5th eINDIA 2009-India's Largest ICT Event:Recognising Innovations!: September 2009 Issue

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-GOVERNANCE

www.egovonline.net - Asia’s Leading Portal on e-Governance VOLUME 5

ISSUE 9

ISSN 0973-161X

5th

India's Largest ICT Event Recognising Innovations!

SEPTEMBER 2009

Healthcare or farming, passport or transport. The face of life is changing. Make a difference to the lives of millions. Be part of the National e-Governance initiative.

Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Government of India

www.negp.gov.in

Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency & reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man

www.negp.gov.in Public services closer home

Asia's Premier ICT Event 2 - 4 December 2009 Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Call for Papers eASiA 2009 seeks call for abstracts/proposal(s) for speakers who illustrate innovation in using ICT for development, by September 15, 2009 Abstracts and Extended Abstracts Submission: September 15, 2009 Notification of Acceptance of Abstract: October 1, 2009 Full Paper Submission: November 3, 2009 Submit your abstracts/proposals at papers@e-asia.org

www.e-asia.org

eINDIA 2009 AWARDS NOMINATIONS

eINDIA 2009

e-GOVERNANCE

GOVERNANCE TO CITIZEN INITIATIVE

GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNMENT INITIATIVE

GOVERNMENT TO BUSINESS INITIATIVE

mGOVERNANCE INITIATIVE

CIVIL SOCIETY/ DEVELOPMENT AGENCY INITIATIVE

27 MUNICIPAL IT

ICT ENABLED MUNICIPALITY INITIATIVE e-AGRICULTURE

ICT ENABLED AGRICULTURE INITIATIVE

TELECENTRE

GRASSROOT TELECENTRE AND CIVIL SOCIETY/ DEVELOPMENT AGENCY INITIATIVE

REGULAR FEATURE

Ask SAP

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editorial

Saluting the innovations! Nowadays, ICT has become all pervasive and easy accessible to everyone and almost everywhere. In the current scenario it is not relevant if one uses ICT, but rather how one uses it. Several projects which have been nominated in the eINDIA Awards 2009 have used the simple technologies, but what make them different from the others are their application because of which they have created beneficial impact for the citizens. The eINDIA Award programme is held annually alongside eINDIA conference proceedings. eINDIA Awards are open to national and international government organisations, civil society organisations, bi-lateral, multi-lateral developmental organisations and enterprises which have transformed social development opportunities into a sustainable social enterprise through innovative use of ICT. In this issue of eGov, you will read about the projects which have been nominated for eIndia Awards 2009 in e-Agriculture, e-Governance, Municipal IT and Telecentre Tracks.

President Dr. M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief Dr. Ravi Gupta Assistant Editor Sandeep Budki

The purpose of starting eINDIA Awards 2009 was to encourage institutions and individuals to use and apply ICT tools in various developmental and sector-specific projects; to identify and popularise emerging innovative projects from different sectors of the development community, including the grass-roots organisations; to identify and felicitate projects which exemplifies implementation and can be easily replicated and at the same time proves efficient and sustainable; to spread awareness about the role of ICT in addressing social concerns and to emphasise the instrumental effectiveness of ICT based applications. We have treid to document in a succint way the various projects nominated at eINDIA Awards 2009. We hope you enjoy reading about them as much as we enjoyed writing and learning from them.

Research Assistant Gayatri Maheshwary Correspondent Pratap Vikram Singh Dy. General Manager - Marketing Gautam Navin mobile: +91 9818125257 email: gautam@egovonline.net Sr. Manager, Marketing Debabrata Ray mobile: +91 9899650692 email: debabrata@egovonline.net

Dr. Ravi Gupta Editor-in-Chief Ravi.Gupta@egovonline.net

Sr. Executive, Business Development Santosh Kumar Gupta mobile: +91 9891192996 email: santosh@egovonline.net Anuj Agrawal mobile: +91-9911302086 anuj@egovonline.net Sr Graphic Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Graphic Designer Om Prakash Thakur Web Zia Salahuddin, Amit Pal Subscription & Circulation Lipika Dutta +91-9871481708 Manoj Kumar +91-9891752931

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egov is published by Elets Technomedia PVt. Ltd in technical collaboration with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS). Owner, Publisher, Printer, Ravi Gupta Printed at Vinayak Print Media, D-320, Sector - 10 Noida, U.P. and published from 710 Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50 Noida, UP Editor: Ravi Gupta

egov september 2009

eINDIA 2009 AWARDS

eINDIA 2009 is a unique platform for knowledge sharing in different domains of ICT for development and facilitates, multi-stakeholder partnerships and networking among governments, industry, academia and civil society organisations of different countries, including the host country- India. The objective is to bring together ICT experts, practitioners, business leaders and stakeholders of the region onto one platform, through keynote addresses, paper presentations, thematic workshops and exhibitions. In order to make the eINDIA event more effective and all encompassing, the organisers confer eINDIA 2009 Awards to distinguished professionals and institutions working in the domains of e-Agriculture, e-Governance, Digital Learning, e-Health, Municipal IT and Telecentre. The eINDIA Awards programme is held annually alongside the eINDIA conference proceedings. eINDIA Awards are open for all national and international government organisations, civil society organisations,

categories of awards e-Governance

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Government to Citizens (G2C) Initiative of the Year Government to Business (G2B) Initiative of the Year Government to Government (G2G) Initiative of the Year m-Governance Initiative of the Year Civil Society/Development Agency of the Year

Telecentre

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Innovative Grassroots Telecentre of the Year Civil Society/Development Agency of the Year

Municipal IT

ICT Enabled Municipal Initiative of the Year

e-Agriculture

www.egovonline.net

ICT Enabled Agriculture Initiative of the year

bi-lateral, multi-lateral developmental organisations and enterprises who have transformed social development opportunities into a sustainable social enterprise through innovative use of ICTs. In this issue of eGov magazine, we present projects that are nominated for eIndia Awards 2009 in eAgriculture, e-Governance, Municipal IT and Telecentre Track. Selection Criteria Individuals and institutions who wished to nominate themselves for the eINDIA 2009 Awards had to furnish details about the projects they were involved with and the nominated projects were evaluated according to economic cost and sustainability, stakeholder support, gender parity, and other inclusiveness indicators, impact on livelihoods and society in general, demonstrable effects on the project target groups, community initiatives and ownership, the measure of replication and extent of collaboration. eINDIA 2009 Awards were decided by certain procedures and rules governing the evaluation of the entries. The call for nominations for the eINDIA 2009 Awards was open till 15th July 2009. The Award selection process went through a dual process of Jury as well as public voting system. The online voting started from 1st August 2009 and closes on 20th August 2009. The major reasons for establishing eIndia awards 2009 was to encourage institutions and individual leaders to use and apply ICT tools in various developmental and sector-specific projects,to identify and popularise emerging leaders and innovative projects from the different sectors of the development community, including the grass-roots organisations, to identify and felicitate projects that exemplifies the kind of implementation that can be easily replicated and at the same time proves efficient and sustainable; especially projects implemented in India and the South Asian region, to promote the most innovative initiatives in the domain of ICTs for Development , to spread awareness about the role of ICTs in addressing social concerns and to emphasise the instrumental effectiveness of ICT based applications.\\

NOMINATIONS: G2C

egOVeRNaNCe Government to Citizens (G2C) Initiative of the Year: Government to Citizens (G2C) Initiative of the Year Award recognises those government departments who have used ICT tools to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens. Government to Business (G2B) Initiative of the Year: Government to Business (G2B) Initiative of the Year Award recognises those government departments who have used ICT tools for improved services, transactions and interactions between the local and central government and the private sector. Government to Government (G2G) Initiative of the Year: Government to Government (G2G) Initiative of the Year Award recognises those government departments who have used ICT tools to provide and improve internal or external government to government services, transactions and interactions. m-Governance Initiative of the Year: Government to Citizens (G2C) Initiative of the Year Award recognises those government departments/private initiatives who have used mobile devices such as cellular/ mobile telephones, laptop, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and wireless internet infrastructure to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

ONLINe fILINg Of COMpLaINts aNd appeaLs tO tHe CIC

he project Online Filing of Right to Information (RTI) Complaint and Appeal with the Chief Information Commission (CIC), is a key initiative driven by CIC and National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the aegis of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), was sought to acquire the key benefits of ICT and deliver the RTI system over the digital network for the citizens. The project stakeholders include representation from; the Government of India; representation from all central government offices viz; Central Information Commission, Public Authorities, Public Information Officers and National Informatics Centre; and Citizens of India. This also acts as a single point source of information for all registered complaints and second appeals.

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aCHIeVeMeNts • Availability of information related to all the actions and decisions taken by the respective officials at different stages. • Availability of status trackers. • The system allows the authorities to understand the status of the appeals during the scrutiny process. • The system also provides information about the direction points related to the complaint/appeal in terms of whether the information has been provided within the stipulated time and if not, then what are the reasons. • Availability of auto-generated hearing notices, decisions and email notifications to concerned parties. • Availability of an authentic single window solution for all the information related to registered RTI complaints and appeals. • Report on the special category of respondents which delineates on how many of the respondents are senior citizens, physically challenged or belong to the general category. Implementor: National Informatics Centre Website: www.rti.india.gov.in

“The most important lesson learnt during the entire development cycle of the project is the need for ensuring a certain discipline in the government departments.”

taXsMILe

axsmile – is an initiative promoted by the 3i Infotech Consumer Services Ltd. Taxsmile is a service that educates people on their tax structure and advocates the advantages of filing tax returns online. It is an environmentally responsible initiative and promotes paperless returns-filing in easy steps. While e-filing of returns is mandatory for business establishments, lot of individual tax payers tend to pay an amount to a Chartered Accountant to file returns on their behalf. Taxsmile here takes up cultivating the culture of filing income tax returns (ITR) by one’s own self. By bringing in the e-way of filing taxes through its website, Taxsmile even suggests the ITR form that is applicable to a particular tax payer. Having a digital signature, it enables tax payers to electronically upload the documents and get an acknowledgement very quickly. 3i Infotech – the promoting company of Taxsmile, is also a CCA certified authority to award Digital Signatures.

Implementor: 3i Infotech Consumer Services Ltd Website: www.taxsmile.com

“Adopting methods such as doing the entire back-office work for filing returns while the filer merely reviews the information, has helped gain consumer confidence and made it a successful initiative.”

aCHIeVeMeNts • Taxsmile has been able to get over 60,000 consumers to file returns online with over 200,000 registrations. • The Income Tax Department recognized Taxsmile to be the most ‘tech-savvy’ intermediary in filing taxes. • Taxsmile has also been the largest e-filing intermediary within the Income Tax Department. ICT plays the most important role in making this initiative a success. The fact that this is an onlinedriven initiative says volumes of how much ICT contributes to its success. • Adopting methods such as doing the entire back-office work for filing returns while the filer merely reviews the information, has helped gain consumer confidence and made it a successful initiative.

autOMatION Of NOtORIsatION OffICes

utomation of notarization offices in Egypt, started in October 2002 with a scope of being a pilot project taking into consideration automating three notarization offices using a server client model. The purpose of automation was to reengineer the work flow and to study how to apply a one stop shop model and to reduce the time needed for transaction. The pilot project succeeded in automating about 70% of the transactions and in reengineering the work flow and provided a study about the obstacles in automating 100% of the work. The study also gives recommendation of how to rollout the project nationwide (business and technical). The Ministry of Government of Communication and IT, Egypt, started a project in 2006 to roll out the project nationwide taking into consideration the recommendation of the pilot project which was: a web based solution instead of server client usage of id bar reader, replacement and abolition of paper ledger with electronic ones. 10

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aCHIeVeMeNts • Reduce the time of transaction from about 1 hour to 10 min. • Completion of 50 automated notary offices in 2 years and building of a robust model that can be replicated easily nationwide easily. • A fully automated work flow. • A better business climate for the citizen and the employee. • Much more secure data. • Building a complete data center 24×7 that is designed to be scalable and can endure all offices nation wide. • Usage of business analytics and IT analytics. • Usage of DMBS and Web based technologies. • A team was dedicated for user support and system support in the offices in the pilot project to solve any problem. • After a year of operation the employees refused to work manually any more and a lot of data was in the electronic form which forced the employees to use the application to retrieve this data. • Electronic search saved time. Implementor: Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Giza, Egypt Website: www.mcit.gov.eg

“It took us about 2 years to establish a system and an extra year to enforce its usage.”

