e-Governance in Municipalities: October 2007 Issue

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e-Governance in Municipalities Revolutionising Government-Citizen Interface

Rs 75

Towards Efficient and Effective Municipal Services Mumbai to a Global City An e-Government Perspective of the Journey

Millennium Corporation and Council An e-Administration Project

I S S N 0 97 3 - 1 61 X

VOLUME 3

| ISSUE 10 | OCTOBER 2007

www .e go v o nl ine . ne t

THE E-GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE FOR ASIA & THE MIDDLE EAST

M-CONNECT

MUNICIPAL WI-FI IN INDIA CHANGING THE WORLD OF COMMUNICATIONS

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

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

TAKING E-GOVERNMENT FROM ‘INFORMATION ACCESS PHASE’ TO ‘INTELLIGENT INTERACTION PHASE’

COUNTRY FOCUS: JAPAN

SOFTOPIA: A CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE IN THE CENTRE IN JAPAN

IT Leader’s Forum

w w w . e g o v o n l i n e . n e t | volume 3 | issue 10 | october 2007

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COVER FEATURES

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Mission: Reforming Cities

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Towards Efficient and Effective Municipal Services

Interview: M Rajamani Joint Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development,

Government of India

Interview: S P Singh, Senior Director, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India

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Services at Click of Mouse

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Interview: Prof. M K Prasad, Executive Chairman and Director, Information

Kerala Mission (IKM) & M Sivasankar, Executive Mission Director, IKM

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Mumbai to a Global City Shree Kant Singh, Additional Municipal Commissioner, Municipal Corporation

of Greater Mumbai

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Millennium Corporation and Council D P Bobde, S D Parkhi, U V Deo (National Informatics Centre, Pune)

Building Sound Local e-Government Interview: Nabroon Bhattacharjee, Urban Team Leader and Program Manager,

Office of Economic Growth, USAID

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Municipal e-Governance Market Opening up in India

Interview: A M Sheshagiri, Director, Government, Education and Health, Oracle India

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e-Governance in Urban Local Bodies Session Report : egov India 2007

e-Governance Models in Urban Areas Shikha Shukla, Development Consultant

Towards a Better Urban Governance Praful Gharpure, Architect-Urban Planner, Tata Consultancy Services

MCONNECT

Municipal Wi-Fi In India

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Upasna Kakroo

News

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Changing the World of Communications

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COUNTRY FOCUS: JAPAN Interview: Miclel Gambier, General Manager, Information Worker Group, Microsoft APAC

Softopia: A Centre of Excellence in the Centre in Japan

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Kemal Bajramovic, Head of IT Department of Civil Service Agency, Bosnia and Herzegovina

COMMENTARY INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Secure Solution for e-Passport

38

Prasanna Gogwekar, Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director, QID

Taking e-Government to Intelligent Interaction Phase

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Sudipta K Sen, CEO and MD, SAS Institute (India) Pvt. Ltd.

PRODUCT SHOWCASE R EG U L A R F EA T U R E

Fujitsu ov

October 2007

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EXECUTIVE MOVEMENTS

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WHAT’S ON

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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 eGovernment project and initiatives, which are of immense value for practitioners, professionals, corporate and academicians.

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

ARTICLES / CASE STUDIES should not exceed

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

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

ALL ARTICLES / CASE STUDIES should provide proper references. Authors should give in writing stating that the work is new and has not been published in any form so far.

BOOK REVIEWS should include details of the book like the title, name of the author(s), publisher, year of publication, price and number of pages and also send the cover photograph of the book in JPEG/TIFF (resolution 300 dpi). Book reviews of books on e-Governance related themes, published from

year 2002 onwards, are preferable. In case of website, provide the URL. THE MANUSCRIPTS should be typed in a standard printable font (Times New Roman 12 font size, titles in bold) and submitted either through mail or post.

RELEVANT FIGURES of adequate quality (300 dpi) should be submitted in JPEG/ TIFF format.

A BRIEF BIO-DATA and passport size photograph(s) of the author(s) must be enclosed.

ALL CONTRIBUTIONS ARE SUBJECT TO APPROVAL BY THE PUBLISHER.

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

SOLUTION FOCUS

APPLICATION FOCUS

STATE FOCUS

OCTOBER

WIRELESS

MUNICIPALITIES

KERALA

NOVEMBER

E-GOVERNANCE ARCHITECTURE

COURTS

MADHYA PRADESH

DECEMBER

MOBILITY

POLICE

WEST BENGAL

Just like that!

What happens if 1 Rupee = 45 Dollars Venue: Sun Microsystems, SanFrancisco , California , US Software Engineer 1: My Visa is expected anytime. Soon I will fly to India Software Engineer 2: Where will you be working?

Software Engineer 1 : I’ll be working in a company in Sadashiv Peth there....

Software Engineer 2 : Oh! Sadashiv Peth. Great yaar. where it is...

Software Engineer 1 : It is in Pune, India

Sadashiv Peth

Software Engineer 3 : Fundoo place yaar. Nice climate Not like California. You’ll love the weather yaar.

Software Engineer 2 : Who is the client yaar?

Software Engineer 1: You know Municipal Corporation of Pune ?

Software Engineer 3 : Yeah. MCP. One of my friends is there in the Road Repair and Cleaning Division. Most challenging job yaar. People are working in the cutting edge of technology there.

Software Engineer 1 : I’ll be writing software for the accounts department of the GCU. Software Engineer 2: GCU? what it means...?

Software Engineer 1 : That is Garbage Collecting Unit.

Software Engineer 3 : : Great yaar. That’s what I like about that country. You can get a job which requires all your skill. Not like here. See I’m writing software for the space shuttle remote control. I hate this.

Software Engineer 1 : Don’t worry guys. I’ll give you my Hotmail id. You can send your resume to me and I’ll forward it to the HRD.

4}

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ov volume 3 | issue 10 | october 2007

PRESIDENT

Dr. M P Narayanan

EDITORIAL IT Implementation in Local Government: Bringing Citizens Closer

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Ravi Gupta SR. SUB EDITOR

Prachi Shirur MARKETING

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

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UNICIPALITIES are regarded as the closest ‘point of service’ for the citizens with the government as they provide basic services to citizens living in urban areas. By adopting Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), public service delivery by the urban local bodies (ULBs) could be restructured to meet the needs of their citizens effectively and efficiently. Thus introduction of Information Technology (IT) by the local authorities is important for improving the accessibility to basic service delivery to the citizens. Some of these services include payment of utility bills-water, electricity, property, issuance of issuance of birth, marriage and death certificates, facilitation of lodging complaints and their hassle free redressal, and so forth. e-Government is being adopted by municipal governments worldwide and citizens are being provided the above mentioned services online so that they can access the services without travelling long distances and without waiting in long queues. Many cities such as Singapore, Shanghai, Dubai, to name the least, have already succeeded in modernising their public administration by the use of technology.

India has embarked in this mission to reform its urban governance in a big way. The Ministry of Urban Development here has made the use of ICT a mandatory requirement at the level of urban local bodies. It is envisaged that once this project is implemented. it will stimulate good governance within the urban local bodies and improve transparency and accountability.

Since these are going to be very large implementations covering the entire municipalities across the states in India, the project is being implemented on a public-private partnership basis. Partnerships are being established with the major industry solution providers, like Oracle, SAP and so on, to improve internal efficiencies and service delivery.

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Yashi Media Works Pvt Ltd New Delhi, India 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

India has a number of successful examples of e-Governance in municipalities such as those of Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation in Maharashtra, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, eSeva in urban Andhra Pradesh, to name a few. But it is still at an early stage and has not obtained many of expected outcomes such as cost savings, downsizing, improved citizen satisfaction, increased revenue collection and so forth. In this issue of the magazine, we bring for you the perspectives from the policy makers, solution providers, experts and implementers on the arena of municipal e-Governance in India, its vision, goals and progress. Hope you will enjoy reading this special issue on municipal e-Governance.

accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided. egov is published & marketed in collaboration with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. (www.elets.in) © Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies 2007 www.csdms.in

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in ov

October 2007

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MUNICIPAL E-GOVERNANCE: THE GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE

Mission: Reforming Cities www.urbanindia.nic.in/moud

js_mud@nic.in

M. Rajamani, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development and Mission Director, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, in interview with egov magazine

What role, in your opinion, can Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play in bringing about efficient, integrated and transparent government in the cities?

ICT has a very important role in bringing about an efficient, integrated and transparent government. Realising that we have made it one of the mandatory reforms at urban local body level. Urban local bodies need to put some of the important functions in e-Governance mode, within the mission period, so that the services are taken to the door-step of the citizens. That is the major idea. And ICT can play this role very effectively. Cities have already started implementing this reform in a major way. Our review shows that cities have started hiring consultancy organisations for hand-holding them, doing business process re-engineering for some of the functions and creating facilitation centres and Internet kiosks. So, they are doing a very good job of e-Governance in municipalities and putting some of these major functions in electronic mode is very much underway. The difficult functions, like e-Procurement, going for a complete ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution, are somewhat backended in the mission period itself.

What is the role of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in chenging the governmentcitizen interface in the urban local bodies (ULBs) and in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals?

Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission is going to improve the government-citizen interface, particularly, ULB citizen interface many-fold. In fact, we, at the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), are insisting that in the ULBs, at least every ward should have, facilitation centre or the citizen service centre, so that people need not have to traverse long distances and need not queue up at ULB offices. So we are insisting that it should be very well spread and citizens should be able to easily access these services. Disclosure of service levels will generate demand for adequate quality 6}

and quantity of services which will help attain millennium development goals.

Please tell us about the plan of introducing IT applications such as Geographical Information System (GIS) in the various services provided by ULBs? Under the e-Governance reform, we do insist on the cities to use GIS as the major tool to deliver almost all services. This is coupled with our scheme on National Urban Information System (NUIS) that we rolled out in the year 2006, in which satellite imageries and aerial photography of a certain scale will help prepare GIS maps. Besides, utility mapping is also carried out on pilot scale. So a well developed GIS map in a city can cater to all the requirements of the citizens, the line departments, and all stakeholders. Thus, GIS, as it is learnt from Honolulu, can deliver almost all services. It can bring down your transaction cost significantly and you need not have to incur a lot of expenditure on establishment. So GIS is going to really revolutionise urban governance.

How in your opinion is NUIS fulfilling its role of urban planning and decision support?

The NUIS launched by this ministry, as a pilot is really now getting off the ground. Survey of India is now very much on board to prepare satellite imageries and areal photographs.

We are planning to complete this particular pilot by the April 2008, so that it will be further expanded in the 11th Five Year Plan to cover more number of cities and towns. Presently the Scheme covers only 137 cities. NUIS is very crucial for urban planning because the satellite imageries (maps of higher scale) are used for comprehensive development plans or perspective plans. Similarly, the areal photographs can be used for master planning and for zonal development plan.

What are the challenges in fulfilling the vision of urban development mission? How are they being overcome?

There are challenges. Capacity building of ULBs is a big challenge. Implementation of projects and reforms is a challenge. We are trying to overcome through various initiatives. We have started rapid training programme.

Personnel in the ULBs will be trained and their skills will be augmented. Where ever professional manpower is available for doing the job, new hands will be inducted to fill the gap.

So capacity constraint is getting addressed.Secondly, in case of inadequate internal capacity, there are ways of doing it by way of outsourcing and private-public partnership (PPP).

And e-Governance lends itself eminently to this kind of PPP option. This has been done in Jaipur and Indore cities, for instance. This way, certain disadvantages in ULBs can be overcome by bringing people from outside and getting the work done for the ULBs. www.egovonline.net

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MUNICIPAL E-GOVERNANCE: THE GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE

Towards Efficient and Effective Municipal Services http://www.mit.gov.in

“When one talks about implementing e-Governance in municipalities, one is really focussing on increasing efficiency and effectiveness of the municipal bodies in improving service delivery mechanism to the citizens and ensure involvement/interaction with the citizens and other stakeholders.

This mission mode project has been planned with a view to providing efficient and effective municipal services to the citizens,” says S P Singh, Senior Director, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and In-charge, e-Governance in Municipalities Mission Mode Project. spsingh@mit.gov.in What is the vision behind e-Governance in municipalities mission mode project? What implications does it have for bringing about good governance in the urban local bodies?

As we know, National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) has already been approved by the Government of India and is being spearheaded by the Department of IT in consultation with various other stakeholders to implement the various mission mode projects (MMPs) that have been identified in the NeGP. e-Governance in municipalities is one of the important mission mode projects, which is being driven by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD). This project basically is expected to focus on clearly identified list of services that will be covered, with clearly laid down service levels and outcomes that will have to be achieved.

The services include birth and death certificate, getting building approvals, payment of property tax or citizens grievances redressal issues etc. In a way, once this project is implemented it will stimulate good governance within the urban local bodies and improve transparency and accountability in the governance of urban local bodies (ULBs) and providing delivery of services to the citizens electronically, online. That is the basic emphasis of this mission mode project.

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Since local government is the first interface between the citizens and the government, so introduction of e-Governance in municipalities assumes a very important role when we talk about use of ICT in the government with clearly defined focus on delivery of services conveniently in the manner, language that the citizens understand and at an affordable cost.

What is the budgetary outlay for municipal e-Governance?

What is the central and state share in the total cost of the project?

The scheme for e-Governance in municipalities that has been approved by the government covers 423 municipalities with a total outlay of INR 787 crores (7,870 million), to be implemented over a period of 5 years. The cost of this mission mode project is to be shared between the central government and the state government. For 35 locations with a population of one million and above, 75 percent of the capital cost and 75 percent of the annual cost for the first two years, will be met by the central government. The balance will have to be met by the state government. However, for the rest of the municipalities, the central government will bear 90 percent of capital cost and 90 percent of the annual cost for first two years and the remaining cost will be met by the state www.egovonline.net

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COVER FEATURE

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government. The scheme also entails preparation of Detailed Project Report (DPR) by the ULBs, for which the funding expenditure will be part of the overall financial assistance from the central government. The state government can engage and be assisted by hiring technical consultancy so that they can come up with well formulated DPR for implementation of this mission mode project.

What is the implementation strategy being adopted and what are the different services that are planned to be delivered online to ensure improvement in urban governance and service delivery?

The National Mission Mode Project on Municipalities has been conceptualised and the broad guidelines for implementing this project have been framed up. These have been also sent to the various states by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD). 423 ULBs, which are basically the class I cities, have been planned to be covered initially over the period of 5 years (starting from the year 2007 till the year 2012).

Initially, this mission mode project will be implemented on a fast track, in 35 cities having million plus population, so that cities which have a large population can render most of these e-Governance services on an urgent basis.

The various services that are planned to be covered under this project are: • Registration and issue of birth and death certificates • Payment of property tax, which also include utility bills (like water supplies and other utilities) and management of utilities that come under ULBs • Grievances and suggestions • Building plan approvals • Procurement and monitoring of projects, which would include e-Procurement programme–licence and solid waste • Health management • Accounting system • Personnel information system There is a structured way of implementation that has been planned. In fact the whole scheme has been put in place with clear focus in mind that only those applications be considered for implementation which meet the basic functional requirements and having been implemented and operational with certain ULBs and considered good examples for replication.

So, as a first step what has been done is that the Ministry of Urban Development initiated a study by the Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) in association with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to look at certain good examples of e-Governance in municipalities in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh etc. to capture complete functionality requirements for various functional modules as a part of this MMP. These successful implementations and other available applications of solutions providers are being evaluated

by Standardization Testing Quality Certification (STQC), Department of IT, and benchmarked. This evaluation has been completed recently and the results are being analysed. As a result of this study, the applications of some of the qualified application providers, which meet the broad requirements, 10

will be taken up for implementation by the MoUD/ULBs .

This methodology is the first of its kind in the country adopted under NeGP for a mission mode project. This will help and catalyse, rather than re-inventing the wheel, to get into the implementation quickly.

What is the current status of the implementation of this mission mode project.

This MMP which is largely citizens focused needs to be implemented on priority. MoUD being the line Ministry for this MMP is taking all necessary steps in this direction. The best implementations and the duly qualified solutions now need to be taken up for faster implementation and roll-out across the ULBs/ States.

