e-Panchayat: September 2005 Issue

Volume I issue 6, September 2005

ISSN 0973-161X

e-Panchayat PAGE 20 Revamping Citizen Services - Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) experience PAGE 27 Municipal e-Governance models: Comparative analysis of European cities PAGE 39 The first Asian monthly on e-Government

Eme rging

knowledge for change

Impa

cts

Page 31 In Practice

Page 35 Industry Perspective

Page 37 Tech Talk

Case of e-Governed Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation

Promising integrated e-Governance solutions S P S Grover, Oracle, India

Creating digital trust through Public Key Infrastructure

A special preview on

Page 23 www.conflux.csdms.in

Asia's first and only monthly print magazine on e-Government.

ov www.egov.csdms.in

CONTENTS

The first Asian monthly on e-Government

Cover Story

20

Bridging the Digital Divide through electronic knowledge based Panchayat C. S. R. Prabhu

In Practice

27

Revamping Citizen Services- Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) experience P K Gupta

31

Case of e-Governed Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) Prabhat Kumar, M. P. Gupta, Sushil

INTERVIEW

Commentary

39

Municipal e-Governance models: Comparative analysis of European cities Willemvan Winden

43

Benchmarking e-Readiness evaluation

10

Dr Vijayaditya Director General National Informatics Centre India

28

Rakesh Mehta Commissioner Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)

35

S. P. S. Grover Senior Director Oracle, India

Jeongwon Yoon and Myoungsin Chae

Tech Talk

37

Creating digital trust through Public Key Infrastructure Urmez Daver

Regular Features

8

News Review

23 Conflux Preview-III Look for the latest updates!

4

45

About Town

46

Facts and Data

A special preview on

www.egov.csdms.in |

EDITORIAL

Vol. I, Issue 6

September 2005

President M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta Sr. Assistant Editor Vikas Kanungo Assistant Editors Anuradha Dhar (New Delhi) Isa Seow (Singapore) Sub-Editor Dipanjan Banerjee Designed by Deepak Kumar Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Web www.egov.csdms.in Editorial and marketing correspondence eGov G-4 Sector 39 NOIDA 201301, India Tel +91 120 2502181-87 Fax +91 120 2500060 Email egov@csdms.in In Singapore 25 International Business Park #4-103F, German Centre Singapore 609916 Printed by 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 accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided. egov is published in technical colloboration with GIS Development (www.GISdevelopment.net)

© Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2005 www.csdms.in

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e-merging India e-Governance scenario in India is passing through interesting times. There is keen interest in this segment emerging from several quarters. At one level, since the Department of Information Technology has taken a lead in developing the National e-Governance Plan. This mammoth plan both in scope, money and promised deliverables is catching the imagination of the top echelons of the government. This is good news. The other good news is that many other actors are coming up with innovative plans on their own and this is unfolding the development of a whole new set of innovative ways to reduce the distance between the government and the citizens.

Mission 2007, inspired by the vision of Professor M S Swaminathan, which envisages the deployment of a knowledge centre in every village of the country by the year 2007, is inspiring many entrepreneurs and NGOs to take a leadership in this area. The West Bengal chapter of the Mission is being launched in the first week of September and there are indications that several other initiatives in this regard in various states are on the anvil.

The Ministry of Panchayati Raj has already announced a grand plan for e-panchayat, the first stage of rolling out of which has already started happening in some states. This seems to be a good sign, since inclusion of Gram Sabhas, which forms the heart of rural society of the country, is of utmost importance for e-Governance to happen at the grass root levels. The cover story of this issue focuses on this subject.

There is also some good news coming up from the Municipal sector. With the exponential growth of urban population, municipalities are not able to cope up with the pressure of delivering citizen services as efficiently as they would like to.

The e-Government initiatives in this sector are critical, to say the least, and it is heartening to note that many municipalities are taking steps in this direction. The Ministry of Urban Development is developing a mega plan for e-Government in the Municipal sector, with help of several international organizations.

In the backdrop of all these progress, several other initiatives are also unfolding.

The effort of egov magazine and the event we are organizing - ‘Conflux2005: The e-Government conference’ would help all these initiatives to come on a single platform, share knowledge and build partnerships.

Hope you enjoy reading this issue and see you at Conflux2005!

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

www.egov.csdms.in |

NEWS REVIEW

egov News

INDIA Knowledge Commission of India working towards a comprehensive national development plan The newly launched Knowledge Commission of India would work towards creation of a knowledge base of the country by focusing on five areas, including access to knowledge. The commission will also make proposals for creation and application of knowledge and delivery of knowledge services.

According to the Chairman of the Knowledge Commission Mr. Sam Pitroda, special efforts should be made for the development of ‘knowledge concepts’ and latest information technology tools could be used to improve access to knowledge and provide knowledge services. The eight-member commission, launched by the Prime Minister Mr. Manomohan Singh, will submit its first set of recommendations in October. The panel proposes to synergise perspectives of people working in various fields. It will formulate the recommendations with a view to benefit young people who are the real consumers of knowledge.

Emphasis will also be laid on need for egovernance in the country to facilitate the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

and e-Authentication systems in Somalia.

This will be one of the remarkable egovernance initiatives of the African nation of Somalia. According to Hasan Ahmed Jama, deputy minister of foreign affairs in the Somalian government, ensuring national and international security is the highest priority of the present Government. SRIT will partner with the Somalian government in the implementation and deployment of a national passport program solution, execution of national ID program, automation of driver licenses, vehicle registration and national health programs.

Data collection drive of Government of India goes high tech In a bid to make data processing more efficient, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of Government of India is planning to use Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) technology for the first time in the fifth Economic Census. The process, also known as Automated Forms Processing (AFP), enables the user to process documents from their images or directly from paper and convert them into computer readable data. The ICR will help make information deciphering more accurate and will enable high precision in data transfer. Since automated forms are designed to be scanned to a digital format so that the data on the form can be ‘extracted’ by the software rather than keyed by data entry personnel, the scope for errors is reduced. This also makes data processing less expensive. The fifth Economic Census is being conducted to fulfill detailed data requirements for the unorganised non-agricultural sectors of the economy.

Indian IT firm to deploy e-Passport and eAuthentication systems 3000 Kisan Soochna in Somalia Kendras planned in Sobha Renaissance Uttaranchal Information Technology (SRIT), a Bangalore based IT company has bagged a Somalian Government contract to set up e-Passport

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The Government of Uttaranchal has entered into an agreement with Jaikisan.org, a fully owned subsidiary of Soft Core Tech of Canada to install nearly 3000 Kisan Soochna Kendras (KSK) across

the state in order to provide varuious IT-enabled services to people from single kiosk. All 13 districts will be covered under the new scheme, the model for which is loosely based on e-Choulpal.

A Soochna Kendra will have facilities like the Internet, basic telephony, a full-fledged home theatre, call centres and other ITenabled services that are related to weather and agriculture. Already 45 Soochna Kendras have been installed acrposs the state. Each Pradhan of a rural panchayat will be entitled to nominate one entrepreneur who can set up the KSK at his village. A KSK would employ nearly 11 to 12 people. For the benefit of tourists, a number of Soochna Kendras will be set up on the roads leading to Badrinath, Kedarnath, Yamunotri and Gangotri

Indian Government to leagalise on-line coal trading Very soon coal companies in India would be trading on-line through e-auctioning. This landmark move by the Government, which is yet to be finalised, can save consumers from forced buying of coal from black market due lack of information and linkage with the industry. Currently, some companies are running e-auctioning on a trial basis to find out its feasibility and efficiency in improving business process.

It is expected that by this year end Government will be giving permission to start e-auctioning of coal on a large scale.

Computers to police traffic in Bangalore In the Indian city of Bangalore, policemen have turned to simputers to discipline wayward motorists. The system that fits into the cops’ palm helps booking drivers for traffic violations on the city road where more than two million vehicles jostle for road space every day. The autowww.egov.csdms.in |

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Q&A with Dr Vijayaditya, Director General, NIC, India National Informatic Centre (NIC) is a premier government technical body of India responsible for various computerisation projects. Establishment of NICNET & CICs (in the north-east India) have been some of NIC’s key achievements. In an exclusive interview with Dr. Vijayaditya, Director General, NIC, egov finds out its present role and future plans.

NIC is 30 years old organization providing ICT applications in government departments at center and states. What changes have taken place in NIC’s thrust and way of working between then and now?

Initially, NIC was conceived to provide informatics services to Ministries & departments of Government of India.

Accordingly, expertise & services were being extended only to the central government as per original proposition.

It was at the time of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s, it was decided to extend our business domain to the States. During first decade, we created basic infrastructure, established data communication systems from districts to the state capitals. It was paramount for us to create necessary awareness about potential of data communication system in Government and making the officers realize that it is a useful tool.

We have been very successful to establish a very reliable, state-of-theart direct communication facility, which is called NICNET - a VSAT based system.

The next ten years were invested in creating an in-vivo understanding about functional & business requirements of the users and their environments and employ this knowledge in developing applications to improve their day-to-day activities.

Our approach has been to develop those applications, which are relevant to their operations .We tried to make sure that the concerned users/officials 10

would own these applications. Without creating a sense of Ownership among individual Users/Officers owning these applications, the success rate would be very poor. As we started implementing these applications their awareness and ownership has subsequently increased.

In the following decade, we emphasised on overall applications using workflow model, to re-engineer the entire process. Our success rate has been high, as we have been able to create ownership of these solutions and products among the various users.

In the last few years, we are focusing upon promoting consciousness about quality certification of software products and development of secure applications in E-governance domain. We have initiated ISO Certification.

What are the programmes of NIC to enhance the skill sets of its resources to ensure the competitiveness of the NIC resource as per the pace of changes happening in IT solutions markets?

Since we provide technical solutions to the Government, we also need to be abreast with the latest technology. We are conducting executive programmes for our officers. One batch of 25 officers has been recently trained at IIM Banaglore. We are also trying to work with other IIMs to give a software management perspective. We are also currently working with IITs to provide executive programmes to our officers on technology trends. Another set of training is continuous enhancements in skillsets to be able to apply the latest toolset, which enables them to perform much better – for modeling, testing and finally going for production.

With government now focusing more and more on PPP models, what role do you think NIC will have in the changed scenario?

NIC is a technical organization within government. It has acquired enormous domain knowledge and expertise in

implementation of these e-Government programmes. But NIC cannot do implementation of all the projects on its own. Our extent of engagements in any given project is guided by various factors such as nature and type of activity; accountability & confidentiality of process and procedures. We do work extensively with a number of private agencies in variety of ways in rolling out the products. In certain places we outsource certain developmental activities. I hear from industry that 80% of successful e-Government projects in India are done by NIC directly or indirectly.

Can you share some of NIC’s key national projects and state-level projects, which have proved to be technology independent, scalable and sustainable?

In case of central government projects, the most successful one is Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT). Today 95% of their operations are done electronically - application for import and export trade license, payments, etc. Other is customs department. We are participating in implementation of EDI system i.e. inter-linking the banks, seaports, airports. At the State level, Land Records project has been successfully implemented in several states – Bhoomi in Karnataka, TamilNilam in TamilNadu, Halaris in Hariyana.

The Registration project (CARD) of Andhra Pradesh has been very successful. Recently, VAT was implemented in Sikkim on 1st April and West Bengal. Implementation of “Online treasury system” in Chhattisgarh could be regarded as achievement considering background of it being a new state in contrast with Karnataka. Internationally, we have a product called eNRICH, which is being implemented at several places in Sri Lanka.

What is your vision for NIC 5 or 10 years down the line?

To make NIC as one of the best organizations for providing eGovernment applications at International level. But within the country, our objective is to develop solutions to reach the unreached destinations. www.egov.csdms.in |

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mated paperless spot fining system, through its Internet connectivity, also helps track down frequent offenders. It allows access to data on two-million-odd cases in less than a minute. Every breach of traffic regulation appears on the screen, with date and place, making it easy for the police to hand out a ticket on the spot

De-sanctioning of Commodity Exchange promise to boost Indian rural economy Indian Government has recently removed the 40 years of sanction the commodity trading promises to improve market for rural population. With 70 per cent of the population in rural areas, it’s pretty obvious that commodity exchanges will affect a lot more lives than the stock market. According to a study done 10 years ago on 17 commodities, if there was a common Indian market, you could unlock a wealth of $9 billion. Since commodities are concerned with about 700 million people in this country, this is the only way the country can become an economic super power.

Indian Railways to use radio frequency identification to track wagons The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) of Indian Railways plans to use radio f r e q u e n c y identification (RFID) technology to improve the wagon management system of the Railways. CRIS proposes to have a RFID tag or chip embedded in all the wagons and provide sheds with handheld devices that would read these chips and thus register the data. Following this, the details can be fed into the Indian Railways system to help track wagons accurately.

To start with, the autonomous body responsible for all IT-related activities of Railways plans to run a pilot project by 12

putting RFID chips in 1,000 wagons in the East Coast Railways.

PAKISTAN Revenue Department to computerise land records The NWFP Senior Minister Siraj-ul-Haq has directed the Revenue Department to expedite work on computerisation of Patwar Khanas, circles and land records as well as command on IT for all revenue officials, including Patwaries, must be made essential to enable them deliver to the masses rather than adding to their miseries like past. It has been decided that Patwaries and other revenue officials would compulsorily have to learn in computer literacy, graphics, maps and software programming while IT expertise in all such concerns would be made essential part of their qualification and experience for future appointments.

SOUTH AFRICA South African Government plans to use open source software for e-Health system The South African State Information Technology Agency (SITA) plans to develop an electronic health record system (EHR) for the national Department of Health. For the nationwide adoption of the project, the department considers an open source based development and calls for tenders. SITA has extended the deadline for responses to its request for information to August 12, 2005.

According to Joseph Dal Molin, a Director of WorldVistA, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to the spread of open-source software based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’

Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), the use of open source software would come along with possibility to save a large of amount of IT expenses compared with the adoption of a proprietary solution.

MALAYSIA Oracle launches e-Governance centre Oracle Corporation has launched a centre of excellence for e-Governance at its Cyberjaya office in Malaysia. The centre at Century Square, which will see RM10 million of investment from Oracle Malaysia over the next three years, will work on prototyping and showcasing solutions. The Cyberjaya centre will invite masters degree and doctoral candidates to come and work there, hopefully bringing about exchanges of viewpoints and ideas which will lead to better solutions that can be made available internationally. It will also lead the way in developing comprehensive eGovernment solutions not just in Malaysia but also around the region.