HOMes (HOusINg ONLINe MONItORINg e-gOVeRNaNCe sYsteM)

overnment of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) has mounted a major initiative named Integrated Novel Development in Rural areas and Model Municipal Areas (INDIRAMMA) starting in 200607. INDIRAMMA is aimed at achieving a slum-free and hut-free state of Andhra Pradesh in 3 year period. The underlining principle is to sanction a pucca house to all the rural households who are living in kutcha houses currently, irrespective of the caste, religion or political affiliation. There is no waiting list since everyone is covered. Housing is the most important component of INDIRAMMA, since it is a permanent, life-long asset. With the help of Centre for Good Governance (CGG), an online system for payments and monitoring has been devised. All the information about the INDIARAMMA-Housing programme is transparent to the Public. Information can be viewed by Citizens/ NGOs/Media till the individual beneficiary level and information like location details, personal details, sanction details, payment release details, image of the house under construction along with beneficiary and bank particulars are on-line without any sign-in procedures.

Implementor: Centre for Good Governance, Andhra Pradesh Website: www.housing.ap.gov.in

“The biggest challenge was design of the application and User-Interface (UI) to enable a computer illiterate to use and process the data without any formal training.”

aCHIeVeMeNts • Social audit is being done by third party NGOs based on the on-line beneficiaries data and finding discrepancies with ground level information. Village level physical progress and financial payment reports are available on the home-page. • INDIRAMMA- Housing programme was started in the year 200607 and this G2C initiative ‘HOMES’ implementation was started in mid 2007, since last three years nearly 23,69,427 houses have been constructed by the corporation. On the average 7,89,809 houses were constructed per annum, this is about 500% increase in the productivity of the corporation. • Till date INR 6,97,833 million of payment has been made to beneficiaries through this application.

dIgItIZatION Of tHe NatIONaL aRCHIVes Of egYpt dOCuMeNts

his project is digitizing more than 35 million documents currently kept in Egypt’s National Archives for inclusion in a database it can be searched and accessed via the National Archieves of Egypt (NAE) intranet site also. The project aims to preserve the physical condition of national archives by producing watermarked, high- resolution digital images of 2 million valuable documents, thereby reducing the need for physical access and develop a web portal providing easy access to national archives in a digital format. The portal provides the users with search, browse and view documents, keeping up with all events belonging to national archives of Egypt. More over citizens can access all documents through digital library published on the portal of national archives of Egypt.

aCHIeVeMeNts • 25 million documents saved in a database that can be searched and accessed via the NAE intranet site. • Web portal providing easy access to national archives in a digital format. • Preserving the physical condition of national archives by producing watermarked, high-resolution digital images of 130,000 valuable documents, thereby reducing the need for physical access and will be increase to 2 million. • An employment of more than 1500 fresh graduates has been done after training them. Implementor: National Archives of Egypt documents, Egypt Website: www.nationalarchives.gov.eg

“National archives of Egypt contains more than 35 million valuable document stored in 22 stores, each of them describes an important period of Egyptian history.”

egov

SEPTEMBER 200

e-LOKsHaHI

ith a view to provide citizen centric and transparent administration, the District Collector and District Magistrate, Jalgaon has developed an Integrated Voice Response System to provide a 24 hour online public grievance redressal system and FAQ forum being used widely through telephone and mobile. For these services citizens have to dial (0257)- 2222222 (Seven times 2) to access the service. Except the ordinary telephone call charges there is no other charges laid down for this service. It is an innovative project of District Collector Office, Jalgaon to have a direct conversation between citizens & administration. Using this platform, citizens can know the primary information or can register their grievance from their home. The concerned officer receives the grievance and records his answer in the system, which reaches the citizen at his home too. Thus this is a complete system for registering grievances as well as accessing solutions/reply of grievances to the citizens. For every type of grievances, time schedule is given for the officers to reply. If not replied in time, the system escalates the grievance and a generated SMS is sent to senior level officer. Four levels of officers are defined for every type of grievance. Implementor: Office of Collector & District Magistrate, Jalgaon, Maharashtra Website: www.jalgaon.gov.in/elokshahi/

“The ICT driven initiative in this project can be used in any of the District Magistrate Office all over the country.”

aCHIeVeMeNts • Presently there are 42 types of grievances and 57 types of FAQ’s services, which are provided and can be increased. • The officers can access the system through telephone, mobile, website & SMS. • The system is operational 365 x 24 x 7. • Citizen can access the service from their home for primary information or registration/ solution of grievances. • The system is based on the concept of IVRS (Integrated Voice Response system). • When the citizen selects the appropriate FAQ’s subject, the system completely gives the information about the service in oral to the citizens. • Registration of grievances in the system interactively asks the sequence of questions and answers are recorded.

e-gRaM VIsHWagRaM pROjeCt aCHIeVeMeNts • Under eGram Connectivity Infrastructure Project, all 13,693 Gram Panchayat are having VSAT along with Web Camera & VoIP Phone. • All eGram Centers have now their eGram eMail IDs and group IDs, which is used by various departments from time to time. • With the help of Ku Band and VSAT Broadcasting facility new training program and important telecast reaches to masses in very efficient manner. • No. of Certificates issued (April 08 – May 09): Birth & Death Certificates 19,11,872; Character Certificates 9,77,215; Tax Collection Certificates 2,48,350; Other Certificates 6,47,807.

-Gram Vishwagram provides facility for electronic issues of certificates which include certificates of birth, death, income, caste, domicile, property, residence proof, agriculture, tax collection, marriage, family information and land ownership. A digitalized databank is in operation for issuance of the above mentioned certificates at the village level, which is the lowest administrative unit of governance. In the phase wise manner of the e-Gram Mission, all 13,693 village panchayats are in a position to provide basic and very important services to their citizens in Gujarati (vernacular) language with the availability of VSAT Enabled, Asia’s Biggest VSAT Connectivity Project. To leverage IT resources at the village level, E-Grams are being operated through Village Computer Entrepreneur (VCE) on a revenue sharing basis under Public Private Partnership model. The VCE is local village boy/girl with secondary schools certificate selected through local panchayat body. 12

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Implementor: eGram Vishwagram Society Website: www.suratdp.gujarat.gov.in

“As eGram PAAWAN Network has its own Broadcast Channel. The telecast transmitted through BiSAG SATCOM Studio is reaching to all Gram Panchayat at their Computer itself.”

eMpLOYMeNt geNeRatION aNd MaRKetINg MIssION

mployment Generation and Marketing Mission (EGMM) is a mission set up by the Department of Rural Development of the Andhra Pradesh (AP) government to provide employment/ employability for the rural youth. EGMM works in a public-private partnership mode with government, companies and the rural communities as important stakeholders. EGMM has set up 450 training centers across AP located in rural and tribal areas. EGMM was put in place in 2008-09, a user-friendly transaction based software which captures data from the training centres upto the youth getting employed, onto a website . This brings transparency into the program. User friendly reports generated help in monitoring the large program seamlessly. The analysis is fed back to improve program quality. The district performances are monitored at all levels – District Collectors at the district level and Senior Government Officials at the state level based on the software data. The transaction based software captures the proceedings of the activity, as and when it occurs in the field.

Implementor: Department of Rural Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh Website: www.egmm.ap.gov.in

“Using IT as a backbone, EGMM has clearly showed that one job to a family takes the entire family out of poverty in a sustained manner.”

aCHIeVeMeNts • The impact of the IT architecture, which is the backbone of the jobs mission, has helped capturing the physical and financial progress of the program at each transaction in a uniform manner throughout the state. • Any right to information queries are guided to see the website which is a detailed one. • Brought transparency into the operations, both for the program and budget flow. • Generates detailed MIS reports for the government and funders seamlessly. • Get analysis reports for different trends, performances of districts and feed the leanings to improve program implementation. • Aids analysis of placements in companies for program team to work on linking poor to higher incomes.

faMILY CaRd pROjeCt

he Ministry of State for Administrative Development (MSAD), Egypt proposed, studied, analysed, designed, contracted and is currently monitoring the implementation of the family card initiative. The initiative was launched to deliver a set of support services to Egyptian families. The Egyptian government has adopted smart cards as a tool and relied on the use of ICT as a means to manage and control the delivery of social and support services to citizens. Meanwhile, a database for the Egyptian families is implemented to support the decision making process related to subsidized services. For now, there are two services that have been implemented, namely; food supply and social pensions’ distribution. The food supply manual system implied that each family is provided with a paper card to receive the relevant monthly food supplies from a specific grocer.

aCHIeVeMeNts • In food supply service, there are about 1608 service centers, and about 25,000 service providers available. They are serving about 11.9 million family throughout Egypt. • For the social pensions service, there are about 2,500 service centers and about 3,000 service providers available. They are serving about 1 million families, expected to increase to 3 million during the next two years throughout Egypt. • The initiative guarantees delivery of the support services to the underprivileged citizens through a computerized application, upto-date database, and efficient incurring system. • It establishes monitoring, control over the infiltration and loss in supports, and allows creation of a civilized environment through which underprivileged citizens can acquire their services. • It achieves transparency through the establishment of clear and neutral processes for acquiring and managing subsidies.

Implementor: Ministry of State for Administrative Development, (MSAD), Egypt Website: www.ad.gov.eg

“Citizen considerations and requirements should be taken into account from the start before planning and implementation phases.” egov

SEPTEMBER 200

NatIONaL pORtaL Of INdIa

ational Portal of India is the official portal for the Government of India. It provides a single window source for alleviating entrée to all information and services that is provided by the various constituents of the Indian Government to its citizens and other stakeholders. The India portal www.india.gov.in, an aggregator of more than 5000 distinct Indian Government websites (of various different domains and owners), has a cohesive interface. The Portal provides a flawless access to a wide variety of services for all Indian citizens, thus acting as a gateway to a superfluity of information and services provided electronically by the different departments of Indian government. The primary objective of e-Government is fulfilled as interaction takes place between the citizen through electronic delivery and exchange of information and services that take place through the Portal. Also facilitated through the portal is the key component of citizen participation in the processes and policy formulation by the government as in the case of RTI Complaint and Appeal, Central Pay Commission and NGO Partnership. The Portal has exclusive section dedicated to the citizens, business, overseas, government and know India, sectors.

Implementor: National Informatics Centre, New Delhi Website: www.india.gov.in

“The content on the National Portal is vital and needs to be always current and managing this itself is a challenge.”

aCHIeVeMeNts • india.gov.in provides a single window gateway to over 5000 Indian government websites, a feat that is unique in its own right. • The Portal has also proven to be an effective medium for the participation of common citizens in the process of governance. • Publication of information and documents over the Net, online delivery of citizen services as well as the facility to know the status of applications submitted for various government services has not only led to benefiting the end-users or common citizens but also fulfills one of the basic objectives of good governance namely enhancing transparency and accountability in the government functioning.

pROpeRtY taX aNd WateR BILL COLLeCtION autOMatION

unicipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is empowering citizens of Mumbai to pay electronically their property tax and water bill. MCGM tied up with ItzCash Card Limited a pre-paid cash card company to facilitate payments on-line, on-mobile or by walking-in to ItzCAsh Outlets branded as ItzCash World outlet and paying in cash. This has reduced the long queues at the MCGM ward offices and offered the citizens to pay as per their convenience, making the entire process cashless through the online payment for property tax and water bill, property tax and water bill on MCGM’s website. The On-mobile payment can be done by the citizen through their mobile. MCGM has also authorized ItzCash Outlets as Citizens Facilitation Centers where Citizens can walk-in and pay their property tax and water bills.

