LIVE Neeraj Gill on IP-based communications
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ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-GOVERNMENT
september 2010 > Rs 75/VOLUME 06 n ISSUE 09 n ISSN 0973-161X www.egovonline.net
The process
accelerator
how e-procurement can bring efficiencies in government p26
Food All for
a report
p36
PDS must be ridded of its weeds to reach its most rightful recipient—the BPL population. Tech can help p14
editorial
For a less hungry nation
F
ood security exists when all people have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life, according to the 1996 World Food Summit. India’s food security and nutrition indicators are among the worst in the world. In India 30 million people have been added to the ranks of the hungry since the mid-1990s and 46 percent of children are underweight, as per October 2009 BBC report. In terms of calorie consumption in India, the scenario is even worse. The National Sample Survey Organisation’s (NSSO) survey of 2004-05 reports that in the period from 1993-94 to 2004-05, the average daily intake of calories of the rural population dropped by 106 kilocalories (4.9 percent), that is, from 2,153 kcal to 2,047 kcal. Such nutritional deficiencies have overwhelming implications for the well-being and future of citizens of India. As the noted economist, Jean Derez has rightly said, mass hunger is fundamentally incompatible with democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. The UPA Government had included ‘Right to Food’ in its election manifesto and to fulfill this promise has recently proposed Right to Food Bill. However, this is not a novel initiative taken for addressing the basic need of the poor in the country. Way back in 1947, India’s nation builders had envisioned a nation where no citizen sleeps hungry. The Constitution of India guarantees some positive socio-economic rights, including one that imposes some obligations on the government related to food security. This was done through the Section 47, which says, “The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties”. Government of India had introduced public distribution system for procurement and distribution of commodities such as wheat, rice, sugar and kerosene to the poor during the inter-war period. However, the Right to Food does not mean that the state’s duty ends with the distribution of food to the needy. In fact, it goes beyond the provision of subsidised cereals. This requires not only nutritious food but also attention to child care, clean water, hygiene, basic health care, and so forth. The Right to Food also needs to be linked to other economic and social rights relating to education, work, health and information. These plus political will and vision, will help achieve the goal of food for all.
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Contents September 2010
second grid grid name issue 06 n volume 09
20
Case StudyCitizencentric! How Sanjog Helpline is helping Orissa manage its PDS better
25
opinion Needed, a unified clearinghouse! An IT platform for all centre-state transaction is a must for GST
32
analysis Extending Moore’s law With McAfee in its fold, Intel is looking at packing security on the chip
46
opinion A curve to the ‘B’ storm? India needs to find a non-intrusive way of handling the Blackberry issue
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PATHTAKERS ashis sanyal
14 | cover story
Nurturing an idea is more crucial than making strategies
Food for All While technology is not a panacea, it can still be a powerful tool in improving the effectiveness of PDS in India. It can help bring in the much needed transparency in the system and drive consistent efforts to streamline efficiencies at administrative and monitoring levels
07
gov talk ashank desai Use dashboard-based approach to monitor and manage PDS
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interview neeraj gill On how IP-based communications can help governments
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egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
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technology The process accelerator e-Procurement can help speed up government project roll out
further reading Editorial News industry News eindia 2010 report last page
03 08 10 36 50
september 2010 issue 09 n volume 06
President Dr M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief: Dr Ravi Gupta
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Yes we want ITS This is in reference to the article ‘Say Yes to ITS’ (July 2010). I agree to the point raised in the write-up on the need for having a more holistic and integrated approach towards planning and management of transport and traffic system in the cities. Ultimately, a department like Urban Development should oversee the tasks, which is now being looked after by the cops. Padmalakshmi Hyderabad
Government at citizens doorsteps The article ‘Made for Local Governance’ (July 2010) updated me on automation efforts of government administration district level downward to reach the citizens faster and achieve transparent governance. It is heartening to know that now we can expect efficiency and better administration in the district,
which ultimately has an impact on common rural people, making their lives easy with better access to government services. Swati, Noida
Paperless departments, hurray! This is in reference to the DMS story ‘Turbo Charging Digital Governments’ (July 2010). Though the use of DMS in the Indian market is still in the nascent stage, the story has very nicely explained the use of DMS in the various domains of egovernance, healthcare and education. I agree on the point that the Indian government should focus on having ‘less paper’ departments to make the robust and effective use of DMS in the government sector. Karan Khanna New Delhi
Events Vicky Kalra Editorial & Marketing Correspondence egov – G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA–201 301, India Phone: +91-120-2502181-85, Fax: +91-120-2500060, Email: info@egovonline.net 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 © All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic and mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage or retrieval system, without publisher’s permission.
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egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
eINDIA Does it Again! It was a great experience to meet thought leaders and interact with other delegates at the eINDIA conference. I wish to convey my heartfelt thanks to the organisers. Congratulations on the grand success of the event. Nagarajan M, IAS
The event was well organised and well structured. I would like to thank each one of you associated with this event for providing us the opportunity to meet up with honchos of the industry and the govern-
ment departments. Praveen Kumar Programme Manager, Indmax
Congratulations to Elets and CSDMS team for consistently organising the eINDIA 2010. I have been regularly attending the eINDIA sessions since 2002 and have found it to be the best knowledge conference and a must annual recharging event. Great job guys! As, I have already shared earlier during my interaction with eGov and Elets team,
such ‘Satellite Events’ are very important as a follow up to national events. Mukesh Hajela CEO & Vice Chairman, Network for Information & Computer Technology
Thank you for organising a wonderful event and providing practioners an opportunity to present their projects. It was a great learning and networking experience. Yogesh Kale GIS Specialist, CHF International
gov talk
ASHANK DESAI FOUNDER, MASTEK
“Old monitoring ways won’t do” We need a dashboard-based approach to monitor and ensure the health of our public distribution system
T
he public distribution system in India plays an important role in providing food security for those who need it most. Millions of poor families depend on the PDS for their daily ration of necessities. India has been grappling with the size, spread and logistical complexity of the PDS for years now. Information technology can transform the PDS. It can improve efficiency of the supply chain and make processes transparent; it can reduce leakage and improve delivery throughput, and most importantly, it can ensure that the right people get the right goods at the right time. But there are challenges… In the Food and Civil supplies department, how would a senior official, say at the secretary level, check the health of PDS? What parameters will he use to monitor it? Traditionally, the monitoring would be done using parameters such as the number of BPL cards and fair price shops (FPS), and the distribution numbers.
But will these numbers tell him how healthy the PDS is? Officials typically have PDS data pouring in from hundreds of offices, and on its own, the data tells them nothing about the health of such a huge distribution network and operation. Take the analogy of a routine health checkup, one that involves blood tests, chest X-rays and other such tests… Do the tests in isolation tell how healthy one is? No. One needs a doctor who looks at them holistically to get a complete picture of one’s health. It’s the same with the PDS. Instead of looking at different numbers in isolation, what if the officials had dashboards that gave them one view of the health of the PDS and also of the FCS. Sounds great? But how is all this data going to end up on those dashboards, and offer insights on the health of the PDS? Ok, let’s break down the PDS into some components. First, we have the beneficiaries, who are identified by fair price shops
through a ration card. Then there is the entire food distribution network at the end of which is the fair price shop (FPS), and finally there is a team that does budgeting and allocation. In the current scenario, when a beneficiary walks into an FPS and buys a kilo of rice, no one in the distribution system other than the FPS knows that such a transaction has happened. Suppose, there was a way that the budgeting and allocation team could track transactions as they happened. Imagine the impact of such a capability on the efficiency of the supply chain! Next, one would want to know if the targets were being met, i.e. the sales record should ideally show that 100 percent of BPL families have received the benefit. To get that, the dashboard could simply calculate the ratio of BPL families in the beneficiary database to the number of BPL families in the sales database. What will make all of this possible? Well, only a well integrated end-toend solution that encompasses the value chain right from budgeting to logistics to beneficiary management.
must Read Unlocking E-Government Potential Author: Subhash Bhatnagar Publisher: Sage Publication Price: INR 450/-
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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news
projects people policy events products
Bihar Water Resources Dept launches e-tendering Bihar’s Water Resources Department (WRD) has introduced e-tendering facility to maintain transparency in award of contracts. The WRD also released a list of 250 offices across the state where e-tendering will be introduced. Further to the communication, a letter had been sent to the 11 chief
engineers in the department where they were asked to complete digital certification requirements at the superintending engineer and executive engineer levels in their respective areas. The communication also mandates use of digital signatures as a key component of the e-tendering process.
security
Delhi Police to sport hi-tech surveillance during CWG HCL Security, a subsidiary of HCL Infosystems, has chosen Barco to be the visualisation partner for setting up a new C4i—command, control, communication, computing and intelligence—center in Delhi. The project, due to be completed shortly, is to provide a highly sophisticated surveillance system for communication with Delhi patrol officers during the Commonwealth Games 2010. “We selected Barco for its state-of-the-art solution,
advanced technology and local service and support,” said Rothin Bhattacharya, CEO, HCL Security. The C4i centre will have Barco’s latest LED-based technology, consisting of sixteen 50 inch display cubes along with two 46 inch Narrow-bezel LCD monitors and the stateof-the-art control room management suite. Nearly 1,000 police control room vans, 12 police video monitoring vehicles and 700 other monitoring vehicles are to be linked to the centre.
This move is aimed at bringing transparency in award of contracts and also minimise chances of violence and resistance at the time of tender submission of tender papers. Earlier complaints of irregularities in the allotment of tenders were received by the Department, as the tendering process was manual. geo data
India to launch forestry satellite in 2013 A satellite for monitoring the country’s forest cover will be launched in 2013, as informed by Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh to the Rajya Sabha in August this year. Replying to supplementary questions, the minister informed the House that the country has gained over
three million hectares of forest in the last 10 years. “India is one of the few countries where green cover is increasing. In Brazil, three million hectares of forest is cleared every year but in India we have gained three million hectares of forest in the last 10 years,” Ramesh said.
public grievance
Mumbai to pilot e-complaint system Lodging a complaint against any offence would be a click away for Mumbai citizens. Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has announced the e-complaint system, which will enable an online registration of any offence. A person can register a complaint on the website of the police with his name and mobile number for identification. While the complaint will be registered within 24 hours and the person will get receipt of it, the Police Commissioner’s office will oversee if the complaints have been addressed by the concerned police station or not. Maharashtra is the first state to provide such a facility.