Please tell us some of the capacity building programmes planned for the functionaries at the ULB? Municipalities, being the 3rd tier of the government, and having total autonomy and independence, I think here a whole lot of sensitisation about what role the ICT can play in the ULBs, needs to be highlighted and has to be taken up with the elected representatives. Building the capacities within the elected representatives, therefore, needs immediate attention.

I think, that is where the higher level call will have to be taken to create awareness.

But down below, at the ULBs level, there has to be honing of the skill sets of the employees, which will be a very important factor, in implementing this initiative not only faster but effectively and successfully.

The success of this project lies in the change management that has to be brought about within the ULBs. As part of this mission mode project a lot of attention is being paid to fulfill the capacity building requirement and 2.5 percent of the total project cost has been earmarked for training and capacity building for the project and elected representatives.

What role has been envisaged for public-privatepartnership under this mission mode project?

As these will be very large implementations covering the whole municipalities, and also service delivery centres, which will be spread all over to provide the services to the citizens, I think, this is a project which can really be implemented on a public-private partnership basis. In fact, that is also the emphasis of the scheme, which clearly outlines that the States/ ULBs should examine possible PPP options and work out a cost effective implementation which will ensure financial sustainability of this project.

What are the plans of introducing applications, such Geographical Information System (GIS) and (Monitoring Information System) MIS for various services provided

by ULBs? GIS and MIS are very important components of this programme. If you look at the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Programme of the MoUD, the use of GIS and MIS has been put as one of the mandatory reforms of the overall urban renewal programme. Without GIS being integrated in the project, you cannot have a very effective decision support system. www.egovonline.net

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MUNICIPAL e-GOVERNANCE: STATE PERSPECTIVE

devadarsanam@ hotmail.com

Services at Click of Mouse prasad_mk@ hotmail.com

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Interview with Prof. M K Prasad, Executive Chaiman and Director, Information Kerala Mission (IKM) and M Sivasankar, Executive Mission Director, IKM What is the status of municipal e-Governance in Kerala?

How important, in your opinion, is the e-Governance at the urban local bodies (ULBs)?

A number of services to the people are provided from the local governments, such as birth, death and marriage registration and waster disposal. In this regard, Kerala has the unique distinction of having all its urban local bodies with computerised registration of births, deaths and marriages from 2005 onwards. In the context of Kerala, the local governments have also a vital role in the plan preparation and implementation. The revenue sources of the urban local governments are not fully tapped and realised, mainly due to the difficulties in the manual system. With very limited increase in manpower when compared to the growth of urban local bodies, the systems are near breaking point or already collapsed. In this aspect, computerisation can play a crucial role, which will in turn help in mobilising maximum resources for the development.

What are the different services that are being e-Delivered in the ULBs in Kerala? How is this impacting the service delivery in terms of speedy and improved G2C transactions?

The Information Kerala Mission (IKM) has currently implemented three service delivery oriented applications in all 58 urban local governments: (i) Sevana for births, deaths and marriages, (ii) Sevana Pensions for handling social welfare pensions and doles, and (iii) Saankhya for easy collection of receipts in the local government in a user friendly Janasaevanakendram.

The Hospital Kiosk programme for electronic registration of births and deaths directly from hospitals, and for issue of certificates by local governments through hospitals within 24 hours of registration, has been implemented in 17 urban local governments (184 hospitals) having considerable registration of births and deaths. The hospitals are linked to the urban local governments over a dial-up network. All these applications have greatly improved the service delivery.

What is the budgetary outlay for e-Governance programme for municipalities? ov

October 2007

www.kerala.gov.in The e-Governance implementations at local bodies are being done in a phased manner and the budgetary outlay in different phases are varying, depending on the availability of funds with the local body and the size of the local body. The expenditure made in municipalities for completing the I and II phases varies from INR 350 – 500 million over a period of 2 years. For municipal corporations, it varies from INR 1000 to 2000 million.

What are some of the capacity building issues that are coming up at the municipal level? How are these being tackled?

IKM is imparting training on technical skills like computer fundamentals, application training on IKM software packages and the Commercial off-the-shore (COTS) software. The challenges are the training on business process reengineering, change management, behavioural aspects in the new context of e-Governance and its public interface.

What are the plans for improving the G2G services at municipality level in bringing more transparency and accountability in municipal operations?

IKM had already deployed applications for G2G services in employees provident fund for municipalities / Panchayats employees of Kerala, the decentralised plan monitoring for government agencies like Kerala State Planning Board, District Planning Office and local bodies.

A centralised database for urban local body staff is under preparation which could be used for state level administrative purpose.

What is the role of public-private-partnership (PPP) in implementing e-Governance at the ULBs? The programme is implemented by the state government agency Information Kerala Mission. Software development, support and training are directly provided by the mission group. The services of the Kudumbashree (women’s self help groups) IT units are used for data entry services. Private participation is limited to hardware supply and maintenance, and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software licenses.

Services of private firms are also being availed for supply of hardware and its maintenance.

What are some of your future plans in providing ‘single window’ services at the ULBs? Already the single window concept of service delivery is implemented through the JanasevanaKendram. More services needs to be added to this facility. There are also plans to extend it to more zonal/ circle offices in Corporations, and also to link to Community Service Centres.

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MUNICIPAL e-GOVERNANCE: THE GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE

Mumbai to a Global City An e-Government Perspective of the Journey!!!

http://portal.mcgm.gov.in/

It is not easy to create and govern a First World global city in a Third World environment. Nor is it impossible.

Malaysia has managed to do that with Kuala Lumpur. China has Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. South Africa has Johannesburg and Cape Town. The problems faced in Mumbai are not new. They have been solved by dozens of cities; many in the third world.

Shree Kant Singh

Developments on all quarters seem to be the mantra of the day. There is an urgent demand for a major transition that would facilitate citizen services to be more transparent, simplified, efficient and accountable. Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is the largest municipal corporation in India and it is spread across 24 ward offices and 550 locations. For a city as large as Mumbai, development is not an over-night task.

The sheer size and rapid but disorderly growth of Mumbai presents a challenge in inducing sound institutions for urban governance. With the increase in population, comes the increase in demands. However progressive changes are being effectively implemented to enable this transition by the state government under the leadership of the Hon’ble Chief Minister with active involvement of agencies like MCGM, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Limited (MSRDC) etc.

This transition also involves enormous infrastructure such as complete beautification of the city; building bridges and over-bridges; improving transport through metro rail and new roads. Plans and strategies that piled up for decades have started moving at a great pace.

CHALLENGES IN MAKING GLOBAL CITY

A Mumbai citizen is one of the most “global citizens” compared to different metropolis in India. Even in general, 12 }

the citizens are becoming more and more demanding with each passing day, be it for their civic amenities or government services. Leaders cutting across the political parties want our city to compete with any other global city.

There are several challenges in achieving this goal related to infrastructure which is well acknowledged by all the stake holders. Time has become the major constraint now. With technology, this time can be efficiently saved and things can now be done much faster than before. Satisfying demands is another Herculean task because of interference and objections from all quarters. What the citizens need is a trend where development is positive in spite of the change in the existing political scenario.

Is it very optimistic to expect such a thing in a democratic country like ours? What is necessary is development with unprecedented support from all quarters, be it the people, government or the numerous investors who pave the way for the same.

GLOBAL AND NATIONAL EFFORTS

Extensive efforts are being made by the government and the local body to cater to the needs of the citizens.

Creative usage of technologies in an innovative manner is helping the civic body develop a secure and collaborative platform for effective management and exchange of information within the civic service. Many projects are being implemented and effectively executed

by the Government of Maharashtra to help Mumbai cope up with the influx of migrants. National level initiatives like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission brings together the State Governments enabling the urban local bodies to catalyse investment flows in the urban infrastructure sector. The aim of this mission is to encourage reforms and fast track planned development of identified cities. Focus is on efficiency in urban infrastructure and service delivery mechanisms, community participation, and accountability of Urban Local Bodies and other such agencies towards citizens.

It is not easy to create and govern a First World global city in a Third World environment. Nor is it impossible.

Malaysia has managed to do that with Kuala Lumpur. China has Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. South Africa has Johannesburg and Cape Town. The problems faced in Mumbai are not new.

They have been solved by dozens of cities; many in the third world. We have the man power, the technology and the need to do the same. Tokyo follows a pattern almost similar to Mumbai wherein all the wards are united into one when it comes to processing.

Office automation techniques, financial adjustments, tax management are all processed perfectly and is available to the citizen at the click of a finger.

Following on the same notes, Mumbai is now readying to serve the citizen 24/7 through its Citizen’s Facilitation Centres (CFC’s) and web access for several civic services. www.egovonline.net

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IMPROVING GOVERNANCE- NEED OF THE HOUR

Shorter turn around time and reduced touch points for citizens seems to be the need of the day. Elimination of redundant activities and lower cost of providing services will go a long way in improving the cities, functioning. Joint operation of e-Government provides more convenience to both residents and businesses while improving administrative operations and reducing cost at the same time. What is new is the strengthened focus and emphasis on transcending organisational structures, changing rules and procedures, to reorganise and integrate the government around customers’ and citizens’ needs and intentions.

It is well appreciated that giving citizens a better quality of life entails quality infrastructure as mentioned above like roads, bridges, sewers etc. But at the same time providing the citizens hassle free interface for availing services from goverment also needs high focus. It can be concurrently achieved by improving the “governance” with the help administrative reforms and Information and Communication Technology.

SUCCESS STORIES- SINGAPORE AND SHANGHAI

Cities like Singapore and Shanghai have successfully leveraged technology to gain a competitive edge over competitors in the global economy. In all these cities many government services can be obtained on the click of a finger. Any related data that a citizen might require is provided on the websites enabling faster, effortless access. These cities have governments that streamline common functions and integrate backend processes such as Human Resource and Finance to improve business operations. Integrated clinic management system,

health care Call-for Collaboration, EdVantage, enhanced eLearning experience are some unique programmes launched by the Singapore Government to facilitate excellent progress.

MCGM- TOWARDS GLOBAL CITY

The MCGM too listens to citizens needs and demands 24/7 and is readying to cater to them online at the click of a finger.

MCGM formed a Project Management Task Force (PMTF) two years back for steering the e-Government initiatives and has been extensively working towards leveraging technology to giving better quality of life to the citizens. Comprehensive initiatives in the areas like process reforms, consolidation of earlier piece meal efforts, employee development, citywide computer network, updating/cleansing history records and implementing multiple software solutions has been undertaken.

For the first time even budget details, deadlines and proposal details are being made available to one and all on MCGM portal. Health services, budgetary details, bill payments, tax management pertaining to MCGM are planned to be made available 24/7 to the citizens. Better city infrastructure, along with the efforts mentioned above to harness technology will go a long way in making Mumbai into a city of global standard.

Though a difficult task, it is definitely not impossible. Right from the good infrastructure to flawless governance, the choice is ours to make it happen.

Shree Kant Singh, Additional Municipal Commissioner (W.Subs.), Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai

e-GOVERNANCE FOR INDIA’S COMMERCIAL CAPITAL MUMBAI Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the largest municipal corporation in India, has successfully launched its Citizen Portal dedicated to the citizens of Mumbai. A first of its kind project in the country, it is all set to transform the way the City of Mumbai functions, ensuring “Freedom from Queues” though e-Governance. The Citizen’s Service portal enabled by solutions, consulting and services by a consortium of SAP AG (provider of enterprise software applications), Siemens Information Systems Ltd.(Solution Design and Implementation partner) and ABM (domain expert and post implementation support partner) will operate efficiently and transparently delivering benefits directly from government-to-citizens and government-to-business interactions.

Designed to be highly responsive and interactive it will address the needs of the citizens, administrators, employees and corporates. Online availability of services through interactive forms, secured payment

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gateway for online payments, online registration of complaints and status monitoring, property tax, water billing, octroi and e-Tendering processes will be enabled, delivering citizen empowerment like never before. Citizens of Mumbai would be able to see a significant reduction in delivery time for the 215 new services by as much as 25-50%. Time bound and speedy service, blending of ICT and administrative reforms, enabling single window service across multiple departments, avoiding repetitive data gathering from citizens and importantly anytime anywhere service.

The entire e-Governance initiative was steered by MCGM through the Project Management Task Force (PMTF) formed two years back under the chairmanship of Shree Kant Singh, IAS, Additional Municipal Commissioner, MCGM. By appropriate usage of Information Technology through “Portal” and “Walk-in CFCs” MCGM shows the way forward on how e-Governance can help municipal corporations in other part of India to reach the entire city population by bridging the digital divide.

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MUNICIPAL e-GOVERNANCE: THE GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE

Millennium Corporation and Council An e-Administration Project This article looks at the e-Administration application suite developed for local urban development authorities by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Pune, India. The applications are citizen centric and also provide administrative support to corporations and councils within Maharashtra State and in other states as well. The product has received ISO 9126 Certification. The applications are classified under three key areas: citizen centric, revenue earning and office automation. These e-Administration computer applications have helped to provide fast track services to corporations and councils.

D.P. Bobde, S.D. Parkhi, U.V. Deo BACKGROUND

e-Administration is a part of good governance in which public participates in requesting for service, availing it and also monitoring the overall process for quality, speed etc. It makes the system transparent to citizens because he is involved in various steps of administration.

Government of India has embarked upon National eGovernance Action Plan (http://india.gov.in/govt/national_ egov_plan.php), which lays the foundation for long-term growth of e-Governance within the country. It is expected to establish core infrastructure to implement a number of mission mode projects at the center, state and integrated service levels to create a citizen-centric and business-centric environment for governance. The mission mode projects include municipalities or urban development authorities under the Ministry of Urban Development along with other projects. Keeping in view the National e-Governance plan, the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Pune launched “Millennium Corporation and Council (MCC)” – an eAdministration Project during 2003. First version of the product was rolled out in 2004.

Many corporations and councils within Maharashtra State and outside are using the product. There are nine applications categorised into MCC – e-Governance and MCC – e-Office. A brief description of each application is given below.

MCC—e-GOVERNANCE APPLICATIONS

1.Birth and Death Registration: The software accepts, verifies and records birth and death registration request in standard formats. It generates birth certificates and death certificates as per rules. As a part of MIS, software generates yearly / monthly reports from available data. The reports are 14 }

in standard government forms [Govt. of Maharashtra general regulations issued on 27/April/2000] and formats specified by the user.

2. Single Window System: Every corporation / council’s citizen charter has approximately 40 types of certificates / permissions which are issued by the respective departments of urban development authority. Applications submitted by a citizen for obtaining certificate or permission is recorded in the single window system (SWS) and identification number is assigned to it (token number). Software keeps track of the application through this token number. Movement of application from department to department, current status of application, total applications, pending applications and other such types of information can be generated through the system. The objective of the system is to keep track of the application and its status, any time.

3. Property Billing: Tax is collected from properties that lie in the jurisdiction of urban development authority (UDA).

It is the major source of income for any corporation / council. In the manual system, substantial time is required to calculate property tax and generate demand notices, which adds to delay in collection of taxes. Monitoring location / ward wise collection of property taxes is also very difficult.

It is also difficult to check whether property tax collection target for the year is achieved or not. The software overcomes such problems and encompasses important activities like maintenance of property records, computation of property taxes, generation of property bills, generation of demand notices, yearly demand register, etc.

4. Water Billing: Collection of water tax contributes to the revenue of Corporation as well. This collection is similar to that of property tax. Standing Committee decides the rate for water consumption. Normally the rates are revised every year.

The connections are varying in size (0.5 inches to 8 inches) and type (resident, commercial, government etc.). Rate of tax www.egovonline.net

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depends on the type of connection (not on size). Most of the connections have meters. Meter reader takes reading; if meter is not working then bill is charged on average consumption.

The software prepares water bills cum receipt, payment received, complaints recorded, meter reader charts, etc.

Queries on collection figures are built-in. The software also caters to flat rate billing.

5. Complaint Monitoring System (CMS): CMS helps citizens to lodge a complaint at single counter; there is no need for citizens to go from desk to desk. He can also get feedback about his complaint on the same counter. CMS supports Interactive Voice Response (IVR), e-mail, phone calls or even hand written application. CMS generates token number for each complaint and forwards it to the respective department. It also monitors such complaints. Once action is taken, it is recorded in the database. CMS maintains registers and generates different statistical reports periodically like number of complaints received, action taken, pending complaints, etc. One can query status of token number using IVR technology on toll free telephone number made available by the municipality.