TANZANIA Government boosts ICT throughout Tanzania The government of Tanzania has made concerted efforts to give a push to the spread of Information Communication Technology (ICT) countrywide as a key vehicle towards achievement of the Tanzanian Development Vision 2025. The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Communication and Transport, Salim Msoma, said this in Dar es Salaam recently.

Msoma said that through ICT empowerment, people’s lives and business transactions were becoming even more efficient and effective. He mentioned the steps as creating a conducive environment for investing in the ICT industry and formation of a national policy, which addressed key areas that needed attention in order to realise ICT for all. www.egov.csdms.in |

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GIS News*

INDIA Satellite maps of Pune every six months

said that the University, in collaboration with the French Institute of Pondicherry, had already prepared a historical atlas of Tamil Nadu under a pilot project in 2004.

Under the pilot project taken up in 2001, a prototype was developed for Pudukottai (Central Tamil Nadu) region. Every village in Pudukottai district was surveyed and documented. More than a thousand inscriptions, dating from the third century BC to the Vijayanagar period, was analysed to enhance the historical geography of the region.

The Ford Foundation wanted the project to be extended to cover the entire South India and agreed to fund the project.

The Pune Municipal Corporation will obtain satellite maps of the city twice a year to monitor use of urban land and also to control unauthorised constructions. Municipal Commissioner Nitin Kareer has sent a proposal to the standing committee, asking for a provision of Rs 12 lakh for the purpose.

Satellite pictures of the city will be taken every six months with help from the Nagpur-based National Remote Sensing Agency. Quick Bird satellite has been selected for the work. The State government has selected eight municipal corporations so that it can get updated information on use of urban land in the state. These maps will be analysed and sent to ward offices concerned.

Digital Atlas for South India The Tamil University in Thanjavur is involved in preparing a historical atlas of South India in digital format, in collaboration with the French Institute of Pondicherry. The Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala; Mangalore University, Mangalore; and the Central University, Hyderabad, are also involved in the project, informed Dr. C. Subramaniam, Vice-chancellor, Tamil University. Ford Foundation has offered to fund the project with a Rs. 85 lakhs grant for three years. The Vice Chancellor *In collaboration with GIS@Development (www.gisdevelopment.net)

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Satellites reveal increase of forest and tree cover The State of Forest Report 2003, based on interpretation of data from Indian Remote Sensing satellites for the year 2002, has shown that the total forest and tree cover of India has increased to 778,229 sq. km constituting 23.68% of its geographic area, against 757,010 sq. km constituting 23.03% of geographic area in 2001 assessment. Thus, there is an increase of forest and tree cover by 21,219 sq. km, which is 0.65% of geographical area as compared to 2001 assessment. The State of Forest Report – 2003 (SFR-2003), was released by the Minister of Environment and Forests, Thiru A. Raja, this week. This report is the ninth assessment of the forest cover of the country carried out by the Forest Survey of India (FSI), Dehradun – an organization under the Ministry of Environment & Forests, which assesses forest and tree cover of the country on a two-year cycle.

in six Indian cities of Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai. The project envisages mapping of utilities like drinking water, sewage, gas, electricity, roads etc. for quick repair, effective maintenance and proper planning. Apart from these, it will help fire, ambulance, police and other departments for dispatching response teams quickly in case of emergency. Aerial photographs on 1:6000 scale would be collected for generating maps of these cities on 1:1000 scale. Once these base maps are ready, data pertaining to the utilities will be collected and superimposed, which will ultimately be developed into a good GIS, to guide civilian authorities. These individual systems would be interconnected through 2 Mbps data lines, making a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN).

Bangalore city to get GIS-based property tax system by 2006 The city of Bangalore is soon going to have a GIS-enabled property tax payment system. This hi-tech and first-of-its-kind system of India, which will get operational by December 2005, will initially cover 57 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), including seven City Municipal Councils (CMCs) and one Town Municipal Council (TMC) of Bangalore. Later, the whole of Karnataka tax collection system will brought under this system. The project, under the banner of e-Governance Foundation, is costing 70 million Indian rupees and is expected to revolutionise property tax collection. The GIS software required for this project has been provided free of cost by the Indian software company Infosys. According to a survey of the Directorate of Municipal Administration (DMA) of Bangalore, use of this GIS-based system is expected to double the total revenue collection from property taxes.

Major Indian cities to have detailed utility maps

Citadel develops digital map of Hyderabad

The planning Commission of India has approved the mapping of various utilities

A GPS-GIS solutions company of India – Citadel, has developed a digital map of www.egov.csdms.in |

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the city Hyderabad called InforMAPtion on a CD. The software will help the user locate and plan the routes to locations in the city. K Jayachandra, additional director general of police formally launched the InforMAPtion recently.

IRELAND Digital Mapping launched at Ireland’s Land Registry office Michael McDowell TD, Minister for Justice, Equality & Law Reform and the Chief Executive & Registrar of Deeds and Titles, Catherine Treacy formally launched the final project in the computerisation of the Land Registry – Digital Mapping. The Land Registry of Ireland has been in the vanguard of delivering Information Society technologies in Ireland.

Land Registry has taken the Information Society agenda to centre-stage at EU level.

The Land Registry systems provide a key element of a well-functioning property market. The Land Registry’s Integrated Title Registration Information System (ITRIS) application is enabling the organisation to process 20,000 cases per month, whereas the former paper based approach was unable to deal with even 7,000 cases per month.

PACIFIC ISLAND COMMUNITY

in the Pacific Islands can take better decision using the data and statistics to be generated by the software. To be used by all the member countries and territories of SPC, the GIS application was initially developed for use by the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The PopGIS features multiple applications; policy analysis, planning and research; monitoring progress, besides the manifestation of different aspects of developments at various levels of geography. The Cook Islands, the Marshall Islands and French Territory-Wallis and Futuna Island have been identified as the next recipients of a national PopGIS.

MALAYSIA On-line street map now available for Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu An on-line street map of the city of Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia and surrounding areas is now available to assist tourists and locals alike to locate places of interests or business premises as well as to find out local events. The website, www.kkmap.com/streetmap, developed by a local GIS/IT solution provider, Menggaris IT Sdn Bhd, gives detailed information for every building and road with an easy interface for all to use. The map is based on data approved by the national Mapping and Survey Department.

The website, the first of its kind in the State, provides the opportunity for advertisers to promote their products and services to a wider audience.

GIS helps Pacific islands population planners in UNITED STATES better decision-making The prototype Population Geographic Information System (PoPGIS) is a userfriendly data and information management system that is recently launched by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), through its Demography/Population Programme.

With the help of PGIS, decision-makers 16

New GPS unit helps dodge traffic jams Chicago-based Cobra Electronics in U.S. recently unveiled its new portable GPS navigation with real-time traffic information. The Nav One 4500 offers rerouting options based on the location of

traffic congestion. Portable units appeal to people who want to be able to use a

device in different cars, including rental cars while on business trips or vacations.

The data, refreshed every two minutes, is available for 48 major cities, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and down to smaller cities, including West Palm Beach, Austin and Texas. The Nav One 4500 has a touch screen, which has proven popular among GPS purchasers.

The original Cobra device was operated with buttons. Nav One 4500 has 7.6 million “interest points,” including restaurants, hotels, parks, beaches, churches, government offices and museums.

BULGARIA Digital Map of Bulgaria now available GfK MACON’s digital maps of Bulgaria with 4-digit postcodes has been recently released. The map set has been updated and reflects the latest 2005 status. GfK MACON’s digital maps of Bulgaria reflects the latest 2005 status and have been extended by postcode maps. For the first time GfK MACON presents an area-wide map of around 4,700 4-digit postcode areas. Additional administrative boundaries and topographic maps such as city points, urbanized areas, rivers and lakes, motorways and national highways, railway lines, airports and elevation complete the map set. The digital maps are now available in the formats of all of the standard GIS. The German company GfK MACON AG has been providing geomarketing solutions and consultancy services on all aspects of the topic of Area Planning since 1991. www.egov.csdms.in |

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ICT4D News*

INDIA Indian IT firm HCL, comes up with its below 10,000 rupees PC

With the goal to make PC ownership affordable for all the Indian IT giant HCL Corporation has launched the cheapest branded PC at a price falling just below the ten thousand rupees mark. According to HCL Chairman, Mr Ajai Chowdhury this was a response to the challenge that Government had thrown to the industry some time ago, as to whether they could come up with a low-cost PC, without compromising on quality.

Recently de-sanctioned Commodity Trading promise to boost rural Indian economy Recent Government de-sanctioning of commodity trading promises to improve market for rural population, especially through ICT and Internet. With 70 per cent of the population in rural areas, it’s pretty obvious that commodity exchanges will affect a lot more lives than the stock market. A study done 10 years ago on 17 commodities, revealed a business potential of $9 billion. Since commodities are concerned with about 700 million people in this country, this is the only way the country can become an economic super power. *In collaboration with i4d (www.i4d.csdms.in)

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CSC, the new generation PCO in Indian villages A Public Call Office (PCO)-like revolution is set to reach Indian villages, taking the benefits of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) to the people through 1 lakh Common Service Centres (CSCs) by 2007. The Department of Information Technology (DIT) has received nine proposals from the private sector to steer the initiative. The hi-tech CSCs, bearing a common logo and name, will offer both government and private services across 15 areas including agriculture, animal husbandry, citizen services, health, education, employment, panchayat programmes, tourism and entertainment.

Depending on location, CSCs may be plain cyber kiosk-like operations with computers and broadband connectivity, photo-printers, digital cameras, telephones, uninterrupted power supply (UPS) with four-hour battery backup, software license and generator set. The CSCs will be run by village-level entrepreneurs to be trained and supervised by service centre agencies at the district level.

AFRICA Clinton to launch tuition-free online education for Africa Former President of USA, Bill Clinton will be launching a tuition-free online education programme for Africa on October 18, 2005, under its youth-based program Professeurs pour la liberté (PPL).

PPL offers scholarships to young people from around the world to deliver tuitionfree online education to the African continent. The programme builds synergy by blending donated course material and recycled technology from developed nations with the idealism and adventurousness of youth. A powerful figure in the non-profit world, the former president is particularly keen to encourage young people to serve their communities.

PPL delivers real facilitators in Africa, to assist and encourage African students.

SRILANKA ICTA-Intel joint program to promote IT-literacy in Srilanka Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Srilanka in collaboration with Intel has recently launched the ‘e-Srilanka PC Program’ in order to improve the dismal state computer literacy among masses. This programme fosters the UN Millennium Development Goals and World Summit on Information Society charter to ‘bridge the digital divide”. Under this program, Intel will be providing low cost PCs to the common people, loaded with open source software. The program will aim to increase the general public awareness toward benefits of owning and using PC and help in creating a knowledge society.

MOZAMBIQUE CD on malaria prevention wins Mozambican ICT award A CD-ROM on malaria prevention has won the first prize for production of digital content awarded by a national jury under the auspices of the Ministry of Science and Technology in Mozambique.

Developed by the Manhica Community Multimedia Centre (CMC), the CD-ROM will now compete for Mozambique in the international e-Content award to be announced during the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005. The CD-ROM, ‘Malária – pela e para a comunidade de Manhiça’ was produced last year as part of an ICT learning initiative. It was made by the CMC in both Portuguese and local languages (Shangana and Macua), in collaboration with the community of Manhiça and the Centre of Informatics at the University of Eduardo Modlane (CIUEM) in Maputo. It has since been widely circulated to other CMCs and community information centres in Mozambique. www.egov.csdms.in |

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COVER STORY

Bridging the Digital Divide through electronic knowledge based Panchayat ePanchayat is a software product conceptualised, designed and developed with the active involvement of the stakeholders at lowest administrative level and is implemented in Andhra Pradesh. It started as a pilot project in Ramachandrapuram in Medak district and spread initially to 40 districts. Now, it has been announced that ePanchayat would be rolled out in 475 major gram panchayats across the state at a cost of Rs 8.31 crores (1.9 million USD).

Institutions of Governance in the field The state Governments have created several Panchayat Raj institutions to ensure grass root level development. At village level the Gram Panchayats are there, these are grass root level institutions. At the intermediate level, i.e., Tehsil/Block/ Mandal level there are nodal executive authorities, they coordinate the implementation of welfare schemes and services. In the case of Andhra Pradesh, there are Mandal Parishads. Similarly at the District level the common nodal administrative authority exists, in Andhra Pradesh at district level there are Zilla Parishads. Some places there are Divisions. At the state level there is state level Administration to prepare policy guidelines and ensure the smooth functioning of the Panchayat Raj institutions.

ePanchayat architecture and features The idea behind e-Panchayat is to streamline the administrative processes and conserve resources at every village resulting in development and empowerment of citizens with with efficient and responsive local administration. ePanchayat’s architecture is web-based n-tiered. It functions like Applications Services Provider for all Panchayat providing digital services to all the stakeholders. The stakeholders are Citizens, Elected Representatives, Grampanchayat officials, the Government and the Knowledge Workers. At panchayat level an ordinary client with Internet access is sufficient to implement 20

Panchayats are the grassroot level organizations responsible for governance in villages in India. There are 2,50,000 gram panchayats in India. Therefore success of any nationwide e-Governance programme can be only achieved by actively involving these Panchayats. The Panchayati Raj Ministry is taking steps to bring IT to grassroot level institutions. It has recently announced to spend over Rs 1000 crores in the next two years towards installation of computers to all panchayats, interlink them with one another and also with a national panchayat portal. e-Panchayat. Most of the computation is done locally, the reporting and association communication takes place through available network for a very brief period of time. Thus field level units can conserve a lot of communication cost and at the same time ensure the uniformity and quality of e-Governance services.

The EKPANCH Application Server Software has four main modules.

• Administration Module • Management Information System Module • Citizen Services Module

•

Elected Representative Module.

The Administration Module helps the Gram Panchayat officials in executing their duties and responsibilities delegated to them. The MIS module is envisaged to facilitate the state level Gram Panchayat planning, finance and revenue Dept officials. The Citizen module is the onestop and non-stop provider of all the services to the citizens. The elected representatives module is going to render services to the elected representatives.