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aCHIeVeMeNts • MCGM empowered the citizens of Mumbai with 3 easy to use ways to pay their property tax and water bills. The citizens can purchase an ItzCash Card with which the citizen can pay their Property Tax and water bill on the MCGM website www.mcgm. gov.in or via a simple SMS from their mobiles. • For citizens who are not very tech savvy MCGM authorized 500 ItzCash Card outlets called ItzCash World as Citizens Facilitation Center, where the citizen can walk-in with their property tax or water bill and pay the ItzCash world outlet in cash, the outlet gives the citizens who pay in cash a receipt to authenticate that the payment has been made. • A 24 hours call center which is already set up by ItzCash, would help resolve any queries by the citizens and make easy availability of the card via home delivery by ItzCash Card Limited to the citizens doorstep

Implementor: Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Mumbai Website: www.mcgm.gov.in

“The biggest hurdle MCGM faced was to educate all the citizens about the modes by which one could pay their property tax and water bills.”

e-taNsIK

-Tansik is related to the admission to public universities and institutions in Egypt that operates through a centralized office, University Enrollment Co- ordination Office (UEC). This office enrolls over 450,000 students yearly. The purpose of the e-Tansik initiative was to replace the old paper process through a comprehensive web-based application, hosted on the Egyptian Government Portal, that accepts student’s university enrollment application, backed by a 24/7 call center for students’ support. The Portal’s operation team was responsible for service operation, security and technical support. e-Tansik proved to be highly beneficial for both citizens and government. It resulted in huge cost savings, higher efficiency and much better services for the citizens at no cost. In addition, it helped building trust in e-Government services. The e-Tansik application was developed by the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. The team developed the online form and tested the application according to the business rules set by the Ministry of Higher Education for acceptance, taking into account geographical distribution.

Implementor: Public Universities Enrollment Project, Cairo, Egypt Website: www.egypt.gov.eg

“The project is the result of the fruitful co-operation between five government organisations.”

aCHIeVeMeNts • The initiative taken was replacing the paper process by a comprehensive web-based application, hosted on the Egyptian Government Portal and supported by a 24/7 call center for student support. • Students are able to access the application with their student IDs and a special PIN code received along with their secondary school certificates. • The online application was offered entirely free of charge. • The automated process allowed extra features over the old paper forms. • It helped build trust in the e-Government services. • A flexible and scalable system design was implemented to allow future consolidation and aggregation.

ROjgaRWaHINI pORtaL

ojgarWahini portal is an e-Governance application forming a link between government and citizens. The portal also builds a bridge between the government and business through the Employer module. Candidates can register, renew and update their registration online. Kamgars like nurse, domestic helpers, and drivers can register their services and search for the job avenues. Similarily, job providers can post their requirements and search in the data of the Kamgars to directly employ them. The portal is available 24X7 to enable the citizens to carry on the activities handled by exchanges. They can visit respective exchanges and get the work done faster at fully computerised exchanges. Candidates can also send their request of renewal, transfer by post, and the exchange software will handle these requests.

aCHIeVeMeNts • The portal has helped the department to achieve it’s goal of employment and self employment co-ordination and provide information which is complete, correct, up to date. • Single window access. • Use of easy conversational language. • Data collected from grassroot level. • User interaction with minimal touch points. • Authentic data of 30 lakh unemployed youth available online. • Candidate can register, update, know his status of submission. • Registered employers can send vacancy orders, search suitable candidates, and fill returns online. • This core team interacted with various agencies, NGO, successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs to collect information.

Implementor: Directorate of Employment & Self Employment, Maharashtra Website: www.ese.mah.nic.in

“It has accumulated data of all 30 lakh candidates registered across 45 Employment Exchanges.”

egov

SEPTEMBER 200

NOMINATIONS: G2G

INTEGRATED FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

inance department forms the lifeline to the functioning of the entire state government. It is very essential for the finance department to effectively manage the budget, expenditure and revenue and to provide required support to the other departments of the state government. Finance department is dependent on manual operations and this causes a lot of delay in getting right information at the right time. The data is maintained in multiple application systems and there was no decision support system for finance department. Government of Gujarat therefore decided to implement Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS). IFMS offers an integrated solution that provides real time details of state government’s financial position by automating the major functions carried out by finance department, directorate of accounts and treasury, directorate of pension and provident fund, treasury and sub treasury offices spread across the state.

Implementor: Finance Department, Government of Gujarat Website: www.financedepartment.gujarat.gov.in

“Expenditure data posting IFMS has gone live at Ahmedabad Treasury since April 2008 and has recently gone live in Mehsana Treasury. Directorate of Pension & Provident Fund office has also gone live since July 2008.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) is an integrated solution which provides consolidated and consistent information about the state government expenditures and receipts across the state. • IFMS integrates the major functions carried out by finance department, directorate of accounts and treasury, directorate of pension and provident fund, treasury and sub treasury offices spread across the state. • Real time availability of the state financial position. • Comparison of expenditure against budget estimates and grant distributed with graphical representation workflow based solution to ease the tracking of the documents. • Cross module validation and verification.

DISE RANDOMIZATION SOFTWARE FOR ELECTION DEPARTMENT

ISE is a software developed by NIC Punjab for automating the deployment of polling personnel, micro-observers, EVMs and counting staff. It helps the administration in formation of polling parties for Parliamentary/Assembly Elections as per guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI) for selection of the staff. The software follows three stages of randomization concept of ECI and works in accordance with all the guidelines issued by ECI. The software has been implemented successfully in Assembly Elections held in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi and Mizoram. DISE was also used in Punjab, Chandigarh UT, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Mizoram during recently held Parliamentary Elections. Prior to the implementation of software, deployment of the staff was done manually by preparing slips bearing names of all the employees and by mixing them in a drum. The process was tedious and prone to mistakes. 18

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ACHIEVEMENTS • Each staff member is being issued an Identity card generated by the software while there was no such measure in place in case of manual system. • DISE has enhanced efficiency of the government and brought in transparency in the whole system of election. • Facilitates adherence to ECI guidelines and quick adoption to last minute changes guided by ground realities. • Ranked as the best software by ECI after comparison of similar softwares from other states. • Transferred to 5 other states and successfully implemented during recent Parliamentary Elections. • A versatile software that has been adopted and implemented in different types of elections such as Assembly, Municipal Corporation, Municipal Council, Zila Parishad, Block Samiti and Gram Panchayat.

Implementor: National Informatics Centre, Punjab Website: www.pbsc.nic.in

“The software has passed the security audit and is not vulnerable to threats like SQL injection, cross site scripting etc.”

CENTRAL PLAN SCHEME MONITORING SYSTEM

he Project envisages tracking of expenditure for more than 1000 central plan schemes of the Government of India having an outlay of approximately Rs 200,000 Crores. The sanction identification process that has been established enables tracking of fund flow under these schemes for various implementing agencies. Accordingly around 70,000 sanctions were captured during the financial year 2008-09. Expenditure under different components of schemes was captured through expenditure filing on a pilot basis from the lowest level of implementation i.e. village for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan and National Child Labour Project in the states of Karnataka (Bangalore-Rural) and Punjab (Ludhiana). Information on all sanctions issued under the plan schemes for release of funds to various organisations/implementing agencies is available on the system.

Implementor: Controller General of Accounts, Delhi Website: cga.nic.in

“The centralised database management system requires certain level of discipline from the various users. This was achieved through the continuous training and sensitization of the users.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • At present the central plan scheme monitoring system is under implementation in all the departments of the Government of India, which are implementing the central plan schemes with some exceptions. • The system has stabilised and demonstrates the capabilities to track the funds on the parameters which cannot be captured through existing accounting system. Thus the same model can be replicated in the state governments for tracking of similar plan scheme releases to various organisations. • Tracking of financial sanctions issued by various programme divisions in the ministries and its payment status. Thus it also works as the bill tracking system. • It has provided MIS to top level management for expenditure management.

AUTOMATION OF GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTING UNITS

his project is part of the Government Enterprise Resource Planning Program in the Ministry of State for Administrative Development in Egypt. The project was initiated to standardize the functions and methods of the accounting units at the various government departments and entities. Deploying workflows in such approach would ensure control and continuous audit leading to better planning of resources in a timely and accurate manner. This will qualify Egypt’s financial framework to integrate with international systems on a global level for future information dissemination or even for benchmarking purposes in Egypt, there are more than 2400 accounting units all over the country. Having this huge number of accounting units, it makes it hard to perform the following tasks in the manual system. It’s a web-enabled application that is installed on centralized or de-centralized servers and is used by the accounting unit employees with their PCs connected to the application server.

ACHIEVEMENTS • The automated system has positively and dramatically affected the operation time. As an example, the daily activity of producing the end of day closure statement is now generated from the system in few seconds compared to two hours in the traditional manual system. • Budget department used to take around one day to list the expenditure by each budget line. Currently it is automatically generated from the system by a single mouse click. • Employees get their work done faster and more accurately leaving more time for analysis and evaluation. • Transparency is enhanced as well. • The system provides information about who did what and when. This helps the accounting units’ top management in monitoring employees and assessing their work quantity and quality.

Implementor: Ministry of State for Administrative Development, Egypt Website: www.ad.gov.eg

“The introduction of the accounting units automation system to the governmental accounting units eliminates the need for external interfaces and multi-systems and applications previously deployed.” egov

SEPTEMBER 2009

E-LEKHA - A STRIDE TOWARDS A CORE ACCOUNTING SOLUTION

-Lekha, a prudent financial management application provides an electronic payment and accounting information system for the Civil Accounts Organization of the Government of India with the objective of improving efficiency and accuracy of the accounting process. Built in and around the COMPACT application running at pay and accounts offices and other offline interfaces, it provides a system of core accounting with integration of daily, monthly and annual accounting processes for near real time value added reporting and financial monitoring and control. e-Lekha is being used by all Civil Ministries of the Government of India covering over 400 Pay and accounts offices and 47 ministries /departments. It is developed by the Accounts Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre for the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) to update and monitor daily reporting of expenditure and revenue of the Government of India, in sync with the budget allotted to a ministry and its sub units and schemes. This software is positioned at the lowest level of accounting and helps in optimum utilization of financial resources.

Implementor: Accounts Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre, delhi Website: www.acid.nic.in

“Greater transparency, efficient exchequer control and better management of accounting functions has resulted directly because of eLekha.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • eLekha is currently operational in all 52 ministries covering 462 pay and accounts offices of different ministries and Union Territories of the Government of India. • Centralised management and online availability of chart of accounts of GOI (over 1 Lakh heads of accounts, grants, object head, categories and their interrelationships, over 70 controller codes, over 500 PAO codes and over 6000 DDO codes ). • Full integration of payment and accounting functions. • Accuracy of Accounts – online validation, no audit qualifications. Rejection of erroneous and invalid data at the lowest level maintaining data consistency and integrity at all different accounting tiers. • Data integrity – through a single database at the Controller and CGA Level and having interfaces with COMPACT at PAO level.

INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY ENABLEMENT OF PRISONS

CT in prisons was initiated in the year 2003 at Delhi Prisons, Tihar. The Tihar Prisons Complex in New Delhi is the biggest prison complex in Asia. NIC took up the task of automating and streamlining the process of prisoner / visitor movement at Tihar Prisons. The application software Prison Management System (PMS), aims to facilitate modular but tightly integrated software solution for administering and managing the data related to prisoners with their case details and other related activities of prisoners along with their photographs and also facilitate dissemination of information over the LAN for all concerned officials of the prisons.The application software, Visitor Management System (VMS) aims to manage the meetings of the inmates with their relatives and to bring transparency in the ‘Mulaqat’ (Meeting). On an average 2500 visitors come to see inmates of prison everyday. It facilitates visitors to register their appointments / meetings with the inmates on telephone or in person. 20

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ACHIEVEMENTS • The visitor database has records of more than 6,09,000 meetings registered along with photographs of more than 4,93,000 visitors. • The use of videoconferencing facility in prisons is for the purpose of remand extension and trial of prisoners (eTrial) with different courts of the country. • The use of modern security gadgets like Closed Circuit Television [CCTV] cameras and biometric based fingerprint identification / authentication / verification system have enhanced the security of the prisons and is helping prison administration in the effective management of both the prisons and prisoners. • In each prisons 2 fingerprint scanners and web cameras are installed to capture prisoners’ fingerprints and their photographs • Information about prisoner / visitor is readily available at any corner of the Prison complex.