PLATFORM - CHOICES AND CHALLENGES

The software was required to have local language user interface so that it could cater to larger user population. To enable search operation it was necessary that the data is stored in code and not font. We also observed that users had several clients with operating system ranging from windows’95 to windows’98. For economic reasons it was desirable to use the existing hardware for MCC project. Further we did not want the users to spend money on system software like SQL, crystal reports, local language tool etc.

The Government of Maharashtra had standardised on ISCII (Indian Script Code for Information Interchange) code and ISFOC (Intelligence Based Script Font Code) script manager (ISM) for local language. Microsoft SQL7.0 had Microsoft Data Base Engine (MSDE) which could be bundled with application. The platform choice thus narrowed down to client-server or standalone windows architecture with MSDE and Visual Basic as front end. The application suite was made available in a single click set-up format. The user required windows server and/or clients. It was possible to distribute applications even on a single client within a department.

MCC e-OFFICE APPLICATIONS

1. Establishment: This software maintains details of each employee of an urban local body. It stores personal details like family members, leave, allowances, loans, etc. Generally such details are maintained manually in the service book.

Numerous MIS reports are generated to help the office staff.

The software is integrated with other applications under MCC – e-Office. This avoids a lot of duplication of work and saves time.

2. Payroll: Payroll preparation is generally looked after by the accounts section. Employee’s personal information such as, basic pay, dearness allowance, house rent allowance, city compensatory allowance, general provident fund (GPF), various advances received, etc., are inputs for the system.

Output covers monthly pay slip, acquaintance roll, earning and deduction statement, income tax forecasting, various schedules like GPF schedule, House Building Allowance schedule, etc.

3. General Provident Fund (GPF): GPF System’s main target is to accelerate and automate the process of calculation and maintenance of employee’s GPF account. The system keeps track of opening balance, monthly contribution, issue of advance, and calculation of interest on balance, closing balance, loan balances, etc. for each employee. The application also generates provident fund ledger (Form 98) and Broad Sheet (Form 99), which are statutory requirements.

4. Work Estimation: The work estimation is used to estimate the cost of a piece of work. It contains many standard items referred as district schedule of rates (DSR) items. Work Estimation is prepared before carrying out any work.

The software takes care of lead and lift charges wherever applicable. Realistic total cost of work can be computed by applying different percentages on estimated cost against establishment charge, labour charge, work charge, water charge etc. ov

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PATH TO QUALITY

e-Administration product having both MCC – e-Goveranance and MCC – e-Office have been quality certified by “Standardisation, Testing and Quality Certification” (STQC) Directorate under Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India, the starting point for any evaluation is the International Standard ISO 9126.

The primary step is definition of the quality characteristics to be used in the evaluation of software products. The standard describes a hierarchy of attributes, sub-attributes and their metrics whereby a software product can be evaluated. The first level consists of defining a set of attributes for a software product. These are described below.

QUALITY ATTRIBUTES

Functionality: A set of attributes, that bears on the existence of a set of functions and their specified properties. The functions are those that satisfy stated or implied needs. The sub-characteristics of functionality are suitability, accuracy, interoperability, security and functional compliance.

Reliability: A set of attributes that bear on the capability of software to maintain its level of performance under stated conditions for a stated period of time.

Usability: A set of attributes that bear on the effort needed for use, and on the individual assessment of such use, by a stated or implied set of users. The sub-characteristics of usability are understandability, learning ability, easy operation, attractiveness and usability compliance Efficiency: A set of attributes that bear on the relationship between the level of performance of the software and the amount of resources used under stated conditions.

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COVER FEATURE

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Maintainability: A set of attributes that bear on the effort needed to make specified modifications.

Portability: A set of attributes that bear on the ability of software to be transferred from one environment to another. e-Administration Model with Characteristics and Subcharacteristics Software Quality Characteristics SO 9126-1

proper and in time tracing of defaulters. Accurate calculations and collection from industrial meters could achieve this.

COMPLAINT MONITORING OR PUBLIC GRIEVANCES

CMS has built-in Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR). With this, it is observed that, most of the complaints could be disposed off expeditiously. Department wise break-up of the complaints is summarised in table below.

LATEST SCENARIO OF MILLENNIUM CORPORATION AND COUNCILS, AT NIC, PUNE

IMPACT ANALYSIS

The impact of software on administration at one council was studied over the period January 2005 till December2005.

Data collected over a year after implementation of software is quoted below for few applications.

BIRTH & DEATH REGISTRATION

In typical municipality 22,490 births were registered. During one-year period, 17813 birth certificates and 5077 death certificates were issued on the spot. This was possible due to the availability of vast data at the finger tips of the concern staff. Total number of records in database is over 2,00,000.

On-Line data is available from year 1989.

Department Assessment Water Department License Electric Land Measure Commercial NOC Total

Applications Received

Applications catered to

1 2993 6 1539 227 141 4907

1 2993 6 1539 227 141 4907

SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM / CITIZEN FACILITATION CENTER

Total applications received were 4907. Department wise bifurcation and action taken are as follows.

In a typical municipal corporation total 1,27,700 bills were distributed. Other processes like collection of property taxes, monitoring the collection and analysis tax collection were completed in a time targeted manner due to automation.

WATER TAX

In one of the corporation due to computerisation the revenue in water tax increased by 20%. This was possible due to 16

In year 2006, an ambitious project “e-Municipality on Open Source (e-Municipality)� was launched by NIC. The domain knowledge and field experience of previous years had equipped the team very well to embark on the new venture. An enterprise approach to MIS for municipality providing common frame of reference for collaboration and communication across departments within municipalities is taken into the project. Municipality Enterprise Architecture Framework (MEAF) is developed as part of the project.

MEAF is based on three distinct but related concepts. First MEAF focuses on the development and sustained operation of business critical systems. Second it evolves development of an information infrastructure to support data sharing and cross-departmental multi purpose operations. Third it helps in upkeep of governance structure through which user needs can be met in coordinated manner. MEAF extends vertically to other government departments and horizontally to other municipalities. The goal of Municipality Enterprise Architecture Framework is to implement interoperable technologies, standards and methods so that data can be used more effectively and efficiently. e-Municipality is now browser based three-tier open source software. The product is Unicode compliant. The server OS can have Red Hat Linux bundled with PostGreSql Data Base. Use of hibernet enables e-Municipality to get into any Relational Data Base Management Software (RDBMS).

Department Electrical Health Gen. Administration License Town Planning Building Permission Cleaning Public Works Legal Tax Education Water Supply Miscellaneous Total

Complaints Received

Complaints catered to

45 3 9 4 115 31 313 129 152 2 4 46 23 867

19 1 9 3 89 30 158 110 147 2 3 44 21 636

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Browsers like Internet Explorer or Mozilla can be used to access e-Municipality.

FUTURE PATH

MCC product is currently used in about 20 Corporations and Councils in Maharashtra. Work for customisation of the product for Corporations at Jammu, Srinagar, Silvassa and Meghalaya is in progress. There are a few thousand corporations and councils in the country. Therefore, the product has tremendous scope for deployment across the country. Efforts are being made to make it available at a reasonable cost.

CONCLUSION

Notwithstanding the initial success we sincerely feel that the MCC project has a long way to go. Some of our future plans for the project are summarised below.

Local language support made the user very comfortable during kick-off period. The code used was Indian Standard code of Information Interchange (ISCII). Now that, Unicode is available for language support, the product is being made Unicode compliant.

The open source platform like PostGreSQL or MySQL together with Java/PHP as front end is proposed to be the future development platform. Considering the fact that Internet is penetrating fast in rural areas and broadband access is easily available at a reasonable cost, the application

is planned to be made browser based to run on wide area network (WAN) with a few powerful servers located at strategic locations. This will not only reduce the cost but will also improve the maintainability of hardware and software.

Inter-departmental information exchange is yet another area for the growth of MCC product. Departments like land reforms / land records, land registration, co-operation need information about properties that fall under the jurisdiction of municipality. Further there is ample scope to integrate several GIS based applications with MCC product.

Security features are very important for citizen centric and revenue earnings applications. In future we propose to make the MCC suit BS7799 compliant.

Authors acknowledge with gratitude their thanks to the staff of STQC, Banglore who evaluated the MCC suit with keen interest. Thanks are also due to all members of the development team at NIC Pune who worked relentlessly on the project.

D. P. Bobde (bobde.dp@nic.in) is the Deputy Director General at the National Informatics Centre, Pune. He coordinates SW development projects for various departments of government of India and provides informatics support to the government of Maharashtra.

S. D. Parkhi, (parkhi.sd@nic.in) is working with National Informatics Centre since April 1990. Presently he is working as the Senior Technical Director, Pune.

U. V. Deo (usha.deo@nic.in) is the Senior Technical Director, at National Informatics Center, Pune, since 1988 - till date. She is involved as the total consultant in computerisation of various state government, central government and public sector undertakings.

GREATER HYDERABAD MUNICIPAL CORPORATION DEPLOYS ORACLE The government of Andhra Pradesh initiative of transparency, quick-turn-around time for citizen services and city transformation towards 21st century has led the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) to adopt Oracle technology solutions. The GHMC has adopted the new system to meet the growing demands of the city and to bring the corporation to a enterprising platform.

Oracle has deployed Oracle Grid Computing including Database Enterprise Edition, Real Application Clusters and Fusion Middleware as the foundation platform for core application. With the deployment of Oracle solution, GHMC is able to achieve the consolidation of application, data store etc. Oracle has provided a strong technological and professionally trained team to GHMC to deal with the challenges of infrastructural inefficiencies.

JOINT RESEARCH ON IMPLEMENTATION OF BEST PRACTICES IN GOVERNANCE The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances in Eradication.” Explaining the project, chairperson of the Centre for the the Union Personnel, Public Grievances (DARPG) and Pensions Ministry Study of Law and Governance, JNU, Amita Singh said, “The project has chosen Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to conduct a research will dissect the anatomy of poverty eradication projects in India. on implementation of the best practices in governance in India. The Every finding of the research undertaken here will be disseminated to project aims at bridging the gap between academic research and its generate a dialogue among academic institutions, practitioners, nonimplementation. government organisations and stakeholders across the world. It is also a The Centre for the Study of Law and Governance in partnership strategy to strengthen the research on implementation theory which with the University Science and Instrumentation Centre for Technical has been one of the most obstinate missing link in governance Assistance and the Centre for South Central, Southeast Asian and and to promote action-based research in transforming the lives Southwest Pacific Studies at the School of International Studies will of ordinary citizens. The project will combine academic research work on this two-year project titled “Capacity Building for Poverty and e-Governance.”

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MUNICIPAL e-GOVERNANCE: DEVELOPMENT SECTOR PERSPECTIVE

Building Sound Local e-Government www.usaid.gov

“Municipalities have significant citizen interactions as they provide a large number of basic civic services to millions of citizens living in urban areas. Hence, introduction of e-Governance, on a massive scale, in municipalities would lead to better services and ‘good governance,” says Nabroon Bhattacharjee, Urban Team Leader and Program Manager, Office of Economic Growth, USAID, in an interview with egov magazine. nbhattacharjee@usaid.gov What is the goal and vision of Indian government’s initiative on urban e-Governance? What has been the role of USAID in designing the Mission Mode project on urban governance?

The Mission Mode Project for e-Governance in Municipalities is one of the State Mission Mode projects under NeGP. Municipalities have significant citizen interactions as they provide a large number of basic civic services to millions of citizens living in urban areas. Hence, introduction of eGovernance, on a massive scale, in municipalities would lead to better services and ‘good governance’. It is also envisaged that this project would also provide a major fillip to the urban reform programme that has been initiated by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Government of India.

‘The vision for the National Mission Mode Project for e-Governance in Municipalities (NMMP) is to leverage the ICT opportunities for sustained improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of municipal service to citizens.’

The key objectives of e-Governance initiative include the following: • Provide single window services to citizens on any time, anywhere basis; • Increase the efficiency and productivity of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs); • Develop Single and integrated view of ULB information system across all ULBs in the state; • Provide timely and reliable management information relating to municipal administration for effective decision making; and • Adopt a standards-based approach to enable integration with other related applications.

It was decided that in order to comprehensively 18 }

conceptualise, design and implement the NMMP, an assessment of various initiatives already on the ground should be carried out so as to draw upon lessons from the various initiatives and plan to systematically integrate and build upon the various components and lessons from these initiatives. USAID-FIRE project supported MoUD in carrying out the assessment in four states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra) and seven ULBs (Hyderabad, Bangalore, Trichy, Coimbatore, Vizag, Kalyan and Mumbai).

The assessment highlighted that, preparing the ULBS for fundamental change, re-engineering core business processes, creating integrated databases and the capacity to manage information are prerequisite for taking up e-Governance as a national level initiative.

Further, in order to comprehensively conceptualise, design and implement the NMMP, USAID supported in the design of the NMMP The design covered four major aspects: Programme Design: Defines institutional / organisational and implementation arrangements including the financial arrangements.

Functionality of e-Governance Modules: Defines the generic functionality of e-Governance modules which may be customised at state level depending on the local needs and suggesting/redesigning process improvements.

Design e-Governance Architecture: Defines broad eGovernance architecture for effective implementation in terms of application software, infrastructure software, hardware, infrastructure components, etc. Also discusses Standards, Guidelines and Recommendations for data/database, security, privacy, software architecture, technology infrastructure, disaster recovery, local language, integration technologies, etc. www.egovonline.net

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Program Implementation and Management: address key components such as organisational aspects, tools for implementation and support arrangements for implementation and sustainability.

The broad recommendation of the design was: • Single application for state-wide implementation for efficient and fast integration between the application modules • Web enabled application for delivery of the services • Application should support n-tier architecture • Integration with the Government of India initiatives such a state wide area network, Common Service Centre, National Urban Information System, etc.

• Development of a single and integrated view of ULB information across all ULBs within the states Based on the design USAID FIRE project helped in formulating the scheme on e-Governance in municipalities.

USAID FIRE project also helped during the approval process of the scheme, Planning Commission and Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. USAID also assisted in preparing draft guidelines for the scheme, Empanelment of Software Vendors and preparation of draft RFP for selection of National Level Consultant.

Could you please tell us about any success story in terms of improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery of urban local bodies both from the point of view of government and citizens?

During the last few years in India there have been major initiatives among different state governments and urban local bodies towards ushering in Information Technology and its tools in the functioning of Government. There are striking examples of e-Governance initiatives in the delivery of basic services including health and education; social services including pension, registration of licenses and certificates; rural services, like the accessing of land records; services in the agricultural sector that include weather forecast and information.

Several State Governments and urban local bodies have taken various innovative steps to promote e-Governance and have drawn up a roadmap for IT implementation and delivery of services to the citizens on-line. The applications that have been implemented are targeted towards providing services with emphasis on use of local language. The emphasis has been on providing better services to citizens and in improving the internal productivity.

The major areas covered by e-Governance initiatives are: • Public grievances: Facility to lodge their complaints and grievances through the web site. The unique point here is that the citizens have full access to the entire process of the disposal of the complaints.

• Social Services: Provides information regarding birth and death certificates that citizens can access this information easily and are also able to get these certificates online.

• Utility payments: Access to information pertaining to

their property assessment, and view the calculations that have gone into it; facility of submitting the building plan applications and water tap applications.

Some of the successful projects are e-Seva in Andhra Pradesh, Setu in Maharashtra, Bhoomi in Karnataka , Citizen Service Centers in Vizag and Kalyan etc.

What are the key challenges in achieving the set goal?

How are these being planned to overcome?

Evolution of e-Governance is a highly complex process requiring provision of hardware, networking, and software and re-engineering of the procedures for better decisionmaking. Re-engineering of the existing government processes and procedures is essential to bring about transparency in working, reducing bureaucratic controls, increasing efficiency and productivity, reducing cost of service delivery etc. Successful implementation would also depend upon organisational leadership and capacity (including the capacity to lead and manage change and to re-engineer major business processes). Therefore, preparing the organisation for fundamental change, re-engineering core business processes, creating integrated databases and the capacity to manage information are pre-requisite for scaling up e-Governance as a national level initiative.

What are some of your future initiatives planned in leveraging ICT for improvement in delivery of municipal services to citizens?

ULBs will implement their e-Governance initiatives in waves.