Uttarakhand GPF status on SMS
Gujarat farmers to get soil health cards
The Uttarakhand government employees can now track the status of their General Provident Fund (GPF) accounts via SMS. This makes Uttarakhand the only northern state to have the service, which has
By the end of December 2010, the Gujarat government will be issuing 42 lakh soil health cards (SHCs) to farmers to help them boost their agricultural yield. Of these, about 20 lakh SHCs
been jointly launched by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and National Informatics Centre (NIC). Government employees can now get details of the monthly deposit, monthly withdrawal, yearly status and
08 egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
opening and closing balance through this new facility. To avail it, the employees will have to register for the SMS service. The SMS GPF facility will benefit around one lakh state government employees of Uttarakhand.
have already been given, according to the state Agriculture Minister Dilip Sanghani. Under the SHC project, the soil is tested scientifically for various properties
india
urban development
Supreme court to adopt e-mail services The Supreme Court of India has decided to use e-mail services to avoid delay in dispersing cases. The new procedure will entail the advocate to file the entire petition as a soft copy, and send both petitions and notices electronically to the respondent’s e-mail address. Statistical data indicates that on account of delay in process serving, arrears keep on mounting. In
Government notifies UMTA for million-plus cities
Delhi itself, 50 percent of the arrears in courts, particularly in commercial cases, are due to delay in process serving. The facility is being extended in addition to the modes of service mentioned in the existing Supreme Court rules. For the time being, the facility is extended to commercial litigation and to those cases where advocates on-record seek urgent interim reliefs.
policy
rural development
The Government of Punjab has finalised a blueprint for reforms in various departments including revenue, local government and police. In a related move, the state government also decided to put all the land records online by March, enabling land owners to access their account details at any place. Taking about the state initiatives, Romilla Dubey, Financial Commissioner—Revenue, said that simplification of archaic revenue laws including those relating to partition inheritance and tenancy was going side by side. She further informed that these amendments would decrease litigation besides empowering citizens by making the whole system transparent. According to sources, the state government is also looking at setting up a network of e-Sewa kendras in all tehsils by March next year to enable citizens services like payment of water and electricity bills and property tax, and filing of various applications.
In a fresh impetus to grassroots democracy, the state has decided to provide every gram panchayat with a permanent secretariat building, equipped with computers and Internet connectivity. According to sources, out of 4,564 gram panchayats in Jharkhand, the secretariats will come up for 1,610 panchayats by the end of this financial year. The buildings will come up under the Bharat Nirman Rajiv Gandhi Seva Kendra programme, a scheme initiated by the centre this year. The secretariats will also ensure 100 days of work and timely wages under MGNREGS by involving citizens to monitor the scheme, he added. With state panchayat polls on the anvil, the secretariats will be the hub all poll-related activities. Apart from these buildings at the panchayat level, the state will also construct block-level buildings at Rs 25 lakh each. Out of 221 blocks, 170 will get their buildings this year.
like productivity, mineral composition, water retaining capacity and others. Subsequently, the cards are issued under the Soil Health Programme of the Agriculture department. The SHCs also contain information on what kind of pesticides, fertilisers, seeds
year, compared to an income of Rs 44,000 crore in 2009. Since the launch of the SHC scheme, which outlines the manner of cropping based on nature of soil, farmers in the state have even sown crops that were previously unknown to them.
Punjab finalises blueprint for reforms
and water should be used to get better productivity from the land. With the introduction of SHCs, it has become easy for farmers to understand properties of the soil they are ploughing. The state is aiming to achieve agricultural income of Rs 55,000 crore this
news
Jharkhand panchayats to have secretariat buildings
Notifications have been issued for creation of Unified Metropolitan Transport Agency (UMTA) for the cities of Chennai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore, Mysore, Ranchi, Dhanbad, Jamshedpur, Puri, Bhubaneshwar and Kohima by the concerned state governments. This information was given by India’s Minister of State for Urban Development Saugata Roy in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha. Setting up of UMTA for million plus cities is one of the reforms conditions of sanction of buses for urban transport under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Mission (JNNURM) to be implemented by states and UTs. The minister also informed that no city or state has asked for any funding for setting up of UMTA. Government has formulated the National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) 2006, which envisages setting up of UMTA in all million-plus cities.
Rupee gets Unicode identity California-based Unicode Consortium, which sets language standards for the computing industry, has voted to accept the rupee symbol as part of its global standards. The department
of information technology (DIT), under the ministry of communications and IT, had on August 5 submitted an application to the consortium to adopt the new symbol.
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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news
industry
Agro info can help farmers save Rs 600 cr Getting information quickly on best prices and cultivation practises, with special focus on areas like plant protection from diseases and weather-related damage, can help farmers take fast decisions, saving them about Rs 600 crore by 2015. According to the recent report ‘Mobile Broadband—Outlook 2015 by Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), the lack of information on
low in rural India. PwC said that better rollout economics of mobile broadband can enable the government to reach out to many more villages with common service centres (CSC) It further indicated that the roll-out of 3G cellular services and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technologies, with better rollout economics, can enable the government to reach all 600,000 villages with CSCs.
effective practises is leading to huge losses in the agriculture sector. Reports suggest that between 1991 and 2009, the share of agriculture in India’s GDP declined by around 14 percent, whereas that of services rose by over 20 percent. The PwC report also pointed out that mobile telephony would be a more convenient means of communication, as penetration of wireline infrastructure remains
finance management
education
TCS bags MP e-Government contract
Canon, Netspider join hands for Rajasthan’s Sarva Shiksha rollout
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s largest IT services company, has bagged a Rs 150-crore e-Governance contract from the Madhya Pradesh government. The Madhya Pradesh government is introducing an ‘Integrated Financial Management Information System’ to monitor the state’s financial transactions on a real time basis. The software platform to be implemented by TCS will help the state revenue department develop an integrated solution to automate Public Provident Fund management, human resources and payroll management, and pension management.
Canon India, along with its channel partner Netspider India, will be working in partnership with the Government of Rajasthan, Education Council in the rollout of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan CTS 2010. The initiative aims to create a database of the demographic attributes, education status, out-ofschool children status and
many such minute details on every child in Rajasthan. Canon India will be providing the automated document feeder scanners for the Rajasthan Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan CTS2010 project. Netspider will utilise Canon’s high-speed document scanning solution integrated with Netspider’s DIMS and forms processing solution to transform
paper documents into database for effective information sharing and report generation of various types as required by the government. This project involves scanning around 3 crore forms in just a month’s time. Netspider India will be the end-to-end solution provider for Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan implemented by Government of Rajasthan.
management APIs. Innovation in the Deltacloud project has been instrumental in the progress of Red Hat Cloud Foundations, announced in June 2010. “As cloud computing continues to expand into today’s enterprises, interoperability and portability become
increasingly important,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager, Cloud Business at Red Hat. “We’re excited to submit the Deltacloud API to DMTF to help bring this level of interoperability to all clouds. Red Hat is continuing to help enterprises build real cloud today.”
cloud computing
Red Hat submits Deltacloud platform to standards group Open source solutions provider Red Hat has submitted the API specification for Apache Deltacloud to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) as part of its participation in the DMTF Cloud Management Work Group. Red Hat’s submission to DMTF is a step forward
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in the company’s effort to offer users of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds the benefits of portability across cloud computing deployments. The Apache Deltacloud project is an open source implementation of a
egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
RESTful web service API abstracting common proprietary IaaS cloud
industry
my take
news
micro finance INTEL PRESIDENT AND CEO ON THE DECISION TO ACQUIRE MCAFEE
PAUL OTELLINI
“In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand...”
IBM announces POWER7 systems for data-intensive applications
SBI signs up Oxigen for kiosk banking Oxigen Services and Sahyog Microfinance Foundation have announced a tie-up with State Bank of India to offer banking services by connecting directly to SBI’s core banking system through Oxigen Web retailers. According to the company, its existing web-enabled retailers will be appointed as Customer Service Points (CSPs) of Sahyog Micro Finance Foundation, to carry out banking transactions on behalf of the bank. Talking about the initiative, Sunil Pant, CGM Delhi, State Bank of India, said, “The Web-enabled retailers will have SBI Kiosk Banking Customer Service Centre signs enabling them to do banking services for masses.” He further said that in the first phase, the activity will be rolled out in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. flash memory
Intel, Micron sample 3bpc NAND flash on 25 nm silicon
IBM has announced its new POWER7 servers designed to manage the most demanding workloads and emerging applications, including a high-end system that offers markedly better energy efficiency. The new 256-core IBM Power 795 offers better energy efficiency. It uses IBM’s leading-edge EnergyScale technology that varies frequencies depending upon workloads. This new system supports up to eight terabytes of memory and provides over four times the performance in
the same energy envelope as the fastest Power 595 IBM POWER6 processorbased high-end system. The new POWER7 technology supports four times as many processor cores as prior systems and uses the latest PowerVM virtualisation software to allow customers to run over 1,000 virtual servers on a single physical system. For the customers nearing capacity limits for energy, space and cooling in data centres, consolidating older systems to the new highend Power 795 could result in more headroom – with
energy reductions of up to 75 percent for equivalent performance capacity. IBM also announced Power Flex, a new environment composed of two or more Power 795 systems, PowerVM Live Partition Mobility and a Flex Capacity Upgrade on Demand option. This solution enables clients to shift running applications from one system to another to perform system maintenance without downtime, helping to balance workloads and more easily handle peaks in demand.
Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. have announced the delivery of 3-bit-per-cell (3bpc) NAND flash memory on 25-nanometer (nm) process technology, producing the industry’s highest capacity, smallest NAND device. The companies have sent initial product samples to select customers. Intel and Micron expect to be in full production by the end of the year. This 25nm lithography stores three bits of information per cell, rather than the traditional one bit or two bits. The device is more than 20 percent smaller than the same capacity of Intel and Micron’s 25nm multi-level cell. Small form-factor flash memory is especially important for consumer end-product flash cards
given their intrinsic compact design. The new 64-gigabit 3bpc on 25nm memory device offers improved cost efficiencies and higher storage capacity for the competitive USB, SD flash card markets. Flash memory is primarily used to store data, photos and other multimedia for capturing and transferring data between computing and digital devices such as digital cameras, portable media players, digital camcorders and all personal computers. These markets are under constant pressure to provide higher capacities at low prices.
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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News
Economy-edition computing
A 35-dollar bill-of-materials tablet is doable by the government as it can keep duties out and ensure high volumes By Deepak Kumar
W
hen in 2005, Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Labs fame unveiled a $100 laptop goal as part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme, he essentially talked of a price point as low as at least one-sixth the price of a low-priced laptop around that time. OLPC approached India in 2006 with the programme, but found little encouragement. Four years later, India’s union HRD minister Kapil Sibal has unveiled a $35 tablet PC prototype at a press conference in July this year. The tablet-talk is probably not a political fig this time, as had been the case a few years ago when a touted $10 PC had turned out to be at best, a content-loaded USB drive.