Implementor: National Informatics Centre, Delhi Website: www.tiharprisons.nic.in

“The process of visitors, prisoners meeting system is ISO 9001:2000 certified.”

NOMINATIONS: G2B

E-PROCUREMENT

-Procurement is the process wherein the physical tendering activity is carried out online using the Internet and associated technologies. For this purpose Code has developed a portal known as www.nprocure.com. Government of Gujarat has made it mandatory for its departments and cooperation to make all it purchases about a certain value through this portal. Through this portal, any organization can avail of e-procurement services. The portal is enabled with a end to end e-procurement software. The portal can handle all the activities from the notice inviting tender to the publishing of the complete tender in the electronic form to corrigendum to filing, encryption for security, and digital signing of online tenders, to multistage evaluation and final conclusions. Average time in decision making like from the day when first tender stage opening (i.e. Document fee stage) till price bid stage opening was approximately 30 days in physical procurement process. This cycle time is reduced to 6.6 days with implementation of online procurement.

Implementor: Industries & Mines Department, Gujarat Website: www.nprocure.com

“Government Process Re-engineering (GPR) was very much required as we experienced the reality while handling an e-Procurement project at start.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Indicative savings of quantitative nature in this project are 23.5 days savings on man days and in terms of financial savings approximately savings of INR 486 million achieved against ECV of average 300 tenders. • Participation of Government Departments increased from 19 departments in January 2007 to 150 departments by the end of June 2009. • Participation of government offices under various departments increased from 49 in January 2007 to 550 by the end of June 2009. • Department users directly involved in e-Procurement were 190 in January 2007 which reached to 1450 by the end of June 2009.

ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEM

xport Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) under the aegis of Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Ministry of Textiles, Government of India is a non-profit organization, established under the EXIM policy of Government of India in the year 1986-87. The affairs of the Council vested to elected committee of administration duly by its 6186 registered members. This year, for the first time, the elections to council were conducted through Electronic Voting System (EVS) along with ballot paper and in person voting. A total of 6168 members opted for voting by EVS. National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) funded application development and hosting for this EVS. The application for EVS was developed in dot net platform with SQL Server backend. The registered e-mail id of members was used for communication and sending electronic ballot. The electronic ballots contained an encrypted link to electronic ballot on the server.

ACHIEVEMENTS • The process of election was automated fully and the process of counting was semi automated. • Electronic ballots and e-mails were used in the EVS. This resulted in faster communications, and cost saving on stationery, postage, and manpower. • Earlier the members needed to fill the ballot, and sent it through courier / post to Secretary Council. It used to take 3 days to reach, there were complaints of lost ballots, late receipt of ballots etc. EVS eliminated these problems by making the filling and submission of ballots automated. • The handling of paper ballots required upto four persons throughout the election process, with EVS, the ballot handling was done automatically. • The counting of ballots used to be a mammoth task involving about 40 persons for counting and upto 15 people for backend support to them. It used to be a time consuming process of about 15 hours. With EVS, the counting could be done. itself instantaneously. Implementor: Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts, Ministry of Textiles, GoI Website: www.epch.com

“EVS was used by 2089 members out of 6168 members opting for electronic voting.” egov

SEPTEMBER 2009

e-BIDDING

he Ministry of Finance, Malaysia recently introduced Government electronic procurement mode named eBidding. eBidding was introduced in selected Government agencies on a pilot basis in November 2006 as part of the ePerolehan, solution under the eGovernment initiative. ePerolehan provides a virtual marketplace to cater for Government buyers (2,500 offices with approximately 12,000 users) and suppliers of products and services totalled 140,000 suppliers. There are 5 procurement modes in ePerolehan which are direct purchase, central contract, quotation, tender and eBidding. All of these procurement modes are web-based and can be accessed by users online. eBidding is a procurement mode that is based on a reverse auction concept where sellers offer their items and compete for the price which the buyer will accept. In this scenario, the Government agency, as the buyer will set up an auction event to receive bids from suppliers.

Implementor: ePerolehan, Malaysia Website: www.home.eperolehan.gov.my

“eBidding utilises web-based platform where it can be easily replicated to other State Governments, statutory bodies and Government linked companies.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • During the pilot implementation, more than 100 transactions have been carried out involving 8 Ministries. • eBidding drastically reduces end-to-end procurement process in comparison with other modes of procurement. In average, the procurement cycle is only within 3 weeks compared to tender which takes an average of 20 weeks in order to issue the letter of award to the respective supplier. • The bidding result is straightforward and is based on the lowest bid price offered. This results in faster and less complex decision making. Commonly, suppliers enjoy faster bidding results. • Government agencies avoid tedious process of examining different suppliers with different specifications. • It fosters broader business participation as all qualified suppliers will, be competing with each other on a level playing field.

E-PROCUREMENT IN ORISSA

ith the objective of bringing reforms related to public procurement under the administrative reforms, Government of Orissa with World Bank, formulated an agenda out of which e-Procurement was a priority area. Accordingly, NIC was entrusted by Govt. of Orissa to undertake the automation of procurement practice. With the principle that what is good for citizen is good for the government, Government of Orissa and NIC committed to adopt e-Procurement as a major e-Governance initiative during late 2006 to bring transparency and accountability in public procurement process. With introduction of GePNIC (Government e-Procurement Application of National Informatics Centre) by NIC during 2007, achieving the goal became a reality. GePNIC, being a Mission Mode e-Governance Project, caters to works related to tendering activities, which covers almost 85% of Orissa Government’s procurement budget. 22

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ACHIEVEMENTS • Department officers have been enabled to create and publish the tender online along with corrigendum. • Department bid openers, open technical and financial bids online in stages. The bids can only be opened after the designated time and only by the pre-selected bid openers. • The financial evaluation is done automatically and comparison chart is generated indicating the L1 and other bidders. The award of the project is automatically intimated to the bidder by mail and through the portal and public can see the results of the tendering. • The application facilitates free online portal registration by any bidder from any place and is a self-registration process. • The bidder also has to register his Digital Signature Certificates to get access the bidding process. • The bidder could search, prepare and upload his bid documents that are stored in encrypted format thus not revealing the bidders price and identity. Implementor: National Informatics Centre, Orissa State Unit Website: www.orissagov.nic.in

“Drawing inspiration from Orissa experience, 12 other states have initiated action for adoption of GePNIC for Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana tenders.”

NATIONAL DO NOT CALL REGISTRY PORTAL

harp increase in telemarketing calls related to marketing, advertising activities and direct sales promotions has been witnessed leading to inconveniences to the subscribers. Thus, it has become imperative for the Government of India to step in to curb this malaise. Hence Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) decided to set up a “National Do Not Call (NDNC) Registry” which enables telecom subscribers to opt out of receiving unwanted telemarketing calls. NDNC Registry means a database or register, containing list of the telephone numbers of telecom subscribers who have registered for not receiving Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC).

Implementor: National Informatics Centre, Delhi Website: www.ndncregistry.gov.in

“The calls by Telemarketers, which started with 5-10 million numbers per day two years back, has reached 90-100 million numbers per day.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Registration in the NDNC Registry by the citizen is a very simple process which can be achieved by sending SMS (free of cost) with message “START DND” to pan India number 1909. • Subscribers can also register their numbers through call centers or web portals. • NDNC Registry has been setup and implemented for the entire country for the citizens of India • RBI has issued a guideline to all the banks to employ only those Direct Selling Agents/ Direct Marketing Agents who have registered with the NDNC Registry. • The NDNC Registry Portal is developed in an open source environment on Java platform as front end and Oracle as backend environment

AUTOMATION OF OCTROI

unicipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) has automated octroi nakas (checkpost) across Mumbai by introducing contactless cards called octroi silver cards to truckers to pay octroi. The first part of challenge for MCGM was intrinsic to their system, it was to change mindsets of the employees, teaching the employees to adapt to the new system took a lot of elaborating how the system functions and how the employees would benefit. There was hands on training which was given to each and every employee with even the smallest details of how the system would work explained, and thus confidence was gained from all the employees. The second part of the challenge faced was educating the truck drivers. These truck drivers who were often uneducated were shown various aspects of how easy it is to use the card, purchase the card, top up the card, simple safety measures were also shown for how to report a lost or stolen card.

ACHIEVEMENTS • The process of collection at the nakas has come down to 1012 seconds per transaction from close to twelve minute per transaction on an average. • The automation of cash collection process of octroi has enabled MCGM to effectively eradicate revenue leakage, thereby increase profits and also reduce traffic congestion at octroi nakas. • The automation process is a very effective method to ensure a speedy and quick payment and collection. • Municipalities across India, can replicate the model for other specific services where there is a huge volume in terms of collections and payers. • The success for the wide adoption of the card is because it delivers Simplicity, Speed and Transparency. • Functionality and the usage of the card has been very user friendly and has made the life of the truckers passing through the nakas a lot easier. Implementor: Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai,Maharashtra Website: www.mcgm.gov.in

“Post introduction of the Octroi Silver Card, MCGM has not only managed to make the collection process quick but has also managed to arrest revenue leakage and increase revenue by 300%.” egov

SEPTEMBER 2009

KEY SPEAKERS AT eINDIA 2009

Key Speakers eINDIA 2009 featured a wide gamut of eminent speakers in its conference, who discussed a vast range of ICT related issues, which concern the Indian ICT community at large and contribute to strengthening the role of ICT in various verticals and development domains. They included key resource persons from the government, senior executives and leaders from the IT industry, and high level representatives from the civil society, academia and the private sector from all across India and beyond. In this issue we present to you some of the key speakers from the government vertical.

Sachin Pilot Minister of State for Communications and IT Government of India

D Purandeswari Minister of State for Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource and Development Government of India

Debesh Das Minister in-charge IT Government of West Bengal

B K Chaturvedi Member Planning Commission Government of India

R Chandrashekhar Secretary Department of IT Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

Subhash C Khuntia Joint Secretary Ministry of HRD Government of India

Ram Sewak Sharma CEO Unique Identification Authority of India

Shankar Aggarwal Joint Secretary Department of IT Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

Chandra Prakash Principal Secretary I.T. & Electronics Department Government of UP

Vivek Bharadwaj Special Secretary Dept of Urban Development Government of West Bengal

Siddharth Principal Secretary IT Government of West Bengal

J Satyanarayana Principal Secretary Health, Medicine and Family Welfare Department Government of Andhra Pradesh

Narendrajit Singh Secretary IT Government of Punjab

P W C Davidar Secretary, IT Government of Tamil Nadu

V S Bhaskar Secretary IT Government of Assam

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Amod Kumar Special Secretary, Revenue Government of Uttar Pradesh

S K Singh Secretary IT Government of Jharkhand

Ashish Sanyal S P Singh Abhisekh Singh Senior Director Sr. Director Director Department of IT Department of IT Department of IT Ministry of Communications & IT Ministry of Communications & IT Ministry of Communication & IT Government of India Government of India Government of India

Seva Ratan M Moni Deputy Director General National Informatics Centre (NIC), New Delhi

Sanjay Jaju Commissioner, Consumer Affairs, Department of Food & PD Civil Supplies Government of Andhra Pradesh

Karnal Singh Joint Commissioner Delhi Police

T Krishna Prasad IGP (PCS&S) AP Police Government of Andhra Pradesh

Jiji Thomson Joint Secretary Extension & Trade Department of Agriculture & Cooperation Ministry of Agriculture, GOI

J Raymond Peter Commissioner Department of Transport Government of Andhra Pradesh

Jacob Victor JD (eGovernance) Department of IT&Communications Government of Andhra Pradesh

C S R Prabhu DDG, NIC Andhra Pradesh

Jayant Sinha DGM (IT) Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited

Ahmed Eisa Chairman Gedaref Digital City Organisation Sudan

Michael Riggs Knowledge and Information Management Officer Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Rome

Dr Gopi Ghosh Assistant FAO Representative India

Oleg Petrov Coordinator e-Development Thematic Group The World Bank

Mahabaleshwar Hedge Vice President National Institute of Smart Government

Neeta Verma HOD Data Centre & Web Services Division, NIC New Delhi

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SEPTEMBER 2009

NOMINATIONS: mGOVERNANCE

AKSHAYA

000 multi-purpose community technology centres called Akshya e-Kendras across Kerala are run by private entrepreneurs provide e-Learning, e-Transaction, e-Governance solutions to the public. Akshaya can serve as a model that can be adopted by other departments in several ways. Akshaya is a technological intiative aimed at the common man. In this connection, this project has been implemented with a view to be accessed even by the lowest layer of the society. Akshaya is bridging the digital gap by breaking the linguistic barrier through application of local language (Malayalam Computing). This has paved the way for the outstanding popular participation and the people in Kerala are now able to dream, think and express themselves in their own language itself.