Wave 1 (Raise Visibility); This wave of services aims to quickly raise the visibility and image of municipalities by establishing a professional and effective web presence. Wave 2 (Build Critical Transactional Services); This wave seeks to establish the core transactional services required to support the key customer segments and focuses on the services essential for effective customer relationship management and common transactional services. Wave 3 (Sustain Value); This wave aims to sustain the value delivered to municipalities/ULBs and their customers through implementation of additional critical transactional services. Services implemented as part of this wave generally possess low customer visibility.

For ensuring timely execution of the project 2.5% of the total project cost has been earmarked for providing training and capacity building of personnel responsible for the project and elected representatives This will be the first step towards implementing urban e-Governance.

The implementation under NMMP is to be completed within a period of five years coupled with the need to cover as much population as possible and as early as possible. In the First Phase (Year 1) 35 municipalities have been included.

The 35 municipalities have been selected as they have more than 1 million populations and cover a large proportion (approximately 20%) of India’s urban population.

The interviewee acknowledges the inputs provided by Hitesh Vaidya, formerly with USAID-Fire Project, USAID.

Look out for eINDIA2008 at www.eINDIA.net.in ov

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MUNICIPAL e-GOVERNANCE: PRIVATE SECTOR PERSPECTIVE

Municipal e-Governance Market Opening up in India http://www.oracle.com/ What is Oracle’s vision and goal of e-Governance in the municipalities? How important is IT in improving the service delivery at the municipal level?

The majority of citizens’ interaction with the government happens with the local authorities, i.e., at the municipal level.

The challenges faced by municipal authorities to provide reliable access to services are mainly due to the non-integrated nature of manual procedures of information management followed by these bodies. Thus, application of IT is critical for municipal authorities to improve service delivery to their constituents.

Oracle’s vision of e-Governance in municipalities encompasses deployment of IT to improve internal efficiencies and to improve service delivery.

Deployment of Oracle’s proven packaged solutions for improving internal efficiencies will lead to better access to information, better revenue collection, enhanced transparency and accountability and reduced operational overheads. These lead to a more efficient utilisation of taxpayer’s money.

Also, deployment of Oracle’s packaged solutions and partner solutions for improved service delivery will lead to a quicker, cheaper and more transparent access to municipal services for citizens and businesses. This leads to a higher level of satisfaction amongst all the stakeholders.

replies@oracle-mail.com “Today governments-central, state and localacross the country are aware and convinced of the benefits of e-Governance. They are finding ways and means to procure and deploy systems to enable e-Governance. The funding is being done by internal accruals and funding agencies. The IT industry is playing its due role in increasing awareness and deploying top of the line systems in India”, says A.M. Sheshagiri, Director, Government, Education and Health, Oracle India, in an exclusive interview with egov magazine

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Please tell us about some of your solutions for municipal e-Governance?

Oracle’s solutions for e-Governance leverages a library of documented best practice processes and business models. In the municipal area these solutions can be classified into: 1. Solutions for improving internal efficiencies: Some examples of these are • Oracle Public Sector Financials to enable movement from a cash based accounting system to a double entry accrual based system including proven process for budgeting and reconciliation and monitoring of income and expenditure.

• Oracle Procurement Solutions to enable effective purchasing and payment cycles.

• Oracle Tax Management solutions to enable more transparent revenue collection.

• Oracle Human Resource system to enable employee empowerment and increased levels of satisfaction in career management.

• Oracle Asset Management Solution to enable more efficient usage of the internal assets and inventory www.egovonline.net

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of a municipal authority.

Oracle Project Management to monitor municipal projects from budget to execution.

2. Solutions for improving service delivery: Some examples of these are: Oracle e-Government Solutions for Social Services • to enable improved transactional services with citizens and businesses (services for birth/death certificates, issuance of trade licenses, etc).

Oracle e-Government Contact Centre Solution to • enable real time multichannel (ie walk-in, telephone call center, web etc) access to constituents.

Oracle e-Government Solutions for Education to • ensure more efficient student grant management and public school services (eg free school meals programme, etc) Oracle e-Government Solutions for Environment • to enable better road maintenance, environmental health management, etc.

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What are the applications in municipalities where Oracle’s IT solutions are being deployed in India and beyond?

In India, Oracle’s solutions are being used at Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad, Kolkata Municipal Corporation and at urban local bodies in the state of Uttarakhand.

Oracle partner solutions are deployed at a majority of the municipal corporations using IT, including Kalyan Dombivli, Ahmedabad, urban and rural e-Seva in Andhra Pradesh etc.

Outside India, our solutions are being used in almost every country. Some examples are the city of New York, Leeds City Council, Catalana in Spain, London Boroughs, Government of Hong Kong, etc.

Having deployed your solutions in the Jharkhand municipality, Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation in Mumbai, e-Seva in Andhra Pradesh, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Gujarat, what are some of its benefits to the municipalities and the citizens at large?

The key benefits to citizens can be classified into: • Improved informational services.

• Directories of all services are available with easier access to all citizens.

• Information on procedures are easier to obtain (e.g., information on obtaining trade licenses, obtaining building plans, etc.)

• Information on property tax paid and payment dues.

• Grievance Redressal system helps citizens lodge and track complaints.

• Improved transactional services.

• Automation of services that require processing at the back end has made the system more responsive and transparent.

• •

Issue of birth / death certificates and trade licenses made more efficient.

Improved collection of property tax and advertisement tax.

Automation of complex transactional services leading to greater satisfaction of citizens. Eg: Building plan approval system.

What is the global trend with regard to municipal e-Governance? How is government and industry in India moving ahead to catch up with the west?

Just as in the West, in India too, local governments have lagged behind businesses in adopting IT. This trend has, in a manner, proved useful because local governments can now benefit from proven technologies – technologies perfected after years of improvement and fine tuning by the private sector. Today governments – central, state and local – across the country are aware and convinced of the benefits of e-Governance. They are finding ways and means to procure and deploy systems to enable e-Governance. The funding is being done by internal accruals and funding agencies (like the World Bank, DFID, ADB etc.), and the insistence by funding agencies to ensure transparency, is fueling deployment of IT systems, which can transact, monitor and control processes. The IT industry is playing its due role in increasing awareness and deploying top of the line systems in India. These companies are transferring their international and India specific experiences to sales to engagments with municipal authorities across the country.

For example, Oracle’s experience in deploying the call center for non-emergency services in the City of New York has made a large number of municipalities in India aware of the usefulness of integrating back end information and allowing a One-Stop access of this information to citizens.

What is the current market of municipal e-Governance in India? How does Oracle plan to cater to this market?

The market for municipal e-Governance is opening up in India with some of the large metropolitan municipalities having engaged IT organisations in deploying solutions.

A few years ago many municipalities followed the process of automating individual functions creating silos of information and creating obstacles for a single window access to services. These municipalities are in discussion with IT companies to integrate the solutions or freshly deploy integrated solutions.

Oracle has a dedicated sales team to work with the government bodies in India. Oracle also has a team of domain experts with long governemnt experience for collaborating with government leaders in strategic concept development.

This is a much valued team for prospective clients of Oracle as they act as a sounding board and provide consultation on issues relating to e-Governance.

PARCEL HANDLING AT RAILWAY STATIONS TO BE OUTSOURCED Parcel handling at railway stations in India, which brings railways business worth INR 1,2000 million every year, is going to be outsourced by the Northern Railway to eliminate touts in the business. Shri Prakash, General Manager, Northern Railway, told, “Besides outsourcing parcel handling, we are also introducing online parcel tracking system with barcoding facility. Now all parcels originating from Delhi can be tracked online.”

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

Opportunities For You The conference will provide a unique opportunity for close interactions between the three categories of participants: From Government - Government participants will describe concrete initiatives, lessons learnt and the remaining challenges. In return, they will learn about the latest research results, and how such results are implemented by industry, non-governmental organizations and other governments to address the challenges they face.

From Industry and Non-Governmental Organizations- Industry and non-governmental participants will demonstrate concrete technological, organizational and societal solutions for governments. In return, they will learn about the real challenges governments face and the latest research findings available for their use in crafting solutions.

From Academia - Academic participants will present models, theories and frameworks which extend the understanding of Electronic Governance and upon which concrete solutions for governments can be built. In turn, they will learn about problems faced by governments, gain access to concrete cases, and identify opportunities to implement and deploy research prototypes.

Media Partner

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

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MUNICIPAL e-GOVERNANCE: SESSION REPORT

e-Governance in Urban Local Bodies egov India 2007

www.eindia.net.in/egov

The session titled ‘e-Governance in Urban Local Bodies: In Service to Citizens’, was held on the inaugural day of the egov India 2007 Conference, one of the seminal tracks of the eINDIA2007, held from 31st July-3rd August, in New Delhi. The session brought the key challenges in municipal e-Governance in India and how IT can help inprove the scenario.

A.K. MEHTA, DIRECTOR, MINISTRY OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, CHAIR OF THE SESSION

While welcoming the esteemed panelists and distinguished delegates, A K Mehta, Chairperson of the session, briefed about Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). The mission, to be implemented in 7 year period, is the biggest initiative in the history of the urban sector. The scale of investment envisaged in this initiative is INR 0.1 million, out of which INR 50,000 will be invested

From Left to Right: Chairperson - A.K. Mehta, Director, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India; Panelists - Srikanth Nadhamuni, Co-Founder and Managing Trustee of eGovernments Foundation; Swati Ramanathan, Founder, Janaagraha, Banagalore; Nabroon Bhattacharjee, Program Manager, Economic Growth Office, USAID; and, Niraj Prakash, General Manager, Public Services, SAP India Pvt. Ltd.

over a period of seven years by the government of India, and the rest of it will be mobilised from the state governments and the urban local bodies, including financial institutions. One of the key components of the mission is the participation of the private players, which is a key reform under this mission.

Other key reform envisaged is e-Governance. There are in fact 23 sets of reforms, some of these are to be implemented by state bodies, but by and large, the thought process is that the urban reforms needs to be JNNURM compliant. There are ov

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33 cities in the countries which are expected to deliver as per the agenda set by JNNURM, by 2008. The urban agenda is thus dictated today by JNNURM, AK Mehta concluded.

NABROON BHATTACHARJEE, PROGRAM MANAGER, ECONOMIC GROWTH OFFICE, USAID

Nabroon Bhattacharjee has been working in India for 2 decades on the various aspects of urban governance. USAID has worked with the government of India in designing a mission mode project on urban governance.

N. Bhattacharjee informed some of the recommendations for e-Governance projects designed for improving urban local bodies 1. The design of such projects should keep in mind a system that will have single application for statewide implementation, for fast integration of implementation modules 2. To make it web-enabled application for delivery of services 3. Integration of such projects with other government of India e-Governance and other development initiatives 4. Finally, to have a single and integrated view of urban local body information system across all ULBs across the states N. Bhattacharjee also touched upon the benefits of eGovernance projects for ULBs from the point of view of citizens, municipalities and decision-makers. From citizens side, the key expected benefit is the access to municipal services, hassle free payment of taxes and user charges, and quick redressal of grievances. From municipalities side, eGovernance would bring in improvement of efficiency and effectiveness of business processes and functions of ULBs. From decision-makers side, improved information and planning for decision making. From employee’s side, it would bring in improved efficiency and better delivery of services.

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From policymakers side, integrated view of performance of the municipalities at the sector and the state-level.

SWATI RAMANATHAN, FOUNDER, JANAAGRAHA, BANAGALORE

Swati Ramanathan made a presentation of GIS and spatial data and what it takes for government for starting to use management tools like GIS and spatial data in their day-today management and in their long term-planning.

She highlighted the spatial data centre initiative in Rajasthan, called SUARAJ (State Urban Agenda for Rajasthan), initiated by the chief minister, two years ago.

This urban e-Governance initiative for ULB reforms used the twin-track approach. There were 10 fast track projects chosen and 10 reform track projects were chosen, which were more related to systemic reforms. Systemic reform projects were large scale and long-term, like land reforms, spatial data centres, master plan of Jaipur city in Rajasthan state, etc. The implementation included- creating city maps and GIS, creating city services and property databases with GIS applications, procuring hardware and softwares, and finally city planning. The project used existing investment in hardware and softwares, incorporated the national urban information system data standards, resolved not to redo the areal photography but to update 1999 exercise with satellite, web-based sharing and updating process adopted, introduced a robust spatial decision support system application suite. In the whole process, Swati Ramanathan recommended that the government and the solution providers need to work very closely, a hands-on relationship is not going to work since the vendor may provide something, but whether it is really used, that is something both need to work on that.

Also, just providing the application suite is not enough, one needs also to think what is the institutional structure within the government who is going to take this forward.

SRIKANTH NADHAMUNI, CO-FOUNDER AND MANAGING TRUSTEE OF EGOVERNMENTS FOUNDATION

Srikanth Nadhamuni started his talk by informing about eGovernments Foundation which was formed 5 years ago, in partnership with Nandan Nilekeni, Co-Chairman, Infosys, with a mission to provide e-Governance software platform to run city municipalities. The foundation makes software system available for free to city municipalities in India, although it charges for implementation and customisation services, but the products are licence free. eGovernments Foundation has municipal e-Governance product suite-municipal systems for corporations, municipal councils and town councils.

Srikant Nadhamuni enlisted some of the challenges of urban India. By 2020 - 50% of population will be urban. In year 1947 – 60% of GDP came from Rural India, but in 2005 - 60% of GDP comes from Urban. Infrastructure is unable to keep pace. Although, urban areas contribute 55% of the country’s GDP utilising 3% of land, but municipal revenue is a paltry 0.6% of the GDP. Property Tax is the single largest source revenue in most states. The urban local services do not 24

work very well, so the credibility of ULBs and municipalities.

Citizens are reluctant in paying taxes and fees, compounded by corruption and inefficiency at the government level. There are also para-statal bodies that take control of the cities. All this results in poor infrastructure and poor network services such as roads, sewages, water line and electricity, and so on.

This is a negative vicious cycle. This is a systematic problem needing systematic changes. eGovernments Foundation looked at the systems that a city needs to run effectively. This include property tax, financial accounting systems that should be accrual based and so forth. He suggested that if the ULBs have at least their property tax system e-Enabled, an accrual based accounting system that tracks every paisa going in and out, and the pay roll system, they would be in a better situation in terms of providing services to citizens. Governments should first set right the poor data keeping, poor processes, unless the data is not right, what are we going to get connected to.

NIRAJ PRAKASH, GENERAL MANAGER, PUBLIC SERVICES, SAP INDIA PVT. LTD.

Niraj Prakash remarked that technology is not an issue, there are solutions and infrastructure that can provide best in class cutting edge technology, including service oriented architecture. Based on the SAP solution implementation across the world, made two points regarding e-Governance in ULBs. One is service level agreement (SLA). How fast the services are delivered and how transparent (without paying bribes), is the most important for citizens. Secondly, any kind of computerisation should not be just the frontend computerisation (for instance, website from where one can download forms, submit application forms), but must also have back-end computerisation, so that IT initiative is an integrated IT initiative. For instance, in a municipality, the pay roll may be already implemented, online property registration might be there or water billing software might be there, but the rest of the pieces are mssing, so there is a huge need for a capacity to integrate this so that the SLAs are met. In implementing e-Governance in an ULB, where it may not be possible to have a separate consultant for process re-engineering, we need to look at a solution which in itself brings certain best practices so that while the solution is being implementation, automatically brings in a business process re-engineering exercise. Gave the example of e-Governance implementation by SAP in municipal corporation of Greater Mumbai, where this kind of a situation occurred.

Niraj Prakash, while lauding the e-Governance efforts of the ministry of urban development, said that the whole process of designing the project and empanellment takes a lot of time. The ministry needs to have some kind of mechanism by which there is a very high level of contractual bonding between the public and the private sector, so that, the whole thing can be taken up as a software as a service model.

The session concluded with an interesting interaction with the panelists and delegates. The chairperson thanked the panelists and presented mementos to them, on behalf of the organisers. www.egovonline.net

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MUNICIPAL e-GOVERNANCE: CASE STUDY

e-Governance Models in Urban Areas http://esevaonline.com/

http://sampark.chd.nic.in

Shikha Shukla

e-Governance represents the strategic and systematic use of modern information and communication technology by governments to improve the efficiency, transparency and accountability in their functioning and interface with citizens.