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egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
About a week after Sibal’s announcement, Negroponte, also Chairman of OLPC, responded with a gesture of cooperation. “Access to a connected laptop or tablet is the fastest way to enable universal learning. We agree with you completely,” Negroponte said and offered India free and open access to all of OLPC’s technology. “The world needs your device and leadership,” he added. The question: is a 35-dollar tablet viable? Well, a Bangalore-based company AllGo Embedded Systems has produced a reference design similar to the prototype, which it had earlier showcased at the Freescale Technology Forum in Orlando. AllGo says the pricing can be directly relative to the number of units. For example, the device can be manufactured for around $50 per piece for a scale of 10,000 units,
while the price can come down to $45 per piece if the scale is upped to 100,000 units. And yes, if the volumes go up to a million units, then there can be a significant reduction in the price. AllGo refrains from indicating a price point for such high volumes, as that would be hypothetical now. Nevertheless, the discussion does set a basis that makes price points of $35 and below look more realistic and achievable, from a bill-ofmaterials standpoint. However, any marketing overheads can’t be accommodated and would push the price northwards. More importantly, the pricing excludes custom and other such duties. And it is for this reason alone that the tablet can be brought into being only by the government, which can keep the duties out. It’s also important to note that only a government can promise the volumes that are required to make the price point succeed. Incidentally, Negroponte too earlier revised the price point for the OLPC and put a price tag of $75 to it. A low-cost tablet can be powered by a 450MHz processor and will be suited for running limited applications, which, nevertheless, should suffice educational and learning needs of students—and several e-Governance needs of citizens. Negroponte is quicker than anybody else to see the potential of a $35 tablet—and its viability. OLPC’s “experience with 2 million laptops, in over 40 countries, in over 25 languages” somewhere makes him see that the idea is not a pipe dream. The device is important for India, which has steadily consolidated its position as an emerging global economy in the recent years, but its long-term sustenance will depend on empowerment of its younger population Education, and bridging of the digital divide, will be vital to achieving that. And certainly, in a country like India, the digital divide cannot be bridged by way of devices that are currently available at their prevailing price points. Also, given the power situation in the country, a desktop would be often unusable in large parts of the country. So the objectives need to be explored through a computing device that can run for long hours on battery, like a mobile phone. A tablet is suitable from that perspective, and also has the added advantages of easy portability and mobility. One does hope that the government is serious about making it.
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cover story
Food All for
PDS must be ridded of its weeds to reach its most rightful recipient—the BPL population. Tech can help
I
By Prachi Shirur
t is a paradox of sorts that although India is one of the fastest growing economies, millions of its citizens reel under extreme poverty. According to Suresh Tendulkar Committee report, 37.2 percent of Indians qualify as poor. The recent National Sample Survey shows that about five percent of the total population in the country sleeps without having two square meals a day. Right to food is a basic human right and reduction of poverty and hunger is the foremost goal of the Eighth United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Government of India has drafted the National Food Security Bill that promises 25 kg of food grain per month at Rs 3 per kg to each family, Below Poverty Line (BPL).
Reaching out to BPL families Public Distribution Systems (PDS) is India’s largest social assistance program, which has the objective of maintaining stability of food grain prices by way of establishing minimum procurement
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prices and providing subsidised basic food grains, sugar and cooking fuel to the less privileged. It has its origin to the famines and the food shortages of the1960s. Till 1992, the PDS was universal in India, available to all consumers. In 1992, Government of India introduced Revamped PDS (RPDS) in limited areas, primarily drought prone, tribal, hilly and remote. It was later substituted by Targeted PDS (TPDS) in 1997. TPDS is specifically aimed at BPL families in all parts of the country, under which each poor family was entitled to 10 kg of food grain per month at a subsidised price.
cover story
The allocation was increased to 20 kg with effect from April 2000, and to 25 kg per family from July 2001 onwards. It was further increased to 35 kg in 2003-04. In order to make TPDS more focused towards the poorest of the poor, the “Antyodaya Anna Yojana” (AAY) was launched in December 2000. AAY aims at providing this target group food grains at a highly subsidised rate—wheat at Rs 2 per kg and rice at Rs 3 per kg. Under PDS, presently the commodities namely wheat, rice, sugar and kerosene are being allocated to the states and UTs for distribution. Some states also distribute additional items of mass consumption through the PDS outlets such as cloth, exercise books, pulses, salt and tea. PDS is being implemented by the Department of Food and Public Distribution, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Civil Supplies, Government of India, and covers over 65 million poor families in the country. With a network of about 5.01 lakh Fair Price Shops (FPSs) as per the ministry’s figures, PDS may well be the largest public food distribution network across the globe. There are six key functional areas covering all processes under TPDS, which include allocation and utilisation reporting, storage, movement, finance, licensing and regulation and grievance redressal. PDS is being operated under the joint responsibility of the central and state governments, with the former responsible for procurement, storage, transportation (up to the district headquarters) and bulk allocation of food grains. The state governments are responsible for distributing these food grains to citizens through a network of FPSs. This responsibility includes identification of BPL families, issuing of BPL
cards, and supervision and monitoring of the functioning of the FPSs. States are also responsible for movement of food grains from the district headquarters to the FPS.
Vilas Kanyal Head for India and Asia-Pacific Business, Mastek
Many evils mar the system The success of PDS depends on proper targeting and prevention of pilferage and corrupt practices. Given the large amounts of subsidies associated with PDS, and also due to the large number of FPSs, complaints of leakages and diversion of food grains during transportation are common. Ashok Kumar Meena, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Food and Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department, Government of Orissa, remarks, “There are vested interests operating at various levels as highlighted by various reports on PDS in our country.” Jaijit Bhattacharya, Director, Government Affairs, HP India, rightly opines, “Efficiency is critical in PDS implementation, as leakages and diversions raise the delivery costs, making the subsidies provided redundant.” The improper targeting of beneficiaries leads to problems of exclusion and inclusion. According to the Union Food and Consumer Affairs Ministry, there were a total of 21.82 crore ration cards issued by the state governments in 2000 as against 18.03 crore households, as projected by the Registrar-General of India. Talking about the issue of bogus and duplicate cards, Vilas Kanyal, Head for India and Asia-Pacific Business, Mastek, says, “It is a vicious cycle with the state and centre having to procure additional amounts of grain for ineligible, duplicate and bogus ration cards, with the additional grain eventually ending up in the open market. On the other hand, a large number of famiAshok Kumar Meena Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Food & Food Supplies & Consumer Welfare Department, Orissa
“There are vested interests operating at various levels as highlighted by various reports on PDS in our country”
“It is important to use the unique ID as a common identification number, even for PDS. UID will help states to get a single view of the various schemes, including schemes for PDS” lies living below the poverty line have not been enrolled and, therefore do not have access to ration cards, which amounts to the problem of exclusion. In its year 2005 report, the Planning Commission reported that “57 percent of the PDS food grain does not reach the intended people.” There is also the issue of scale and quality of food grains provided. As Priyadarshan Nanu Pany, President and CEO, CSM Technologies, puts it, “The scale and quality of food grains delivered to the beneficiary is rarely in conformity with the policy. Many FPSs are open only for a few days a month and beneficiaries who do not visit the FPS on these days are denied their rights. FPSs also use multiple excuses to both charge higher rates and deliver reduced quantity of food grains.” The most serious flaw in the whole PDS is the lack of transparency and accountability in its functioning. The system lacks transparency and accountability at all levels, which makes monitoring of the system extremely difficult. Transportation of food grains and appointment of dealers of FSPs are also difficult issues. In spite of the presence of entities like the Vigilance Committee and Anti-Hoarding Cells constituted to ensure smooth functioning of the PDS, their impact is virtually non-existent at the ground level, leaving malSeptember 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
15
cover story
Andhra Pradesh sets up
drive for cleaner database In 2005, Government of
verify the existence and
removed from the ration
Andhra Pradesh had taken up
eligibility of the family for BPL
card data, while ineligible
a project to issue new ration
card, social security pensions
ration card holders have been
cards after capturing iris of
and housing.
deleted from the BPL list.
Sanjay Jaju, Commissioner
New key registers have been
the solution could not scale
of Civil Supplies and Ex-Officio
generated showing the exact
up to perform iris matching
Secretary to Government of
list of ration cards under each
on large volumes of data due
AP Consumer Affairs, informs,
Fair Price Shop (FPS).
to which duplicates could not
“The project has been able
be detected. So the state
to bring perceptible systemic
FPS-wise citihas been kept
government decided to
changes in building up the
online and brought into the
take up the project of
institutions along with making
public domain. The same
de-duplicating the iris-based
the public delivery systems
can be seen at www.icfs.
ration card data.
efficient and corruption free.”
ap.gov.in. The project can
The impact has been manifold.
be replicated easily in other
done in four phases. About
Bogus and duplicate cards
states in the country as
25,000 officials were deployed
detected to the extent of 15
problems of duplicate, bogus
for the field verification
percent have been removed.
and ineligible beneficiaries
process during which they
Non-existent and permanently
exist in their welfare scheme
visited every household to
migrated persons have been
databases as well.
family members. However,
The field verification was
The entire purified
Orissa takes the smart ration
card route
between the beneficiary and
and Consumer Welfare Depart-
the ‘fair price shop’ owner
village or ward-level biometric
ment, in association with World
will be made available on the
enrolment stations were set
Food Program (WFP), initiated
Government website, which will
up across 2,445 villages in 11
a project for biometric-based
further enhance transparency in
blocks and 41 wards. The project
smart card ration cards, biomet-
distribution.
resulted in identifying 10,092
ric bar coded ration cards and
According to Dr Nitin B
pairs of duplicate families
bar coded coupons in Rayagada
Jawale, Collector and DM, Raya-
and 12,828 pairs of duplicate
district, which houses 1.96 lakh
gada, Orissa, “The vision behind
individuals.
families receiving PDS benefits.
this project is to check the pilfer-
Dr Jawale adds, “This
age in the PDS by application of
project is unique in the sense
bar-coded coupons and smart
technology solutions based on
that for the first time all 13
cards, the distribution of which
unique biometric indicators. This
biometric indicators are used
began from 18th Aug 2010,
is to ensure that the subsidised
for the database and that
aims to reduce the pos-
an essential commodity reaches
the ghost/bogus cards were
sibility of pilferage of essential
those for whom it is meant and
eliminated at the stage of
commodities. The transaction
to none else.”
verification itself”.
Biometric ration cards,
practices in the system to thrive.