Implementor: Kerala State IT Mission, Kerala Website: www.akshaya.net

“Training programmes have been conducted to demystify technology and break the mental barriers by use of technology.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Malapuram and Kannur Districts declared 100% e-Literate. Kollam, Kozhikode, Thrissur and Kasargodu Districts achieved e-literacy above 90% and Eranakulam District 74%. 33, 40,707 persons have achieved e-literacy through Akshaya. • Activities of Akshaya have been rolled out to the entire state. • As on 31 March 2009, there are 2,161 Akshaya centres functioning in the state. Railway ticket booking through Akshaya centres were introduced from December 2008, about 291 Akshaya centres now offer these service to the public and the transaction in March 2009 was Rs.7,83,371. • Kerala is the first state in India to facilitate electronic filing of commercial tax returns.

RAILWAY SMS ACHIEVEMENTS • Railway Service on 139 is now available on SMS and voice (IVR and Agent) from anywhere in India. • More than 1 million indian citizens use this service across India • Created a pool out of the defined resources and handled the activities on a priority basis. • Only authorized officials can perform the critical tasks because of features like role based access, encryption and locking / unlocking at every stage of randomization.

MS Service is used to provide railway information like PNR enquiry, train arrival / departure, time table, fare enquiry etc. on a single short code 139 which is accessible Pan India from All major telecom operators. Users can send their 10 Digit PNR number to 139 in the form of an SMS to get the required information online. Getting co-operation from Operators across India and in all circles was the biggest challenge faced during the implemantation of this Project. This was overcome by co-ordinating with operators’ VAS and SMS teams on a regular basis.

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Implementor: Indian Railways Website: www.indianrailway.gov.in

“This service would be extended on USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Services Data) on a short code *139# soon across all GSM Operators in India”

NOMINATIONS: CIVIL SOCIETY

CIVIL SOCIETY/ DEVELOPMENT AGENCY INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR The Award for Civil Society/Development Agency Initiative of the Year aims to honour civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations, bi-lateral, multi-lateral developmental organisations from throughout the world that demonstrate extraordinary effort, innovation, leadership, and excellence in providing ICT services for Governance. The Award is an attempt to recognize the civil societies and development organizations whose exemplary service and success towards spreading the word of ICTs for governance, may have gone unnoticed and unappreciated on the international stage. The award was open for all civil society organizations, nongovernmental organizations, bi-lateral, multilateral developmental organizations, Self Help Groups (SHGs) and community based groups who use/advocate Information, Communications and Technologies (ICTs) for governance.

ICT SOLUTION FOR SOCIETY FOR ELIMINATION OF RURAL POVERTY (SERP)

ociety for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) has formulated and implemented successfully new schemes in the areas of insurance and pensions, dairy, health and nutrition, gender, disability, Non-Pesticide Management (NPM), jobs and education for empowerment of rural women in particular and rural poor in general. Besides, it is also responsible for implementing co- contributory insurance and pension scheme called “Abhaya Hastham” announced by the government of Andhra Pradesh. SERP assigned the responsibility of developing and implementing IT solution to TCS for implementating an ICT solution to automate all the functionalities of SERP and capture all transactions of SHGs and their federations. The major objectives for implementing this project is to capture all Self Help Group (SHG) transactions at their origin, solution to make program monitoring easy for the government, performance monitoring of different SHGs and fast and ready flow of correct and right data to all the stakeholders

ACHIEVEMENTS • ICT solution to SERP covered all the functional areas related to SHG and bank linkage program. • The functional areas covered in the ICT solution are for monitoring the whole SHG movement and successful implementation of microcredit scheme in Andhra Pradesh. • SHG and VO wise loans – target, achievement and repayment. • Government can compare performance SHGs, Village Organisation & Women Group and MSs by setting parameters. • Banks and financial institutions can check the performance of SHG online and disburse the loans. • All the transactions like savings, loans received, loans repaid, and so on are made transparent and visible to outside world.

Implementor: Tata Consultancy Services Website: www.rd.ap.gov.in

“The scope of the project includes end to end implementation and also includes study and consulting to implement feasible and workable system in rural areas considering all the bottlenecks in country side.” egov

SEPTEMBER 2009

SETTING UP COMMON SERVICES CENTRES (CSCS) IN THE 15 BACKWARD DISTRICTS OF MADHYA PRADESH (INDIA)

his project aims at establishing over 2900 CSCs in selected Panchayats of the 15 backward districts of Madhya Pradesh. Out of these, over 2300 CSCs have already been set up by AISECT. They are driven by a rural youth called Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE) capable of setting up an ICT enabled kiosk to deliver the bouquet of services including G2C, B2C and online services. The core services include G2C through MPOnline and Online Education through egyan and cvruonline portals. In addition, financial inclusion products in banking and insurance are being delivered through appropriate tie-ups and telecom and entertainment services are also extended with various service providers. Training modules have been designed to deliver services. Over 100 Training Programmes have been conducted at various levels and IT Yatras have been organized in each district to spread awareness about ICT in rural areas. The project has already achieved over 80% target in one year’s time, which is one of the highest in the country.

Implementor: AISECT, Bhopal Website: www.aisect.org

“The project has already achieved over 80% target in one year’s time, which is one of the highest in the country.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Number of Common Service Centres set up till date is 2300. • Direct employment generated is about 4600 persons. • Range of services offered are e-governance, online education, banking, insurance, telecom and infotainment. • Monthly newsletter “CSC Khabar” is published for all VLEs and the various stakeholders of the project. • Learning from the field experience AISECT educational network has expanded its core educational services to a bouquet of rural centric ICT enabled services. • The network has consolidated itself with a Data Centre based at AISECT head office for delivery of services through the ICT enabled structure for prompt delivery in rural areas. The data centre is equipped with integrated portals, access to online services and trained staff. Thus, capacity has been enhanced within the organisation.

COMMON SERVICES CENTER PROJECT

he Common Services Center is a project initiated by Government of India for providing better citizen services in rural areas under NeGP initiatives. It is basically a uniform and unified large scale project of various such e-Governance Project like Gyandoot, Rajasthan School IT Project, Lok Mitra and many more. The key at this time in implementation is not the number of CSC but the focus of NICT is to provide such a business model which will become continual and sustainable process rather then a piloting model Its business model includes various B2C and G2C services. Its emphasis is to bench mark those services immediately, which are of daily need to immediately start cash flow at these kiosks in order to make them sustainable. It has started business facilitator services, apart from this electricity online bill collection service is one of thier best USP

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ACHIEVEMENTS • Sustainable functioning of CSC kiosk because in past also there were efforts to open such kiosk but due to lack of G2C and other B2C services they could not succeed. • Utilizing the digital opportunity through CSC project launched by Government of India for rural development and poverty eradication. • Implemented automated Gram Panchayat Software individually at each Gram Panchayat and started providing Birth Certificate, Death Certificate, basic MIS of Gram Panchayat, documentation of Gram Panchayat and providing MIS in soft copy to Tehsil and Collectorate. • They have roped in Electricity Bill Payment and Insurance, Banking services in CSC’s.

Implementor: NICT (Network for Information and Computer Technology),Indore Website: www.nict.co.in

“The lack of G2C services has demotivated lot of VLE’s.”

NOMINATIONS: MUNICIPAL IT

ict enabled Municipal initiative of the year The Municipal IT India 2009 Award for ICT Enabled Municipal Initiative of the Year aims to felicitate those municipal initiatives that have

used ICT tools to provide and improve services, transactions and interactions with citizens and businesses. The award in the category of the best government initiative was open for all national municipalities that use or endorse upon the use of ICT tools to increase efficiency of the municipalities, and benefit end users.

LUXor iNFraStrUctUre deVeLopMeNt

uxor IT Strategy Vision provided automated verticals services and became municipal service providers to Citizens / Investors and tourist in the country. It enabled increased technology culture at local community level Initiative projects. GIS information center project were developed using latest GIS technology including establishment of a new location equipped with automated environment. Machines were used for the measurement of the data with the GIS technology and provide service to citizens / investors for their project over specific location . Educational multi-purpose lab were also provided to combat illiteracy education using computer. As a national project, education was provided to woman through their vocational training program.

Implementor: Luxor IT Strategy Vision Website: www.luxoregov.org

acHieVeMeNtS • Provided IT infrastructure, equipment for technical and end-user training. • Improved services, performance and delivery time. • Provided general IT Training to the citizen.

“As a national project, education was provided to woman through their vocational training program.”

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SEPTEMBER 2009

MUNicipaL corporatioN FaridaBad

unicipal Corporation Faridabad (MCF) had set up a Complaint Centre, where any citizen could come and get his complaint registered. The complaints are then redressed by different officers dealing with various functions of the Corporation. The facility has been widely appreciated by the general public because of the effective disposal of their grievances and complaints. MCF had reengineered the processes of property/house tax computation and its billing by automating the processes. e-Tendering System was also introduced to publish the tenders online and give emphasis to the community participation in the works undertaken by MCF. This brought in transparency and accountability in the system and is appreciated by the community.

Implementor: Municipal Corporation, Faridabad Website: http://www.mcfbd.org/

acHieVeMeNtS • Citizen facilitation and online redressal of public grievances. • Complaint centre for citizen facilitation. • Unique identification of properties. • Streamlining and web-enablement of property tax system. • Automation of licensing. • Automation of rent & lease. • e-Tendering, ward works and community participation. • Building plans on Net for registering online objections.

“eTendering System, which aimed to bring about transparency in issuance of tenders/community participation notices issued by MCF, has been highly appreciated by the business community.”

McgM portaL acHieVeMeNtS • Time and cost of the common man was saved by the digitisation of MCGM platform to streamline the revenue/ tax collection module. • The Sify relationship not only extended a wide geographical coverage with multi-fold citizen touch-points, it also enabled the flawless integration with the critical payment gateway of MCGM. it laid guidelines with the help of its own development team in coordination with MCGM.

he ICT enabled initiative is a partnership between the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and Sify Technologies to provide Civic Services to the citizens of Mumbai through Sify’s e-Port cyber cafe chain. This partnership is aimed at making the lives of the citizens of Greater Mumbai easier with convenient access to online services from a nearby ePort cafe. Online solution was the only way out to reach the masses and increase the interactive efficiency among the corporation and the common man. The objective was clearly defined to build convenience for citizens and enhance productivity for the Municipality by outsourcing their most critical job of revenue/ tax collection at multiple points across the city.

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Implementor: Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai Website: www.mcgm.gov.in

“MCGM was earlier available to the citizens of Mumbai through its 24 Customer Facility Centres across 24 Wards in the city. The solution extended by Sify empowered MCGM to represent itself through the 240 and more Internet outlets and PC kiosks available across these wards.”