In August 2002, Government of India announced its plans to implement a comprehensive programme to accelerate eGovernance. A high-powered Task Force on “Information Technology and Software Development” prepared the National e-Governance Action Plan (2003-2007) which pointed to the need for creation of appropriate governance and institutional mechanisms; setting up of core infrastructure and policies; and implementing Mission Mode Projects at the centre, state and integrated service levels to create citizen-centric environments for good governance. Several state governments have since undertaken innovative steps to promote e-Governance and help implement on-line delivery of their services. This paper documents two innovative integrated service delivery e-Governance initiatives in urban areas in India, namely eSeva and Sampark.

eSEVA

eSeva is an e-Governance initiative of the Department of Information Technology and Communication, Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP). It provides one-stop shop for a variety of Government to Citizen (G2C) and Business to Citizen (B2C) services. eSeva provides 128 G2C services of 15 State Government Departments and 2 Central Government Departments.

At present, eSeva covers twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and 116 municipalities in the state (excluding Hyderabad and Secunderabad) through 273 Integrated Service Centres. All service centers in the twin cities are operational between 8 am and 8 pm on working days and 9 am and 3 pm on holidays. In the districts the service centers operate from 9 am to 7 pm on weekdays and 9 am to 3 pm on weekends and holidays.

The primary objective of eSeva is to provide citizens with a transparent, efficient, effective, and hassle-free administrative system through the application of electronic and information technology. Citizen access to services offered through eSeva remains easy and convenient, as there are no jurisdictional limits and any service can be availed at any centre in the city / district. Service centers also have long working hours and ov

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are operational even on holidays. Citizens are also offered a variety of payment modes including cash, cheque, demand draft or credit card. Besides counters, utility bills can be paid through the online facility. The online payment facility is available only for the payment of water and electricity bills and property taxes. For using eSeva’s online payment facility, a consumer has to register with www.eSevaonline.com as well as have an Internet banking account with any of the following banks (UTI, GTB, HDFC, IDBI and ICICI) with whom eSeva has an agreement. Once registered the customer can add services like payment of electricity bills, telephone bills and property tax etc., on line. After selecting the bank where the customer has an account, the control is transferred to the bank site. Here the customer logs in with the user name and password given by the bank and the amount is debited from the account and credited to eSeva account. The transaction is updated on-line on the departmental server. Citizen gets a receipt, which can be printed. The transaction reference number can be quoted for any future correspondence.

An electronic queuing system at the center helps reduce waiting time. Along with consumers, service providers have also benefited greatly as it saves them resources in maintaining separate counters and staff for effectively carrying out collection of utility bills. eSeva was implemented in a phase wise manner – there were three phases, namely, the pilot phase that covered one ward of Hyderabad, the replication phase to the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and the replication phase to the districts covering all municipalities in the state.

While the pilot phase was implemented by the Information Technology and Communication (IT&C) Department, GoAP, the replication phases were implemented in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) through a Build, Operate, Own and Transfer (BOOT) model for a period of five years. In the replication phases, while the state government provided the building and required infrastructure facilities for eSeva centers, the private technology partners were responsible for providing hardware, developing and maintaining interface software for all services and operating the eSeva centres and data centres.

The revenue model is based on three types of charges, namely, service charges for G2C and B2C transactions and revenues from advertisements. Transaction costs were arrived at based on the anticipated volume of transactions vis-à-vis capital and operating costs of the initiative. The 25

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transaction costs varied with the nature of transactions and the geographical area of implementation There were different charges for payment of utility bills, tax payments, ticket reservations, paper based and PVC based transactions.

The transaction costs were different for the twin cities and also varied across different zones comprising of districts, Sets of revenue sharing formulae were established between government and the private technology partners for the replication phases. The revenue sharing formulae were based on the volume of transactions (actual number of transactions per month) and the time that had elapsed from the beginning of the initiative. The total project capital cost is approximately INR 530 million. eSeva has revolutionised the Government to Citizen (G2C) interface. The service is immensely popular among citizens, evidenced by the huge increase in the number of transactions over time. The service is being used extensively for payment of utility bills. During April 2002 to July 2004, 89 percent of the total transactions in the twin cities were for the payment of electricity bills, telephone bills, water bills and property tax. eSeva has translated in substantial increase in revenue collections. In the twin cities from a modest collection of INR 43 million in August 2001 the collections through eSeva are at INR 3050 million (December 2004). The scale up phase to the districts also saw a substantial increase in collections.

details of various services offered by Sampark centres; and by sending an sms “SDOC” users can get a list of documents accepted for age / residence proof. These codes and more can also be obtained by sending an sms SMENU to 8888.

Sampark has been implemented on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) through a Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) model for a period of five years. SQL Star is the private sector agency responsible for setting up and operating the Citizen Service Centers and launching a transaction based Citizen’s portal. While the Department of Information Technology provided the building, electricity and ISDN connectivity for centres; the private partner was responsible for providing hardware, developing and maintaining interface software and operating the centres. The total capital investments for the initiative are approximately INR 9 million.

The service has gained tremendous popularity among citizens. In the last one year (1st Nov 2004 till 19th Nov 2005) a total of 0.80 million transactions have been recorded. The average number of transactions is approximately 66,841 per month and 2228 per day. The service is primarily being used by citizens for the payment of utility bills including electricity bills and water and sewerage charges. Of the total revenue collections of Sampark, majority of the collections are by the Engineering Department, Chandigarh Administration.

CONCLUSIONS SAMPARK

Sampark (literally meaning contact) is an e-Governance initiative of the Department of Information Technology, Chandigarh Administration. Sampark envisions improving the interaction between citizens and government departments by providing all government services under a single roof. It aims at eliminating difficulties encountered by citizens when they visit numerous government offices for availing different services / paying their bills, etc.

At present, Sampark offers fifteen services of various central, state and local government agencies through eight Sampark centres located across the Union Territory. The centers are located in the refurbished existing bill collection centers of electricity office and municipal corporation. There are no jurisdictional limits as to where the services can be availed i.e., citizens can avail of any of the offered services at any centre.

Service counters have long working hours from 8 am to 8 pm and are operational from Monday to Saturday. The services are available through three delivery channels, namely, Sampark centres, online through a website (www.chandigarh.gov.in) and through mobile phones. While all services are available through the Sampark centres, only payment of taxes / utility bills is possible through the internet. In association with Indiatimes, Sampark offers access information on a host of services by sending an SMS to 8888 through mobile phones.

By sending an sms from mobile phones to 8888 citizens / consumers can receive access information on a whole range of Sampark services. By sending an sms “SBILL” users can get their electricity / water bill details; by sending an sms “SLOC” users can get addresses of various Sampark centres across the city; by sending an sms “SSERV” users can get 26

eSeva and Sampark has been successful in revolutionising the Government – Citizen (G2C) interface. Based on a customer centric approach, they have greatly enhanced the value of services available to citizens.

For the participating departments the service has translated into several benefits including increase in the bill paying consumer base, increase in revenue collections, cost saving on operating department specific bill collection centres, and has also enabled utilities to allocate surplus bill collection staff to other work streams.

The Public Private Partnership on a Build, Operate, Own and Transfer (BOOT) model has proved a useful model for sharing the capital and operating costs between government and private partners and for leveraging private technological expertise. The quality of service delivery in a partnership arrangement depends largely on the strength of the arrangement. The contracts with the private technology partners were so designed that they made conditions favourable to the private partners. The transaction costs and revenue sharing formulae were fixed to enable private partners to recover their investments and cover the operating costs. The experiences have also brought forth the need for a conducive policy and political environment for success of e-Governance initiatives.

Shikha Shukla (shikhashukla@hotmail.com) is a social development consultant with over eight years of experience in the development sector.

She has been involved in direct intervention programmes, research and policy advocacy initiatives.

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MUNICIPAL E-GOVERNANCE: VIEW POINT

Towards a Better Urban Governance The ITIL Way The National Mission Mode Project (NMMP) for municipalities has been initiated by the Ministry of Urban Development with a vision for e-Governance in municipalities. The project also aims to leverage the ICT for sustained improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of municipal service. Municipalities provide basic services for the citizens living in urban areas. As we progress towards maturity of e-Governance, there is a need of an integrated approach of IT based service delivery.

Praful Gharpure BACKGROUND

As per the Census of India 2001, the urban areas in India account for 27.8 percent of the population. About onethird of urban India (71 million) lives in metropolitan cities. The number of such cities in India has increased from 23 in 1991 to 35 in 2001. Urbanisation is associated with increased incomes, improved health, higher literacy, improved quality of life and other benefits. At the same time it results in strain on the physical and social infrastructure.

The job profiles in the mature urban areas are driving the need for an effective, efficient and economic urban service provider. The urban local bodies i.e. Municipal Corporation and Urban Development Authorities (UDA) play this role and use of Information Technology via e-Governance initiatives is gaining momentum in the provision of the urban services to the growing number of urban customers.

ICT FOR URBAN SERVICES

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has gained a strong base in the field of urban services in India over the last decade. This is primarily because of role of IT in the day-to-day lives of urban citizens. Development of ICT sets the road map for e-Governance. e-Governance in India has picked up the pace. This is evident from the e-Readiness report for Indian states published by Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India, where in, as many as 27 states show up as IT ready states in 2005. The report also identifies the states of Karnataka, Kerala, Tamilnadu, Chandigarh and Maharashtra as leading states. The National Mission Mode Project (NMMP) for municipalities has been initiated by the Ministry of Urban Development with a vision for e-Governance in municipalities. The project also aims to ov

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leverage the ICT for sustained improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of municipal service. Municipalities provide basic services for the citizens living in urban areas.

As we progress towards maturity of e-Governance, there is a need of an integrated approach of IT based service delivery with a strong backing of a service support mechanism.

This article intends to map a framework around IT solutions that are being built at various urban local bodies across the country.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE LIBRARY (ITIL) FRAMEWORK

The ITIL is a set of best practices intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services.

It defines IT processes that are required to support business processes. The ITIL processes aim at achieving high financial quality and value in IT operations. These procedures are supplier-independent and have been developed to provide guidance across the breadth of IT infrastructure, development, and operations.

ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management (ITSM) today. ITSM has derived enormous benefit from ITIL best practice approach and follows ITIL framework in accordance with the ITIL documentation. ITIL best practices are drawn from the IT implementations in public and private sectors internationally. The acronym ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a registered trade mark of the United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

The best practices documentation forming ITIL – Version 2 is divided in two parts namely Service Delivery and Service Support. Version 2 is currently undergoing a major refresh which will be rolled out as Version 3 in 2008. Service Support and Service Delivery together consist of 12 disciplines that 27

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constitute the framework for the provision and management of effective IT services.

The Service Delivery is primarily concerned with the proactive and forward-looking services that the business requires from its ICT provider in order to deliver the desired services to its users. It is focused on the business as the customer of the ICT services. The Service Support is focused on the users of the ICT services and is primarily concerned with ensuring the access to the appropriate services to support the business functions. Figure 1 below illustrates the ITIL framework and the processes which support the service delivery and service support disciplines.

However these local bodies are experiencing tremendous financial stress even to operate and maintain the existing services at satisfactory levels. It’s a well known fact that around 60% expenditure at a ULB constitutes salaries; operations and maintenance; and Interest on Payments. On the revenue side, property tax, octroi and betterment levies are major contributors. There is need for the ULBs to gear up for the challenges which are coming their way, provision and maintenance of efficient services is a key requirement for the future investments in these areas. The shift to e - Governance is a positive indication in the direction. e-Governance initiatives in India started mainly around 1990 with various states starting projects of varying nature like, e-Literacy programme in Kerala, computerisation of departmental processes like document registration in Andhra Pradesh, agricultural marketing in Madhya Pradesh, land records computerisation in karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamilnadu, e-Nagarpalika in Gujarat, are few initiatives which got national recognition.

ICT INITIATIVES GO THROUGH 3 DISTINCT PHASES OF IMPLEMENTATION FIGURE 1: ITIL FRAMEWORK

1.

CHANGING TRENDS IN URBAN AREAS

The Indian IT industry has been known to have its base in all the metros cities. The cities referred as Tier I cities, including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai have all emerged as significant hubs for both Indian and global IT companies. At the time when these cities are attracting IT investments and creating employments, escalating real estate costs, and overstressed infrastructure such as power, roads and airports, are creating challenges for the organisations that have set up operations in these cities.

In the recent past, it is being felt that other urban centers referred as Tier II and Tier III cities need to be developed for the IT, in order to take off the pressure from metro cities. These urban centers provide advantages in terms of cheaper real estate, access to relatively skilled manpower and gradually improving physical infrastructure. The Tier II cities are coming into their own in terms of drawing global and Indian IT majors. As per estimates by NASSCOM (National Association for Software and Service Companies) these new IT destinations are expected to employ 30% of the projected strength of 850,000 IT professionals and 1.4 million BPO professionals by 2010. The offshore IT and BPO industries directly employ around 700,000 professionals and provide indirect employment to approximately 2.5 million workers.

As these new investments set up either in the urban centres or on the urban fringe, it will put direct demand for urban infrastructure and services as support systems for economic activities. Further the user base of the services shall desire online and quality service provision.

India has a total of 423 urban centers managed by Urban Local bodies (ULBs). These urban local bodies are statutorily responsible for the provision and maintenance of basic infrastructure and services in areas of their jurisdiction.

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Provision of Static Information: This stage is where urban local bodies/government department has a website of its own. Citizens can access information, seek procedural details about city services, however they cannot interact with any of the process within ULB. 2. Capability for Transactional Services: This stage is where user can carry out transactions online.

3. Creation of Online Communities: At this stages ULB website provides interoperability with various organisations within urban area enabling the participation of citizens in developmental activities and interaction with officials and NGOs. Majority of e-Governance initiatives fall under the first stage as outlined above. In Indian cities the service delivery is fragmented with multiple entities in each of the service.

These entities often map to different departments under state / central government. The net result is that the ULB has limited control over the key services provided in their jurisdiction impacting the statutory functions which a ULB is required to perform. Further the e-Governance initiatives in the different departments are carried out independent of each other; as such the impact of the initiatives is diluted for the want of a user base. This builds a case for an integrated approach for the delivery of urban services backed by efficient service support mechanism involving a user interface. Shared IT infrastructure and adoption of ITIL framework is a possible solution.

APPLICATION OF ITIL FRAMEWORK

IT implementation in urban India is happening in bits and pieces. IT has found place on the agenda of all the departments however what it lacks is an integrated approach to its rollout and effective sharing of IT infrastructure to economise the www.egovonline.net

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CTQs for a service it is equally important to review the activity pattern which a user follows while following the process to avail the services. The ones considered here in are the major services availed by the citizens of an urban area. Figure 3 illustrates the handoffs / sharing of similar information / need of interaction with multiple providers.

INTERPRETATION OF ITIL FRAMEWORK IN URBAN SERVICES CONTEXT

FIGURE 2: SERVICE CATALOGUE FOR MAJOR URBAN SERVICE PROVIDERS

initiative. At a National level this has been achieved with agencies like National Informatecs Centre (NIC) where a centralised data base has been created and information is available through one single portal. However it still falls in the first category mentioned as above i.e. providing static information.

For effective implementation of e-Governance in Urban Services, it’s essential for these initiatives to mature to stage II where in its users can carryout transactions and use the service leading to wide-ranging benefits. Figure 2 below outlines a big picture of urban services and the service catalogue highlighting key services of each provider. It illustrates the interlinkages amongst the various departments providing the basic services to citizens (users) in urban areas. The users go through series of rework loops for the want of information and information updating subsequent to any transaction carried out. A centralised data repository shall result in faster transactions and reduction of non-value added work for the customer of the service.

For a user of urban services, there are some basic requirements which are” Critical to Quality” (CTQs) for the service under consideration. These link to “Voice of Customer” (VOCs) in all process improvement initiatives. While considering the

Use of ITIL best practices is well known in the organisations providing services across geographical locations via a suitable user interface. While providing these services the organisations within themselves have different IT applications supported by different teams. ITIL provides the framework for effective provision of the services via efficient co-ordination using the

FIGURE 4: ITIL VIEW OF THE URBAN SERVICE PROVISION

twelve ITIL disciplines. In the context of urban services a similar situation exists where in individual service provider is interacting with same set of users independently. As a result the processes followed result in a series of rework loops, duplication of efforts and non value added works.

At the same time the optimal use of IT infrastructure is not achieved. Application of ITIL framework to the provision of urban services shall result in mutual benefits to the providers as well as its users. Figure 4 below illustrates the ITIL view of urban services provisioning.