The multi-media based information dissemination software, the bio-metric www.egov.csdms.in |

COVER STORY

based attendance monitoring software etc., are also part of this ePanchayat to facilitate empowerment through simplicity, morality, accountabilility, responsiveness and transparency (SMART) at the Panchayats.

ePanchayat implementation model The main objective is to ensure successful implementation of EKPANCH in all the Panchayats, in shortest possible time with least amount of resources and overheads by the Government.

The following strategy is suggested.

The Commissioner Panchayat Raj & Rural Employment need to buy only the servers.

At Grampanchayats, on Build Own and Operate (BOO) basis the systems can be facilitated through a self-employment generation scheme. So that in each village one or two families shall able to get their livelihood by rendering services to the Citizens and the GP officials by operating and implementing ePanchayat. For rendering the services, the service charges can be fixed. It will be the enterpreneurs responsibility to collect and feed data, and generate reports. The amount of data fed and the number or reports generated are monitored through software and accounted for making payment. The system maintenance, procurement, Internet connectivity and associated logistics shall be taken care by the entrepreneur.

• • • • • •

The Citizen Services are focused on Birth & Death Registration and Certification House Tax Collection Old Age, Widow & Disabled Pensions Trade Licenses Layout Permissions Grievances Monitoring

Current implementation status and conclusion For sustainable socio-economic development at the grass root level, a wide involvement of the communities and businesses would need to be ensured.

This would automatically warrant forging of sound business relationships based on transparency, mutual good will and benefit. NIC’s e-Panchayat offers a unique opportunity for establishing inter as well | September 2005

Main features of ePanchayat 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

Bio-metric attendance Monitoring Below Poverty Line - Enumeration Village Level Planning Meetings Management Self Help Groups related information management Monitoring Attendance in GP Meetings Managing Information related to the Meetings at Mandal/ District Officials Managing Information related to the assignments of the Superior Officers related to the Village.

Managing the information related to the GP Property.

Managing Information related to the Weaker section Housing Program Encroachments related information Maintenance.

Managing Information related to the Atrocities against Women & Children (if any ) Gram Panchayat Registers Computerisation Communicable Diseases related information management.

Tax demands, receipts generation, revenue accounting.

Anti Malarial Spraying related information management.

Crops related information management.

Anganwadies, Balwadies related information management.

Generation of Ceritificates for citizens.

Tree Plantation & Protection related information management.

Maintain Sanitation related information.

Maintaining information related to the atrocities against SC, ST (if any) Planning & Implementation related information management.

VTDA related information maintenance.

Relief & Rehabilitation related information management.

Untouchability Eradication Programmes related information maintenance.

Assistance to AP TRANSCO related information maintenance.

Enrolment related information management.

Minimum Wages Act voilation related information maintenance.

Maintaining information for organizing Literacy Classes Birth - Death Registration related information management.

Crop Coverage Information management.

Marriage Registration information management.

34. Extension Information management for dissemination.

35. Grama Sabha - Beneficiaries Information management.

36. Managing land Information for Azmoish of Crops 37. Property Details information maitenance.

38. Maintainance of Agriculture Statistics 39. Managing Information for Serving Legal Notices (as and when required) 40. Maintaining information to ensure upkeep of Display boards & Assets 41. Managing information related to village level events to Inform Public.

42. Maintaining information related to Black Marketing of Inputs for reporting.

43. Managing information to assist in Loan Recovery.

44. Maintaining Weavers Information for reporting.

45. Maintaining information related to Panchanamas conducted.

46. Managing information for generating and issuing Dependancy Certificate to Weavers 47. Managing information to ensure safety of Govt Attached Property.

48. Managing information to ensure better Co-ordination among various Agencies operating in the village.

49. Managing information for performing Election Duties 50. Managing information related to Govt.

Programs for public participation.

51. Maintaining information to inform Police about unlawful incidents.

52. Managing the information related to village Teachers for better laisoining.

53. Managing Information to Organize Meetings for Community work 54. System to Report Accidents immediately to higherups.

55. System to ensure Co-ordination among all Departments right from hamlet level to the state level.

56. Manage Information related to the Old age Pension Scheme.

57. Maintanance of information to ensure Clean and Green 58. System to report Epidemics Out break in time.

59. System to provide Marketing Services 60. Managing information related to the Community Welfare & Development Other information, Counselling, Transaction Processing (including payment), certification , authentication, grievance redressal etc., services are included in

21

COVER STORY

Normal Model

22

Build Own & Operate (BOO) Model

Govt. has to procure and maintain the systems

It is enterpreneurs responsibility. Govt recommends a soft loan through Bank or through Govt’s economic upliftment welfare schemes.

Govt has to arrange for internet connectivity.

Govt need not arrange for internet connectivity.

The Gram Panchayat secretary or other officials may have to feed the reports to the central server. The existing staff may not be willing to operate and feed the data, as they may have to attend to other duties.

The data will be collected and fed by entrepreneur, as for each report entered and sent, he gets a fixed amount of revenue.

GP has to bear the overheads of system maintenance and communication and stationery and consumables charges. It will be difficult to monitor the expenditure on consumables.

GP need’nt bother about the recurring expenditure and need not keep track of the associated expenditure.

Operations may be slow, timely reporting may not take place.

Operations shall be faster, as GP can remove slow and non-responsive enterpreneurs. Or if load is more, may issue license to additional enterprenuers and thus create competition.

Difficult to encourage and create competition.

Prompt services results in quick revenues and thus speed and promptness are encouraged. And Scope exists for creating a healty competition for operating and utilising the EKPANCH system.

Gram Panchayat has to incur expenditure.

GP may also get a share of revenue.

Revenues may not go up as all payments may not be accounted.

Revenues go up as all accounts are recorded, even otherwise, people shall demand a receipt from a powerless businessmen for the amount paid rather than a powerful Govt servant.

Takes time to implement in all the villages, due to overheads.

Implementation can take place simultaneusly in all villages, as overheads are almost nil for the Govt.

Difficult to sustain the model.

Easy to sustain the model, so runs for longer time.

The Govt shall be under pressure to ensure successful implementation, as overheads are more and expenditure is involved.

Govt shall not have any pressure, as there is no expenditure for the project implementation in the field from the Dept.

The pressure is distributed to all the village level enterprenuers. So problem is getting divided and solved.

Similar ePanchayat initiatives are carried out in other states like Chhattisgarh (epanchayat.cg.nic.in), Uttar Pradesh, etc. as intra stakeholders partnerships at the grass root level. Realising this fact the Government of Andhra Pradesh has decided to implement the e-Panchayat system in all the major Gram Panchayats in the Andhra Pradesh. It went one step ahead and to ensure e-readiness of the Panchayats, training, procurement of hardware etc., resources were allocated.

To ensure sustainability, the RajIV operators were also being involved in the implementation of the e-Panchayat. (The village level enterpreneurs owning a computer, obtained through District Administration and Internet connectivity are called RajIV operators in Andhra Pradesh) Currently, Government of A.P. has issued orders and released funds for rolling out ePanchayat in 475 major gram panchayats in AP. ( to be operational by end of current year). After this, the roll out plan will be expanded to 800 Panchayats. In each of these 475 panchayats, one PC with 8 hour backup UPS will be installed and connected to Internet. The software modules are both local and web based. Funds are allotted for hardware, data entry and training. NIC is giving software and training. The internal accounting of the Panchayat is taken care by Financial Accounting module.

C. S. R. Prabhu Dy. Director General and State Informatics Officer National Informatics Centre, Hyderabad sio@ap.nic.in

www.egov.csdms.in |

CONFLUX

2005 PREVIEW III

The Grand New Delhi 17 - 19 October 2005

Organisers

Host state

Institutional partner

Co-organisers

Government of NCT of Delhi

Media partners

Supported by

ISPAI

Internet Service Providers Association of India

Gold sponsor

CONFLUX

2005 PREVIEW III

Rural Computing

NeGP

Information Communication and Technology (ICT) can greatly improve the quality of life of rural population.

Introduction of cheap and robust computer devices and deployment of rural IT infrastructure are the key requirements to give computing a fillip in those regions. The session on Rural Computing during Conflux 2005 will look into understanding the needs of people in rural areas and bring out the innovations of governments, corporates and civil society organisations in addressing these issues. Topics to be covered under this session are :

The Government of India has recently launched the National e-Governanment Plan (NeGP), which is perhaps the biggest initiative launched in the country towards usage of ICT in governance. Conflux 2005 will discuss in detail about the roadmap of NeGP, the implementation plan, possible impact and ways to take the message of NeGP agenda to a much wider and deeper level within the Government system.The conference would encourage State governments to discuss their NeGP action plans, time-lines and potential areas of collaboration with industry, civil society and within the Government.

Common Service Centres (CSCs) Governments can make best use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to serve citizens, especially in rural areas, by creating access points called common service centres - as one-stop shop for a host of Government services for citizens.

e-Panchayat The success of Rural IT implementation largely depends on capacity building and enhancement of absorptive ability of personnel working at the Panchayat level. In order to discuss the strategies and know about the current developments in this sector, Conflux 2005 will have a dedicated session on the subject in association with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India.

ICT in Agriculture Most developing nations of the world, including India, thrive on an agrarian economy. ICT has a tremendous potential of delivering crucial information to farmers and help them learn new agricultural practices. Conflux 2005 will have a session on ICT in Agriculture that will bring government officials, scientists, IT experts and grass root practioners to share ideas, expertise and knowledge in applying ICT for agriculture.

e-Health The session on e-Health in Conflux 2005 will be organised in collaboration with leading government and non-government organisations in this sector.

Key topics to be discussed Introduction to NeGP • Overview of NeGP • Components of NeGP (SWANs, Data Centres, CSCs) • Standards • Gateway India Portal Implementing NeGP • Capacity Building • Core Scoping of Mission Mode Projects Central Mission Mode Projects • National ID • Central Excise • Income Tax • DCA 21 • Passports/Visa and Immigration • Pensions Implementation and Policies Strategy for NeGP

Key sectors to be addressed • • • • •

Citizen services Income tax/Commercial tax Municipal e-Government Police departments Transport

• • • • •

Land records Passport department Postal department Registration services Treasuries automation

www.conflux.csdms.in |

CONFLUX

2005 PREVIEW III

Overview of first Advisory Board Meeting of Conflux 2005 19 August 2005, India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi

ICT in Education

Conflux 2005 organised its first Advisory Board Meeting on August 19, 2005 at India International Centre, New Delhi. The meeting was aimed at bringing the honoured members of the advisory board on a common platform to discuss the vision and strategies of Conflux 2005 and review the progress made so far. The meeting witnessed an active interaction among the delegates to brainstorm the present needs and priorities of eGovernment, which need to be addressed through the conference.

There is abundant evidence that the use of ICT can lead to positive academic outputs, higher literacy rate, better attitude towards schools and better understanding of the abstract concepts. The audience that gains most from use of modern technologies in education are low income households, people with disabilities, marginalised communities if the right approach is taken.

In order to focus on using ICTs for improved learning, Conflux 2005 will have a parallel conference - Digital Learning 2005 from 18-19 October 2005.

Digital Learning 2005 aims to take stock and learn from practices from a variety of perspectives. Digital Learning 2005 will showcase ICT in Education initiatives which will add value to education and drive and build digital competence in the knowledge society. The opportunities, challenges and the critical issues of concern that the convergence of new information and communication technologies with education has created, will be addressed in the conference.

Digital Learning 2005 focusing on the theme ‘ICT and Education: Challenges and Practices’ will be of interest for policy implementers in government; persons associated with advocacy; managers and administrators; e-Learning content developers; ICT experts and the learning community.

The following sessions have been proposed for the conference:

Participants The meeting was attended by key stakeholders of e-Government representing the Central Government, Delhi State Government and the IT industry.

Key inputs by members •

There should be mix of doers/ practitioners (from Central and State level), e-Champions and key decision makers who can learn from the conference and go back and implement them

•

There should less focus on technology discussions. It should be a Practitioner’s conference. Most of the participants should be the people who are into the business of governance and want to use technology to help them do their job better.

Session I:

Tools for Learning through ICT: Availability and Scope

Session II:

e-Learning: Best Practices and Challenges

Session III:

Technology in Education

•

District level e-Government initiatives should be addressed

Session IV:

Policy and Advocacy: Critical Issues

•

Session V:

Government initiatives in ICT and Education

Session VI:

Civil society and NGO initiatives in ICT and Education

More case studies should be presented. Even failure stories should get highlighted. Or stories where ‘failures have turned into success’

•

More time should be dedicated to discussions

Private sector initiatives in ICT and Education

•

Speakers should be given proper presentation guidelines prior to the conference

Session VII:

| www.conflux.csdms.in

CONFLUX

2005 PREVIEW III

KEY SPEAKERS Shiela Dikshit Chief Minister of Delhi

Prof V S Ramamurthy Secretary Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India

Maxine Olson United Nations Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in India

R. Chandrashekhar Joint Secretary (e-Governance), Deptt. of IT, Government of India

Amitabha Pandey Principal Resident

Deepak Maheshwari Secretary

Dr K Subramanian Deputy Director General

Prakash Kumar

ISP Association of India

National Informatics Centre

Dr Thomas Riley

Jeremy Millard Head e-Governance Programme

J. Satyanarayana CEO National Institute of Smart Government (NISG)

Chair Commonwealth Centre of e-Governance

Dr Morten Falch Technical University of Denmark

Commissioner Government of Punjab

IT Secretary Delhi

Ian Swann Vice President SAP AG

Danish Technological Institute Prof Michael Blakemore Department of Geography

Aruna Sundarajan Country Programme Facilitator, India

University of Durham

gesci

Salem Khamis Al-Shair Chief Editor e4all Dubai e-Government

Important contacts Submission of papers: Vikas Kanungo - +91-9312722591 papers@conflux.csdms.in Registration: Lipika Dutta - +91-9871481708 registration@conflux.csdms.in Sponsorships/Exhibition: Rakesh Tripathie - +91-9810331208 sponsorship@conflux.csdms.in Last date for full paper submission: 15th September 2005

Dr Vijayaditya Director General NIC

Ajay Sawhney Joint Secretary

Government of India

Department of Personnel and Training Government of India

International participation Conflux 2005 will bring participants from all across the globe to showcase some of the good practices in e-Government from several countries of Europe, South Asia, South East Asia, Middle East and North America. The conference promises to be one of the few knowledge sharing events in the field of eGovernment, which will have judicious mix of national and international perspectives on a single platform.