ICT can kick in the reforms To address the problems inherent in public
16
Under this project, 6,000
The state Food, Food Supplies
egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
distribution of food supplies, the country’s Department of Food and Public Distribution in the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Civil Supplies, has been taking various
initiatives and also advising states and UTs on a continuous basis on ensuring proper identification of beneficiaries, achieving timely delivery of food grains and adoption of innovative ways of distribution involving community participation. Aspects like enhancing viability of FPSs, construction of additional and decentralised storage facilities, and monitoring of distribution of PDS items through social audit by local bodies or NGOs are also being looked into. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can play a major role in resolving many of these issues. With the use of ICT, accurate allocation, accurate consumption reporting, visibility of grains across the value chain, and correct identification of BPL families is possible. The PDS process computerisation market is estimated at between Rs 6,000 crore and 8,000 crore, as per industry sources. Kanyal of Mastek is optimistic that “In the next three-five years, all states in India would have embraced IT in PDS.” ICT is being utilised in TPDS by the centre as well as state governments and UTs. At a conference of state and UT food secretaries on ‘best practices and reforms in targeted public distribution system’ held in July 2010 at New Delhi, it was resolved that rapid but phased rollout of IT in PDS must be given priority. Department of Food and Public Distribution has taken several initiatives for computerisation of TPDS. A pilot scheme on computerisation of TPDS has been approved in August 2009 with an outlay of Rs 53.47 crore. It involves computerisation of processes related to allocation of food grains to states, off take, storage, movement, finance, licensing and regulation, grievance redressal and reporting. In the first phase, the scheme has been approved to be implemented in three districts each of the four pilot states—Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. Also, there will be piloting of food grain bag tracking in one district in Chhattisgarh. The proposed IT system for computerisation of TPDS is envisioned to be achieved by developing a TPDS portal, with the necessary automated workflow in the background to act as a single point of reference for all key functional areas to citizens and department users based on user roles and privileges. Prior to this, a pilot scheme on smart cardbased delivery of TPDS commodities was approved for the Chandigarh UT and Haryana
cover story
Binod HR Head–India Business Unit, Infosys
“While the UIDAI is correct in its suggestion of merger of Aadhar and PDS databases, the state governments also need to plan for the next step which is the integration with PDS system to ensure its true effectiveness” in December 2008 with an outlay of Rs 142.29 crore. The scheme aims to assist in proper identification of beneficiaries and ensure that TPDS commodities are received only by the targeted persons. The smart cards will contain biometric features of adult members of the ration card holder families. The smart cards as well as smart card transaction terminals will also store details of transactions of TPDS commodities issued. Both Chandigarh UT Administration and Government of Haryana have completed trial runs of smart card-based transaction of TPDS commodities on June 7 and June 17, respectively. The project has been launched on July 13, 2010. Replicating these schemes in other states and UTs will be considered after the schemes are evaluated on fulfilment of objectives and suitability of technology.
States going gung-ho While central government has been driving the initiative to cleanse the PDS system a lot of ground has been covered by some of the states towards digitisation of ration cards, procurement of food grains, allocations to fair price
tdps portal structure
shops, issue of smart card based ration cards, and grievance redressal. Besides, some of the state governments like Chhattisgarh are also using GPS for tracking and monitoring of the entire PDS supply and distribution chain. Chhattisgarh: In its bid to streamline the PDS system in the state, particularly to ensure that the benefits of Chief Minister’s special Rs 2 per kilogram rice scheme reaches out to the BPL population, the state Food and Civil Supplies department has created a central ration cards database, which is online for everybody to see. The state has also completed the process of automating the entire food grain supply chain—from paddy procurement, its storage, milling and distribution of rice and other commodities to 3.7 million ration card holders through 10,416 FPS. With the database of beneficiaries and the FPS in place, the state government is now not only able to monitor the inventory and accounts of State Civil Supplies Corporation, it can also keep track of record of lifting, sales of ration commodities and issue of ration commodities from warehouses to fair price shops. The project also has a component of public interface, complete with a call center for public grievances. The state plans to install Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to track the movement of vehicles carrying subsidised rice
for the poor to ensure effective implementation of PDS food grains. The GPS devices will give complete information on where and for how long the vehicles carrying rice halted after loading at the warehouses and before unloading the rice at PDS shops. Tamil Nadu: This is one state that is way ahead of others in using technology to prevent diversion and malpractices in PDS. The state government initiative includes an e-Services project that has been rolled out for updating the online ration card database and carry out corrections and modifications that have taken place over the last 4-5 years. In fact, the corrections that are carried out at taluk level and the corrected data are expected to be posted in TNSWAN online. This ensures that the card database is dynamic and the latest information is available on real time basis. The state government is looking at using the data and the system for automating the shop wise monthly allocation generation process. The Government also intends to use this updated database for taking up 100 percent door-todoor verification of the ration cards to eliminate bogus cards in a phased manner. To check diversion of PDS commodities, control rooms have been opened in all districts, including in Chennai. As a trial measure, a GPS-based vehicle movement monitoring September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
17
cover story
system has been implemented in Thiruvallur and Krishnagiri districts to track the movement of vehicles carrying PDS goods. Similarly the state government has also introduced an online warehousing monitoring system for enabling online capture of all transactions in a phased manner. To prevent mass diversion of goods by lorry drivers, every vehicle is accompanied by a department assistant who is provided with a special SIM card that helps in tracking the movement of the vehicle. Further, SMS-based fair price shop stock monitoring has been set up by the Cooperative Department to track the stock of every commodity at each fair price shop on a daily basis. Handheld billing machines with GPRS connection have also been installed in all fair price shops in Chennai to enable real time monitoring of sales and stocks. Maharashtra: The Public Distribution Department of Maharashtra Government plans to provide smart cards with biometric information to 2.24 crore card holders in the coming year. The state government is also computerising the entire ration distribution system and planning to adopt newer technologies to stop pilferage in the system.
How Aadhar can be leveraged The Unique Identification (UID) or the Aadhar program can share the burden of PDS reform
by assisting in positive identification of unique individuals and families. This can lead to a high-quality beneficiary database without duplicate and ghost cards, thus improving the targeting of benefits. In this context, a task force headed by Director General, National Informatics Centre and comprising representatives from Department of Information Technology, UIDAI, Department of Food and Public Distribution, FCI and the selected states and UTs has been entrusted with the responsibility of working out the modalities for integration of existing projects and also to suggest how the unique identity number will eventually be leveraged for TPDS purposes. Says Kanyal: “It is important to use the unique ID as a common identification number, even for PDS. UID will help states to get a single view of the various schemes, including schemes for PDS.” PDS can benefit from the legislative, technology and administrative infrastructure being created for the implementation of the UID programme. Integration with the UID program will lead to better identification of individuals and families. This will lead to better targeting and increased transparency and therefore better functioning of the system and its public approval. Binod HR, Head–India Business Unit, Infosys, suggests, “While the UIDAI is correct in its suggestion of merger of UID and PDS databases, the state governments also need to plan
for the next step which is the integration with PDS system to ensure its true effectiveness.” It is worth noting here that Madhya Pradesh government has become India’s first state set to deploy food coupon based PDS system to empower the poor and will be one of the largest ‘Aadhar’ rollouts in the country with 50 million UID numbers generated. These food coupons will capture all biometric, tax, demographic and personal information, enabling authorities to ensure proper distribution of food rationing and other benefits. HCL Infosystems has bagged this order, which will involve setting up an efficient model of food and civil supplies distribution in the state based on UIDAI guidelines, for over 10 million expected transactions per month. While technology is not a panacea, it can still be a powerful tool in improving the effectiveness of PDS. It can help bring in the much needed transparency in the system. It can drive consistent efforts to streamline efficiencies at administrative and monitoring levels so that any vested interests can be countered effectively.
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egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
Analysis
REGULATIOn
Tying is a case for trying
Big Blue is under an EU scanner for allegedly shutting out its operating system to non-IBM big irons By Stacy Baird
I
n late July, the European Union launched two antitrust investigations into the business practices of IBM. While issues in the EU might seem distant, Asian countries should take an interest as they increasingly develop as knowledge economies. Local companies need to know that they have the right to compete without fear of lock-out and that there are laws that protect them. The European Union, U.S. and most developed markets have antitrust laws, also called ‘competition law’ in Europe, on the books. Indeed, the EU has worked with governments in Asia to enforce antitrust laws. Governments will step in to protect consumers and ensure a fair marketplace when a company uses contracts to impair competition, for
example, by fixing prices or restricting access to sources of supply. In one investigation, the EU is examining whether IBM uses its control of the availability of spare parts to impair competitors from servicing IBM mainframe computers. A government will also step in where a company unfairly uses its market dominance or monopoly position to keep competitors at a disadvantage or out of the marketplace all together. There are many situations that may be an abuse of a market dominant position: unfair contract terms such as exclusivity; predatory or discriminatory pricing (imposing an unfair buying or selling price); refusal to give access to essential facilities; or, as is the case in the second investigation of IBM, “tying.” Tying is where a company conditions the sale of a product (the tying product) on the
customer’s purchase of a second product (the tied product). For example, computer printer manufacturers often design their printers (the tying product) to accept only ink cartridges manufactured according to certain patents owned by the printer manufacturer (the tied product). The printer’s manufacturer, in control of who manufactures the ink cartridges through licensing, or in this case, not licensing, precludes competitors from making compatible ink cartridges. So in order to use the printer, a customer must buy the printer manufacturer’s ink cartridges. An early case often used to illustrate tying to business and law students around the world involved IBM in 1936. At that time, punch cards were used to enter data into a computer. IBM had something close to a monopoly in computers. They required their computer customers to also buy IBM punch cards, which they sold at a higher than market price. By tying punch cards to the sale of computers, IBM was able to keep competitors from entering the punch card business. Although IBM claimed the requirement ensured quality, IBM lost its case. The EU will be examining allegations that IBM engages in tying sales of its operating systems to its sale of mainframe computers. The case will examine whether the alleged tying locks out competitors that offer operating system emulators that makes it possible to run applications written for IBM mainframes on non-IBM (e.g., Windows and Linux) servers. Tying can make a market more efficient by providing consumers more complete packages of products—or enable a company to maintain high quality—but when a business with a dominant market position or monopoly ties products, antitrust law may kick in. Given IBM’s ubiquity in the mainframe computing business throughout the world, the critical nature of mainframe applications in large and public sector enterprise, and the growing importance of IT integration and interoperability particularly in light of cloud computing, those of us in Asia interested in a vibrant, competitive IT marketplace should watch developments in the EU investigation of IBM closely.
the author is former advisor to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and author of the book ‘Government Role and the Interoperability Ecosystem’
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
19
case study
G2C
Manoj Ahuja
Project Name Sanjog Helpline The organisation Department of Food Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Government of Orissa Key People n Manoj Ahuja, Commissioner-cumSecretary, Department of Steel & Mines, Orissa n Ashok K K Meena, Commissioner-cumSecretary, FSCW Department, Orissa n S K Basistha, Managing Director, Orissa State Civil Supplies Corporation Problems & Challenges n Leakages in state PDS system n Delays in addressing PDS beneficiaries’ grievances n Near opaque grievance redressal system n Lack of accountability among the concerned
By Prachi Shirur Photo by Joe
Citizen-centric! Sanjog Helpline is working well as a grievance redressal system that prods field officials until a complaint is resolved
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egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
G2c
T
The Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare (FSCW) Department is one of the premier bodies in Orissa. Its functions cover formulation and implementation of policy relating to procurement, storage and distribution of food grains and implementation of the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS). With a population of around 3.6 crore, of which 38 lakh families are still below the poverty line, Orissa is one of the front runners in the implementation of PDS. But the state grapples with various issues of malfunctioning of the system, including leakages and diversion of PDS commodities. In such a scenario, a mechanism was required where the government and the citizens could both reap benefits and smooth implementation of PDS could be effected.