ITIL FRAMEWORK FOR URBAN SERVICES

FIGURE 3: SERVICES VS PROCESSES OF PROVISION

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As illustrated in Figure I above, ITIL framework is structured in two parts with six disciplines each. The definitions of each of these in the context of urban services are given below.

A. Service delivery (i) Service Level Management (SLM): SLM process is focussed towards the maintenance of the quality of service by the provider. Each service provider needs to outline a service catalogue and the associated Service Level Agreement 29

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(SLAs) for the provision of the services. (ii) Capacity Management: For the provision of services the provider needs to ascertain the handling capacity of the in place infrastructure. This information also needs to be available to the customers. (iii) Availability Management: Processes at Provider end to ensure the availability of service to the customer. (iv) Service Continuity Management: Processes at provider end to ensure the service / information availability to customers in event of disasters and quick/controlled recovery of services post disaster. (v) Financial Management of Services: Effective planning of resources to cope up with the demand of the services. (vi) Security Management: Process to ensure data security.

B. Service Support (i) Service Desk: Centralised or virtual user interface for users for all service related activities. i.e. service requests, request for change, request for information etc. (ii) Incident Management: Instances of interruption of services reported by users to be documented and resolved as per SLA. (iii) Problem Management: Identification of causes of service interruption and providing permanent fixes, post implementation reviews, maintenance of knowledgebase of past incidents. (iv) Configuration Management: Intent of this process is to ensure that infrastructure component information is kept updated. This results in optimal utilisation of infrastructure items based on its lifespan. On time replacement also minimises the outage of services and leads to effective monitoring of usage. (v) Change Management: Changes to the infrastructure on account of a service request or an expansion of service needs to follow this process. In such an event-infrastructure-change this process prescribes the documentation of any change via this process in conjunction with the configuration management processes. Centralised approval authorities (equivalent to Change Approval Board in IT space) need to approve all changes to minimise the impact to other services. (vi) Release Management: This process provides a structure for carrying out infrastructure changes to a plan. As a result all concerned teams are informed about the upcoming change to the infrastructure. The teams can gear up for any response in event of materialisation of any risk associated with the change.

INFORMATION FOR CITY MANAGERS

Each of the above processes have a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) associated. These KPIs play a vital role in the governance of IT services. For urban services, these KPIs provide useful information to the City Managers to plan, finance and implement the city level infrastructure initiatives and maintaining the level of services performance. The few important ones are listed below.

1. Information on volume of service request with break-up 30

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

by type and nature.

Cycle time and first level resolution of service requests.

Monitoring of incidents (Complaints) and their resolution cycle time.

Information on frequency and details of changes to city infrastructure.

Record of outages of the services.

Record of SLA breaches in service provision / fulfilment.

Useful information for capacity planning for infrastructure provision based on land transactions/ service requests received.

Control of building activity in areas where infrastructure capacity is inadequate.

BENEFITS OF ADOPTING ITIL

The benefits of ITIL adoption for IT service provision are enormous. The ITIL framework not only benefits the provider from management perspective but also benefits the end user.

Some of the major benefits are mentioned below.

• Improved quality of information for optimal resource management and decision making.

• Better management of IT infrastructure.

• More efficient and effective usage of resources related to service provision and subsequent cost reductions.

• Improved interdepartmental teamwork.

• Expeditious response to customer requests and complaints.

• Virtual “Single Window Service” reducing the crowding in offices and saving in travel time of citizens to offices.

• Transparent transactions.

• Reduced paperwork.

• Ease of tracking requests, complaints and SLAs. • Online exchange of interdepartmental user specific data to effectively reduce cycle time for service fulfilment.

CONCLUSION

ULBs and other government departments in India are implementing IT infrastructure initiatives aiming at automating their current processes. As a result the implementation is happening in silo style and lacks the required interlinkages resulting in lots of rework / duplication of effort. With the variation of volume and nature of services, IT is expected to stay ahead of service demand to ensure efficient service delivery mechanism. This necessiciates a proactive policy for IT service deployment. The most expeditious way to deliver the service which user needs is to identify and apply an industry best practice, which in the context of urban service delivery is ITIL. Praful Gharpure (praful.gharpure@gmail.com), Architect - Urban Planner with Specialisation in Tourism and Urban Development.Working as Management Consultant for over 12 Yrs. Over last four years working in the field of IT process transformation for Tata Consultancy Services clients in UK and US using Six Sigma / ITIL methodologies.

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Understanding the Mobile Ecosystem

WiFi - Fulfilling the Goal of Ubiquitous Connectivity

www.m-Connect.in

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Municipal Wi-Fi in India Case Study of Unwire Pune Project Upasna Kakroo

http://www.punecorporation.org/

The Pune Municipal Corporation has initiated “Unwire Pune” project, with Intel Technologies Ltd. as the chief technology and programme management consultant. This project is aimed at making 400 sq kms of the city alongwith adjacent areas of Pimpri and Chinchwad, wireless. Intel would be deploying the Wi-Fi and WiMax technologies for making the city wire-free. The main aim behind to project is to provide seamless connectivity to citizens, businesses and academic institutions.

INTRODUCTION

Often referred to as the ‘The Queen of the Deccan’, the western city of Pune, India has had a glorious past. With its growth into a major IT hub and a student city with a high e-Literacy rate, Pune also has the distinction of having the largest Internet user base in India.

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has announced the “Unwire Pune” project, with Intel Technologies Ltd. as the chief technology and programme management consultant. This project is aimed at making 400 sq kms of the city alongwith adjacent areas of Pimpri and Chinchwad wireless. Intel would be deploying the Wi-Fi and WiMax technologies for making the city wire-free. The main aim behind the project is to provide seamless connectivity to citizens, businesses and academic institutions.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

Intel would be responsible for developing an extensible, high performance technical architecture and detailed design to suit the PMC requirements. Intel would also be responsible for informing and educating the PMC by various workshops and training programmes. PMC has set apart an initial estimate of INR 70 million for the project.

Apart from the push by the corporation, Pune has been selected over a lot of cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore, mainly because of its small size. PMC is planning to build 10 WiMax towers, 800 Wi-Fi hotspots in the city. Initially free access to low end users and charges to high end users (with high bandwidth usage) is being planned. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) has not been decided yet. According to specifications from PMC, the backbone wireless communication infrastructure network for the whole area considered would result in ubiquitous connectivity. Within 100 sq km of the metropolis area the bandwidth available per user would be 128kbps. It would take about 12 months for the project to materialise. The technology to be used for Wi-Fi would be IEEE (Institute of Electrical and 32

IMAGE GEDIT- HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/LECERCLE/164092218/

Electronics Engineers) 802.11g standard, which has backward compatibility with 802.11b-only clients also. It would mean a data rate of 54Mbps, according to specifications. There would be 99 percent uptime and the frequency band used would be 2.4 Ghz. For WiMax IEEE 802.16e standards would be used.

In April 2007, the project finally took off, much later than its expected date, and PMC joined hands with Microsense to commercially roll out the first phase of 802.16d Wi-Fi and WiMax network in the city. The first phase would provide connectivity in a 25 sq km expanse of the city, and would take about four months to completion.

PMC has offered a service plan of INR 250 per month with the speed of 256 Kbps. The rest of the city would be covered in the next 12-16 months. Internet access would initially also be provided to 30 municipal schools in the city. The Pune project www.egovonline.net

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cost has been estimated at INR 1000 million over the next couple of years for setting up the infrastructure.

BENEFITS

Interestingly, the city of Pune would be holding the Commonwealth youth games in 2008, and infrastructure development is a priority to the PMC, this being the biggest sporting event being organised by the city which will be a major push towards the tourism, hospitality and allied industries, and to be able to rake in the benefits of the same, the city will have to be prepared for it. Wi-Fi is being looked upon as an investment into the infrastructure in this direction too, and its successful implementation would go towards realising the benefits of the games in the city. This would also give the city an impression of being futuristic in its adoption of new technologies. Applications like voice over Wi-Fi, video mails, distance learning would become possible. Health services and social workers would be able to take a virtual hospital or clinic out to their patients instantly.

The PMC expects every citizen of Pune to use the Wi-Fi network. Visitors to the city would be able to access internet with a temporary account provided to them.

CHALLENGES

This plan is optimistic and ambitious. Even though in comparison to the rest of the country, the city of Pune economically is placed very high, having the highest per capita income, but amidst all the positive figures another one that also catches attention is that, 40 percent of the city population is in slums. Under these circumstances, a logical implication of this would mean that with people lacking basic facilities, it is highly unlikely that they would be interested in Wireless and more so, they would not be economically sound enough to buy laptops.

Another factor worth consideration is that the literacy rate in the city is not 100 percent, which would cause further problems to mass adoption of the technology. Also, a large section of the population in the city is not well versed with English and thus special care taken towards content development. Local language interfaces will have to be used additionally on the Internet which would have to be made bilingual. Interestingly even the website of the PMC maintained by the statistics and computer department of the city is not bilingual.

Political and bureaucratic delays have often led to faulty or slow implementation of various policies in the city. PMC has

been riddled with controversies often in case of infrastructure development.

The download speeds of wireless internet (using Wi-Fi) are still doubtful and would specially effect high population density areas of the city where the bandwidth sharing would mean low speeds anyhow. The poor deployment of Wi-Fi so far in the country has meant that ISPs have backed out. WiMax claims are still thought as being optimistic by researchers.

These factors will be important while considering the adoption of the technology. As confirmed by the PMC in Pune, there are ongoing issues with spectrum availability, which they claim have been sorted, but they seem to have surfaced out again, as Intel stated the fact that the PMC had not decided on the spectrum availability issue. The government policymakers are not sure if WiMax allocation is a priority issue or not especially as the rest of the country is struggling to provide enough bandwidth for high speed broadband connection.

CONCLUSION

Throughout the world various business models have been experimented with Wi-Fi, and nothing as yet can guarantee success. Wi-Fi has only had moderate success contrary to initial industry claims. WiMax deployments have hardly started. The model to be chosen would have to be such that it can keep lower prices, while ensuring competition. The model would have to consider that the project is also able to fund itself, keeping capital reserves for future network upgrades also.

It was stated that the pricing would be such that it is less than the current prices for broadband and also that only for high bandwidth users, a price would be charged. This however, would mean that unless the project is a huge success, sustainability of the project would not be easy.

With multitudes of issues related to the project it may not be easy discern whether the project is a success or not. The projects may well become successful on paper, but they will be a real success only when they would cater to “all” in the real sense.

Upasna Kakroo (upasna.kakroo@gmail.com) is an Electronics and Communication engineer (from College of Engineering, Pune) and has a master’s in Communication Technology and Policy (from University of Strathclyde, UK).

She has researched extensively on Indian Telecom sector and on the state of Wi-Fi and WiMax in India.

PUNE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION TO MAP UTILITIES The PMC has decided to map all utility lines across the city and also have GIS system to monitor along with recently prepared digitised map of the city roads. With the mapping of the utilities lines, the PMC will have detailed information on the number of the utility lines on any particular road and their exact underground location. The PMC is starting off the mapping utility lines of the MC including electricity cable network and telephone cable network. The utility map will provide information of utility lines to contractors and various other government departments, so that they do not damage the utility lines while carrying out work on the road.

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NEWS PHILIPPINES ISPs GOING BEYOND BASIC INTERNET ACCESS The traditional Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Philippines are now in the transforming phase, where the new multi-service, multi-focus Internet companies have given new strength to the Internet access industry. The Internet companies are aligning with the market demands like online games and communications.

According to William Torres, chairman and president of local ISP Mozcom, the availability of broadband and falling rates of broadband services have paved the way for small ISPs that have overtaken their peers in terms of presence and customer base. Meanwhile, the government of Philippines is urging for more changes in the Internet market and is calling for local cyber cafes to generate demand for Internet usage. William Torres, who is also the president of the Philippine Internet Service Organisation (PISCO) explained “The government’s Commission on Information and Technology (CICT) and host of private association are working hand-in-hand encouraging more ISPs to promote access”. He further added that the government is planning to establish “e-Centers” which can generate demand of Internet usage in rural areas.

NEAR-FIELD COMMUNICATION ON TRIALS IN SINGAPORE Two of the largest mobile service providers in Singapore, Sing Tel and Network for Electronic Transfer announced their plans to do the trial of Near-Field Communication (NFC) services internally in the country over three months until the end of 2007. The services will allow the users to top up to the stored cash value in their mobile phone over-the-air (OTA) via the phone network, using credit cards.

It is estimated that over 1000 merchants will be participating in this trial. 50 staff from Sing Tel and Nets will be involved while over 200 subscribers will be roped in the trial.

The executives of Sing Tel and Nets told at the launch that Nokia 6131 is currently the only commercially-available phone model that comes with NFC capabilities but Sing Tel is working with other companies like Samsung, Sony-Ericsson to introduce NFCenabled phone.

FAST INCREASE IN FIXED MOBILE CONVERGENCE IN CHINA The fixed mobile convergence (FMC) is estimated to increase by 11.4 million in China, as per the IT Facts (http://www.itfacts.biz).

In an estimate, the FMC market will grow slowly and they will grow fastly after the commencement of 3 G services between 2008 and 2010. The Chinese business market expect the growth from 0.4 million to 5.6 million in 2010.

NFC is a short-range wireless connectivity technology commonly deployed in a chip and embedded in handsets such as mobile phones. The introduction of this technology will enable mobile users to make their payments at stores by tapping their NFCenabled mobile phones on readers.

TRAI PUTS RESTRICTION ON TELEMARKETER The Telecoms Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has put restriction on the telemarketers through unveiling the “Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communication Regulations 2007”.

The new directive allows subscribers to list their landlines and mobile numbers under the ‘National Do Not Call’ (NDNC) database and opt out of receiving any unsolicited commercial communication (UCC), including SMS (smart messaging service). The new regulation will bring relief to 230 million telecoms subscribers in India.

The Indian Government’s Department of Telecommunications had authorised the

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National Information Center (NIC) to oversee the maintenance and operation work

of NDNC registry. According to the new directive, every Telemarketer operator in India must register with the NDNC database to ensure that they will not include those that are on registry. An update of list will also be sent to the telemarketers every 15 days.

According to the new directive those who will register with NDNC and continue receive unsolicited calls or SMS, can file complain with the TRAI. The errant telemarketers will pay a fine of USD 12.50 (500 INR) per call to the subscriber as penalty.

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SLOW UPTAKE OF BROADBAND SERVICES IN MALAYSIA The government of Malaysia has revised its earlier optimistic IT penetration targets due to slow uptake of broadband services. That resulted in industry observers to call for market reforms. Earlier the government set the target of 75 percent adoption rate by 2010, but only 11.7 percent of Malaysia’s 5.5 million household have broadband access.

This disappointing state of affairs promoted a Cabinet Committee chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to revise the target down to 50 percent by 2010. The broadband service providers reported that its total broadband customer base was 864,000 in 2006, against a population of 27 million this is mathematically insignificant and work out to 0.32 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitant. It is being recommended that telecompanies in Malaysia could follow the lead of countries such as South Korea and Japan, to upgrade to fiber networks, to improve the quality of broadband services.

RELIANCE LAUNCHES MOBILE FINANCIAL PORTAL IN INDIA Reliance money become the first company in India to launch financial market information across mobiles through launching “Mobile Financial Portal” the first of its kind portal offering a range of financial services and information to its investor. With this launch the company is estimating to trap around 200 million telecoms user base in India.

The tie-up was announced by Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Director and CEO of Reliance Money and Beerud Sheth, Co- founder and President of Webaroo, the technical partners for this initiative. “This unique initiative will provide mobile users an opportunity of staying connected with financial markets while on the move, irrespective of the status of their network. Most importantly, this service is being offered by Reliance Money free of charge to all, across networks and mobile technologies”, said Sudip Bandyopadhyay.

NEW BROADBAND OVER CABLE SPEED RECORD The new broadband over cable speed record of 120 megabits per second (Mbps) in consumer homes on UPC’s cable network, has been broken in Amsterdam by two leading network solution providing companies, Cisco and UPC Broadband. With this, speeds of up to 200 Mbps and beyond are now within reach over cable networks. This was announced at the IBC conference in Amsterdam, Europe’s largest trade show for broadcasting and broadband industries.