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AWARDS

JURY

M P Narayanan President CSDMS

Dr Ashok Kumar DDG & Director Central Bureau of Health Intelligence Ministry of Health & FW, Government of India

Ashish Sanyal Senior Director Dept. of IT, Ministry of Communications and IT Government of India

Ashish Garg Asia Regional Coordinator GeSCI (Global e-Schools Initiative)

Dr Basheer Ahmad Shadrach Senior Programme Officer Telecentre.org International Development Research Centre

Dr Gopi Ghosh Assistant FAO Representative India

Madhuri Parti HeadLearn India

Prakash Kumar Director Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) Cisco Systems India

Ravi Gupta Executive Director CSDMS

Rajen Varada Resource Person & Moderator ICTD communityUN Solution Exchange

Shashank Ojha Senior e-Government Specialist e-Government Practice â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ISG Global ICT Department, The World Bank

S N Goswami MD and CEO Media Lab Asia

Dr V Balaji Global Leader Knowledge Management & Sharing ICRISAT, Patancheru, Hyderabad

Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai Vice Chancellor Indira Gandhi National Open University

Sajan Venniyoor Country Representative (India) Deutsche Welle

aHMedaBad MUNicipaL corporatioN

o eliminate corrupt practices, the e-governance system was built to to provide better services to citizens. Success of e-Governance depended on use of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) in mobilization of Government resources and utilization of these resources. e-Governance enabled the City Government to re-engineer the processes in delivering speedy and better civic services. It eliminated discretionary powers vested with employees and removed human interface in decision making process to ensure transparency. It also eliminated lengthy and cumbersome procedures involved in storage and retrieval of information. The integration of all the departments have made free flow of information across and has in built audit trial. It has brought corporate culture to city government employees.

Implementor: Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Website: http://www.egovamc.com/

acHieVeMeNtS • Revenue collection jumped from 38% to 85% in 5 years time. • All departments were integrated. • As Municipal Corporation were more responsive and transparent, chances for corruption were eliminated. • Quicker services were provided to the citizens. • 24-hour remote access to AMC transactions and services. • Payment gateways and electronic transactions eliminated manual intervention.

“It has helped in capacity building of skilled man power to sustain ever changing information technology environment and sustain IT enabled urban e-Governance project for long-term.”

goVerNMeNt SerViceS deVeLopMeNt prograMM (MoNoFeya goVerNorate)

inistry of State for Administrative Development MSAD through ‘Government Services Development Program’ intended to improve the quality of services presented to the citizens and address the challenges that government agencies faced formerly. The program aimed at installing single-window-type citizen-service centers at the governorate offices. The project established Citizen Service Centers within the governorates. The work done involved architectural remodeling, furniture, business-processes enhancement, IT infrastructure and Software development as well as staff training. Governorates Portals acted as a media interface on different local government project developments and plans. Other than accessing services online, the citizens could visit Citizen Service Centers in the governorate where government employees were appointed to perform the online service on behalf of the citizens. 32

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acHieVeMeNtS • MSAD through local governorates’ efforts focused on enhancing the living standard of the community, as well as simplifying the government services provision to the public and business. • City councils underwent restructuring, civil works, renovations, furnishings, infrastructure building and back office preparations including LAN’s and ICT tools and equipments, business applications, staff training and capacity building. • Anti-corruption policies and regulations were applied by separating between government officials at the backend of the processes and the citizens. • Efficiency was achieved through standardization of forms, modern management applications in reducing friction, resolving conflicts and managing relations with customers and investors. • The most significant ongoing goal in the transformation process was to provide better services to citizens. Implementor: Ministry of State for Administrative Development Website: http://services.monofeya.gov.eg

“Using a workflow based information system to track the citizens’ requests within the different departments, the Local Government Services Project target was to establish portals for the governorates to be active and efficient mediators in serving the citizens in different fields.”

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IT Directory

November 2009 Issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Egov magazine is coming out with first of it kind directory of IT companies and System Integrators for the Government community. This directory is aimed at providing IT related information to government department, public sector units, and autonomous bodies of the government. The directory is aimed to create a comprehensive compilation of companies offering hardware, software, networking and communication solution as well as those offering specialised Government IT solutions.

For advertising opportunities in this issue, please contact: Santosh Kumar Gupta, santosh@egovonline.net, 9891192996 Anuj Agarwal, anuj@egovonline.net, 9911302086

SUBidHa- State UrBaN BodieS iNtegrated data HaNdLiNg & acceSS

he Housing and Urban Development (H&UD) Department, Government of Orissa, had undertaken several e-Governance initiatives in the Urban Local Bodies (ULB) under “SUBIDHA”the Urban e-Governance project, developed & implemented by NIC. The project provided both information and services to the citizens. The services provided could be categorized into two parts: Public Services - where citizen can register the information or enquire from the system and Authenticated Services – where certain verification and document submission are required. The information component including rules and regulations, guidelines, forms etc. could be accessed from any internet enabled system. SUBIDHA can easily be replicated and made available as a project as well as SAS (Software as Service) model.

Implementor: National Informatics Centre (NIC), Orissa State Centre, Bhubaneswar Website: www.orissa.gov.in/housing&urban/index.htm

“Embedded with the features of transparency of the process, non-discrimination of citizens, equality of access, accountability, probity and security features, SUBIDHA was reviewed and accepted by various ULBs. Thus the process of e-Governance in Urban sector of Orissa has gained public and departmental confidence.”

acHieVeMeNtS The project has given the reformist face to the ULBs. Empowerment to the citizen for remote access. Reduction in service delivery time through the suitable Government Process Reengineering. • Delivery of quality printed certificates instead of handwritten ones leading to citizen certification. • Quick analysis reports/graphs facilitating decision support system. • Quick searching to check certificate validity by any Government officials / colleges / universities / citizen etc. • • •

MoNoFeya portaL acHieVeMeNtS • The departments of the governorate interacted via the internal communication network to save time and speed performance. • Reporting through the portal databases to provided access to all people, what has a positive effect on decision making in the right time. • Availed interactive service for people through the internet. • Electronic services were presented by municipalities, directorates for the native citizen without getting to the service place. • Use of information and communication technology to disseminate the results of the local certificates, saved transportation time and money.

onofeya has become the first governorate in Egypt to have applied the electronic system in performing services for citizens and present an online service considered as a direct contact between the citizens and the governorate leaders to enable the citizens send their complaints, opinions and suggestions through the portal. From the aspects of development and utilizing the telecommunication and information technology, unemployment is eliminated and various job opportunities are created for the youth. The portal also enabled the youth to obtain a registered flat from the government through Mubarak National Project of youth housing through the advertisements on the portal established by the governorate.

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Implementor: Monofeya Governate Website: www.monofeya.gov.eg

“The project gives a great deal of information regarding local municipality as an independent entity in many aspects that interest the citizens on one hand, and the officials on the other hand that realizes the proper media for interaction and decision making process.”

www.eINDIA.net.in 5th

India's Largest ICT Event 25 - 27 August 2009 Hyderabad International Convention Centre, India

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Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances Ministry of Personnel, PG & Grievances Government of India

Department of Information Technology Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

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NOMINATIONS: eAGRICULTURE

eAGRICULTURE The eAgriculture India 2009 Award for ICT Enabled Agricultural Initiative of the Year recognises excellence in the field of agricultural production, agricultural marketing and agro-business with use of ICT. Individual farmers as well as farming communities who use best

practices and apply advanced technological applications to enhance agricultural output were eligible to be nominated for this award category. Individual or group of individuals who have successfully integrated modern information delivery mechanisms or innovative electromechanical tools rendering a substantial amount increase in agricultural production were also eligible for this award category.

GRAMIN SUVIDHA KENDRA

ramin Suvidha Kendra (GSK) is a unique, innovative marketing model between MCX and India Post, which uses the principles of public private partnership (PPP) based on trust and credibility. It also works on the principle of bringing in the open markets to the doorsteps of small, marginal farmers thereby offering them a basket of services and providing very much needed market linkages. With a network of 1,55,516 post offices (with 1,25,148 in rural areas), India Post provides an un-paralleled reach and depth to take across any offering right at the doorstep of farmers. Each GSK centre is manned by a local youth, thereby giving rise to empowerment and employment. GSK aims to demonstrate how the widespread network of India Post can be synergized with MCX to cater to the need for market information, warehousing, advisory, and agriculture inputs among the Indian farming community located in far flung villages and interiors. 36

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ACHIEVEMENTS • The usage of existing postal network has resulted in a unique Private Public Partnership (PPP) model that showcases how corporates and government machineries can work together for the benefit of those at the bottom of pyramid • Availability of agri inputs ensures that farmers do not have to travel to marketplaces to buy them. • Apart from saving on MRP, because of not having to travel for purchases, there is an intangible benefit that translates into increased quality time spent with the family. • Highly-quality seeds, pesticides and fertilisers – as well as crop inspection and grading facilities; make farmers more conscious of farm productivity and quality, and fetches them better prices. • Each service has revenues built in at every step for India Post, seed company, and the coordinator, thereby making the model sustainable.

Implementor: Multi Commodity Exchange of India Limited (MCX), Mumbai Website: www.gsk.mcxindia.com

“Deciding to launch agri inputs as per the needs of the farmers was not easy and we had to convince seed companies to join us and see the innovativeness in this.”

M-KRISHI

he e-Agriculture initiative was taken jointly by Subhash Arve and TCS. Arve is a progressive farmer from Borgaon village. Innovation Labs – Mumbai of Tata Consultancy Services proposed mKRISHI (TCS Mobile Based Agro Advisory Solution) based precision grape farming to Subhash Arve. Arve uses mKRISHI application to send a query in Marathi using a mobile phone and receive personalized advice in the same language on his phone. He uses both methods of sending queries to the Expert: one was to select a query from the list of queries available on the mobile phone and another method was to send information as “voice sms” and receive information in the expert’s voice. The end-to-end system deployed in Borgaon village consists of, handsets (mobile phones) for sending queries and receiving responses, an automatic weather station and sensors in village to provide local weather and dynamic soil information to the expert, cameras in a mobile phones for enabling the farmer to send high resolution crop images to the expert and suitable Graphic User Interface (GUI) in the mobile application which enables the farmer to view a five day local weather forecast. Implementor: TCS Website: www.tcs.com

“mKrishi provides a platform for other stakeholders such as traders and transporters to get in touch with individual or group of farmers directly using their mobile phones”

ACHIEVEMENTS • An automatic weather station with datalogger, battery and solar panel was identified and imported. • Several weather, soil and leaf wetness sensors were identified and procured and installed in Arve’s grape field. • Data coming from sensors was transmitted to remote server located within a TCS facility. A CDMA modem was designed through a third party vendor. • Communication software was written on the server to communicate command and data between server and the data logger in the grape field. • The experts from the agrochemical manufacturer Rallis India provided the grape domain knowledge to the TCS development team. Arve along with several other grape farmers and Rallis’ experts were consulted before designing the user interface for the applications.

E-ALERT AGRAMART

GMARKNET e-Alert system has been designed to facilitate delivery of Agricultural Marketing information to various stakeholders (farmers, extension workers, researchers, traders, agri-business firms, government officials etc.) through automated e-mails/SMS. It has been designed to strengthen the existing AGMARKNET delivery system in Inida. The application has been designed using ASP.net with SQL server as back end database. The farmers/beneficiaries of AGMARKNET system can register their details through this system for getting market price information of their choice via e-mail or SMS. The valid registered users of this system will get market price information of their choice initially for a period of one month and later if needed they can renew their registration.

ACHIEVEMENTS • With fusion and diffusion of ICT, e-Alert system plays a catalytic role in accelerating the agriculture marketing system in India. • Introduction of automated SMS and e-mail service in marketing is a step towards delivery of digital contents to the masses. • Mobile technology based solutions can greatly streamline processes, reduce cycle times, increase efficiency, minimize errors, and generally improve the overall service levels of marketing infrastructure. • It is one of the critical building blocks for an electronic trading platform for commodities. • The idea is to connect all agriculture wholesale markets covered under AGMARKNET project (spread across the country) through nation wide web based interactive marketing platform. • This can facilitate speedy and efficient information dissemination for better price discovery and risk management to actualize vision of National Commodity Exchange with the fusion of mobile computing. Implementor: National Informatics Centre, Kerala Website: www.kerala.nic.in

“The e-Alert initiative overcomes the limitation of the traditional Internet based delivery system which has low penetration in rural areas.” egov

SEPTEMBER 2009

ESTABLISHING AND OPERATING THE KISAN CALL CENTRE

he e-Agriculture initiative that Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) in collaboration with Government of Madhya Pradesh undertook is Establishing and Operating the Kisan Call Centre. Through Kisan Call Centre, implementers transfer technical and scientific knowledge to the farmers by experts who have specialization in different fields like horticulture, agronomy, plant protection, processing, soil science, animal husbandry works under one roof to provide precise solutions to the farmers supported by agricultural information system with multi-lingual customer support and other services like livelihood support and extension services. The calls and queries received in our Kisan Call Centre are directly answered and resolved by the experts/professionals who are highly qualified and experienced in their respective fields. Extreme poverty in many underdeveloped regions of India, high costs of internet access and social constraints continue to stifle creative expression and socioeconomic advancement.