The solution In its endeavour to achieve unhindered PDS goals, the FSCW department, Orissa, initiated an integrated grievance redressal mechanism, Sanjog Helpline, through a dedicated call centre. Earlier, a complainant had to travel miles to a Block Development Officer (BDO) office and stand in queues on a particular day and register complaint regarding PDS. The BDO thereafter, filed a petition and sent a letter to the field officer of the Food and Supply Department to enquire and file a report. Such activities made the process time taking and also often resulted in uninvited prosecution.
case study
Now, through Sanjog Helpline citizens can register any type of complaint without any apprehension. It is a centralised call center for citizens, manned by call center executives (CCE) who receive calls on a toll free number 155335. Citizens can register their complaints through five different communication channels—the Web portal www.sanjoghelpline.in, fax, letter, SMS and the toll free number. Having multi-channel communication ensures that the complaint is registered at Sanjog helpline positively. After registration by the CCE, the citizens get a unique ticket number which helps them to track the status of their grievance anytime, with the help of the toll free number or the Web portal. The built-in intelligent system of Sanjog identifies the last level officer who is responsible for the jurisdiction and notifies him about the grievance in real time through SMS, e-mail and fax for immediate action. The system ensures disposal of grievances by escalating the grievance to the higher authorities if it is not resolved in the stipulated time. The software is unique as it notifies the field-level government officer in real time via SMS in codes to look into the problem and in parallel follows the government channels where it generates a letter in the same format as a government letter, which is automatically faxed and e-mailed besides posting over the Internet. “The software was designed to counter the inherent problems in paper based reporting system at various block offices”, says Manoj Ahuja, Commissionercum-Secretary, Department of Steel and Mines, Orissa. And who should know better, for Ahuja is the man who was instrumental in rolling out this FSCW project during his earlier posting as the department’s Commissioner-cum-Secretary. What’s more, the solution has also helped in improving the performance assessment module by creating a well defined escalation procedure, with the automated system sending faxed letters and SMSs to higher officials in the hierarchy of the scheme, if the action-taking authority is not able to resolve the issue within the stipulated time period. After the implementation of Sanjog helpline, it has become imperative for all officers to solve issues pertaining to their locality. Else, their status on Sanjog HelpLine will display lack of activity and the system will automatically send them email, fax and SMS reminding them of the pending jobs. Ashok Kumar Kaluaram Meena, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Department of FSCW says, “Sanjog Helpline has metamorphosed the complete inspection and reporting activity of the district level offices from an ad hoc process to a perennial process requiring little intervention. It is also a step towards strategic m-Governance.”
Tech@use Application: ASP.NET 2.0 Database: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition Hardware: IBM X Series x3650 and x3850 (DB Server) Resources: Mobile, fax and Internet connectivity Platform: Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
The benefits Gives complete picture of the complaint and the entire mode of operations Helps improve performance assessment module
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
21
IN PERSON
Video and voice conferencing have direct correlation to the reduction of carbon emissions by providing alternatives to travel
22
egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
grid name IN PERSON
Neeraj Gill
Managing Director–India & SAARC, Polycom
“UC can lead
to sharper, quicker decision making in
government”
W
As Managing Director–India and SAARC at Polycom,
here is the world headed in IP-based, enterprise-grade communication? How can the government and public sector organisations benefit from it?
Current realities like globalisation and worldwide competition continue to drive the need for real-time and life-like collaboration over dispersed geographies. We expect this trend to continue into the future, as we constantly innovate to cater to the customer demand. Today, organisations want flexibility, choice, and investment protection and do not want to tie themselves down to a single-source vendor when choosing Unified Communication (UC) solutions. Government offices are spread geographically, and the implementation of UC could help communications become easier and real-time, thus making the decisions sharper and quicker. Spontaneous and real-time UC will help the public sector in terms of improved efficiencies and enhanced mobility with anytimeanywhere services.
Neeraj Gill has been guiding Polycom’s business strategy in the region and working to extend its share of key markets, particularly in the fast-growing video conferencing market. Gill is credited for his outstanding skills as a communicator, his tremendous drive to achieve success, and his exceptional understanding of India’s enterprise, financial services and government sectors. Gayatri Maheshwary spoke to Gill on the changing paradigms in the
What are the key trends in the Video Conferencing and Telepresence and how is Polycom gearing up to meet the market needs? A great range of social, technological and financial trends are influencing the market for UC. High-definition technology has been one of the most important key trends in the enterprise communication market. Polycom’s visual communication solutions provide a complete, UltimateHD experience—HD video, HD voice and HD content sharing to make the experience much more seamless and life-like. Polycom offers solutions for different application, space and budget requirements that work together seamlessly for enterprise-wide visual communication. High-definition video and telepresence are expected to drive the growth of the industry. The social issue that is also opening up the market for video conferencing and telepresence is Green IT. Being responsible to the social issues without affecting
area of communications and the promises and benefits that lie in store for the government sector
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
23
IN PERSON
market in terms of total spending and better overall awareness. The report mentioned that India has a good potential for the growth of UC applications. It is growing at the CAGR of 7.9 percent currently. Public sector cuts across service and manufacturing industries, policy making and implementing, and security enhancement and disaster management. All these areas need real-time presence. UC makes that happen. The introduction of video conferenc-
steady and is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 22 percent and would become $1,200 million by 2012, as per industry sources. Currently, the UC market in India stands at $549 mn, while $321mn comes from enterprise telephony that include 17 percent share of contact centre applications, 11 percent email and messaging, 10 percent telepresence and conferencing while 1 percent comes from mobility, as per industry sources.
“Government can benefit
from IP-based communications for development of rural India,
while also using it effectively for disaster management”
the revenue is a challenge of the era. Installation and use of video and voice conferencing solutions has a direct correlation to the reduction of carbon emissions by providing an alternative to travel. Virtual collaboration technologies deliver a raft of sustainability benefits to organisations. Video traditionally was only used by large corporations but another noticeable trend is that now it is enabling new business models and giving small companies big presence and reach. Polycom is expanding the market for visual communication with a range of new solutions that will drive new applications and put highperformance video conferencing and collaboration capabilities within reach of smaller organisations, small-office homeoffice environments, and new industries.
The deployment of highdefinition telepresence and video conferencing solutions is expected to grow significantly in the world. Is India, which is still dominated by the standard definition, ready for the new wave? According to a Frost & Sullivan study, India leads the Saarc region’s UC
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egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
getting personal QUALIFICATION Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Engineering from Punjab University, Chandigarh Working Experience More than 20 years of experience in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) market. Gill has worked across multiple geographies in Asia, the United States and United Kingdom, and has held senior management positions with a number of highprofile companies including Intel, AT&T and JDSU India FAVOURITE PASTIME Playing Golf
ing with pretrials has helped to increase the efficiency of the criminal justice system by helping the police, judiciary and prisons departments to save manpower and bring speedy justice and increased security, while realising discernible time and cost efficiencies.
How do you rate the government and public sector in terms of adoption of IP-based communication technologies? Post the recession, the most important tasks for companies had been cost reduction, value efficiency, and real-time collaboration. Specific sectors like government, banking, financial service and service industry are the fastest adopters of this technology in India. However, while the technology is becoming essential in the Indian context, a lot of work still needs to be done. The government sector can draw a great deal of benefits from IP-based communication technology for development of the rural India. Disaster management can be one of the most vital benefits for the government, at a large scale. Education and healthcare sectors could also be revolutionised with this technology. In the Indian context, the market is
India has been experimenting with video conferencing in a big way on the judicial front. Can you give an update on this? India has implemented the video conferencing solution to enhance the judicial system’s efficiency. Andhra Pradesh Department of Prisons and Correctional Services (AP Prisons Department) oversees seven central prisons, nine district jails, two women’s prisons, one Borstal school and 120 subjails for inmates serving less than one month or awaiting pretrial. The resource and security challenges prompted AP Prisons department to find a convenient way for the courts to effectively communicate with the prisoners to ensure fair pretrial proceedings, without the costs and risks associated with transferring prisoners to and from the courts to stand for pretrial. Polycom’s cutting-edge technology uniquely satisfied AP Prisons department’s comprehensive requirements. Polycom’s easy-to-use and manage system allows judges, legal professionals, court officials, inmates and witnesses to seamlessly communicate face-to-face in real-time as effectively as if they were in the same room.
Analysis
TAXATION
Needed, a unified clearinghouse!
An IT platform that supports all center-state and interstate transactions is a must before GST regime is kicked in By Siddharth Mehta
W
ith the government working hard to expedite the Goods and Service Tax (GST) implementation, one wonders as to whether we have the necessary IT infrastructure in place to support the new system. Under the current system too, there is some degree of automation, both at central and state levels. For instance, most of the tax compliances around central taxes such as excise duty and service tax can now be discharged by taxpayers online through ‘ACES’ and e-payment facility. At the state level, an IT platform called ‘TINXSYS’ is used to track details of dealer registrations and issuance of declaration forms such as Form C for inter-state transactions of sale of goods. Additionally, some states like Kerala, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh
provide facility of e-payment and or e-filing to the taxpayers. However, most of the other states are currently trailing behind, and still rely on manual registrations, tax payments and filings. Also, in view of the variations in compliance requirements between the central and individual state-specific tax laws, there is currently no national IT platform that can handle all indirect tax related compliances for the taxpayer. The uniformity in tax provisions and compliances, likely to be offered by GST, clearly offers an opportunity to automate these compliances. Thus, with common registration and return formats, and similar tax-payment obligations, the government can create a unified IT platform for GST. A pan-India IT platform is anyways inevitable under GST, in order to implement the proposed ‘IGST’ model for inter-state transactions. By design, GST would be a destination-based tax
i.e., in case of inter-state supplies of goods or services, the state’s share of GST would accrue to the destination state where such goods or services are getting consumed. However, for the convenience of taxpayers, they would be required to deposit IGST in the state from where they supply such goods or services. IGST would be deposited with the central government or a nominated agency, which would then act as a clearing house and transfer the state component of IGST to the respective states on a periodic basis. Hence the need for a robust IT network that would capture details of such inter-state supplies, and facilitate reconciliations and fund-transfers between various governments. Recently, an empowered group has been constituted under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani, to take appropriate measures for timely implementation of the IT platform required for GST. National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) has been selected for implementing this network. As far as creating the platform for implementing IGST is concerned, TINXSYS may perhaps serve as a good base or prototype, to begin with. However, the system would need to have the ability to process, verify and reconcile dealers’ invoice wise details uploaded by inter-state suppliers. This is likely to be an onerous task with minimal room for error, as it would have a direct bearing on the funds to be transferred to each state for the IGST supplies attributable to them. The other big challenge would be to expand the IT coverage to the not-so-tech-savvy states and remote parts of the country, to facilitate online registrations, filings and payments for all taxpayers. While we do have a similar online system for income tax, the geographical spread and challenges of GST are somewhat different from income tax. As regards the quantum of data to be handled by such system, while it would be huge, we already have precedents in terms of the IT systems used at the NSE and NSDL. Once implemented, a common GST portal would not only help the taxpayers, but also help the government with better audit trail, and a facility for pattern-analysis.