Cisco and UPC have been the first to take the Eurodocsis 3.0 and M-CMTS technology into the field with a trial in the modern residential neighbourhood of IJburg in Amsterdam. The trial over UPC’s existing hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network, with the most advanced modular cable modem termination system (M-CMTS) architecture with ED 3.0 channel bonding technology from Cisco, is already delivering speeds of up to and over 120 megabits per second (Mbps).

3RD ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ISSUE OF EGOV MAGAZINE Its our extreme pleasure to announce that egov magazine (www. egovonline.in) is going to complete 3years of its long term initiative of creating a knowledge community in the domain of e-Governance.

In this three year long journey, egov magazine has done excellent work in providing and disseminating information and knowledge on e-Governance initiatives taken nationally and internationally to the policy planners, industry leaders and the academia. In this great occasion we would like to invite comments, suggestions and feedback from our esteemed readers for improvement and making the magazine more informative.

Please tell us how you have liked the egov magazine and what more you would like us to cover. Your feedback will be printed in our 3rd anniversary issue of egov magazine to be published in January 2008.

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INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

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Changing the World of Communications Microsoft Unified Communications

www.microsoft.com/uc/ and conferencing - into the work they do on a computer - documents, spreadsheets, instant messaging, e-mail, calendars - has the power to fundamentally change the way the world works.

michel.gambier@microsoft.com “We believe that integrating the experiences people associate with the telephonic calls, voice mail, and conferencing-into the work they do on a computer-documents, spreadsheets, instant messaging, e-mail, calendars-has the power to fundamentally change the way the world works.” Informs Michel Gambier,General Manager, Information Worker Group, Microsoft APAC to egov magazine

Please tell us about the vision and objectives of Microsoft Unified Communications (UC)?

We believe Unified Communications (UC) will transform the way people work in the coming decade in the same way e-mail changed the communication landscape in the 1990s. Microsoft UC technologies use the power of software to deliver complete communications - messaging, voice, and video - across the applications and devices that people use every day. We believe that integrating the experiences people associate with the telephonic calls, voice mail, 36

Could you tell our readers about the role of UC and how it helps to clear the common barriers to effective and efficient collaboration between public sector departments and organisations from an IT perspective?

The benefits, particularly to the public sector, are substantial.

Public sector organisations are typically comprised of hundreds of departments and thousands of employees, and all of them need to communicate and collaborate on a daily basis to get work done. This can be an administrative nightmare, both from an end user and an IT perspective.

For public sector employees, UC replaces confusing phone-based menus with intuitive tools in the familiar Microsoft Office system environment. Users can click on a person’s name to launch a call, or click on several names to launch an audio– or video- conference. Since the entire system runs on Active Directory, they only have to log on once to check their voice mail and their e-mail. Plus, all telephone information–office extension numbers, voice mail box assignments, and mobile and home numbers–are stored in Active Directory alongside IP-network information like e-mail. There is only one directory to set up and maintain for both communications systems.

What are some of the key features and products offered by Microsoft UC? In what way does have an edge over other market players like IBM and Avaya, in this field?

Indeed, there are many players in this field, but Microsoft is taking a software-focused approach to bring together disparate communications technologies into a unified experience – driving down the cost and complexity of communicating and collaborating at work. We have developed a host of powerful UC technologies to transform the entire Microsoft Office experience both for the public and private sector. These include: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, a robust, flexible, communication platform that enables presencebased VoIP (voice-over-Internet), call management; audio, video- and web-conferencing; and instant messaging communication within and across existing software applications, services and devices. www.egovonline.net

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Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, with unified messaging features that go beyond e-mail and today’s stand-alone voice-mail systems to deliver a unified inbox experience that includes e-mail, voice mail and faxing functionality, as well as new capabilities such as speech-based auto attendant allowing users to access their communications from any phone.

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, a unified communications client that works in tandem with Office Communications Server 2007 to deliver a presence-based, enterprise VoIP “softphone”; secure, enterprise-grade instant messaging and connectivity to public instant messaging networks; one-to-one and multi-party videoand audio-conferencing; and web-conferencing.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting, a rich conferencing service designed to help users more effectively collaborate, conduct training and deliver presentations using just a PC and an Internet connection.

We believe that Microsoft will play a very important role as the software leader for the unified communications market, but, of course, this will be in the context of working with a wide range of industry partners, a broad ecosystem that will help customers realise the vision for unified communications.

Could you tell us how Microsoft UC technologies are helping governments to streamline and secure communications and increase efficiency and reduce costs, which are the prime concerns of public sector in the emerging markets?

Telephones run on switched networks while computers run on IP networks. This is the fundamental infrastructure challenge facing every technology department, and it forces governments to invest in two complex infrastructures, each with their own specialists and maintenance costs. UC solves the problem of maintaining two expensive options and brings down the cost of everything from initial purchase, deployment, configuration, operations, management, administration and maintenance of organisational communications. Office Communicator also enables users to make long-distance calls to remote offices and tele-workers without the accompanying costs, as easily as you change a printer. UC also enhances productivity. It allows users to rout calls, and send faxes and e-mails to an employee wherever they are, whether in a branch office, corporate office, working at home or on the road, with whatever device they happen to be using. Microsoft’s UC approach also puts the power in the hands of end users by arming them with the power of the PC, smart software, and services to help solve their communication and collaboration challenges.

As a result, users have the flexibility to choose the most appropriate solution for their individual challenges, making them more efficient.

What are some of the key challenges in adoption of unified communication technology in government departments?

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need to be assured against a breech or loss of confidential and sensitive private citizen information.

Microsoft UC technologies have built-in protection against spam and malicious attacks, address compliance and privacy concerns, and ensure business continuity. For example, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 delivers integrated anti-virus, anti-spam, and anti-phishing technologies that are automatically updated to help stop the latest threats before they impact your business and employees. Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 also includes enhanced encryption features to help maintain the message confidentiality and instill confidence in communication and new continuous replication capabilities continually back up data so systems can also help ensure data recovery in minutes, even between geographically separate sites. This helps ensure that systems can stay up and running should the unexpected happen.

What is the current global market trend of use of UC? How is India placed in this context?

Research analysts estimate that one in four information workers currently spend the equivalent of 3 full working days each year trying to connect with others by phone, and 70 percent of people have a chance of being transferred to a voice-mail system when making a call to someone at work. When you take these the long term outcomes of these productivity barriers into consideration, it is not difficult to imagine the tremendous impact that UC will have on public sector organisations.

In fact, in 2007, IDC estimates that the market size for worldwide UC is approximately USD 4.8 billion, and by 2011 it is expected to increase to USD 14.5 billion. These statistics can be translated to the Asia Pacific context, and we look forward to bringing these next generation UC technologies to customers in a new world of collaboration and communication in the region.

What are some of your suggestions for the public sector regarding what they need to know before implementing UC infrastructure?

Some questions that government organisations should ask themselves before implementing a UC infrastructure include: What are your business communication needs?

• Can the system improve the productivity and solve the pain points of my employees?

• Can the solution meet your company’s ministries/ agencies need today and in the future?

These were questions that the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRB) had to answer before deciding to replace its ageing messaging system to cope with the changing communications needs of an increasingly mobile workforce.

The organisation had a lack of Web mail messaging and wireless email access hindered effective communications and productivity within IRB. Impressed by the UC approach of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, IRB implemented a pilot project and has since seen a boost in staff productivity and collaboration with the rich set of productivity tools and integrated email, voice-mail and faxes under a single unified messaging platform.

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COMMENTARY

Secure Solution for e-Passport QuantumID Technologies

www.qidtech.com

Prasanna Gogwekar

All roads towards e-Passport globally have led to the usage of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). RFID is a means of encoding digital information onto silicon, which can be transmitted over radio frequency waves, and can be read, authenticated and processed by a RFID Reader.

The e-Volution to e-Passport Managing sensitive documents such as passports and keeping track of all visits / tour transactions in a global economy is a very tedious task.

For some Governance processes, individuals are asked to report all trips made in the last 3 to 5 years, and this could be a staggering task for a frequent traveler in this global economy.

There are three critical requirements which are the necessary and sufficient conditions for e-Passport 1. Digitised record of citizenship and travel transactions 2. Secure transmission of this digital information on an as needed basis only 3. Capability for authentication and verification at all government checkpoints All roads towards - e-Passport globally have led to the usage of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

Though e-Passports are definitely one of the top e-Governance priorities around the world but it is currently facing the following major issues: 1. Digital data which can be transmitted over RFID can be read by a RFID capable Reader matching the frequency ranges.

2. Once ‘Read’ the data can be copied to another silicon potentially cloning any sensitive document. Even after encryption techniques which can be used, encryption techniques has had some failure rates.

3. Nationality can be detected and hostile agents can trigger harmful activity to a specific National by automatically detecting the information over RFID. 4. Identity theft can be done by eavesdropping into personal information such as name, birth dates, address and passport number.

A Secure Solution for e-Passports QuantumID Technologies addresses all of the issues through QuantumSecure e-passports. QuatumID secure solution for e-passports is based on completely revolutionary dimensions of technology

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• • •

Tags powered by light RF transmission over line of sight Data transmitted over multiple mediums light and RF QuantumID Technologies conceptually formed in late 2005 based on disruptive innovation in the field of RFID in MIT, Boston. It envisions to generate an ecosystem of profitable growth by bringing powerful efficiencies into the market with RFID based products methodology, solutions and services. Its services include: Business Consulting RFID, Feasibility Analysis, Pilot Projects, Application software, Technology Consulting, RFID Implementations with SAP.

QuantumID has a patented technology – “Active tags without batteries”. Its tags have the ability to store KB’s of digital data in secure memory of the silicon, which is dead, till the tag is powered with light encoded data by Quantum-authors.

Quantum-authors are literate RFID machines which can read and write RF and have the power to invoke Quantum secure memory RFID tags embedded in passports.

The data in the e-Passport remains safe till the e-Passport gets powered on by light and gets an electronic data Key transmitted as encoded / modulated light.

The data sent and received is encrypted at multiple levels at client (tag) and server sides and has a line of sight restriction which is the cure for eavesdropping.

Quantum thus has an innovative and quantum secure e-Governance model for e-Passports and other governance ID cards.

Prasanna Gogwekar (prasanna@qidtech.com) is Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director, QID. Prasanna holds an engineering degree (B.E) in Computer Sciences and has a vast experience in Operations and Programme Management and in deploying supply chain solutions for Fortune 500 companies.

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PPRODUCT SHOWCASE

Non-stop Business with Fujitsu Reliability, Availability and Scalability Primequest Server Unique in the industry, Primequest server offers multiple options for mirroring critical components to ensure continued operations in the wake of hardware failures. The system’s address and data crossbars are implemented redundantly so that they can be configured to carry mirrored signals. Memory can also be redundantly configured to mirror data in separate modules.

Utilising Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors, the new Primequest server by Fujitsu, delivers high performance with enhanced scalability.

In addition Primequest is designed and optimised to run Microsoft Windows Server and Linux, giving enterprises a unique combination of market standard operating systems that can benefit from the economies of industry-standard solutions.

Primequest server is perfect for running mission-critical applications which demand high-availability and robust performance, while providing enhanced flexibility for optimum resource utilisation. With its capabilities, it is ready to handle all challenges of typical application areas such as large-scale database and online transaction processing systems.

What differentiates Fujitsu Primequest server from other industrystandard Itanium Processor Family based platforms is the careful attention paid to the designs. Fujitsu leveraged on its experience in mainframe and high-end Unix Primepower servers to create a stable family of servers in Primequest to run mission-critical operation.

The largest of Primequest 500 series server can now scale up to 32 processors with 64 cores. Primequest server also offers flexible partitioning feature, with the ability to be configured up to 16 isolated partition (in model 580), each running its own operating system.Each Primequest can support multiple custom software stacks.

Another feature that sets Primequest apart from other modular scalable SMP system is the system interconnect (crossbar). Fujitsu

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www.fujitsu-india.com

has leveraged its supercomputing experience to design a crossbar switch that operates at higher bandwidth and lower latencies than competitive systems. As a result Primequest 500 series server delivers higher system performance and better scalability than other implementations that may use the same processors.

Providing mission critical hardware is only part of the equation. To extend the mission critical features to the Operating System, Fujitsu formed global alliances with Microsoft as well as Red Hat. Fujitsu has collaborated with Red Hat and contributed to the hardening of the open operating system for business critical usage via the contribution of 500 Fujitsu Linux developers.

Under the Global Alliance Partnership, Fujitsu is working closely with Microsoft around the development of mission critical RAS features and the optimisation for industry-leading performance benchmarks.

Lastly, the Primequest server line is offered as part of the Fujitsu Triole strategy for optimised IT, which unites servers, storage, networks and middleware to provide a dynamic and flexible customer IT environment. As mission critical operation is not restricted to just servers, the Triole strategy provides the optimised design, development and deployment of highly reliable, business-critical platform in heterogeneous environments aimed to increase business continuity, agility and efficiency.

All of these make Primequest 500 series server an ideal choice for organisations wishing to realise the economic benefits and flexibility of industry standard solutions without compromising their business continuity.

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COUNTRY FOCUS: JAPAN

Softopia A Centre of Excellence in the Centre in Japan

www.softopia.or.jp/en/

Gifu Prefecture, located in the centre of Japan, emerge as Japan information technology hub with it is Softopia Japan ICT incubator and Technology park — a place of excellence in providing start-up business support, ICT human resources development, development of regional information society and supporting ICT research and development projects.

Kemal Bajramovic

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ocal governments in Japan are all about providing better quality of life to their citizens. Bigger community means a bigger source of income and opportunities to access different funds on national level, so local governments are trying to attract businesses and people to reside in their region. Wherever you go in Japan, you will see a local government devising new ways of revitalising their region, many of them by undertaking a number of unique information technology projects. Gifu Prefecture, conveniently located between Japan’s capital, Tokyo, and Osaka, Japan’s second biggest city, is leading a process of fostering the information technology industry as well as development of information society. With Softopia Japan, Techno Plaza, and the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Gifu Prefecture aim to become world-class level base for ICT investments in Japan. I had a privilege to spend some time in Gifu Prefecture and those facilities; to witness how ideas, leadership and commitment of public administration top management are main ingredients of success in development of information society.

SWEET VALLEY CONCEPT It all started with the “JoJo”…

Former Gifu Prefecture’s Governor Taku Kajiwara’s dream was to turn Gifu region into a “JoJo” (comprising two Japanese characters to mean information industry), that is, a highly networked information society, where information produces added value and sophisticated services to help realise a good life. “The information hub” is the “point of production” of this information value and it is equivalent to farms (NoJo) in agricultural society or factories (KoJo) in an industrial society.

Sweet Valley is actually a territory situated in southern Gifu Prefecture and represents a Japanese version of Silicon Valley or Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor. It is a location of a growing concentration of IT companies, research and development institutions specialising in communications and 40 }

SWEET VALLEY—MAIN FACILITIES INCLUDES SOFTOPIA JAPAN, TECHNO PLAZA AND IAMAS

multimedia (such as Softopia Japan and Techno Plaza) as well as a diverse range of high-tech educational and commercial complexes. Gifu Prefecture government is committed to helping people, industry and businesses in this area, especially those who have the potential to excel at the global level, through providing personal development opportunities, business incentives and commercial promotion. Kajiwara’s dream of Gifu in 21st century was built around bridging information gaps, overcoming the digital divide, computerising local government, improving the life of citizens, and computerising medicine, welfare, and education services. Softopia Japan is at the core of this dream come true.

SOFTOPIA JAPAN

The idea is quite simple: to attract IT companies from throughout Japan and from overseas to transform Gifu into a major IT centre in Japan. The advancements in information technology and presence of knowledge-based companies are also expected to enhance the lifestyle of Gifu residents, by providing high-quality jobs, better welfare, as well as better www.egovonline.net

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e-Government services. As it is a case of other incubation and technology parks, government is providing significant business incentives for those who start their business operations in Softopia Japan area.

SOFTOPIA JAPAN AREA — CURRENT STATE OF DEVELOPMENT

Gifu Prefecture Softopia Japan concept was drafted in 1987 and the main building were open in 1996, hosting some 59 companies with 375 employees. Ten years after, there are some 170 resident companies with more then 2,100 knowledge workers doing business in the area of Softopia Japan. Great results have been achieved by prefecture government considering that population of Gifu prefecture is 2.1 million, relatively small compared to over 126 million in the whole of Japan.