Conflux 2005 Secretariat Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies G - 4, Sector-39, NOIDA - 201 301, India Tel: +91-120-2502180 to 87, Fax: +91-120-2500060 URL: www.conflux.csdms.in

IN PRACTICE

Revamping Citizen Services – Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) experience

M

unicipal Corporation of Delhi has decided to leverage information and communication technologies to provide efficient, affordable, accountable and transparent municipal services to the people of Delhi. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has become so common in our daily life that to ignore its potentially beneficial influence in the area of municipal governance was no longer possible. With this in mind, MCD decided to set up a Department of Information Technology in the Corporation that would not only make IT plans for the Corporation but also oversee and supervise their implementation in a time-bound manner.

Citizen Service Bureau, Lajpat Nagar Centre, New Delhi

MCD embarks on an IT Journey MCD started its IT journey on 19th February 2003, by launching its website www. mcdonline.gov.in. It adopted an innovative model of implementing it’s IT plans on a BuildOwn-Operate (BOO) revenue model in order to ensure that neither absence of IT skills in

from and how to interact with MCD (e.g. from home, at work or on the move) Provide round the clock services—24 hours a day, 7 days a week through an interactive and dynamic website. d) Set up a modernized municipal service network through increased use of Information and Communication Technologies in all departments and offices. e) Create a digital community – A digital community can foster personal involvement in municipal government by providing people with easier access to R S Rana information and other resources User of CSB, Resident of East Delhi c)

“I am quite satisfied with the quality of service offered through these centres. Service delivery is fast and convenient. Earlier, it used to take a lot of time to deposit bills, now it is only a matter of minutes.

”

municipal employees nor MCD’s non-existent IT infrastructure come in the way of successful implementation of these plans.

Objectives for MCD e-Governance The strategies adopted by MCD for ushering in municipal e-governance were based on the belief that objectives of MCD’s e-governance programme are as follows: a) To bring MCD closer to the people through Citizen Service Points, PC kiosks, telephones and others. b) Anytime-Anywhere government service¾users will decide when, where | September 2005

Strategies for implementing e-Governance

Keeping pace with the developments that are taking place the world over, MCD decided to encourage public-private partnership for implementing its e-governance initiatives.

Strategies adopted for this are as below: 1. Prepare MCD’s Master Plan for IT 2. Launching an interactive and dynamic website 3. Setting up Citizen Service Bureaus 4. Digitisation of records of important departments 5. Training of municipal staff 6. Capacity building in the areas of IT infrastructure, Health, Engineering, Sanitation, Education, Employee Information System, Financial Management and Property Tax Collection System 7. Launching of e-tendering and computerized Public Grievances and Redressal (PGR) System to bring transparency.

According to the proposed strategy, the IT Master Plan: 2005 has been prepared by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS, www.tcs.com). MCD has also launched a dynamic website www.mcdonline.gov.in for the providing on-line services of MCD. Apart from this, MCD in partnership with a private IT services 27

IN PRACTICE

Tete-é-tete with MCD Commissioner

infrastructure, I strictly followed the Hong Kong model for MCD. We are merely providing the physical space and everything else, such as – hardware, software, communication network, manpower development and training have been arranged by our private partner SARK Systems.

Rakesh Mehta Commissioner Municipal Corporation of Delhi (www.mcdonline.gov.in)

Rakesh Mehta is an active e-Government evangelist, who is continually contributing towards

betterment

of

municipal services in Delhi through use of citizen-centric technologies.

Egov presents an interview of the person behind Delhi’s e-municipality

When and how did the e-Government initiative of Municipal Corporation of Delhi started? e-Government initiatives of MCD started roughly around the time when I took over the charge of this corporation in April 2002. Right after joining MCD, I attended an UN conference on municipal e-Governance in Shanghai, where I came across a number of municipal e-governance models that where being followed in countries such as - New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan and in a host of European nations. I was particularly impressed with the Hong Kong model, which was based upon the concept of delivering government services through a platform of multiple private providers. In that model, the private players provide an interface between the government and citizens by delivering all front-end services. In addition to this, I visited places like Vizag, Hyderabad and Bangalore to study some of the existing municipal e-Government projects, which were already running in India. However, in most of these Indian projects the government was found to provide the hardware and software, while private players are engaged only in the service delivery part. In comparison, the Hong Kong model was a step ahead, where the government just has to pay the transaction fee and everything else is being taken care of by private service partners. Since I did not have much disposable funds with me to invest in developing the IT

What was your strategy while starting with the electronic/online services of MCD offered through Citizen Service Bureaus (CSBs)?

We started with the IT Master Plan prepared by TATA Consultancy Services in year 2002. This plan, which took almost 8 months to come up and costs about 6 million rupees (136,233 USD), is now our Bible for implementing any e-Governance initiative. Although, our CSBs have become quite popular these days, we must understand that it is only a small part of the overall automation process. CSBs are not the say-all-and-endall of our computerization process. They are only the front-end part of what we are doing but it is the back end, which is most crucial. Unless the backend is robust and fully integrated, the front end will never be able to serve. The IT Master Plan gives a holistic view of e-Governance initiatives of MCD and proposes an investment of 400 million rupees (9.086 million USD) over a period of 3 years for various departmental application. However, for CSBs the investment of MCD is almost nil. Thus, all this 400 million rupees of investment will go into updating and automating records, changing work process and building IT skills of MCD staff members to work with technology.

How many departments of MCD are fully automated as far as back end is concerned?

Currently, the Birth and Death Records are fully automated.

We have digitised records of births and deaths from the current day till 1998. Second in line is the Property Tax Department, where the automation process is going on very fast and it will take a year or two to get it fully completed. The third level is the ward-wise information for all wards (smallest administrative unit of a city) of Delhi including information about roads, sewerage systems, buildings, parks and all other public utilities. Here, we have kept the Fund-based Accounting System as a spine of the entire system and everything else is being linked to it. For this, we had to do a complete re-working of the financial management in order to make it automation friendly.

When you started the e-Government initiatives in MCD about three years back, did you face any resistant from the employees?

Initially, there was enormous resistant from the employees as

company called SARK Systems has opened up 30 Citizen Service Bureaus (CSBs) in different parts of Delhi. Currently, the following services are being provided to citizens through CSBs: • Registration & issue of Birth & Death Certificates • Issue/Renewal/Amendment of all types of licenses such as General Trade licenses, Factory licenses, General Health Trade licenses, Tehbazari licenses, Rickshaw Puller licenses etc.

• Collection of property taxes • Booking of Parks/Community Centers for private function • Receiving payments through Internet payment gateway.

In addition, a number of departments have undertaken the exercise of complete 28

digitisation of their records. For instance, Birth & Death records pertaining to years 1998, 1999, 2001 has been digitized so that Citizens can take Birth & Death Certificates immediately for the said period. In addition, 350 registered Hospitals (Private & Government) have been provided with the facility of online registration of Births & Deaths. To facilitate the digitisation of historical records, Information Technology Department of Municipal Corporation of Delhi www.egov.csdms.in |

IN PRACTICE

also from MCD councilors. However, political support has grown considerably over the time. Introduction of CSBs made all the difference, as the real benefits of e-governance became very much evident and even easy to understand. The biggest advantage that CSBs provide to citizen is the transparency factor. In the traditional system citizens generally end up paying bribe for getting a birth/death certificate but through CSBs they can get it done only for a nominal fee and that too within a matter of few days. This is saving a lot of transaction costs for the citizens and is hence fast gaining popularity by itself.

What is the number of daily average transactions carried out through each CSBs? What is the total amount of transaction done through CSBs till now?

On an average, there are 200-400 transactions performed over a day through each of the CSBs. According to latest figures, we have managed to collect about 6000 million rupees (136.28 million USD) in revenues through these CSBs over the last two and half years. In addition, the private company (SARK Systems) delivering the services at CSBs have collected about 2-3 crore rupees (0.45-0.68 million USD) as transaction costs.

MCD is often referred to possess good end-to-end Public Grievance and Redressal (PGR) System available for municipal e-government in India? What are your comments on this?

It is true that currently we are having one of the best PGR systems being implemented in India. Our PGR system has been developed by the e-Government Foundation (www. egovernments.org) of Bangalore. This system is having two components to it – one is the public grievance module and the other is the ward-wise action plan module. Thus, on a single system one can actually view what are the public complaints and what action is being taken on a ward-wise basis to address such complaints. This is currently not being uploaded as we still need to collect a lot of data and moreover, we have to organise the entire website to make it fully operational.

In a hypothetical situation, if none of the officer responds to a particular complaint, in how many days would it reach you?

This actually depends on the type of that particular complaint.

If it is garbage related one, it will reach me much earlier but if it is some thing like unauthorized construction, it may take more time. For instance, the maximum permissible response time for garbage removal has been designated as 5 days, while this is relatively more for other categories of complaints.

(MCD) has empanelled Data Entry Service Providers, for a period of two years to provide data entry services, both onsite as well as offsite and will provide Data Entry Operators (DEO) for various departments of MCD. Records of Factory licenses have also been completely digitized.

Training of Municipal Staff is also undertaken on a priority basis. More than 800 municipal employees have been trained in basic computer training. In order to provide computer | September 2005

What are some of the other e-Government initiatives of MCD? Currently, we are in the process of computerising and automating management of our entire engineering department.

In addition, we are also deploying GIS and GPS based systems for maintaining property records and managing/tracking sanitation, sewerage and garbage disposal activities.

What is the plan of MCD for increasing the number CSBs in Delhi?

At present MCD is having 30 CSBs in Delhi. However, we are planning to provide one CSB in each of the 134 municipal wards of the city by December 2005. This would ensure that none of the citizens have to walk a distance of more than 2-3 km to reach a CSB. We are already having the premises and physical space required for setting up these centres and it is only a matter of months that they get operational. These ward level centres (to be called Sugam Kendras) will be having two operators, along with a MCD cocoordinator (Sugam Sanyojak). Each centre will be having two deputed co-coordinators of MCD, who will be working in shifts of eight hours each, acting as the local representative of MCD. What is the plan for training and capacity building of MCD staff members to help them deliver the IT-enabled services of MCD? MCD has already identified 1,200 personnel out of its existing staff members who are to be specially trained for Sugam centres.

For this, we engaged a professional HR company, which helped us in identifying the best people out of our 4,000 clerical staff. These people are being selected through a rigorous psychological testing to assess their capability to handle public. Out of these 1,200 people, 300 are actually to be utilised, at the rate of 2 personnel for each centre and 1 in reserve. The reserve provision is kept at 40% of the total requirement, taking staff leave into consideration. Those who are selected will be given a special pay package with additional incentive of choosing their place of posting at Sugam centre falling near to their residence. In addition, they will be specially trained on Public Relations to help them serve citizens better.

Moreover, there will be a dress code and a defined code-ofconduct for people delivering services through Sugam centres.

Thus, we are trying to bring an all round professionalism in the public service domain of MCD.

training to the doctors and nurses, two more training centers have been set up in Hindu Rao Hospital and Swami Dayanand Hospital in Delhi. 10 computers at each of the 6 Science Centers in Schools have been set up to provide basic computer training to municipal school teachers. A training centre has also been set up at the Ambedkar stadium complex to train contractors and officials on the process of e-tendering. The centre has already trained 150 contractors and 200 MCD officials on use of this system and would soon be expanded to provide training to MCD engineers on usage of engineering department’s applications.

In order to build up the internal IT capacity, MCD has installed 13 IT work stations in each MCD zone and also at the Town Hall. These Workstations consist of 5 computers and two printers. Additionally, these workstations are 29

IN PRACTICE

MCD e-Government Snapshots • • •

• • • • • • • •

23 identified buildings of MCD to be networked through LAN and also Metro networked to Network Operating Center and Data Center of MCD. Pay Roll of 1,50,000 employees, along with their Personnel records is getting computerized.

Property tax system shall be computerized and digital library shall be created to store building/floor layouts, which will all be linked to a GIS System.

6 MCD Hospitals are getting internally networked through optical fiber and high-end switches.

2500 computers are proposed to be procured and installed even up to JE/Inspector levels with the provision of e-mail facility.

The working of Engineering and CSE Departments is getting fully computerized.

Solid waste management and billing of private contractors carrying waste is getting computerized.

Setting up of Data Center and Network Operating Center has been finalized to process all MCD computerized applications.

Financial Management System on double entry basis is getting computerized.

6 Science Centers are providing basic computer training to MCD schoolteachers.

All the zones and important offices including computerized workstations have been provided with Broadband Internet connectivity to access PGR system, mcdonline and core applications of MCD.

being provided with Line Printers to support large pay roll printing. Each of these stations is also provided with broadband Internet for high-speed connectivity.

These IT work stations are capable of monitoring all the transactions done through CSBs, printing of reports, pay bills and pay slips, creation of database, edition of data and accessing of various core applications of MCD through Internet. In addition, 250 senior officers of MCD have been provided with desktop computers while 134 Municipal Councilors have been given laptop computers. A pair of highend servers has also been set up for the purpose of testing the applications developed by e-Government Foundation of Bangalore. Along with this, a number of information systems and networks have been developed and deployed within MCD departments for leveraging an IT-enabled work environment. Some of these are - Engineering Department Information System, Health Information System, Employee Information System, Property Tax Information System, Solid Waste Transportation system.

New e-Government Initiatives Over the last few months MCD has come up with innovative plans to introduce new e-Government services and to extend/upgrade the existing ones. Some of these initiatives are as follows: Introduction of Sugam Kendras: MCD is working towards extending the existing Citizen Service Bureaus to all the 134 wards of Delhi. These ward-level centres to be called as Sugam Kendras will cater to various services ranging from collection of electricity bills, water bills employment exchange registration, booking in Delhi tourism buses, payment of Delhi Traffic Police challans etc.