the author is a specialist in indirect taxes, and is actively involved in analysing the developments around the proposed GST framework
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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TECHNOLOGY
E-PROCUREMENT
The
process accelerator
By Pratap Vikram Singh
G
one are the days when procurement and tendering process could take as many as 180 days. E-procurement has brought purchase-and-sales cycles in the government down to 30-40 days. No wonder then, e-Procurement has been included as an integrated Mission Mode Project under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). Essentially, procurement means timely acquisition, purchase and delivery of goods, works and services at the best possible total cost of ownership to the customer. It includes estimate or indent preparation, tendering, contract management, catalogue management and auction, and caters to procurement of all types—works, goods and services.
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A few rollouts exemplify that adoption of e-procurement systems can bring in unprecedented efficiencies in governments
E-PROCUREMENT
Despite the huge financial savings accrued through lowered bid values, shortened procurement cycles and transparencies in the system, the adoption of e-procurement systems can still be termed as poor. Though some of the states, including Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are quite ahead in reaping the benefits from the automation of the procurement process, many other states and central ministries and departments are still following the traditional, manual system of procurement, plagued by wide spread inefficiencies and lack of transparency that throttles fair business and competition among suppliers. Commenting on the adoption of e-procurement at Government of India bodies, V Ramachandran, Chief Technical Examiner, Central Vigilance Commission, said, “The overall adoption has been quite slow. In a circular issued by the Government of India,
MN Vidyashankar Principal Secretary, Centre for e-Governance, Government of Karnataka
“Cost savings and reduced cycles are the motivating factors for adoption of e-procurement. The number of departments using it has increased from five in 2008 to over 63 now in Karnataka”
TECHNOLOGY
10 essentials to look for in an e-procurement solution
Does the solution significantly reduce the time taken to prepare indents and tender documents? Are repetitive tasks in the tender preparation process automated? Is paperwork significantly reduced? Do most significant activities like document preparation, verification, approval, escalation, annotations and remarks occur online, and are they auditable?
Can the solution import data from item masters and schedules-of-rates to build tender documents? Does the solution enforce existing workflows and escalation metrics in a dynamic manner? Does the solution keep track of the sanctioning power of various officials in the escalation metrics? Does the solution make use of the Public Key Infrastructure
all central ministries and departments were to adopt e-procurement by April 2009. However, roughly 35 percent of the departments have adopted automation of the procurement processes, but partly.” Some organisations have made good progress though. Centre for Railways Information System of the Indian Railways is doing good work in furthering e-procurement across the department. The pilot on e-procurement in the Northern Railway zone has been completed and in the near future it is to be scaled up to each zone in the country. Gas Authority of India too is way ahead of others in adoption and usage of e-procurement. Besides, Ministry of Coal is doing quite well with its e-auction system being in place. On e-procurement adoption in Karnataka, MN Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary, Centre for e-Governance, Government of Karnataka, said, “Only few states in India have currently adopted e-procurement. Even Government of India and PSUs are yet to adopt it. The state of Karnataka has been successful in implementing e-procurement in more than 63 government departments, agencies or organisations, with more than Rs 33,000 crore worth of procurement already handled since early 2008.” In Chhattisgarh, “Currently, around 4,864 tenders worth Rs 15,020 crore have been processed. The adoption of e-procurement by different government departments and organisations in Chhattisgarh offered the solution of transforming the traditional tendering process
(PKI)? Are digital certificates mandatory for signing documents? Is the solution integrated with a payments gateway? Are bids received online? If yes, do they have to be printed out to carry out technical and commercial evaluation or are comparison metrics generated automatically for both technical as well as commercial bids?
to a transparent online tendering system,” AM Parial, Additional CEO, Chhattisgarh Infotech and Biotech Promotion Society (CHiPS) said. Giving details on the state of adoption in Andhra Pradesh, M Vidydhar, Project Manager, e-procurement, Govt of Andhra Pradesh said, “E-procurement is implemented successfully in 26 government departments, 39 PSUs, 126 municipalities and 14 universities spread across length and breadth of the state. Since the inception of the project in January 2003, the portal has processed 106,532 transactions worth Rs 194,068 crore or US$ 36 billion.”
Legal compliance and security On January 30, 1997, the General Assembly of the United Nations, by a resolution, passed the Model Law on Electronic Commerce adopted by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. Following the suit, Indian IT Act was passed in the year 2000. The IT Act 2000 mandates use of digital signature in e-procurement. It provides legal recognition for transactions carried out by means of electronic data interchange and other means of electronic communication, commonly referred to as electronic commerce, which involve the use of alternatives to paperbased methods of communication and storage of information, to facilitate electronic filing of documents with the government agencies. The Central Vigilance Commission has provided the stakeholders in e-procurement with a comprehensive list of security specifications. September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
27
TECHNOLOGY
E-PROCUREMENT
AM Parial Additional CEO, Chhattisgarh Infotech and Biotech Promotion Society
“E-procurement benefits include transparency, cost savings through increased competition and demand aggregation, reduced inventory costs, and sustainable contractor development” Elaborating on the security the compliance issues, Parial of CHiPS said, “CVC and other national and international guidelines for government procurement are designed with the ethical principles to achieve equity and economy.” Sujeet Bhatt, Director Technical at NexTenders, a company that specialises in e-Governance, opined, “The Central Vigilance Commission has issued a circular that provides a checklist to achieve security considerations in e-procurement for organisations interested in implementing the solution.” He further said that CVC has mandated the availability of security features as stated in this checklist for all government organisations having implemented or in the process of implementing an e-procurement solution. Vivek Agarwal, CEO of C1 India, an e-procurement solutions company, said, “All e-procurement solutions in India need to follow guidelines established by CVC and the provisions as laid under IT Act 2000. For projects funded by the World Bank, procedures and guidelines set by them need to be followed.”
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State of e-procurement affairs Chhattisgarh Chhattisgarh Infotech and Biotech promotion Society, Government of Chhattisgarh (CHIPS) has adopted a public private partnership (PPP) model whereby the system is managed and maintained by NexTenders. The contract covers for nine separate departments of the state government. Around 4,600 tenders valued at Rs 7,500 crore had been processed till end of May 2010. There are about 2,700 vendors currently registered on the government portal. Madhya Pradesh: Madhya Pradesh Agency for Promotion of Information Technology (MAP-IT) is the IT nodal agency for implementing e-Governance
projects in the state. The project envisages implementation of a Web-based centralised e-procurement system for departments and agencies across the state. Currently, there are 33 departments and agencies using the NexTenders eGP System. The rollout has occurred progressively over four years. Andhra Pradesh As part of the e-Governance initiatives, the state government has set up an e-Procurement Marketplace, linking government departments, agencies and local bodies with their vendors. After a pilot was successfully completed, e-procurement was rolled out in to service eight government
Putting the state laws into the given perspective, Vidyashankar said, “e-procurement needs to comply with guidelines, acts and rules of the concerned state for its implementation at the state level. For example, the e-procurement solution of Karnataka complies with the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement (KTPP) Act.” The use of digital signatures in electronic procurement has been mandated in almost all legislations, CVC directives and international standards set by organisations like United Nations and World Bank. Nevertheless, the awareness and education on using this cryptographic security mechanism at the government and citizen levels is not satisfactory. From the time a bid is submitted online, to its saving into the virtual tender box, and then to its opening, security is of paramount importance. The digital signatures are a must to ensure the non repudiation and authentication of the users and the participants in the procurement process. “It’s quite unfortunate that the awareness on the usage of digital signatures is not encouraging among the government bodies.” Moreover,
departments, 13 public sector units, 51 municipalities and five universities. Starting from January 2003 to July 2010, 106,532 transactions worth Rs 194,068 crore have been done through the e-procurement system. Karnataka The State of Karnataka has been successful in implementing e-Procurement in more than 63 government departments, agencies or organisations with more than Rs 33,000 crore of procurements already handled since a beginning in early 2008. The number of departments using the e-procurement platform has increased from five in 2008 to more than 63 till date. The project is implemented in PPP mode with zero-cost to the government.
“The Net banking system is still based on the user name and password authentication mechanism, and so it is vulnerable to illegal access. Still, the use of digital signatures in financial transactions is a distant dream. The Reserve Bank of India has come up with a circular that mandates use of digital signatures in every online financial transaction, including banking and e-procurement related transactions. It has set a deadline of April 2011 for the banks and other institutions to adopt usage of digital signatures,” Ramachandran said. Holding a positive view on the use of digital signatures, Bhatt said, “Digital signatures are being used by thousands of suppliers and buyers in all our deployments.”
Return on investment With the posting of tender information on e-procurement website, the stakeholders have saved from investing in paper work and publishing ads in national dailies. The bid participants can access and download the tender document without any hassle. Earlier, because of vested interests, the tender document itself was sometimes not accessible by all.
