chat, uploading a photo and/or accessing a dating service – than their counterparts in France, Germany or the United States.

Only 7.2 percent of German cellphone users, 6.7 percent of U.S. users and 6.5 percent of French users had done so.

The other findings of the study are: •

•

Subscribers to certain carriers in each country were more likely to use the data-based services. In the U.K., wireless operator 3 scored 17.4 percent, way above the national average of 10.1 percent.

In the United States, T-Mobile wireless operator came in with 10-percent penetration, well-above the

6.7 percent average for all carriers.

•

Similarly, in Germany, operator O2 saw 10.6 percent of its user base tapping into at least one of the applications.

•

In France, the wireless operator SFR topped the list, but by a small margin of 7.1 percent compared with 6.5 percent for the country as a whole.

•

In Germany, among a list of applications, 79.8 percent of cellular users had sent a text message in April, while 6.2 percent used personal e-mail and 3.1 percent used work e-mail.

•

In the U.K., the numbers were 84.6 percent for text messages, and between 6.7 percent/3 percent for personal/work e-mail, while for France the total numbers were 69.4 percent and 5.4 percent/1.9 percent.

•

In the United States, only 35 percent sent a text message, but personal/work e-mail figures were higher at 6.9 percent/4 percent.

Source: Telecom Web http://www.telecomweb.com/news/wbf/charts/ 17327.html

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www.egovonline.net |

numbers 40% 20.5 million INR worth e-Governance project introduced at the Sambalpur University in Orissa (India). This is part of the funding received from the government under the 12th Finance Commission for effective management of the University.

drop in Rwanda’s agricultural workforce is envisaged within 15 years with the implementation of the vision 2020 project in Rwanda. The project aims to transform the agricultural economy. This will make Rwanda the regional ICT hub.

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565

10

5

Village Resource Centres would be provided with CDMA2000-based wireless Internet connectivity solutions

by QUALCOMM Inc. in association with the NASSCOM Foundation, India, under the Rural Knowledge Network Program.

year nation-wide project called the Picture Archiving & Communications System (PACS) has been undertaken by the NHS in United Kingdom to streamline diagnostic services. It makes a paradigm shift of all NHS hospitals from wet film processing to computerised digital technology for all images.

45

million people in Africa would be given ICT training by 2010, as planned by Microsoft. Microsoft will also help the governments of countries in Africa to create sustainable economic growth. The company intends to use its already existing partnerships in the continent that include those in learning and unlimited potential education programmes to execute the project. | October 2006

million US$ would be spent by New South Wales, Australia, under its grand vision for electronic service delivery and IT streamlining. The program aims to improve the delivery of government services.

billion $NT (US$152 million) is earmarked by the Government of Taiwan to help the country develop an intelligent vehicle industry by 2010. The government aims to help the automotive industry manufacture intelligent vehicles, allow vehicle information services to grow, and create an intelligent mobile environment to ensure safety and convenience for motorists.

Source 15

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2006/07/21/ 2003319692

10

http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name =News&file=article&sid=5521&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

20.5

http://www.hindu.com/2006/08/02/stories/2006080215210300.htm

40%

http://english.people.com.cn/200608/02/eng20060802_289174.html

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http://english.people.com.cn/200608/02/eng20060802_289174.html

565

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,19929109 %5E15441%5E%5Enbv%5E15306-15319,00.html

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http://www.tribune.com.ng/20072006/infosys1.html

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WHA T’S ON WHAT’S This section lists upcoming e-Government conferences, exhibitions, and other public events for the benefit of our readers.

2 – 3 October 2006

30 October 2006 – 1 November 2006

22 – 24 November 2006

First Iberoamerican Congress on eGovernment Santiago, Chile

Enhancing Public Administration BackOffices Olten, Switzerland

http://www.sumaq.org/egov/

Digital Government 2006: Reengineering Processes to Maximize IT Value Chain Singapore

5 – 6 October 2006

http://www.availcorp.com/english/events_list. php?eventsid=81&backurl=upcomingevents_list.php

European e-Skills 2006 Conference Thessaloniki, Greece

30 October 2006 – 1 November 2006

http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/5640/ 5744

9 – 11 October 2006

12th India Telecommunications International Summit 2006 Shangri-La Hotel, New Delhi www.india-telecoms.com/el/egov.html

t-Government World Europe 2006 Amsterdam The Netherlands http://www.terrapinn.com/2006/tgov/