Public Grievance and Redressal System (PGR): The PGR system launched in January 2005 is enabling citizens to register their complaints on-line and track their status on the Net. Citizens shall also be able to register the complaints through letter, telephone or e-mail. MCD higher officials and Councilors shall be able to monitor the complaints in their departments and wards and act accordingly. In 30

Vivek Mittal Administrative Officer - IT Department MCD Cental Zone Office, New Delhi

“The greatest advantage of these centers is the high level of transparency and efficiency that they offer. Earlier most citizens had to go through an arduously long process for applying and availing government services. Moreover, many of them did not even knew where to get the

”

information for various services on offer.

addition, this system will also help in developing a ward-wise action plan that will soon be available on the Internet.

E-tendering System: All MCD tenders initially valued over rupees 10 lakh (1 million) shall be processed from indent to placement of order on the new e-tendering system. Since April 2005, Wipro has been working to set up this e-tendering system for MCD. Up till the end of July 2005, 13 tenders have been put through this route for processing. Henceforth, submission of tenders and processing, including preparation of comparative statement shall be done on-line by contractors and officials. In addition, digital signatures are to be used for placement of work order and even concurrence by finance.

Already identified as one of the best practioners of municipal e-Governance in India, MCD is taking long strides of modernisation through efficient use of IT and innovative e-Government tools. In the coming days, MCD promises to deliver the citizens of Delhi with best of services and chart out a developmental path of the city through effective use of IT.

P K GUPTA Advisor (IT) Department of Information Technology advit@mcdonline.gov.in

www.egov.csdms.in |

IN PRACTICE

Case of e-Governed Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) In the midst of myriad of experiments, the project of e-Governed Municipal Corporation at Kalyan and Dombivli, the twin suburban cities of Mumbai stands out on their own for having created an example of use of Information Technology for betterment of administration and delivery of public services finally leading to Good Governance.

T

here are many experiments going on in India in various fields of activities for There are many experiments going on in India in various fields of activities for introducing electronic governance in brick and mortar government organisations. Many of these have achieved tremendous success, even beyond expectations. ‘Bhoomi’ project in Karnataka and ‘E-Seva’ in Andhra Pradesh are two such examples of hugely successful e-governance projects. While the former relates to transactions of land records, the latter facilitates payment of various types of bills and some other allied activities. There are similarly other projects in the country which have attained success, while others are partially successful and the third category of projects are the ones, which have failed to achieve their objectives in their original form and intent.

In the midst of myriad of experiments, the project of e-Governed Municipal Corporation at Kalyan and Dombivli, the twin suburban cities of Mumbai stands out on their own for having created an example of use of Information Technology for betterment of administration and delivery of public services finally leading to ‘Good Governance’. KDMC serves a citizenry of about 1.3 million people to provide more than 100 civic services like water supply, electricity, urban infrastructure of roads, drainage, providing birth and death certificate and a host of other services.

In 2000-01, KDMC under the leadership of the then municipal commissioner Mr. Sri Kant Singh conceived to create a fool proof system driven corporation by using ICT as the prime facilitator, to provide electronic services to the people of the area in a transparent and accountable manner. The project was christened as KDNet (Kalyan Dombivli Network). Within two years, the corporation realised its objective and an e| September 2005

Governed Municipal Corporation was inaugurated on 24th September 2002 by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

KDMC e-Governance programme has won several national and international awards. Success of the programme lies in the fact that Maharashtra Government has decided to replicate the KDMC programme in all other 146 corporations of the state. Goa also decided to enter into a collaboration with KDMC for introducing electronic governance at it’s Margao Municipal Council. Many municipal corporations in Maharashtra have also decided to enter into a memorandum of understanding with KDMC to help them out in facilitating e-Governance in their own jurisdictions.

So what are the necessary ingredients that have gone into making KDMC a successful experiment? Among other things, the following are some of the key areas that have essentially contributed to the success of KDMC.

Getting the organisation ready First step in introducing e-Governance is getting the organisation and their employees mentally and physically ready for use of ICT and computers in the process of discharge of its functions. The role of the CEO of the organisation, namely the municipal commissioner is very important at this stage, who has to do several things at once. He would be required to do the following atleast: • draft a tentative vision of the e-corporation • prepare a plan to involve all employees and other stakeholders • identify people in his team, who will act as champions of the project • to educate people about the possible benefits of e-Governance • raise the hope of all the stakeholders towards better governance through ICT • act as an evangelist • start preparing for getting the necessary funds • prepare for the next stage of action • market the idea that e-governance forms part of a larger process of change and reform in bureaucracy

Writing a new mission and vision for the organisation The municipal commissioner and his team developed a new philosophy to create an e-Governed municipal corporation by the use of the right blend of ICT and administrative reforms that would provide highest levels of transparency, accountability and service standards to the people coming to avail of the services from the corporation.

Selecting the right team (S) e-Governance activity is a project work, which takes 2-5 years to complete. Therefore there is a need to involve everybody in the exercise. In KDMC project, all the heads of the departments were the key resource persons to cater to their own areas of work. They were chosen as the champions of the project. A System 31

IN PRACTICE

“We focussed on Administrative Reforms and designed our e-Gov system to bring about objectivity, transperency & accountability in decision making.

”R. D. Shinde

Commissioner, KDMC Manager was appointed to look after the overall co-ordination and management.

Some of the team members were initially hesitant, but under peer pressure and under the pressure of the municipal commissioner, they all started showing positive vibes around the whole project. There was a feeling of being left-out, if they did not associate fully with the project.

Selecting a team of Experts (Think Tank) One of the novel ways devised in this experiment was to select a team of experts from IIT Mumbai, VJTI, NCST and TIFR, who provided guidance on technical matters at various stages of the project and steered the project work from beginning till end. A mix of appropriate expertise available from different authorities therefore facilitated the work of expeditious commissioning of the KDMC project.

A ‘Big Bang’ approach in automation Rather than going by the established wisdom that projects should be executed in a phase wise manner, KDMC adopted a bold ‘big bang’ approach. It went for an all pervasive computerisation of every function within the corporation to create an integrated IT enabled corporation.

Business Process Reengineering exercise for automation

KDMC’s commitment on time-bound delivery of services has made a huge difference in the reputation of the organisation. An innovative and disciplined system has been established in all departments of the corporation, which delivers time-bound services to the citizens. Commitment has been made to deliver services like birth and death certificate, trade licenses and renewals, property extracts in 10 minutes.

Developing a proper IT Architectural plan An architectural plan consists of a drawing of interconnection between different units of IT infrastructure; how hardware at different centers would interact with the process design of different departments.

At KDMC, powerful RISC UNIX servers at the headquarters have created a central datacenter, which is connected in real time to other connected locations. Other locations like ward offices, division offices, etc. are connected by LAN or WAN (leased line). The applications run on Oracle 9i as RDBMS and Oracle 9iAS as its Application server.

Different locations are connected in real time, which ensures that citizens can access services from any of the CFCs. There is also a choice to avail of the services being delivered to homes and the citizens while filling-in forms have to make a choice to this effect.

One of the key requirements of a successful e-Governance project implementation is to review all the processes of the transactions and simplify them, wherever necessary to make them amenable to automation. In the case of KDMC, the visionary authorities not only did an excellent job in changing the processes, the whole exercise was clubbed with the broader process of ‘Administrative Reforms’. In trying to create an e-Governed council, the officers and others in charge visited all the systems and introduced changes wherever required. Using the right mixture of IT and administrative reforms, a solid foundation for good governance was laid at the KDMC. BPR was done along with organisation re-alignment, keeping in mind the convenience of the people and the location.

Developing service standards One of the key changes made in the mode of the working of KDMC was to develop a proper service standard for all municipal services. While in the old system, there were no strict criteria laid down for delivery of services, in the computerised operations, it was possible to do time stamping on the transaction processes. It is easy to identify for example, as to when was the application submitted and where is it lying currently. A system of token number was developed, with the help of which the customer could himself see the progress of his file within the municipal organisation.

32

Help Desk at KDMC

KDMC has also virtualised the services in cyber-space. Their portal www.kdmc.gov.in is a self-managed space on the main servers in the HQ and provides 24x7 services to the www.egov.csdms.in |

IN PRACTICE

following: • Make payments for all types of dues relating to electricity, water, property tax etc.

• Lodge complaints for services like water supply, drainage, roads, health etc.

• Request for all types of forms, registrations, certificates, permissions, NOCs etc. Enquiries can be made as to what documents are required for various transactions.

• Status of all applications can be verified through CFCs

Change management strategy Change management strategy is an essential component of a successful initiation, running and making necessary changes in applications and other infrastructure. It encompasses users, employees and other partner agencies, which have to adjust to the new service delivery systems.

For the employees of the corporation, this was a big One of the six Citizen Facilitation Centres spread across Kalyan and Dombivli change. There was a sense of loss of power in the manner the citizens through Internet. Applications are all user interface was developed. However certain things worked to ensure that web-enabled, so that they can be accessed employees actually delivered. Chief among them were: • Senior officers of the corporation very frequently manned the counters, to anytime from anywhere. send a message to the employees that the corporation was serious in making Selection of software vendor the change.

KDMC selected ABM Knowledgeware Ltd as their software vendor, after following the due • Success in the electronic transaction boosted the morale of employees. procedure. The vendor happened to be a small • Municipal corporators too participated in the activities, which boosted the morale of the employees. software company, which had a proven track record in the filed of e-governance. The • Involvement of the municipal commissioner ensured that the right message was sent to all concerned. vendor was involved right from the stage of specification writing till implementation. The • Chief Minister of Maharashtra personally came to inaugurate the e-governance programme of the municipal corporation. Involvement of the top level political vendor also helped in drawing the leadership ensured the success of the programme. specifications for the hardware.

Application Software has been designed • Training of Employees- Employees were properly trained to handle customers, software applications and appear to be friendly to the visitors. Attitudinal in a three-layered architecture. The first layer, training formed a large part of their overall training. as the core, manages the procedural guidelines and Rule Based functioning of the Statistics of Services delivered through CFCs corporation. This covers User Profile Service Name Services Delivered Management, Work-Flow Rules and Application Scrutiny Sheets etc. The second Assessment Related Services 9,925 layer, as the Functional Systems Layer Birth / Death Certificates 65,481 manages various departmental functions of Food Licenses 2,770 the organisation. This covers function modules for property tax assessment, water Market Licenses 5,774 connection and billing, market and trade New Water Connections 14,132 licenses, food license, birth and death Water Bill Payments 2,17,790 registration etc. Lastly, the third layer of the application software is the citizen services Tax Bill Payments 1,26,211 layer, which manages time bound service Complaints Accepted 56,877 delivery for various citizen services, such as Inward Letters Accepted 1,52,971 help-desk, citizen facilitation centers and Other Services 40,742 enterprise information portal.

Citizen Facilitation Centres (CFCs) There are six Citizen Facilitation Centres spread across Kalyan and Dombivli. These centers are well equipped with the necessary infrastructure to serve the citizens. Users can visit at any of these 6 centers to do any of the | September 2005

Total

6,92,674 As on date : 20-08-2005

Total System Transactions carried out in system are more than 19,60,000 (includes above services, bills prepared, accounting transactions, etc.)

33

IN PRACTICE

Awards •

Regonition Award from Department of Administrative Reforms, Govt of India in the Category of Exemplary e-Governance Initiatives.

•

Skoch Challenger Award 2004

•

Finalist for CAPAM International Innovation Award 2004 (www.capam.org)

•

Finalist for Intelligent Enterprise Award 2004

•

Finalist for the CRISIL Award 2005.

Award received by KDMC from CAPAM at Singapore

Challenges in KDMC From a study of the project, it appears that a number of improvements could be made, if certain things were done differently. Here is a list of a few recommendations: (A) Use of Database for higher value added services: In this project, no planning has been done for the use of database for either improving the quality of services over time or for creating a database of citizens. For example, the data relating to births could be used in providing better health services for immunisation, or for enrolment of children in school, when they achieve school-going age, as has been done in the case of Rajshahi Corporation example of Bangladesh1 experiment.

(A) Promotion of Internet based transactions: Here the e-governed council runs from 6 CFCs. Hence people have to travel to these 6 centers to conduct transactions. The web model is also available. Perhaps at the current stage of web development and keeping in mind the fact that people of the area are literate, the KDMC may have undertaken a promotional exercise for popularising web services, particularly for payment of bills etc. This may have resulted in more convenience for the users and more savings in time and money. Corporation could have had to deploy less number of people at the counters.

(B) Public Private Partnership: There is no Public Private Partnership model in either funding or in any sharing arrangement, except for the fact the application software work was outsourced. The risk factors could have been minimised, in case any funding was sought from the multi-lateral agencies.

(C) Challenges in replication: The state government has taken a decision to replicate the success achieved at the KDMC in 246 Municipal Corporations and other local bodies in the state. However it would be better if a centralised model is followed with one set of servers at a single location and other corporations accessing the same applications through the central server. This would lead to standardisation in service delivery process, saving in time and money in implementation and most importantly in creating a database of citizens at all these centers. State Government can then use the data usefully in planning and delivery of other services to the citizens.

Further replication of KDMC model itself is full of challenges, as the application will be run in 246 different environments, with local issues, problems and challenges.

Whether the environment factors of KDMC can also be replicated and municipal employees will feel the same level of motivation in delivery of services are moot questions that will need an answer.

(D) Integration of Municipal Programme with other e-governance Programmes: The e-Governed council is a stand alone model. This does not share any information, data etc with any other programme of the state or the central government. Two examples of e-governance programmes, one from Naestved2 34

region of Denmark and the second from the Valencia3 region of Spain comes to mind, where a holistic approach of service delivery to citizens have been adopted. A Portal arrangement has been designed to offer services from the public as well as private sector together. Similarly in e-Seva Project, services from private sector operators such as Banks, Insurance companies are available through the same source. This model, if adopted would have boosted the revenues of the corporation as well.

References 1.

2.

3.

http://www.egov4dev.org/rajshahi.htm) Survey on Government and the Internet, The Economist, June 24, 2000, page 20 (www-3.ibm.com/software/success/ cssdb.nsf) Survey on Government and the Internet, The Economist, June 24, 2000, page 20

Prabhat Kumar M.P.Gupta Sushil Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Huaz Khas, New Delhi 110016 (India) mpgupta@dms.iitd.ernet.in

www.egov.csdms.in |

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Promising integrated egov solutions “Today, Governments from across the world are looking at the model of e-Governance adopted in India and are showing interest in India’s way of aligning IT with the needs of the state.