TECHNOLOGY
E-PROCUREMENT
The participants now need not come to the bidding centre to participate in the bidding process. With Web browser-based software, bidders can participate while sitting in any part of the world. For e-procurement service providers, the increase in bidder participation has resulted in increased transactions, which in turn has increased the fee collection. Recalling the benefits derived from e-procurement deployment, Bhatt of NexTenders said, “In our experience, an average large government agency or state government which properly implements a robust e-procurement system can expect one-time savings of 10-30 percent and recurring savings of three-five percent annually through increased process efficiencies and throughput. When you are dealing with budgets in thousands of crores,
Sujeet Bhatt Director Technical, NexTenders
An average large government agency or state government which properly implements a robust e-procurement system can expect onetime savings of 10-30 percent and recurring savings of three-five percent annually 30
egov / www.egovonline.net / September 2010
M Vidydhar Project Manager, e-procurement, Andhra Pradesh
“Since the inception of the e-procurement project in January 2003, the portal has processed 106,532 transactions worth Rs 194,068 crore or US$ 36 billion” this is substantial.” Putting forth the observations from Chhattisgarh, Parial stated, “Effective and innovative procurement has transformed service delivery and realised significant savings for our state. Efficient procurement benefits everyone—the state, agencies, suppliers and citizens. By achieving economies and efficiencies through procurement, the state could improve its effectiveness and also stimulate the state’s economy.” The e-procurement platform of Karnataka has been instrumental in savings to the tune of 10 percent of the value of procurement due to a competitive bidding environment. Some of the departments have achieved negative premium on tenders, which was not thought of earlier in traditional mode of procurement. “Also, the reduction in the procurement cycle enabled the departments to do faster procurement. The cost savings and reduced procurement cycle times are the motivating factors for adoption of e-procurement in government departments. This is evident from the fact that the number of departments using e-procurement platform has increased from five in 2008 to more than 63 till date in Karnataka,” Vidyashankar said.
Implementation challenges For an e-Governance project, the most basic hurdle remains the resistance to adopt new technology. Here, capacity building measures through regular training and change management assumes utmost importance. Vested interests of certain officials in the government is also one of the causes of resistance,
and has been a major hurdle in the adoption of e-procurement in many states and government departments. On addressing the implementation hurdles, Agarwal says, “Change management and buy-in from various stake holders is crucial for smooth implementation of e-procurement projects. Another aspect that needs to be taken care of is the training on the processes involved.” Parial said, “Implementation of the project requires not only technological solution but also process re-engineering and most importantly change management. This makes implementation of e-procurement a very complex project. The complexity acquires an altogether different dimension on account of the change management involved. Intrinsically, there is resistance to change any organisation and government is no exception to it.” Bhatt agrees, “The main challenge is buyer and vendor resistance. This is best dealt with by using a graduated carrot and stick approach. Successful implementations usually start with clients mandating the use of e-procurement for high-value tenders and then gradually reducing the threshold value to bring more and more vendors on board.” “In some cases, manual bidding is allowed in parallel for a short time to ease the transition, and some governments have even offered monetary incentives for bidding online. Education and training hold the key, and experience shows that once stakeholders experience the benefits of e-procurement firsthand, there is no looking back. Availability of infrastructure like electricity and Internet access still remains a challenge in some remote areas,” he added.
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Analysis
SECURITY
Extending Moore’s law
Intel’s acquisition of McAfee literally amounts to packing security as a component on the chip. How will it work?
By Deepak Kumar
I
ntel’s co-founder Gordon Moore penned down an empirical observation in 1965, noting that the number of components that can be packed in an integrated circuit would double every year. Later he made a revision stating that the doubling would happen every two years. The statement has since been formalised into one of the most venerable laws in the technology industry. It’s been a yardstick for setting targets at semiconductor companies, particularly at Intel. It has held ground for nearly half a century now and doesn’t show any definite signs of aging yet. Moore’s law has served as an unwritten policy statement for Intel and has played an important role in steering the company to a formidably dominant position, so much so that the chipmaker’s performance today serves as a barometer of the IT industry. That, however, will not be enough to take Intel far and beyond in an era where industry dynamics are rapidly shifting from PCs to mobile devices and from hardware to software.
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Analysis
This is the premise that sets a basis for acquiring companies that can bring robust software capabilities to the chipmaker. Does that fully explain Intel’s big-ticket McAfee acquisition at US$ 7.7 billion? Or are there elements of disconnect and ambiguity? Let’s view the announcement in the backdrop of some prior acquisitions.
Some prior moves Indeed, Intel has known the risks of sticking only to the PC and server segments for long. As early as 1999, it made serious attempts to extend its dominance to segments other than PC and server segments. With the objective of foraying into the mobile phone segment, it acquired DSP Communications for around US$ 1.6 billion, an investment that did not pan out as expected and led to an impairment charge of US$ 600 million later in 2003. Intel’s energies have since remained largely focused on making PC chips better and better. Most of its acquisitions too—small or big—were aligned with this focus. Like last year, two small software snap-ups—Cilk and Rapidmind—were aimed at giving developers better leverage with the chipmaker’s growing portfolio of multi-core platforms. However, Intel’s much larger acquisition in June last year—of embedded and mobile software maker Wind River Systems—was a bigger leap forward, into wider realms of software. The deal that was valued at US$ 884 million in July 2009, in the midst of an economic crisis, was stated in a press release to be “part of Intel’s strategy to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices.” That was logical given that Intel had actually stepped out of its stronghold of “traditional” PCs and servers and tasted fair amount of success with its Atom processors designed for a new genre of net access devices. An innovation in hardware had helped it travel a certain
The chipmaker will need early adopters for a “McAfee inside” approach to work like the “Intel inside” messaging did
distance, and there had to be a software vehicle to take the journey further... The importance of hardware-software interplay is evident from the fact that historically neither Intel nor Microsoft’s Windows platform have singularly been credited with the crowning success in the PC market segment; the honours have been given to Wintel—the unofficial combo engine at work. At the same time, it’s been no secret that both Intel and Microsoft—while benefiting from their long-standing equations—have also clamoured to lead when it comes to determining the direction of the PC and server market segments, among other IT segments as well. Unsurprisingly therefore, Intel has a long history of duly supporting developments in the open source software spheres. The Moblin OS and application stack, which was later merged with Nokia’s Maemo project to create the MeeGo project this year, is also a software case in point.
Is it about security? If viewed independently, the McAfee deal indeed may be seen as Intel’s attempt at growing its circle of influence in enterprise IT market, considering that security has remained among the top-most concerns for enterprise CIOs and IT mangers. One possibility would be that McAfee technologies could be adding more teeth to Intel’s existing hardware-based security program vPro. However, there has been scepticism if hardware-based security will be able to provide quick guards against security threats that are ever new and so dynamic in nature. Intel’s strategy on how it will meet this challenge is not pronounced, but logically it could be using Wind River’s technological depth in embedded platforms to stitch together an acceptable solution. Also, the fact that the McAfee acquisition has come only after Intel had reportedly worked with the security specialist for several months on various projects indicates that a neat-enough roadmap might well be in place. There is also a successful precedence in the IT industry that can come handy—EMC’s successful acquisition of RSA effected nearly four years ago. Having said that, just security can’t be Intel’s strategy; it’s got to be much bigger—maybe to get a share of the software market pie. Some observers have even gone as far as speculating
that Intel would want to eventually put its fingers in the services pie too.
And the mobile piece? Well, the segment has gotten too significant to ignore, more than ever before. And from that viewpoint too, the Wind River buyout last year and the McAfee acquisition now, are important. Both have been fairly well positioned in the mobile space to serve as key footholds in developing an ecosystem around Intel’s processor platforms like Atom. Atom’s success so far has largely been limited to the netbook space and it will be critical for Intel to crack the smart phone segment. Thankfully, equations in the mobile market segment have changed much since about ten years ago, when Intel would have been seen as a dreaded Goliath. Today, Nokia is working with Intel on MeeGo project, even as Intel has been porting Google’s Android to its Atom platform. Security has not been much of a concern on mobile devices so far, but as preferences grow for mobile-based commerce and transactions, that would change. Arming these devices with biometrics-based protection, for example, would be a necessity in due course of time. It’s another matter that the upgrades and innovations in the Atom-based product lines have been slower compared to those evident in the smart phone segment...
Building early adopters Intel will need some early adopters for a “McAfee inside” approach to work as well as the “Intel inside” messaging has worked. Government and education verticals, by virtue of their less ephemeral computing processes and application needs, would be better suited for a security-on-the-chip architecture. Early successes in these segments would also build a technology—and business—case for other verticals. The security threats in the mobile space are not yet looming large and Intel will therefore have some time at hand to seal a compelling proposition before mobile security concerns get real and alarming!
the author is a market researcher and consultant, specialising in IT and Telecom
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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EVENT
The sixth edition of India’s largest ICT expo and conference, was held from 4-6 August 2010 at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC). The event was hosted by the Government of Andhra Pradesh and organised by Elets Technomedia and CSDMS, along with the Department of IT (GoI), Ministry of Panchayati Raj (GoI), Ministry of Labour & Employment (GoI), UIDAI, Directorate General of Employment & Training, NeGP, and IGNOU. The three-day event was attended by over 5,000 stakeholders from across the development and government sector, including elected members of state Assemblies and the Parliament, senior level bureaucrats, policy makers, academia, NGOs and industry associations.
R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, DIT, Ministry of Communication & IT, Govt of India
RS Sharma, Director General & Mission Director, UID Authority of India, GoI
Jayashree Raghuraman, Secretary-cumCommisioner, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Govt of NCT of Delhi
Loknath Behera, IGP, National Investigation agency, Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt of India
Ashank Desai, Founder, Mastek
Dr Ajay Kumar, Principal Secretary IT, Govt of Kerala
The chief guest Dr K Rosaiah, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, lighting the lamp at the inauguration of eIndia2010. Standing L-R: K Ratna Prabha, PS, IT , GoAP; Dr Asraf Abdel Wahab, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Administrative Development, Egypt; Lt. Gen. (Retd) Bhopinder Singh, Lt Governor, Andaman & Nicobar; R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, DIT, GoI; Komathireddy Venkat Reddy, Minister, IT & Communications, GoAP
D Sridhar Babu, Minister, Higher Education, Andhra Pradesh and J Krishna Rao, Minister for Food, Civil Supplies, Legal Metrology & Consumer Affairs, Andhra Pradesh talking to the exhibitors
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EVENT
D Sridhar Babu, Minister, Higher Education, AP & Nadendla Manohar, Dy Speaker, AP Legislative Assembly
NK Pradhan, Minister–IT, Sikkim is all attentive at the Thought Leader’s Conclave
A Raja, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Government of India
Agatha Sangma, Minister of State for Rural Development, Government of India Agatha Sangma, Minister of State for Rural Development, Government of India along with Dr M P Narayanan, President, CSDMS (centre) and Dr Ravi Gupta, Editorin-Chief, Elets Technomedia (left) launching the special issue of eGov magazine.
nibh ero cor si. Guerciduipis dolobore ent
Odissi dance performance by members of Smitalay
eIndia Award winners along with Dr M P Narayanan, President, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) and Dr Ravi Gupta, Editor-in-Chief, Elets Technomedia
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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event
egov india 2010
uid and people
Fool-proofing is easier said than done UID’s schema is holistic and biometric makes it free of any cracks but that also makes implementation a tough task
(L - R) Srikanth Nadhamuni, Head–Technology, UIDAI; Sanjay Jaju, Commissioner, Food & Civil Supplies, Andhra Pradesh; VS Bhaskar, DDG, UIDAI (Chair); Guru Malladi, Partner, Advisory Services, Ernst & Young; Rana Gupta, Business Head (India & SAARC), SafeNet India; Vishal Dhupar, MD–Sales, Symantec India; Savitha N, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle
T
he Unique Identification (UID) project aims to give the 1.2 billion residents of the country a unique 12-digit identification number. The number, by ensuring such registration and recognition of individuals, would help the state deliver their rights to them. Over five years, the UID Authority plans to issue 600 million Aadhaars. To understand the implementation strategy and the progress made at it, as also for leveraging it for maximum benefit and to discuss the security concerns, a session was organised with participation from government, potential players, vendors and civil society representatives. The session was chaired by VS Bhaskar, Deputy Director General, UID Authority of India, Government of India, who put UID in its correct perspective, and discussed its conceptual framework and the progress made so far. He also elaborated upon the implementation and operational challenges, interoperability issues, and how one would utilise an UID number.