9 - 11 Oct 2006 Public Sector Websites Grand Hyatt Singapore, Singapore http://www.ark-group.com/home/xq/asp/ sid.02291AF3-9051-4BE3-AD2C-A42655840 BC2/eventid.7B6BAA8D-7DB5-463A-AD38C5242802F350/eTitle.Public_Sector_Websites/ qx/events/event.htm

6 – 7 November 2006 E & E Government Asia Kuala Lumpur Malaysia http://www.marcusevans.com/events/CFE ventinfo.asp?EventID=11149

Utilizing E-Government to improve Government Service Delivery and Increase Transparency (Training) Washington DC, USA http://www.ip3.org/t2006/t_workshops_ 1627.htm

2nd Annual public sector online services United Kingdom

9 – 10 November 2006 Global Forum 2006 Paris, France http://www.items.fr/globalforum.php3?id_ rubrique=75

World eGov Forum Paris, France http://www.worldegovforum.com/index. php?lang=en

First European Summit on Interoperability in the iGovernment Valencia, Spain http://www.esiig.gva.es/

27 – 29 November 2006 Enabling Efficiency between Government, Business and the Citizen: A Focus on Current e-Identity Applications London, United Kingdom http://www.eema.org/index.cfm?fuseaction =focus.content&cmid=323

Achieving IT Governance & Information Security Grand Hyatt Singapore, Singapore http://www.ark-group.com/home/xq/asp/ sid.02291AF3-9051-4BE3-AD2C-A42655840BC 2/eventid.D2F1FA3D-78E2-46B0-B131-8FF624C AD6AC/eTitle.Achieving_IT_Governance__ Information_Security/qx/events/event.htm

6 December 2006 2nd Annual Event: Information Management in the public sector London http://www.kablenet.com

16 November 2006

18-20 October 2006

22 – 24 November 2006

29 Nov – 1 Dec 2006 6 – 17 November 2006

10 - 12 Oct 2006

http://www.ark-group.com/home/xq/asp/ sid.02291AF3-9051-4BE3-AD2C-A426558 40BC2/eventid.CBA245E1-7CE3-47C0-A40727C2E1BD0B35/eTitle.2nd_Annual_public_ sector_online_services/qx/events/event.htm

http://international.fhso.ch/ted/ted

eDemocracy ‘06 London United Kingdom http://www.headstar-events.com/ edemocracy06/index.php

7 December 2006 eGovernment Conference 2006 Copenhagen, Denmark http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp? containerId=IDC_P11911

25 – 27 October 2006

20 – 22 November 2006

6-8 February 2007

eChallenges e-2006 Conference Barcelona, Spain

Arab eGovernment Summit Dubai, UAE

Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

http://www.echallenges.org/e2006/

http://www.datamatixgroup.com/

http://www.egovonline.net/egovasia/

Tell us about your event at info@egovonline.net 46

www.egovonline.net |

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The first and only medium to reach top Government policy makers, implementers and industry leaders in Asia and Middle East egov is the only monthly print magazine on e-Government for Asia and Middle-East. It is an effort to cover public sector/industry requirements in planning and implementing e-Government initiatives and provide a holistic view of the developments and issues in the sector. The portal (www.egovonline.net) is engaging readers with the content of its magazine available for free and full access. It provides daily e-Government news, case studies and promotes academic and anecdotal discussion on wide-ranging issues pertaining to the use of information technologies for governance - a platform for user groups, researchers, implementers, NGOs, policy makers and administrators (from the government and the private sector).

Frequency: Monthly Print run = 15,000 Readership: 95,000 www.egovonline.net monthly hits: 6,58,512

Readership Profile A Government departments/ ministries B IT industry, Telecom Industries, Finance, PSUs and Banking sector C International agencies SDC, UNDP, ADB, IFC, World Bank etc.

D Corporate foundations/NGOs/CSOs E Educational institutes, R&D organisations

Our Advertisers till now IBM

Microsoft

SAP

HP

Newgen

GILAT

Telelogic

Intel

Wipro

EPFL

NIIT

Event Ads Assocham

egov World Forum

Connecting Rural Communities 2006

ICT Expo 2006

For more details contact Rakesh Tripathie (rakesh@csdms.in) Mobile: +91 9899821364