”

S P S Grover Senior Director, Oracle, India In which year, did Oracle begin to focus on Government sector in India? How far, Oracle has been successful in exploring this market till now?

Oracle’s focus on the Indian Government sector began in 2003 when a dedicated Government vertical team was set up in India. It was in the same year that Oracle set-up the first Oracle-HP e-Governance Centre of Excellence at Gurgaon. It is a growing market segment and we are very encouraged by the success achieved so far. We have a very large dedicated team in place that is involved developing this market place through thought leadership and capacity building initiatives.

What were the objectives to set up OracleHP e-Governance Centre of Excellence?

Over past one-year, what have been the major achievements of this Center?

Oracle understands that e-Governance has varied hues and complexities in the Indian sub-continent and one cannot simply pick up existing solutions and plug them into this region. Therefore, Oracle decided to involve various stakeholders in a collaborative set-up to develop practical solutions and set-up the OracleHP e-Governance Center of Excellence.

Over the past year, the Oracle-HP EGovernance Center of Excellence has worked closely with various state and central government bodies to understand the peculiarities of e-Governance in India, and tailor make technology solutions to empower government bodies to provide citizen services to the masses of India.

Partners such as CMC, IIIT Bangalore, | September 2005

PricewaterhouseCoopers, Satyam Infoway, Red Hat, Center for Good Governance, Government of Andhra Pradesh have been contributing to the success of the Oracle-HP E-Governance Center of Excellence.

One of the major achievements of the center was the seminar on ‘Seven Steps to Implement the National e-Governance Plan’ and was organised on 11 th of July, on the occasion of the second anniversary of the center’s launch.

Speakers from variopus organsistaions including Delhi Govt, Deptt of IT, GOI, NIC, CMC, HP, PWC, Red Hat shared their thoughts. The seminar, the first ever web seminar of its kind in India, was attended by over 500 attendees from across the country.

What are the factors that need to be kept in mind for effective implementation of any kind of e-Government project? e-Governance is not just about servers and PCs thrown in with a few applications. e-Governance is first about a capacity using modern information technology to bring about a better civil administration and judicial system for citizens and better and more optimal use of national resources. It is this goal, which has to be kept in mind while implementing any eGovernance project. One has to ensure that the implementation increases the efficiencies of the various Government departments and helps the citizens at large by way of effective data management.

Finally, in e-governance projects, the ultimate customer is the citizen.

e-Governance projects are being funded out of citizens’ taxes and they must be the ultimate beneficiaries.

Which are the key concern areas in public sector that are addressed by Oracle solutions?

Oracle offers complete and integrated solutions that help transform governments. The solutions are designed to address key concerns of public sector organisations such as: • Building an Information Architecture for e-Government • Connecting Citizens to Services • Provide Best Practice Public Expenditure and Financial Management • Reduce Operational Costs through eprocurement, Better Human Resource management and internal workflow efficiencies • Creating the Government Knowledge Worker What is the level of progress made in India over the past five years in carrying forward e-Government initiatives? Is the rate of progress satisfactory enough or does it need to be charged up for faster transformation?

Even though e-Governance in India is still at a nascent stage, over the past five years, e-Governance initiatives have been gaining momentum in the country. A few visionaries in most of the Indian States and in the Central Government have largely led these initiatives. Some of the initiatives and achievements in this area are indeed commendable but this is happening in pockets and is not an integrated effort. However, despite the islands of excellence, e-Governance has not been able to make rapid progress due to several operational, economic, personnel, planning and implementation issues. e-Governance in India has also focused heavily towards investing in hardware and very little on developing software and services, which could maximize hardware investments.

35

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

With the introduction of the National e-Governance plan (NeGP), however, the pace of things in the e-Governance sector is poised to change, for the better.

What are the present challenges facing India against fast-forwarding eGovernment implementation? Is it more of a financial constraint, low technology awareness or a lack of political will?

There are many challenges being faced in accelerating the e-governance initiatives but I guess the fundamental driver has to be political will. Any project if properly executed will pay for itself. Technology awareness is definitely not an issue – Politicians, bureaucrats, citizens and businesses are well aware what technology can do for them courtesy the success demonstrated by the Railway reservation and the Election commission Electronic voting initiatives which have touched large population of the country.

Since Oracle is doing e-Government projects in many countries worldwide, compared to those countries where do you find India in terms of e-Government plans and implementation?

The problem with e-governance initiatives in India is that for a number of very valid reasons, the different Government bodies have adopted a non-integrated approach. Due to this approach, we see e-Governance initiatives in pockets.

However, despite the limited initiatives taken by India in the e-Governance space, the country has been able to make a mark for itself in this space. Today, Governments from across the world are looking at the model of e-Governance adopted in India and are showing interest in India’s way of aligning IT with the needs of the state.

Governments have also shown interest in the e-Governance Center of Excellence established by Oracle. Such is the success of the center that Oracle has recently established centers based on similar line in Philippines and Sri Lanka.

The Indian e-Governance market is gradually maturing as government bodies at various levels understand and experience the benefits of e-Governance.

What future plans does Oracle have for increasing its Government IT market share in India? How hopeful is Oracle 36

Key projects in the Government space for Oracle in India A. Government

• • • • • • • • •

I. Revenue-generation/Fiscal management in Government Department of Income Tax Department of Treasury, West Bengal Department of Commercial Taxes, Government of Assam Department of Sales Taxes, Government of Punjab Department of Treasuries, Madhya Pradesh Directorate of Treasuries, Government of Karnataka Directorate of Commercial Taxes, West Bengal Bihar Commercial Tax Department Computerised Interstate Check Posts – Gujarat Regional Transport Office

• • • •

• • •

• • • •

III. Government work-flow efficiencies Indian Railways Catering & Tourism Corporation Kandla Port Trust Mumbai Port Trust Mormugao Port Trust

regarding Indian Government’s IT spending in coming years?

We are looking at e-Governance initiatives of various state governments as major business driver for years to come.

Already, e-Governance constitutes a large portion of Oracle’s business in India and has been one of the focus areas for the company.

Both the Central and various State Governments have realised that for effective governance a comprehensive e-Governance framework should be evolved in the country. This would enable

IV. Urban/Rural local government Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation Coimbatore Municipal Corporation Department of Panchayats and Rural Development, West Bengal Tamil Nadu Urban Development Project Kolkata Municipal Corporation

B. Utilities • • • • • • • •

II.

•

Citizen Services Delivery for Government eCops, Government of Andhra Pradesh eSeva, Government of Andhra Pradesh Sampark, Administration of Chandigarh Computrisation of Courts (by NIC)

• •

Gujarat State Electricity Board Maharashtra State Electricity Board Kerala Water Authority Bihar State Electricity Board Tamil Nadu State Electricity Board Andhra Pradesh Transmission Corporation West Bengal State Electricity Board Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board

C. Health • •

Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation Department of Family & Child Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh

D. Education •

•

Think.com (a collaborative initiative) for 900 Kendriya vidyalayas in country Oracle Academic Initiative covering over 13000 students across various engineering and management institutes.

government services to be offered online to the citizens, thereby increasing convenience and reducing costs. The formulation of the National e-Governance Plan showcases the seriousness of the government in this regard.

Because, Oracle offers worldclass technology in the Governance space and has been involved with e-Governance projects, we will definitely look at actively partnering with Government bodies across the country for their e-governance initiatives, in the coming years. www.egov.csdms.in |

TECH TALK

Creating digital trust through Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

T

raditionally enterprises have been spending a significant amount of their resources securing the network perimeter, deploying security systems like Firewalls, Intrusion Detection systems, AntiVirus software to protect its information assets from external threats, while little realizing that information assets are just as vulnerable from within an organization. Quite a few surveys have recently cited that threats of a security breach over the Internal Systems are as high as external threats. These breaches could be on account of reasons like discontented, reckless and greedy employees or even disgruntled former workers. They all can be bigger threats than the mysterious hacker from outside. Also as more companies outsource portions of their business or extend the network/corporate resources, vital company information can easily fall into the wrong hands. If one has to build adequate safeguards to protect these digital assets, the key is to build “Trust” around these systems.

When we talk about Trust, what we essentially mean is how do we transact with faceless individuals literally sitting across the two ends of the wire. In this regard some of the crucial concerns are: • How do we know whether the person or entity we are dealing with is indeed who he or she claims to be?

• How can we be sure that the information we sent across has indeed gone without someone else taking a look at it?

• How do we know that the data we received has not been altered mid-way?

• What if the person we transacted with went back on his word? Do we have proof?

In the physical world we use and associate the signature of a person to establish identity and credibility of the individual, but what happens in the electronic world? Coupled with this concern is another dimension of the law – what is the legal validity and sanctity of an electronic transaction in any court of law?

Therefore, “creating trust” in an eenvironment involves assuring the | September 2005

transacting entities about the integrity and confidentiality of the transaction along with authentication of the sending and receiving entities such that both entities cannot repudiate the transaction.

The enabling technology to achieve this Trust is PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). The Indian IT Act 2000 enables individuals to use a Digital Signature in place of a physical signature that enjoys evidentiary status in the Indian courts of law. This landmark IT act has in fact created history of sorts & catapulted India into that small band of nations that have a Digital Signature Legislation.

Very Simply put, a Digital Signature Certificate is like an “electronic passport”.

It is an individual’s identity on the net that uniquely identifies him or her.

For a Digital Signature to enjoy this legal status, it has to be issued by a licensed Certifying Authority or CA. Certifying Authorities are awarded licenses by the Controller of CA (CCA), under the Central Government. after ensuring that the licensee fulfils the stringent criteria laid down in the IT Act. Being in the business of trust, the licensee has to follow some very rigorous security guidelines (as per the IT Act 2000) pertaining to infrastructure, technology and people, to qualify as a CA. Once an individual possesses a unique Digital Signature Certificate issued by a Certifying Authority, the individual can affix his or her unique digital signature on any electronic document communication and transcation.

What PKI can do?

PKI solutions can be used to secure a wide range of business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) applications over the Internet. Functioning as electronic credentials that identify parties online, Digital Signatures enable encrypted communications and enforce legal validity, thereby making them a vital component of online transactions in e-Commerce, financial services, supply-chain management, virtual private networks (VPN), as well as wireless and mobile commerce environments. PKI as we know today has evolved beyond the traditional offering of E-Security and is considered a basic enabler of new E-Business revenue streams.

Early in its life cycle PKI established itself with a clear value as compared to it’s immediate counterparts. Firewalls established the fortress for a corporation, of which intrusion detection served to enhance this capability. Antivirus protected hosts and desktops to the threat of infection. VPNs ensured secure communications over public networks. PKI stepped in to provide application level security, did away with the inherent weaknesses in IDs and passwords and linked the identity of users to their Internet hosts through digital certificates.

But PKI went further and crossed the boundaries of security by enabling a host of services, which were not previously enabled due to lack of enhanced security. Some of the unique services offered by digital signatures are • Digital Signing of electronic documents • Electronic supply chain management • Electronic (e)-Ordering & e-Procurement • Online e-Government Services These are only a few examples of new applications which were earlier not carried out over for the Internet but are now enabled as new services due to the enhanced security offered by PKI. 37

TECH TALK

PKI – The Technology PKI is one of the few technologies of today, which integrates the disciplines of Legal Practices & Information Technology. This results in several unique challenges in its deployment.

To understand PKI one must appreciate the underlying concept of PKC (Public Key Cryptography). It would be safe to say that though PKI is not a technology at the forefront, Public Key Cryptographic Techniques are pretty much the building blocks for securing applications.

Stock Broking Companies • • •

Public Key Cryptography PKC is based on the principle of Public Private Key pairs i.e. what one key encrypts the other key decrypts. The private key as the name suggest is private to the user while the public key is the open. A user signs a piece of data with the private key to prove identity, integrity and non-repudiation where as the user uses the public key of the recipient to ensure privacy of data by encrypting the data with the public key. Extending this concept from users to devices and applications, public key cryptography forms the centerpiece to provide an all round e-security pertaining to Database Security, Channel Security or even Secure Access to remote applications.

•

•

•

Public Key Infrastructure PKI is the infrastructure that is used to maintain the public and private key pairs for operations. Infrastructure is not just about hardware and software but includes a lot more, such as - Key Management, Security & Operations, Support Services, Application Integration and Consulting. For most organizations putting all this in place drives up the operational cost and hence it seems to be an expensive proposition. An alternative here is the Managed PKI Services model, which has by far been the most successful model worldwide for most PKI implementations. It just does not make business sense to invest in setting up a full-fledged PKI if an enterprise does not have a large number of users.

To overcome the legal and technological obstacles, implementation of PKI solution can be performed in two fundamentally different approaches: In-house PKI In this approach the customer purchases PKI software and hardware, which is used to deploy digital certificates to individuals. Dedicated staffs are responsible for defining their own certifying practices and policies for the creation and distribution of digital certificates throughout the corporate infrastructure.

Companies perceive that this approach offers inherent “ownership” and flexibility.

But typically this option requires a large upfront investment in both time and money.

Outsourced PKI This approach is analogous to the service provider market where the ownership of infrastructure lays with an external entity – in this case the Certifying Authority (CA). The CA is responsible for setting policy, managing information technology (IT) and owning liability of ownership on behalf of the customer. The advantage to the enterprise is control of their certificate issuance, co-branding and management, while moving the responsibility of maintenance, scalability and policy management to the back-end (commonly referred to as the processing center) Some of the common factors that may be found in successful PKI deployments across the world are - PKI as a part of Government to Consumer Interface, Technology Specific Legislation prescribing the use of PKI, Effective drive and implementation mandates from Authorities and Preference of Outsourced PKI Service over the In-house PKI model.

The following table illustrates two supporting cases of PKI implementation one for stock broking companies and another for export-import companies of India.