Softopia Japan is placed in Ogaki City, small and quiet town in western Sweet Valley. Main mandates of Softopia include business support, research and development, promotion of IT in the region and development of human resources.

Softopia offers specialist advisors which are responding to the needs of the incubating company when it comes to business plans and incorporation instructions, financial affairs, management and legal consultations, procurement of funds, humer resources and labour, and patent and intellectual property rights consultations. Softopia provides up to 3 consultants free of charge.

To assist in the growth of newly established companies, Softopia organise seminars related to technology, management, legalities, tax system, marketing etc. The aim is to develop tenant’s managerial, presentation and other skills.

Examples of themes are how to do presentations, anecdotal accounts from venture company managers etc. Trainings are also offered free of charge.

Softopia provides marketing support also. The issue of a guidebook and establishment of a website that entails company descriptions, field of expertise and main products, allows incubating businesses to conduct powerful public relation In order to cultivate customers, Softopia arrange joint booths at IT company exhibitions in major cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.

In the Central Building there are several systems available for creating visual contents and computer graphics (audio and visual recording studio, editing of recorded data in video editing rooms, all sorts of various media transformations, systems that were used by professionals and all types of necessary systems for creating computer graphics. Incubation room residents can get it for 50 percent of normal price.

BUSINESS INCENTIVES FOR START-UP BUSINESSES

Softopia provides attractive business incentives and affordable office space for start-up ICT businesses in the four main complex buildings - Central Building, Annex, DreamCore and Workshop24.

For a price of 218 US$ per month, you can rent a 22 square meter room with all the necessary furniture, connected to a fiber optic network and Internet line. You can use 3 meeting rooms (business discussion, presentations, conferences), lounges for breaks, shower facilities, support rooms (relaxation, nap, store rooms) free of charge. Each room has 4 electrical outlets, air conditioning and 100Mbps broadband internet access and mail accounts that are also included in the price. Absolute privacy is provided and you will have 24hr access to your room secured by card key security system. If you’re on the eve of major discovery or just a workaholic you can spend nights in your incubation room.

Beside affordable office space and common utilities, incubating businesses will be supported by many other means. ov

October 2007

DREAMCORE PROVIDES 100 INCUBATION ROOMS FOR RENT

To become a tenant, you need to apply with your cursicution vitae and business plan. Applications are accepted around a year, but examinations are held once every two months.

BUSINESS INCENTIVES FOR WELL ESTABLISHED COMPANIES

After incubation period of maximum of three years, companies can rent office space with same facilities like incubation 41

COUNTRY FOCUS: JAPAN

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rooms but for more commercial price. Workshop 24 is such a building which contains reasonably priced, versatile development rooms for large companies, which, as we said, can also be used as the next step up for a venture company.

It also houses venture support offices that perform consulting services, overnight stay facilities, and rental housing.

For companies interested in large-scale/long-term business development, it is possible to construct a building of their own design, which best suits their business activities, on one of the designated lots in Softopia Japan area.

that leads to Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and other vendors certification are offered free of charge. Eligible applicants for training have to be over 18 years old and fit one or more of the following conditions: persons without a stable job, new graduates with no employment plans and/or persons seeking to change career. Most of the trainees manage to secure a job in one of Softopia companies.

Government of Gifu Prefecture is actively combating “digital divide” phenomena by providing free access to computer rooms, located in DreamCore building, to elderly and people with disabilities. Citizens can spend their time freely, learning how to utilise computers and e-Government services provided by Gifu Prefecture.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

As much as it is important to support development of ICT industry, equally it is important to promote utilisation of ICT technology in non-ICT industries. In the Gifu Prefecture, government is financing work of scientists’ teams to conduct research and development with the goal of creating technologies which support the digitalisation of the industry. Any company from the region can address Softopia regarding any of their IT needs, and Softopia will provide technology consultation and introduce them to partners capable of solving their technology problems.

Companies can also freely enquire about existing base of R&D projects that are available for technology transfer. If you are running a business in that area, Softopia can show you live demonstrations of their technology in action. Main area of interest is knowledge-based image recognition technologies.

FINAL WORDS

SOFTOPIA JAPAN WORKSHOP 24 BUILDING

Investors can count on a three year tax exemption for municipal property tax, Prefecture enterprise tax and realestate acquisition tax, as well as exclusion from special landholding taxes. Different scenarios of national tax exemptions also exist.

IT TRAININGS IN SOFTOPIA JAPAN

In an effort to promote development of ICT industry and ICT utilisation in Gifu Prefecture, the government has taken steps to educate and train highly skilled IT technicians. It is not enough just to foster job opportunities for the young people; you need to provide training that will bridge the gap of job related requirements between young people and companies starting their business in Softopia Japan and Gifu region. Government has started ambitious programme called “IT training for Local Employment” under which the courses 42

A person who works in ICT field has very specific needs.

It is not like working in the factory; you have to think, and generate ideas. It is only possible in healthy and calm natural environment, and Softopia provides it. There’s a lot of greenery with numerous restaurants and convenient stores spread across the area. When you combine it with personal development opportunities, well-thought business incentives and support, and commercial promotion that Softopia provides, one thought comes to my mind. It is probably the best place to start ICT business in Japan .

Recommended links: Softopia Japan - http://www.softopia.or.jp/en/ Softopia Japan Business Matching Site - http://www2.softopia. or.jp/bms/english/index.html Gifu Prefecture IT Business Investment Promotion Site - http://www. itbusiness-gifu.jp/e/

Kemal Bajramovic (kemal.bajramovic@ads.gov.ba) is Head of IT Department of Civil Service Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

www.egovonline.net

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INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Taking e-Government from ‘Information Access Phase’ to ‘Intelligent Interaction Phase’ www.sas.com/india

“Business Intelligence is emerging to be a strategic area of investment with in the government organisation as it allows them to transform citizen data into meaningful intelligence to manage citizen expectation and thereby strengthen service delivery to them.

Coupled with advanced analytics it is now possible to unearth areas of tax evasion, thereby increase revenues..” Read more on SAS Business Intelligent solutions, in this exclusive interview of egov magazine with Sudipta K. Sen, CEO and MD, SAS Institute (India) Pvt. Ltd. udipta.sen@sas.com Please tell us what are some of the SAS software solutions for the public sector? How are these helping governments to increase transparency and efficiency to reach its citizens?

Working with Government organisations to provide enriched citizen experience is our key organisational focus. SAS solutions for government can be categorised in four functional areas: Citizen Intelligence, Organisational Intelligence, Performance Management and Financial Intelligence.

Citizen Intelligence addresses challenges associated with providing single view of citizen, enhancing the service delivery and accessibility, data quality and integration issues etc. Financial Intelligence deals with areas relating to avoiding ov

October 2007

tax evasion and fraud; activity based management; planning and financial reporting.

Performance Management enables organisations for managing and monitoring their performance against their stated goals with the help of strategy maps, balanced scorecards, and executive dashboards.

Organisational Intelligence helps government organisations in IT management and strategic sourcing.

What, in your opinion, are the major drivers for Business Intelligence solutions in public sector?

Some of the key growth drivers for government organisation to embrace Business Intelligence solutions include: 43

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Managing information explosion.

Managing citizen expectations.

Increasing transparency.

Avoiding tax evasion and minimising fraud.

Business Intelligence is emerging to be a strategic area of investment with in the government organisation as it allows them to transform citizen data into meaningful intelligence to manage citizen expectation and thereby strengthen service delivery to them. Coupled with advanced analytics it is now possible to unearth areas of tax evasion, thereby increase revenues. Looking at historical data and trend, it is also possible to do predictive modeling which can be a great business driver for ministry of commerce, agriculture etc. At every level of transactions, there is a constant need for the government to ensure public value efficiency, accountability and transparency. The main drivers that ensure this are: tighter strategic and tactical planning; faster, agile and event driven decision making; reporting and compliance; analytics that focus on “how well” rather than “how much” and improved performance and effectiveness impact.

• • • •

Which are the applications for Government segment, where SAS solutions are being deployed? Please elaborate some of your successful deployments in India?

SAS solutions like performance management, activity-based management, forecasting and predictive analytics, data quality and integration, financial intelligence, citizen intelligence etc. are being effectively used by government bodies across the globe. Some of our global customers are US Census Bureau, Department of Commerce and Treasury, Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Service Commission, Prisons and Constabulary, Bureau of Internal Revenue. At present we are working with a lot of government bodies in India as well.

In India we have been successfully working with various Government organisations and helping them some of the challenges which they face.

Please tell us about your business intelligence platform.

How is SAS integrated business intelligence platform helping the governments to provide consistent and accurate information based on a comprehensive view of the business.

It is absolutely important for government organisations to deploy IT infrastructure which can support their strategic agenda. SAS’ integrated business intelligence platform

helps governments get consistent, accurate and intelligent information for policy and decision making. SAS platform helps governments gather information/ data from multiple statewide systems consolidate and monitor the same, convert this information in to intelligence by analytics and forecasting, thereby giving them a comprehensive view of the national policies and state of affairs. SAS enables government organisation to have accurate fact based decisions thereby further strengthening the effectiveness.

What role SAS is playing in fulfilling the e-Government vision of the Indian government?

Results-oriented, citizen-centric and reform-minded have become a mandate and not just rhetoric. The government needs to efficiently and effectively speedy information and services to the public. It is important for Indian e-Government initiatives to not only provide ‘access to information’ to citizens but engage citizens meaningfully for intelligent interactions.

This requires clear understanding of who the citizen is, what relationships he has with multiple government organisations etc. We see a great opportunity for SAS in working with Government organisation to equip them with required intelligent infrastructure which can take e-Government from ‘Information Access Phase’ to ‘Intelligent Interaction Phase’ with citizens.

What are the challenges and opportunities in working with the public sector in developing countries especially India?

We are pleased with the governments’ focus on using IT for improving service delivery to citizens and we believe they would be successfully executing against their stated goals.

I believe it is important for industry to raise the level of awareness of deploying Intelligent IT infrastructure which can further accelerate the required transformation.

What are some of your future plans in e-Government sector?

We are excited by the opportunity presented by this sector.

We have a focused strategy of working closely with the governments and enable them with required intelligent infrastructure for them to taking fact based decisions. SAS’ 30 years of experience in working closely with this segment coupled with industry backed solutions, positions ideally to serve this segment.

Join us on the Deliberations on India’s March Towards Transforming Public Sector Delivery INDIA

2008

25 - 27 June, 2008 India Expo Centre, Expo XXI, Greter Noida, India 44

www.eINDIA.net.in/egov For furter information contact: Gautam Navin (Mob: +91-9818125257 email: gautam@elets.in) www.egovonline.net

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Executive Movements N Ravi Shankar, Principle Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Uttrakhand has joined as Joint Secretary, Department of IT, Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, Government of India.

Som Mittal succeeds Kiran Karnik, as President, NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies), India’s premier chamber of commerce of the IT software and services industry. Mittal will assume the office of the President from January, 2008. He is presently the head of services business of Hewlett-Packard for Asia-Pacific and Japan region.

Bhawani Prasad Barat has been appointed Joint Secretary Industries, Midnapur, West bengal.

S Venkat, S K Kundra and S Lahiri will be the new Executive Directors (Finance) of the National Aviation Company of India Ltd (NACIL), the new company into which Air India and Indian have been merged.

R.K. Goel, Director (Finance) in Gas Authorilty of India Limited, will be the new Chairman of Ratnagiri Gas and Power Private Ltd (RGPPL), Maharashtra.

Sunil Mitra has been appointed new administrator of the Calcutta Stock Exchange (CSE). Mitra will replace T.K. Das.

Amit Sharma has joined the AsiaAmerican Tower Corporation as Executive Vice President. Sharma will serve as President of the company’s Asian operations and will be based in the company’s new office in Delhi. In this role, Sharma will be responsible for pursuing opportunities to extend the company’s wireless communications site leasing business into India and southeast Asia.

Neeraj Sharma, South Asia Managing Director of Lenovo has quit. Sharma is joining in a senior position in IBM. Sharma had initially moved to Lenovo from IBM India, where he was Vice President, personal computing, once the former acquired the personal computing division of IBM. Simon Bennett has been appointed as Executive Vice President and head of European operations in Quintant Corporation, the Business Services Provisioning (BSP) company with a strategic sourcing model. He will be based out of London, UK. Prior to joining Quintant, Bennett was Executive Director, UBS Warburg.

Ninad Karpe is joining as the Managing Director of Computer Associates International India. Karpe will head CA India’s sales, marketing and technical organisations. Karpe joins CA from CA Satyam ASP, a joint venture between CA and Satyam Computer Services, where he was the Chief Executive Officer.

Prior to being in CA Satyam, he was Executive Director of CA India.

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WHATS ON

27-29 NOVEMBER 2007 WIMAX Eastern Europe Eastern Europe http://www.wimax-vision.com/newt/l/wimaxvision/

29 OCT - 1 NOV 2007 8-11 OCTOBER 2007

Bangalore IT.in Bangalore, India

ICIN 2007 - Emerging Web and Telecom Services: Collision or Coopetition?

Bordeaux, France

4-5 DECEMBER 2007 http://www.bangaloreitevent.in/

e-Government Summit Kinepolis, Brussels, Belgium http://ca.com/be/en/events/item.aspx?e=150821&eis=1

http://www.icin-conference.com/

29-31 OCTOBER 2007 09 OCTOBER 2007

Networked Nations: Transformational Change with e-Governance New Delhi, India

eGovINTEROP’07 Paris, France

http://www.cisco.com

4-6 DECEMBER 2007 Vietnam e-Government Symposium 2007 Hochi Minh City, Vietnam http://www.egov.com.vn/

http://www.egovinterop.net/SHWebClass.ASP?WCI=Show Doc&DocID=2736&LangID=1

1 - 2 NOVEMBER 2007 4-6 DECEMBER 2007

E-Commerce India 2007 Mumbai, India

16-17 OCTOBER 2007 Convergent Billing and Revenue Assurance for Telecom Bangalore, India

http://www.marcusevans.com/html/eventdetail.asp?eventI D=12933&SectorID=17&divisionID

Mobility World Congress & Exhibition 2007 Hong Kong, China www.MobilityWorldCongress.com

http://www.vibrantec.net/billing.htm

6-7 NOVEMBER 2004

6-7 DECEMBER 2007

18 OCTOBER 2007

E & E Government Asia Restructuring governments to be more efficient and process friendly, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Securing Your Organisation’s Information in the Digital Age Sydney, Australia

Porvoo 12 Grosseto, Italy

http://www.marcusevans.com/html/eventdetail.asp?sector ID=32&EventID=11149

http://www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au/events-b090infosecurity.htm

http://www.fineid.fi/vrk/fineid/home.nsf/pages/ 6F4EF70B48806C41C225708B004A2BE5

21-22, OCTOBER, 2007 Symposium on Nanoscale Architecture San Jose, CA

8 NOVEMBER 2007

10-13 DECEMBER 2007

e-Democracy ’07 London, UK

ICEGOV 2007 - International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance Macao SAR, China

http://www.headstar-events.com/edemocracy07/

www.icegov.org

http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=24747

9 NOVEMBER 2007 24 OCTOBER 2007 Challenges e-2007 Conference and Exhibition The Hague, The Netherlands

2nd Annual Data Protection Practical Compliance Conference Dublin, Ireland http://www.pdp.ie/

12 - 13 DECEMBER 2007 Virtualisation Masterclass Sydney, Australia www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au

http://www.echallenges.org/e2007/

24-26 OCTOBER 2007 eChallenges e-2007 The Hague, The Netherlands

13 NOVEMBER 2007

17-20 DECEMBER 2007

e-Government Summit 2007 Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre, Singapore

4th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Internet Technology Bangalore, India

http://www.echallenges.org/e2007/default. asp?page=exhibinfo

28 - 30 OCTOBER 2007 3rd Information Society Conference: e-Government and Public Administration Reform Bosnia and Herzegovina

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http://www.kiit.org/icdcit2007

13-15 NOVEMBER 2007

28-30 DECEMBER 2007

Asia Rail 2007 Grand Hyatt, Singapore

Fifth International Conference on e-Governance Hyderabad, India http://www.asiarail.com/

http://www.iceg.net/2007

http://www.is.gov.ba/conference/

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