Implementor: Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals and Government of Madhya Pradesh Website: www.manage.gov.in/kisan

“KCC has 30 seats and answers more than 500 queries every day.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Kisan Call Centre (KCC) software is a Monitoring Infrastructure (MIS) tool capturing complete milieu of advisory services provided through Kisan Call Center and at the same time provides backend data support to the knowledge worker, while processing the calls/queries from the farmers. • This software also provides, backend data support to knowledge worker while processing calls through FAQ databank. • During processing of calls, on making selection of different categories pertaining to any query, related answers from the FAQ in knowledge bank appears automatically on the answerbox screen. • KCC answers queries related to agricultural streams like ‘Agronomy, Horticulture, Plant Pathology, Soil Sciences, Animal Husbandry, Plant Breeding and Genetics’ etc.

RURALINFOBD

his project is about a web-portal which delivers mainly agricultural content to the rural farmers in native language “Bengali”. This is first ever private initiative in Bangladesh to produce an Agro portal in native language. It is surfed through telecenters in rural areas by the farmers, with the help of the telecenter operators. It also provides a unique system to solve the unattended information through mobile telephony. These solutions are also hosted in the portal so that any farmer in the other parts of the country can use the same for their need. A numbers of farmers are getting elaborative help from, www.ruralinfobd.com, portal which has been developed on the basis of the rural farmers need and in their native language, which farmers prefer the most. This need changes from country to country. But the basic structure of the portal can easily be replicated/adapted by other models based on the target audiences’ language and need. 38

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ACHIEVEMENTS • Formerly, agricultural info needed to be walking through a long and time-consuming way to reach the target rural farmer. Government bureaucracy, individuals’ personal interest etc blocked the quick-route for that. After implementing this portal which is updated regularly this hassle has been cut down almost to 80%. • The whole process of gathering content, validating, incorporating proper images/illustration are being done digitally. • In the development phase and in the dissemination phase IT has a great role because everything has been done by the help of ICT. • The rural farmers as well as other citizen are getting used to know about computers hence IT literacy and thus helping the nation to promote towards IT enriched future generation.

Implementor: Ruralinfobd, Bangladesh Website: www.ruralinfobd.com

“For each and every query from farmer’s part, content producers are giving solution through mail and the new information is uploaded in the portal on a regular basis.”

E-VELANMAI

ess than 20 per cent of the technologies generated by Agricultural Universities were transferred to the farmers field in India due to the lack of an appropriate technology transfer model. Hence an action research was experimented to test verify and validate the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based agricultural extension model called ‘e-Velanmai’ (electronic Agriculture) for addressing the agricultural problems of farmers through ICT tool based dissemination of agricultural technologies from the Scientists of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) directly to the needed farmers. This action research was started during July 2007 with the support of the TN-IAMWARM project of the Government of Tamil Nadu. Its objective was to test and evolve an ICT enabled agricultural technology transfer model named as ‘e-Velanmai’ for addressing the problems faced by the farmers in selected command areas of Tamil Nadu.

Implementor: Centre for Agricultural and Rural Developments Studies, Agricultural University Tamilnadu Website: www.e-velanmai.com

“A video film explaining the process of technology transfer, implementation and success stories running to 8 minutes in English and Tamil is loaded in the scheme website.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • The farmers (members) or their children are trained to frame the photograph of symptoms in a digital camera and to upload them for advice from the scientists of TNAU and receive the technical advice through internet or mobile. • So far, 405 farmers joined the scheme by paying membership fee. At least one individual from each farmer’s family was trained to handle ICT tools successfully. • 1120 expert advices were offered to the farmers in all the three sub basins to solve both problems and decision based queries. Twelve visits were made by the scientists to the farmers’ field to solve complex problems. • The volunteer inspects the farmer’s field and frames digital images using a camera and transfers the photo through www.fileflyer.com using the lap top and internet surfing device.

KISSAN KERALA PROJECT

ISSAN Kerala – is an integrated, multi-modal delivery of agricultural information system, which provides several dynamic and useful information and advisory services for the farming community across Kerala. It is one of the citizen centric egovernance projects of the Department of Agriculture, Government of Kerala. The project was conceived, developed and managed by the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management- Kerala for the Department of Agriculture, Government of Kerala. Objective of this project is to provide “right information to the right person(s) at the right time in the right place(s) and in the right context” dynamically using a combination of advanced technology portal, television based mass media programs, telephone based call centre, mobile SMS based advisory and broadcast service.

ACHIEVEMENTS • The core deliverables and achievements of the project is an integrated multi-component, multi-modal delivery of Agriculture Information Services system that is accessible anywhere anytime by all concerned. • A weekly agriculture television program - in local language that provides selective information dissemination of best practices, success stories, departmental news, news on various schemes, market analysis, cultivation methods, analysis of current issues, etc. Care has been taken to ensure that KISSAN Krishideepam is authentic and totally produced in-house by agricultural and media experts. • The project has launched the country’s first online video channel in Agriculture. More than 100 selected videos (telecast quality) were made available through the channel.

Implementor: Department of Agriculture, Govt. of Kerala Website: www.kissankerala.net

“The integrated model of the project ensures the speedy aggregation of relevant information from various sources, and dissemination through cross media platforms.” egov

SEPTEMBER 2009

E-KRISHI

-krishi is an initiative of the Kerala State IT Mission to address the gap in agricultural information flow and transaction management. e-Krishi is a market-driven agricultural initiative that envisages facilitating and enabling farmers to sell their produce using the ICT network of Akshaya. Some 450 Akshaya centres are now functioning in Malappuram, providing a range of services such as computer training, Internet browsing and e-Payment facilities (for utility bills) e-Krishi project envisages facilitating and enabling farmers and other stakeholders through Agri Business Centres to interact with Agricultural Service Providers in the private, government and Non Government sectors. The project provide a web based solution enabling the small and medium farmers as well as owners of large landholdings. The vision of the project is to establish a connected farmers community throughout Kerala who have access to information on market demand, prices, good agricultural practices, quality agricultural inputs supported by a technology enabled robust transaction platform that facilitates all their offline activities.

Implementor: Kerala State IT Mission Website: www.e-krishi.org

“The value of commodities transactions have increased exponentially from 50 lakhs during pilot phase to a staggering 35 crores in 2009.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • In Malappuram, where e-krishi was launched as a pilot model, the project could set up a fairly large network of farmers by giving them instant access to a lot of information useful to them, including market demand, price, best practices, and expert advice on quality improvement. • Many a farmers in Malappuram district has been selling his produce such as paddy, coconut, arecanut, vegetables, banana, rubber, vanilla and medicinal plants through Internet, using the e-krishi portal. • The project was a great success. The farmers found the demand for their goods was higher than what they could supply. • As many as 114 Akshaya centres have been upgraded to e-Krishi centres, providing all the help to the farmers.

TOUCH SCREEN INFORMATION KIOSK FOR GOAT KEEPERS

he information kiosk with touch screen, an ICT device, designed for the use of the goat keepers who are poor not only in resources but also in information, to access the desired information to improve their knowledge on goat rearing. The computer aided interactive knowledge kit on goat rearing which can be installed in touch screen kiosk is one of the knowledge dissemination methods designed and developed by Rajiv Gandhi College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Pondicherry. “e-Contents ” are designed in such a way that the information could be accessed with ease even by less literate and not computer savvy people by touch of the screen. The knowledge kit designed is user-friendly and compatible to run through any windows operating systems. The main menu has topics such as breeding management, feeding management, general management, young kids management, housing management etc with audio support. 40

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ACHIEVEMENTS • People can get information in their own language at an easily accessible place in their locality, thus saving time and money. • Kiosk serves as store house of knowledge enabling the users to access the desired information as and when he wants it. • Economical for the service delivery centre to provide the required information to a large number of livestock owners. • Kiosk provides information on all topics of goat rearing, which include first-aid treatment, deworming, vaccination, breeding, feeding, general management, common diseases affecting goats, and prevention and control of the infectious diseases. • Touch screen kiosk, when installed in a common service centre like veterinary dispensary, can very often supplement or complement the services offered by the service centres.

Implementor: Rajiv Gandhi College of Veterinary & Animal Sciences, Kurumbapet, Pondicherry Website: www.ragacovas.com

“Inadequate/ insufficient Knowledge of Goat Keeper’ on scientific management practices and markets is one of the reasons for the goat keepers’ inability to exploit the information on goat production resulting in low production and less returns.”

NOMINATIONS: TELECENTRE

Innovative Grassroots Telecentre of the Year The Award for the Innovative Grassroots Telecentre of the Year aims to recognize those telecentres that have done exemplary work in the use of digital technologies to support community, economic, educational, and social development. The award was open for all NonGovernment Organisations (NGOs), Self Help Groups (SHGs) and community based groups who use Information, Communications and Technologies (ICTs) in providing various services, including education, eGovernance, health, education, public service delivery, social security services and other services through a telecentre programme.

CIVIL SOCIETY/DEVELOPMENT AGENCY INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR

The Award for Civil Society/Development Agency Initiative of the Year aims to honour civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations, bilateral, multi-lateral developmental organisations from throughout the world that demonstrated extraordinary effort, innovation, leadership, and excellence in the use of digital technologies to support community, economic, educational, and social development.

VISION CENTRE

ision Centres are aimed at providing comprehensive primary eye care services to the rural and remote population and thus create access to quality eye care. Each Vision Centre covers a population of 50,000 to 60,000. These centres are equipped with ophthalmic equipment such as slit lamp, streak retinoscope, direct ophthalmoscope, trial sets, schiotz tonometer, basic sterilizers, BP apparatus, 90D lens, digital camera, and a computer with a webcam and high bandwidth (4 mbps) point to point wireless (802.11b - license free spectrum) or BSNL broadband connectivity. These centres are run by well trained ophthalmic assistants who perform slit lamp examination, refraction, treating minor ailments and a counselor to counsel the patients and manage the vision centre operations. All investigation results are directly entered into computer using electronic medical record software and medical images taken are attached to the medical records that are accessed by the ophthalmologist at the base hospital while providing consultation.

Implementor: The Aravind Eye Care System Website: www.aravind.org

“Low cost vision centre is an approach to reach out to the rural population by providing comprehensive primary eye care services, similar to the concept of primary health care.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Vision centres are providing eye care at the door steps of the rural areas. • It has reached and served nearly 80% of those in need of eye care within a period of two years which highlight the changes in the health seeking behavior. • The conventional camps could screen the cataract cases and could not help other eye diseases like diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and others, but these centres are permanent and could provide comprehensive eye care to the community. • Availability and supply of medicines and spectacles at the centre ensure the compliance rate of treatments advised. • Only 7 to 10% of the people gets referred to base hospital for further treatment otherwise nearly 90% of the people could gets treatment at these tele-centres. egov

SEPTEMBER 2009

ICT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING FOR COMMUNITY COMMUNICATION DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

ommunity Communication Development Program, CCDP is a project by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). The project aims to make a socio-economic impact on communities in under-served areas with communications and network services and facilities. The facility, which is housed in tuck shops, sundry shops and the like, is aimed to be the focal point for communications and multimedia access in the community. The program was launched in 2003 by the establishment of 55 Kedai.Kom in selected locations in the state of Perak and Kedah, Malaysia. Maxis Communication Berhad, a telecommunication company was awarded the contract to supply, install, commence and maintain all ICT hardware and VSAT in 45 Kedai.Kom in seven districts of Perak state. Maxis is also responsible for the ICT training for the Kedai.Kom operators and the community in the vicinity and has awarded the job to Warisan Global (WG). WG has been engaged since 2006 to deliver ICT and entrepreneurship program to the community and operators of Kedai.Kom. Implementor: Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission Website: www.warisanglobal.com/ccdp

“The model of having telecentres in business entities such as tuckshops, stationery shops, etc, and operated by entrepreneurs is a unique model in Malaysia.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Increase in ICT awareness among the community members It has been reported by most operators that demand for ICT classes have increased in recent years. • More sessions were held to accommodate demands for ICT and entrepreneurship classes. • Development of community projects and local content. • Created decent income to some operators. • Business at some kedai.kom have expanded beyond training and internet surfing. • Value add services like wedding cards printing, company’s profile write up, business proposal, etc have given some operators good income. • Created a cadre of community trainers.