38

Pain Area: Cumbersome process of sending out Contract notes to customers Business Requirement: Streamline the process and reduction of cost Solution: Electronic Identity for Authorized Signatories (who were signing physical contract notes and Application for signing these contract notes How it works: Authorised Signatories use their Digital Certificates to sign and issue Digitally Signed contract notes online Benefits: Dramatically reduces costs while enhancing security and client convenience Used by: 30 of the top 40 brokers in India (jointly developed product with NSE.IT) and ICICI Direct.com

Secure transactions for Export-Import companies with the DGFT •

•

•

•

•

Pain Area: Large community of Exporters & Importers to move online for transactions with DGFT – but security and repudiation considerations are paramount Business Requirement: Community of EXIM users to transact with DGFT using their portal application in a secure manner (authentication, integrity of data, confidentiality, non-repudiation) Solution: SAFE EXIM, Electronic Identity for community of users and Application to sign documents How it works: EXIM user purchases a copy of SafeEXIM – enrolls for a certificate which is issued on successful validation of the organisation.

They use this certificate as credentials to access the DGFT portal application over the Internet and transacts and signs the document using digital certificate.

Benefit: Since the DGFT was keen to derive benefits of this system – the EXIM community received an incentive in terms of fee waivers.

Urmez Daver Manager Business Planning & Marketing Safescrypt urmez@safescrypt.com

www.egov.csdms.in |

COMMENTARY

Municipal e-Governance models: Comparative analysis of European cities The analysis of municipal e-Governance models deployed in key European cities of Barcelona, Venice, Capetown, Manchester and Johannesburg presents policy lessons for other cities struggling with the problem of aligning information and communication technology with the function of local government organisations.

Introduction ICTs have obtained an increasingly central role in municipal organisations. One of the central questions that urban managers ask themselves is whether to outsource certain or all ICT functions to external private partners –that may have a lead in technical abilities and competences- , and what to keep “inhouse” from a strategic control perspective.

This paper deals with the strategic management ICT in the cities of Barcelona, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Manchester, The Hague and Venice. This set of cases is interesting, because it contains a wide variation in the way the cities organised their strategic ICT management internally and in terms of outsourcing relationships and strategic partnerships with private actors.

ICT management in a number of case cities Cities are aware that the strategic value of ICT for their organisation is growing. At the same time, the technological complexity and volatility in ICT are growing as well. Cities need at least a minimum level of private sector expertise to make their ICT systems work; at the same time, they need some minimum of expertise “in-house”, as ICT systems are increasingly at the heart of the municipal organisation.

Barcelona is a good example of a city that has kept most of its IT in-house. The city relies heavily on a municipal information technology centre that ranks among the best of its kind in Europe. The Municipal Institute for Informatics (IMI) has to negotiate contracts with each of the municipal departments. These are complex negotiations, because the partners have to find a balance between the clients’ priorities as represented by the departmental managers, and the general interests of the city, as represented by the | September 2005

director of the General Services department. But they share a common understanding of the public interest.

By consequence, although municipal departments are free to choose other ICT service providers, IMI has a “de facto” monopoly: almost every IT system and application must fit Barcelona in the highly integrated infrastructure of equipment, software and information. The city government of Barcelona decided that maintaining this centralised ICT-strategy and centrally managed facilities is a prerequisite for integrated attention to the citizens as well as for territorial and functional decentralisation.

In Venice, the situation is slightly different There, individual city departments can and do buy applications from external ICT companies. The city of Venice has founded “Venis Spa.”, a public company that is in charge of integrating the various information systems utilised by the Municipal Administration and delivering services. Until a couple of years ago, they were the only provider, with total responsibility for the city’s ICT services. Now they are responsible only for system management and integration. For new systems and projects they have to compete with the market. In this transition, Venis had to change its mission.

In the city of The Hague, there is no integrator, and every single city department buys its own applications in the market. Until now, the level of coordination is low. As we have seen, the city of The Hague already outsourced its municipal computer centre in the early 1990s, and the municipal departments developed their own systems in a rather uncoordinated way. All ICT project proposals have to be developed through the municipal departments. They appear to have some trouble to align the technological issues involved, both at the level of interacting technologies (enabling e.g. the integration of services) and at the level of the requirements of introducing the new technological regime (staffing, knowledge, resources).

The city of Johannesburg outsourced its entire ICT operations in 2000.

Outsourcing was considered the best way to acquire the technological expertise needed to develop responsive government and good quality public service delivery. The financial position of the city was in bad shape, ICT management was underperforming, there were hundreds of ICT costs centres spread throughout 39

COMMENTARY

the administration, the level of internal ICT services was poor, and there was an apparent lack of skills for the delivery and use of desktop and LAN services. Outsourcing to the Sebedisana consortium (created for the occasion) was the quickest and the easiest way to obtain the required expertise.

Manchester City Council was aware that implementing e-government requires both new organisational concepts and integration of ICT systems. Such complex operations need specific know-how that was not available within the organisation. The City Council chose to enter into a strategic partnership with ICL/Deloitte&Touche, which proposed a combination of business process reengineering with rearrangement of ICT Figure 1 Comparison of the case cities systems. As a next step, the city has not just simply contracted out the job, but it engaged in a strategic partnership in which the risks and benefits are distributed between the city and the consortium. Both parties find it hard to give substance to a real “strategic partnership”, and the partnership arrangement does not preclude the Council from partnering with other private sector suppliers as appropriate. In the process, the relation between the consortium, the central ICT unit and the ICT units in the municipal departments is troublesome at times. In some instances the departments work together with the consortium without consulting or involving the central ICT unit.

Cape Town chose the public option. In 2000 the city found itself with a multitude of ICT systems, very much like Johannesburg. Every district and almost every department had its own hardware, networks and applications. This situation seriously hampered the management of the city. Both the city manager and the central ICT department were strongly convinced that a new, integrated information management system needed to be put in place in order to streamline information flows and integrate all the different systems. It was decided to put an integrative Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in place, which would meet these requirements. The city decided a collaborative partnership with Accenture. Like in Manchester the process of implementing the system went hand in hand with a reorganisation.

In sum, the differences are large. City vary from having a strong centralised ICT management (Barcelona, Venice) to very decentralised ones (The Hague), and, in terms of relations with the private sector, from far reaching forms of outsourcing (Johannesburg), moderate partnership models (Cape Town, Manchester) to an in-house orientation (Barcelona).

Analysis In this analytical part, we will make an attempt to judge the benefits and drawbacks of the various policy types along the four criteria: 1) the degree of strategic control of the urban management over the ICT functions; 2) the readiness for system integration in the municipality; 3) the degree in which cities restructured their back office organisation and 4) the risk of “lock-in” into a supplier’s system. In figure 1, the cities are ranked according to their scores. Below, we will elaborate on the scores in this figure.

Degree of strategic control If it is true that ICT is becoming more strategic for cities, then cities should be at least at a strategic level to influence and steer the ICT developments at a strategic level. Barcelona obtained the highest score. Strategic ICT management is organised 40

on four criteria

centrally, and at a high level in the organisation.

The various urban departments are clearly subordinate to central strategic objectives and decisions. Venice also scores high in this criterion. Its centralised ICT integration unit makes it easy to establish links with the city management, and limits the power of the individual city departments to go their own way. In The Hague, Capetown and Manchester, the level of strategic control over ICT system is more limited. In these cities, the municipal departments have a more independent role, which loosens the grip of central management. Also, these cities are engaging in strategic partnerships with consortia of ICT companies and consultants, that have a lead in terms of know how and technological expertise. Johannesburg has been struggling to implement the strategic responsibility at an appropriate level: The external technology partner has actually been leading the way to e-government as Johannesburg’s knowledge partner in the outsourcing contract.

Readiness for system integration Our second criterion to analyse the cases is to what extent the ICT arrangement provides a readiness for system integration. Barcelona is again the best placed city: its central IT management unit makes sure that all the systems can talk to each other. The freedom of individual departments to go their own way is extremely limited. Venice also obtains a high value. Venis ltd, the public integrator of ICT systems, takes up it role relatively successfully. However, individual department have recently increased their level of freedom www.egov.csdms.in |

COMMENTARY

to purchase their own ICT solution form the market. This somewhat reduces the integrative capacity of Venis. In the cities of Capetown and Manchester, a private consortium is set to integrate the huge number of ICT systems in the municipal organisation. Given the technological and organisational capabilities of these consortia, this is likely to succeed, but we have to be careful to draw to quick conclusions, as at the time of writing, the cities were still in the process of negotiating the details of the strategic partnerships. In Manchester, the relation between the consortium, the central IT unit and the IT groups in the other Council departments is troublesome at times, which is not conducive to an optimal system integration. Also, in some instances the departments work together with the consortium without consulting or involving the central IT unit. Capetown obtains a lower score than Manchester because its relatively unfavorable starting position. The current “Unicity” of Cape Town was established in 2000 as a consolidation of 7 municipalities. This legacy is reflected in the current IT context in the city. The city finds itself using a multitude of IT systems: every municipality, and almost each department, has its own hardware, networks and applications.

Some estimate that a total of 270 (!) systems are currently in place. Systems do not communicate well, so the information provision does not meet the demands of even basic management standards. In The Hague, the readiness for systems integration is weak, basically because there is no system integrator with formal power or competence.

There are substantial initiatives, however, to improve this situation.

Restructuring the back office To what extent have cities restructured their back-office? This criterion is relevant as the value of using ICTs for an organisation strongly relates to its ability to reorganise work processes and to move to more horizontal or network type of configurations.

One of the most eye-catching phenomena in the way Barcelona organises its services to the citizens, is the integrated approach towards telephony, internet and district offices. Integrated attention to the citizens is one of the spearheads of the Barcelona approach to the inhabitants of the city. All relations between the city and the citizens are taken care of on an exclusive basis by a “one stop shop” service. This service, Barcelona | September 2005

Informacio (BI), is a relatively autonomous institute that reports to the director of General Services. It is strongly supported by the executive city management and the political leaders of the city government. The back-office is organised in such a way that it supports the integrated attention to the citizens. There is no need for direct contact between the main city departments and the citizens – with the exception of specialised services. However, the integration of services that need input from different government levels is often hampered by an insufficient level of standardisation and data harmonisation at the national level. Manchester and Capetown have engaged in strategic partnerships that aim to both integrate ICT systems and rearrange the back office, but, as said, they have only just begun.

The city of Manchester should have all its service delivery on-line by 2005, in line with government targets for all public bodies in the UK. The Council is working hard to achieve this. Online service delivery is part of a broader strategy to improve the service performance of the Council. The city has decided not to do everything at once –it lacks the resources to do so anyway- but to focus on services where the marginal returns in terms of benefits for the citizens are the greatest. The city Council is aware that implementing E-government requires both new organisational concepts and integration of IT systems, for which it needs specific know-how that was not available within the organisation.

Capetown introduces ICT systems not as an aim in itself, neither to automate existing processes, but rather to re-engineer local government to improve its performance and lower its costs. The implementation of an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system) is currently taking place. The city management recognised the need for simultaneous e-government efforts in a very early stage (2000). Currently, systems and processes that will support e-government are being introduced side by side with the citywide transformation process. The momentum of change is optimally used to upgrade the cities’ IT capacities.

In Johannesburg, the turn-around of the back-office – implementing ICT as an enabler of renewing municipal business – is a point of concern. However, existing personal linkages between municipal departments and the outsourcing company have been of particular interest. Before the outsourcing took place, many employees of the external supplier used to work for the municipal departments and enterprises. They knew the business and the people in the customer organisation, and after their transfer to the ICT supplier, they acquired the new skills needed for the implementation of back-office systems and procedures for egovernment. These personal linkages at operational level were complemented by good relations between the city and the outsourcing company at strategic management level. Meanwhile, virtually all departments and municipal enterprises have appointed a Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the management of information has moved out of the back offices into the Office of the City Manager.

The Hague has opted for an organisational model in which the internal departments of the municipality remain intact. A “virtual organisational layer” is being created to increase transparency and demand-orientation. Despite these efforts, public online service delivery suffers from departmental thinking. On the department level, however, this can lead to good results. The tax department for instance has develop a now widely used service that enables to assess the property of your home and that of similar objects and check whether the property tax was well calculated.

Risk of lock-in When dealing with private firms to find ICT solutions, there is a risk that private companies, with their headstart in technical competence, take the lead in systems development or take too big a slice of the cake. A city may become “locked in” to the chosen system, which puts the city in a weak bargaining position vis-à-vis the technology supplier and makes it dependent on the vendor for a long time at high costs. Cities are more likely to become locked-in to the systems of private suppliers when 1) they don’t have strategic ICT competences in the organisation and 2) 41

COMMENTARY

when they outsource substantial parts of their ICT to a single supplier.

Johannesburg, from this perspective, receives the lowest score. It outsourced much of its strategic ICT to one single company, and kept virtually no strategic ICT competence in-house. In the other cities, lock-in risks are much lower. In Barcelona and Venice, with a strong public sector say in the purchase of systems from suppliers, the risks are the lowest. Capettown and Manchester take a middle position: they have to be careful not to be locked in by the mighty consortia they work with, and make sure that solutions are vendor-independent on the long run.

In The Hague, lock-in situation may occur, but only at the departmental level.

Overseeing this, our conclusion is that Barcelona’s model is the best placed to reap the benefits of the new ICTs. In fact, in this city the number and quality of electronic services is high. The city of Venice is second. This city has also integrative capacities, but lacks the rigorous organisational restructuring and scores lower on central control as well. The results for the partnership models (Capetown, Manchester, and in the future also The Hague) will depend on the way the partnerships will work out: this is not always clear, as the cities have just entered this partnership model. The lowest cores are for The Hague, that lacks an integrating unit, and Johannesburg, that has lost strategic control over its ICT management.

It should be noted that The Hague nevertheless manages to deliver electronic services on the sectoral level.

Concluding remarks The examples from our case studies in e-government yield policy lessons for other cities that struggle with the problem of aligning information and communication technologies with local government organisations and technology partnerships.

Some of the main recommendations are: The city should have a clear vision of the value of ICT. It is not “just a tool” or a cost centre but a key asset for municipal service provision, electronic government, workflow management and enterprise resources planning. ICT implementations have become a strategic issue. It touches the core business of the city, and it exerts substantial influence over the quality of service delivery.

Our case studies reveal that cities have difficulties in finding the right partnership model. Key issues are how to share risks and returns amongst the partners, how to keep control of the change process, and how to avoid lock-in into a certain system or supplier. And last but not least, the commercial consortia are not always aware of political and bureaucratic peculiarities and sensibilities of the municipal organisation.

Good working relations between the service provider(s) and the municipal departments should be encouraged. The municipal departments have the best knowledge of the business of service delivery. However, a main threat to e-government and the integrated information architecture may arise when

departments act on their own and involve business consultants for supposedly departmental issues. In many cases these consultants expose a rather biased view of the departmental interest and their own scope of experience, paying too little attention to the corporate municipal perspective. And in those cases where the ICT-facilities have been outsourced they may lend too much of an ear to the outsourced unit and its mother company.

Only a strong corporate level of ICT-expertise in the municipal organisation can deal with such threats.

The city needs an expert strategic unit for ICT at corporate level. Such a unit should be powerful by virtue of its political backing, and influential by virtue of its professional authority towards the municipal departments.

All in all, outsourcing and other forms of strategic technology partnership are key issues for the delivery of e-government.

Further research is needed to deepen our understanding of the opportunities and the risks that are at stake, as well as the strong points and the weaknesses of the different partnership and ownership models.

Willem van Winden European Institute for Comparative Urban Research The Netherlands vwinden@few.eur.nl

Conference Announcement International Conference on e-Government (ICEG) 2005 Lord Elgin Hotel, Ottawa, Canada, 27-28 October 2005 ICEG 2005 will offer an opportunity to discuss the latest research and thinking in the field of e-Government. Presentations will be made on a range of topics dealing with both the theory and practice of e-Government. Apart from the main conference, three mini-track sessions will run on Connecting with citizens and business, Evaluating e-Government and Use of Open Source Software in e-Government. A panel discussion on the second day, to be chaired by Stephen Chanasyk of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Toronto, will look at Enterprise Collaboration across Jurisdictions.

A full list of abstracts selected for submission as papers can be found at: http://www.academic-conferences.org/iceg/iceg2005/iceg2005abstracts.htm Expected Participants: The conference will be of interest to practitioners, advisors, vendors, students and scholars involved in developing or implementing e-Government strategies, researching the impact of e-Government on democracies or those interested in learning from experiences of others.

Contact Details: E-mail - info@academic-conferences.org; Website: http://www.academic-conferences.org/iceg/iceg2005/iceg2005-home.htm 20% discount on registration rates are available for readers of egov. Quote ‘CSDMS’ in the discount code box on the registration form.

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www.egov.csdms.in |

COMMENTARY

Benchmarking e-Readiness evaluation

A

ccording to Department of Economic and Social Affairs of United Nations, e-Government, a relatively new phenomenon in the work of public administration the world over, has come with a great development promise but without a blueprint for its deployment. Each year United Nations announces its annual report on eGovernment Readiness. Even private organizations and academic institutions such as the Economist magazine and Brown University analyze the global status of eGovernment services and readiness. Looking at these statistics, it is relatively easy to compare that which country is better prepared. However, question still remains whether it is indeed fair and accurately reflecting the readiness by comparing advanced economy group such as E.U. and U.S. and developing economy group such as Republic of Congo, for instance, with same measurement standard. In many cases, developing countries and economies in transition have limited resources but pull out the best resources ever. For instance, there are well-known success stories of India’s e-Government programs, Estonia’s e-Participation program, and Bolivia’ administration modernization project. These successes are accomplished with wellCritical Success Factors

Cost-Effective and/or Non-Technology Driven

Grouping critical success factors by scale of economy There are well-known success factors for e-Government services to maximize public value and interest (See Table). However, for many developing countries, some factors are considered as limited resources such as: finance, technology, and infrastructure. For instance, ICT infrastructure is very expansive success factor, and yet is hardly or insufficiently available to developing countries due to financial constraints. But some countries pull out available resources to provide quality services. For instance, there is a cost-effective network access to the public using satellite and/or public switching network for public-valued services such as elearning, distant-medical diagnosis, and civil services. The service may have a limited bandwidth and the quality of service, but could be considered as the effective mechanism in specific environment and even cost-beneficial. Therefore, required critical success factors for e-Government services and readiness could be various by environment and applied differently by economy, culture, and other indicators. On the same line, measurement of readiness evaluation could be classified and applied to different groups of economy because advanced nation holds abundant resources already. Each group of economy could be measured with different standards with different critical factors. As table shows, critical success factors are characterized as “cost-effective and/or non-technology driven” and “high cost and/or technology driven”. High cost and technology-driven factors are more or less resource-oriented. Theses factors are critical for the High Cost and/or Technology-Driven 9

ICT Infrastructure Legal Framework

established strategy, political will, and optimized resource management. In a certain sense, these countries deserve a better credit for e-Government readiness, and need to be evaluated under different categories. According to the World Public Sector report by UN, there is no single established way, no “best practice” that would lead to successful e-government. It also points out that their interpretation and application must be invented locally. In another words, critical success factors may be interpreted differently, considering various environment and available resources of each country, specifically in the context of developing countries.

9

Characteristics

Requires Long-term plan, Technology, and Financial Resources Insufficient for Developing Countries

Human Capital

9

Requires Long-term Training and Technical upport

Financial Resource

9

Insufficiently Available for Developing Countries

Technology

9

Insufficiently Available for Developing Countries

Political Leadership

9

Partnership

9

Strongly Recommended for Start-up Countries Strongly Recommended for Developing Countries 9

Access

Insufficiently Available for Developing Countries

Education

9

Requires Long-term plan and Commitment

Culture

9

Need to Reflect Cultural Characteristics into e-Strategy

National e-Strategy

9

9

Differentiate Strategies by Scale of Economy

Table. Some Examples of the Critical Success Factors for e-Government Service and Readiness | September 2005

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COMMENTARY

developed group in order to leap to more advanced e-Government services. Costeffective factors are more or less policy-oriented. Developing countries may give more weightage to these factors to optimize the limited resources and to provide public-valued services.

Readiness evaluation by customizing critical success factors There are several processes to consider before applying critical success factors for readiness evaluation. As defined(See Diagram), Readiness Environment Indicators shows which country belongs to which group. The most influential indicator to determine the group is the finance-related such as GDP, budget, and infrastructure. Based on the indicator, countries are grouped together. Critical success factors may be classified and grouped for the specific group of countries defined by Readiness Environment Indicators. Then, the evaluation can be done for each group with different measurement standard. Estonia wouldn’t belong at the group where U.S. is. Also, critical success factor of e-Government services and readiness are different by the evaluation criteria.

been observed that many developing countries made an attempt to adopt the eGovernment strategy from some of developed countries. However, as mentioned above, applying e-Government initiative shaped from the environment of developed countries to developing countries are not accepted as much efficient as western observers already predicted, because of risk of failures, financial burdens, or limited availability of technology.

Most of all, considering the fact that ICT blueprint actually reflect that specific country’s strategic approach with available resources, it would be even more difficult to adopt a blueprint from advanced nations. In other words, many success factors need to be reconsidered, reexamined or even reshuffled to draw customized strategy and architectural modeling for specific target countries.

The evaluation is a way of analyzing the status and finding the solution for improvement. However, reflecting the actual situation in the country for the evaluation is often underestimated. Classifying the critical success factors could be one of many ways to accurately reflect the performance of developing country. This would lead to national e-strategy more accurately reflected for the specific countries. Evaluation is supposed to help the clients, not discourage them with a bunch of numbers.

Why differentiate the critical success factor for evaluation?

First of all, direct comparison between advanced groups and developing groups doesn’t give out reasonable interpretation and analysis between these groups. Secondly, the blueprint, or we might say “National e-Strategy”, is shaped based upon critical success factors reflecting the target countries’ political priority, financial capability, public culture (probably attitude toward ICT-driven services), and illiteracy rate. Another words, depending upon the critical success factors, the national e-strategy is shaped differently with different targets and objectives.

The World Bank mentioned that e-Government could establish a new way of doing the business of government with a more integrated delivery of information services and processes. The bank also points out that it is too early to look for a macro impact of e-Government initiatives but some evaluations indicate significant micro level impacts in specific agencies, cities, or regions. Based on these claims, it is extremely difficult to establish a blueprint without acknowledging a macro impact. Macro impact may also be measured or predicted based upon the successes of small pilot cases. But, once again, the small pilot case has to be driven out as a part of national ICT master plan or blueprint. Without knowing the macro impact, it would be extremely difficult to draw a blueprint with legitimate pilot projects. In case of advanced nations in the area of e-Government, they could annihilate the risk of failure by putting abundant resources of finance and technology. Majority of developing countries couldn’t afford either failure or financial burdens. It has 44

Jeongwon Yoon Director, Department of Global Consulting, National Computerization Agency Seoul, Korea yjw@nca.or.kr

Myoungsin Chae Associate Professor, Seoul University of Information and Venture

www.egov.csdms.in |

ABOUT TOWN

e

e

e

Conflux

e

2005

The e-Government Conference

This section lists upcoming e-Government conferences, exhibitions, and other public events for the benefit of our readers.

12 September 2005 User Involvement in e-Government development projects Rome, Italy http://www.effin.org/egov-workshop.html

19 September 2005 Semantics and Orchestration of eGovernment Processes Compiègne – France http://www.egovinterop.net/SHWebClass.

ASP?WCI=ShowDoc&DocID=1556&LangID=1

10-11 October 2005 FT E-fficiency in Government Conference London, UK

9-11 November 2005

http://www.financialtimesconferences.com/ pages/conference.asp?ecode=ZZ1107

GTC East 2005 Seventeenth Annual Government Technology Conference Albany, New York http://www.govtech.net/gtc/ ?pg=conference&confid=230

GTC Southeast 2005 Fifth Annual Government Technology Conference Atlanta Georgia

The 2005 Asia e-Gov Summit Beijing, China http://www.worldsummits.com

http://www.govtech.net/gtc/?pg=conference &confid=253

Conflux 2005 The e-Governance Conference The Grand New Delhi India e

http://www.conflux.csdms.in

http://www.terrapinn.com/2005/govtechza/

15-17 November 2005

18-20 October 2005

17-19 October 2005

19-22 September 2005

Government Technology Africa 2005 Johannesburg South Africa

e

17-18 November 2005 e

Conflux

e

2005

The e-Government Conference

Government Health IT Conference Washington, DC, USA http://www.fcw.com/events/ghit/

19-21 September 2005

18-19 October

24-25 November 2005

The 5th Enterprise Architecture Conference & Exhibition Washington, DC

EWorld Government & Healthcare London, UK

Ministerial eGovernment Conference Manchester, UK

http://www.eworld-government.com

http://europa.eu.int/information_society/ activities/egovernment_research/minconf2005/ index_en.htm

http://www.e-gov.com/events/2005/ea/

19-21 October 2005

20 September 2005 IDeA e-champions network annual conference and exhibition 2005 Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster http://www.idea-knowledge.gov.uk/idk/core/ page.do?pageId=1700346#annual2005 e-champions@idea.gov.uk

3-5 October 2005 CollECTeR LatAm 2005 Talca, Chile

eChallenges 2005 Slovenia, Austria http://www.echallenges.org/2005/

26-28 October 2005 IFIP International Conference on eBusiness, eCommerce and eGovernment (I3E’2005), Poznan Poland http://www.multiagent.com/dailist/ msg00056.html

http://ing.utalca.cl/collecter/papers.php

27-28 October 2005

10 October 2005 eGovernment Conference 2005 An IDG Event Italy, Rome http://careers.idg.com/www/IDGProducts.nsf/ 0/b0799a03066941cb00256fea006afa0b?

OpenDocument

The International Conference on E-Government (ICEG 2005) Lord Elgin Hotel Ottawa Canada http://www.academic-conferences.org/ iceg2005/iceg2005-home.htm

9-11 December 2005 3rd International Conference on e-Governance (ICEG) Lahore, Pakistan http://web.lums.edu.pk/iceg2005/

4-7 January 2006 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 39) E-Government Track Kauai, Hawaii http://www.ctg.albany.edu/conference/hicss/

30 January-2 Febuary, 2006 GTC Southwest 2006 Seventeenth Annual Government Technology Conference Austin, TX http://www.govtech.net/gtc/?pg= conference&confid=276

Tell us about your event at egov@csdms.in | September 2005

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FACTS AND DATA

Economist Intelligence Unit e-readiness rankings, 2005 2005 e-readiness rank (first 50) 1 2 3 4 5 6 (tie) 6 (tie) 8 9 10 11 12 (tie) 12 (tie) 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 (tie) 32 (tie) 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

2004 rank 1 6 3 10 2 9 5 8 4 12 7 11 13 12 16 19 17 14 18 22 25 20 21 23 24 26 31 27 (tie) 27 (tie) 30 29 36 32 39 (tie) 33 39 (tie) 34 35 37 38 n/a 42 45 43 44 48 50 41 46 47

Country Denmark US Sweden Switzerland UK Hong Kong Finland Netherlands Norway Australia Singapore Canada Germany Austria Ireland New Zealand Belgium S. Korea France Israel Japan Taiwan Spain Italy Portugal Estonia Slovenia Greece Czech Republic Hungary Chile Poland South Africa Slovakia Malaysia Mexico Latvia Brazil Argentina Lithuania Jamaica Bulgaria Turkey Thailand Venezuela Saudi Arabia Romania Columbia India Peru

2005 e-readiness score (of 10)

2004 score

8.74 8.73 8.64 8.62 8.54 8.32 8.32 8.28 8.27 8.22 8.18 8.03 8.03 8.01 7.9 7.82 7.71 7.66 7.61 7.45 7.42 7.13 7.08 6.95 6.90 6.32 6.22 6.19 6.09 6.07 5.97 5.53 5.53 5.51 5.43 5.21 5.11 5.07 5.05 5.04 4.82 4.68 4.58 4.56 4.53 4.38 4.19 4.18 4.17 4.07

8.28 8.04 8.25 7.96 8.27 7.97 8.08 8.00 8.11 7.88 8.02 7.92 7.83 7.68 8 7.45 7.33 7.41 7.73 7.34 7.06 6.86 7.32 7.20 7.05 7.01 6.54 6.06 6.47 6.47 6.22 6.35 5.41 5.79 5.33 5.61 5.33 5.60 5.56 5.38 5.35 n/a 4.71 4.51 4.69 4.53 4.38 4.23 4.76 4.45 4.44

Source: www.eiu.com/2005eReadinessRankings

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2005 Digital Learning Conference

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Digital Learning 2005

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ov knowledge for change

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www.conflux.csdms.in

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e

Conflux e

2005

The e-Government Conference