SIYAFUNDA CTC – COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY CENTRE

iyafunda CTC - Community Technology Centre. Establishing partnerships and relationships with stakeholders, such as local government, private business organisations and community based organisations in delivering Community Technology Centres in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality previously disadvantaged communities. It aims to ensure that all citizens of Ekurhuleni are computer competent and have access to information and communication technologies, the internet and email. The vision and mission fully supports the national government’s AsgiSA and JipSA initiatives. This initiative brings reality to the concerns of National and Local Government to make ICT Access (Internet & Email) affordable to all communities. This initiative also envisages skilling the youth, thereby making them employable and alleviating unemployment by networking with recruitment agencies, government agencies and businesses in the Ekurhuleni Metro. 42

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ACHIEVEMENTS • People who had never touched a computer, mouse or keyboard after a 2-month training programme, have become computer competent. • Till date the following number of people enrolled had been trained at the 4 Centres: Palm Ridge Centre (from November 2006): 660; Adelaide Tambo Centre (from October 2008): 110; Duduza Development Centre (from February 2009): 96; Ekurhuleni Business Development Academy (from March 2009): 77 • Daily school learners and students, small businesses and the general communities access the Centre for the Internet, email and faxing facilities. • Business Skills Development and Training. • Employment opportunities by resume preparation services and networking with employment agencies and businesses. Implementor: Siyafunda CTC – Community Technology Centre (GDCO) Website: www.siyafundactc.org.za

“We form partnerships with community based organisations who take ownership and responsibility for the centre, in terms of operations, governance and sustainability.”

PROJECT E3

roject E3, a Public-Private-Community Partnership, innovated an adaptable, scalable and replicable solution for sustaining Telecenter Networks (TCN). E3 stands for e learning, e business and e leadership, designed to serve emerging digital knowledge needs of rural societies, develop micro economic networks and to address MDGs through telecenter leadership. Aimed at scaling up to 587 Telecenters in Sri Lanka, In the first year, Project E3 helped in improving sustainability of 60 Telecenter network in Uva province of Sri Lanka by improving e services, visibility and usability. The impact of E3 shows that Uva TCN sustainability growth by 96% in an year reducing closing risks from 68.3% to 18.33%.

Implementor: Niranjan Meegammana Website: www.telecenter.lk

“E3 demonstrate that telecenter networks are an important development philosophy to shape future rural societies.”

ACHIEVEMENTS • The average number of users has grown from 28 to 101 (364%) and average income grew from Rs. 7650.00 to Rs. 17597.00 (230%) with in a year. This is viewed as significant increase of performance in the network. • E3 developed skilled telecenter operators to sustain telecenters implemented e learning to improve 150 rural youth communities. • Developed telecenter leadership forming telecenter community helped securing more than $ 80000 funding for projects for the network created a knowledge network among 150 telecenters Initiated global collaboration for Telecenter Research in Sri Lanka Uniting Telecenter operators for professional development. • Established a common portal for sharing knowledge and discussion led to empowerment of grassroot telecenter workers.

HOWTOPEDIA.ORG

owtopedia is a Swiss non-profit organisation whose primary objective is the collection and promotion of high quality information focussing on applied know-how. Howtopedia’s goal is to centralise and translate this information on a free online library in order to enhance its accessibility and foster its application in a broad public, linking internet newcomers to organisations and experts. The library’s content focus is on: Simple technologies cause minimal cost, use local materials, require minimal skills, are easy to understand and maintain, protect the environment and comply with the principle of sustainability; Practical knowledge is concrete knowledge, solution-oriented, field related and helps acquire new skills. howtopedia is of straight forward use, for visitors as well as for information publishers, has one clear object and is oriented towards a broad public of individuals and organisations seeking for concrete solutions to concrete problems.

ACHIEVEMENTS • Howtopedia enjoys a relatively broad visibility. • Was used by 330 000 visitors from 190 countries and gained major partnerships like Practical action and the International Network for Technical Information. • A resource for empowerment and essential information diffusion. • The effectiveness can be measured through the visitor traffic and activity on the website as well as through comments and surveys at regular intervals through the website, as through partnering tele-network centers. • Howtopedia secured the financing of the idea with a private funder, professionalized its structure, created a proof of concept of the project’s website, and set-up a network of relevant partners.

Implementor: howtopedia Website: www.howtopedia.org

"Our strategy emphasizes on strengthening the incentives to motivate the contributors, especially the traffic on the website." egov

SEPTEMBER 2009

IKRAIL-TRANSFORMING INDIGENOUS TECHNOLOGY KNOWLEDGE TO MODERN SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AT VILLAGE

he purpose of the project is to upgrade the lifestyle of the people living in the remote rural areas and to recognize their indigenous knowledge through transformation to modern technology. As such, the initiative was taken in three steps. In the first step, the senior scientists, technologists, researchers and decision makers were empowered with ICT knowledge. They are all women and the total number of them is 152. They were trained at different universities in the capital city as well as to regional towns. In the second step they identified the rural particularly the remote peoples’ problems and the possibilities among them. In the third step, implementation of the project activities started at different regions depending on their needs in the social contexts. The project entitled “Transforming indigenous technology knowledge to modern scientific knowledge at VillageIkrail” is a project that started in 2007 at the K.M. Vocational School.

Implementor: K.M. Vocational School Website: www.unhabitat.org

“In introducing new technologies, women are more helpful and effective than their male colleagues. Most women are found sincere in learning technology and more interested in implementing their knowledge for community developements. ”

ACHIEVEMENTS • Telecentre as well as community school, general education school and vocational have been used as the main platforms or the vehicles for the regional development. • The project has brought the tremendous change in a most neglected region where education for the girls were a curse. Their guardians or parents used to say “educating girls means watering neighbours’ trees”. • Now 70% students in the schools are girls. • They have jointly stopped many early marriages of the minor girls. • Telecentre and telehealth care have enabled them to communicate all over the world and to learn how to remain healthy that means free from diseases.

TELECENTRE PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT

edaref Digital City Organization (GDCO) is an NGO based at Gedaref in Sudan. GDCO is the founder of the first national telecentre academy in Africa, called the Sudan National Telecentre Academy or SuNTA, which is the 13th such academy in the world. This project gives the farmers the opportunity to be medically treated using information technology (telemedicine) to reduce the cost and provide the patients with high quality of treatments against serious diseases .

ACHIEVEMENTS • The project ensures environmental sustainability by preventing over exploitations of the resources. • This e-Farmer project is a great partnership where partners (farmers, NGOs, PPP) from different parts of the world share experiences, best practices and knowledge to make the life more comfortable for farmers communities. • More than 13.000 farmer's information are installed in the system of Gedaref mechanized agriculture corporation (GMAC). • Farmers renewed their farm license annually and it was done manually in two to three days, but now they can renew in few minutes. • Farmers and traders can easily sell and buy crops. • Reduction in the cost of. agricultural planning and Geographic coordinates (demarcation) because it is conducted by the trained engineers in GMAC. Implementor: Gedaref Digital City Organization Website: http://gedaref.com

“GDCO on behalf of Sudan Telecentre academy (SuNTA) has signed a MoU with the Ministry of Education in Gedaref state, to train 120 teachers as Telecentre operators and mangers and it will be replicated in other states.” 44

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The First Asian Monthly Print Magazine on e-Governance

ASK SAP

Sustainability through e-Governance As Vice President of the Public Services group for SAP’s Asia Pacific Division, Adaire FoxMartin oversees the strategic direction and activities in the area of public services in the health, education and defence sectors across the region and executive relationships with customers and partners. Ms. Fox-Martin is a key member of the SAP leadership team and plays a lead role in delivering SAP’s offering to public sector customers. A respected thought leader, Ms. Fox-Martin continues to be invited at seminars and conferences by the media and analysts to address public services issues ranging from e-Government transformation and reengineering of Government processes to public service policies. She is regularly featured and quoted in numerous publications throughout Asia and Australia. Ms. Fox-Martin has over 20 years of experience in the field of information technology and management. Effective e-Governance can take information technology (IT) to the common man, while helping Governments to regulate their services in line with the changing needs of both citizens and stakeholders, as well as develop the economy. Recognizing the growing importance of e-Governance we have been bringing you a much needed, regular, interactive platform, where questions on a pre-defined theme are answered by Adaire Fox-Martin, Vice President, Public Services, SAP Asia Pacific and Japan. Most E-Governance initiatives focus on citizen services and internal efficiencies. Perhaps, there is also a larger need to bring the long and very-long term needs into focus while developing and implementing ICT initiatives around E-Governance. “Sustainability” of various kinds is one such framework that would provide an excellent and much needed guidance towards this end. Government and related agencies discuss the issues of sustainability in great measure and it is time that we looked at ICT as key facilitator in improving it.

What is meant by “Sustainability”? Sustainability is the capability to endure, particularly under difficult, demanding and deteriorating situations. In the larger context, Governments and Policy Organizations are very keenly discussing issues of sustainability pertaining to areas like climate, energy and power, food, water and safety. We clearly see the impact of global warming and pollution; diminishing resources for generating energy; increasing population and food and potable water shortages; and, of course, terrorism and security attacks and threats. It is critical that clear management plans are put in place by the highest levels of governance to create and improve sustainability. What does sustainability have to do with e-Governance? Sustainability is (and in many cases should be) one of the most important items on the agenda for governance. Any effort at conceptualization and implementation of E-Governance will fall short of expectations if it does not deliver on this aspect of governance. There is a clear need for the ICT initiatives to aid and support sustainability across the spectrum. However, to achieve these, E-Governance initiatives will require new technologies that increase transparency, accountability, efficiency, communication, and collaboration. In this context, it is imperative that E-Governance not only focuses on citizen services but also strives to provide a larger support to achieving sustainability over the period of human lives. Can E-Governance really support sustainability? What is the best example? In fact, E-Governance can be one of the most potent ways to support sustainability. Consider a situation where comprehensive, integrated and holistic visibility is provided to the government agencies as well as citizens about water and power availability and how they could deteriorate with increasing population or unmindful usage. Government agencies could benefit from this in their decisionmaking process and citizens can appreciate the sensitivities involved and could be deterred in a positive way with respect to usage and

consumption. While public services at large will have the crying need for sustainability, sustainability of cities offers the best need and example. Cities account for more than 80% of global economic growth and are yet at the biggest risk of sustainability from most perspectives – power, water, safety, health and transport. While international, federal, and regional organizations will retain key roles in shaping a new landscape, agencies in cities and surrounding metropolitan areas will likely be the thought leaders and change agents for safety, security, and sustainability. What are the key ICT solutions for sustainability and who are the thought leaders? Some of the key aspects of sustainability solutions are built around the best practices of: • Sustainable and inclusive government • Service excellence • Intelligence- and knowledge-led strategies • Informed and engaged communities, and • Collaboration and innovation Integrated agency applications along with citizen services, case management, public security and disaster management solutions, intelligence and analytics applications, and capabilities of collaborations built around web 2.0 are few of the examples to initiate sustainability through E-Governance. Several large global IT organizations have put out their solutions and messages around sustainability and SAP is one such global software leader. In fact, SAP’s thought leadership is unique in terms of its offerings for sustainability being fully integrated and holistic as well as the fact that they are concretized with very specific solutions in specific areas, safe and sustainable cities being one of them. Substantive information including the thought leadership paper can be had from http://www.sap.com/industries/publicsector/ safer-and-more-sustainable-cities.epx. Besides, http://publicsector. sapbyindustry.com is a comprehensive Portal that provides valuable and contemporary information and solutions. I would highly recommend a visit to all readers. \\

Next Month’s Topic: “Integrated eHealth”. Please write to us your queries on this topic or mail back to us at info@egovonline.net 46

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