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with the entire records, this is the most challenging problem UIDAI is facing,” noted Srikanth. Rana Gupta, Business Head, India & Saarc, SafeNet India, dealt with privacy issues and the role information security would play in the successful rollout of UID. He commended UIDAI for considering security of database from a data center point of view rather than taking a network or periphery standpoint. Sanjay Jaju, Commissioner, Food and Civil Supplies Government of Andhra Pradesh, gave the perspective of Registrar of Enrolment and also talked about the experience of AP with the biometric ration card implementation in the state. One challenge that was faced in implementation was that de-duplication and enrolment generation of cards was not happening simultaneously. Savitha N, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle, discussed the role that a master citizen data solution could play in the UID program for consolidating the master database, cleaning data centrally and distributing data as a single point of truth. Guru Malladi, Partner, Advisory Services, Ernst & Young, applauded the UID program for being holistic and subsuming all other
Since there is no shortcut to matching one’s biometrics with the entire records, this is the most challenging problem UIDAI is facing The UID number is a unique and a random number. There is no duplication because of the biometric de-duplication being in place. And even though UID is not mandatory, Bhaskar is hopeful that as the value of UID number is enhanced, more and more people in India will join the ecosystem of UID. Srikanth Nadhamuni, Head of Technology, UID Authority of India, talked about the technological aspects related to UID. If a resident submits his biometric information and substantiates it with the proof of his identity and address, he could be issued a UID number, after the system checks his biometric details against the entire central database of UIDAI. “Since there is no shortcut to matching one’s biometrics
identities because of the uniqueness that the UID number commits. He also said, “UID programme will be very successful because it connects with the social and democratic fabric of the country.” Talking about the need to keep abreast with security threats in the digital world, Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director of Sales, Symantec India, remarked that, “UID gives us a business opportunity to prosper in this digital world.” The question and answer session followed the panel discussion, where participants put forth queries on how universal coverage could be achieved, how it would be ensured that people with multiple disabilities don’t get excluded, and how the security compliance can be met.
egov india 2010
ICT for Rural Development
It’s got to be a data-drill Standardisation and interoperability of panchayat-level data is as important as capturing it rightly in the system
(L - R) Maj Gen. (Dr) R Siva Kumar, Head–NRDMS; Rakibul Hasan Khanm, Local Development Associate, Access to Information Project, Bangladesh; Rajgopal A Srinivas, Sr VP, Tulip Telecom; Dr Naimur Rahman, Director, OneWorld South Asia; Niten Chandra, Joint Secretary, Rural Development, GoI (Chair); S K Hudda, OSD, Department of Panchyats, Gujarat; S B Singh, DDG, NIC–Uttar Pradesh; K Manohar, GM (Bangalore), Railtel
N
iten Chandra, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, session chair, provided an overview of the rural scenario of India, informing that rural India had more than 17 crore people living in nine lakh habitations. Government of India is spending around Rs 90 crore per year in rural development programs that are development, project or area-oriented. The issues that the ministry is grappling with in this regard include data capture, transformation of data, loading of data into data warehouses, data mining and data analytics, for which it seeks support of ICT experts. The panel included experts from both government and non-government secors. Major Gen. (Dr) R Siva Kumar, Head,
Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, highlighted the use of spatial data for better planning of rural development programmes. He however, emphasised the need for standardisation and interoperability of data. Recalling Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA) program, which has connectivity as its base, Dr Siva Kumar said, “Spatial data is the underlying requirement of PURA.” Rakibul Hasan Khan, Local Development Associate, Access to Information Project Prime Minister’s Office, Bangladesh, shared his country’s experience with ICT interventions in rural development. The government is trying to strengthen the union parishads (similar to panchayats in India) in Bangladesh through ICT to deliver services to people at their doorstep. For this, it plans to establish 3,396 union information services centres by December 2010.
event
SK Hudda OSD, e-Gram, Department of Panchayats, Government of Gujarat shared the e-Gram Vishwagram project, which aims at providing e-services at panchayats. e-Governance application entails computerisation at the village level itself for instant processing of birth and death registration, and issuance of certificates such as agriculture, caste, income and electricity. For access, broadband Internet connectivity has been provided to all 13,693 gram panchayats, using the VSAT technology. Niten Chandra applauded the project, saying that, “e-Gram implemented by Gujarat government is a very innovative project and even the Ministry of Rural Development has drawn a lot of lessons from it.” Dr Naimur Rahman, Director OneWorld South Asia & MD, OneWorld Foundation, India, informed about the joint partnership program between Ministry of Rural Development and OneWorld Foundation to bring in transparency and public accountability in MGNREGA by e-enabling all the processes. These include biometric-based registration, demand for work, issue of dated receipt, allocation of work, recording of attendance with GPS coordinates and work measurement using hand-held devices like mobile phones. SB Singh, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC), Uttar Pradesh State Unit, provided an overview of various programmes that Uttar Pradesh was doing in rural development using ICT. “If e-Governance is moving in Uttar Pradesh, which is such a large state and thereby has so many challenges, in smaller states, the technology application by government should not be an issue.” Rajgopal A Srinivas, Senior VP, Tulip Telecom, discussed how Tulip discussed some of its solutions for rural India such as rural on-line banking, e-literacy and e-enabled education centres, healthcare, e-posts, Internet telephony and video conferencing. K Manohar, General Manager—Bangalore, Railtel India, emphasised, “e-Governance is associated with access to broadband connectivity.” He apprised that Railtel was on its way to provide countrywide broadband and multimedia network to help Government of India achieve 200-500 million broadband users by 2015. Talking about the challenges in rural broadband, he suggested use of simple technology that would be manageable. The complexity should be pushed to the network, he said. September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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egov india 2010
ict for food security
India needs a clinical approach Sporadic uses of technology have been made but the system needs an end-to-end IT overhaul to get functioning-fit
(L - R) Amod Kumar, Director, Maternal & New Born Health Project, IHI; Ashok Kr Meena, Commissioner-cumSecretary, Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Orissa; Jayashree Raghuraman, Secretary-cum-Commissioner, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Delhi; Sanjay Jaju, Commissioner, Food & Civil Supplies, Andhra Pradesh (Chair); Srinath Chakravarthy, VP, NISG; Vilas Kanyal, Head Asia Pacific, Mastek
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he session was chaired by Sanjay Jaju, Commissioner, Food and Civil Supplies, Government of Andhra Pradesh saw panelists presenting update of their work on ICT for food security front. Talking about the initiatives by Orissa, the state Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department Commissioner-cum-Secretary Ashok Kumar Meena said, “PDS is nothing but a supply chain, from production at the farm to procurement, from giving the minimum support price to farmers to keeping food grains in storage and distributing it to the districts and to the fair price shops (FPSs), from where it gets distributed finally to the targeted below poverty line (BPL) beneficiaries.” Meena also spoke on the biometrics-based ration cards pilot project of Rayagada district in Orissa, introduced in the year 2008, with the support of the World Food Program and Government of India. The project aimed at stopping wastage and fraud in PDS through use of biometric ration cards in order to better
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mation of information exchange between school authorities and the Department of Education. Jayashree Raghuraman, Secretary-cum-Commissioner, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Government of NCT of Delhi, dealt with the challenges Delhi faced with regard to the identification of beneficiaries since it had issues like migration of people to Delhi from various states of India, movement within Delhi from one area to another, and shifting of people from BPL category to above poverty line population. She felt that ICT can be very effective in dealing with such issues. In this regard, the Department did a Biometric review of all existing BPL and AAY cards and deleted bogus cards. Vilas Kanyal, Head—Asia-Pacific, Mastek, was optimistic that the goal of “Food for All” could be met through use of ICT. India does have pilot projects and projects that are part of other program, but there is no end-to-end solution to tackle the ills of PDS. In this context, he provided an overview of Mastek’s ‘e-FCS’ solution that provided the advantages of a comprehensive solution, with a quick rollout time. The modules in this solution included ration card management system, backend supply chain system, issuance system, FPS management
Food grain provisioning needs to be viewed as a supply-chain activity that must have an MIS system for actionable review monitor and manage distribution of foodgrains. As per Sanjay Jaju, “The project has a lot of bearing on the biometric capture and ICT use that is gaining ground in the country”. Amod Kumar, Director, Maternal and New Born Health Project, Intra Health International, briefed on the IVRS-based daily monitoring system for mid-day meal (MDM) scheme in Uttar Pradesh. The lack of proper mechanism to monitor the implementation of the MDM scheme, prompted for a Web-based MIS for transporting data directly from school to the state. The school authorities can now inform the number of students availing meal on that day without any time lag and all reports can be viewed and managed in real time due to auto-
module, and budgeting and accounting system. Srinath Chakravarthy, Vice President, National Institute for Smart Government, informed about the computerisation of TPDS program of Department of Food & Public Distribution, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, GoI to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the entire system. Government of India had engaged NISG to provide consultancy services in designing a comprehensive e-Governance framework at the central and state levels, formulating a set of solutions to be implemented. He advocated that beneficiaries should be able to get food grains from any FPS in India, using UID as a pan-India identifier.
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Cloud Computing
It’s not a thumbs-up, yet With low utilisations of existing data centres, full-blown clouds won’t be a govt priority now, but SaaS is ok
(L - R) Sumeet Bhatt, Director, NexTenders; CSR Prabhu, DDG, NIC, Hyderabad; Sanjiv Mital, CEO, NISG; Dr Ajay Kumar, Principal Secretary–IT, Kerala (Chair); Ashok Kr Meena Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Orissa; Sethumadhavan Srinivasan, Dy Director-Network Strategy, Huawei; Prashant Chaudhary, Consulting Manager (Govt), CA; Ravi Joseph Pinto, Principal Architect, Oracle
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jay Kumar, Principal Secretary, Government of Kerala, chaired the session on ‘Cloud Computing & RoI for the Government Sector.’ He set the premise that RoI on cloud computing was a challenging task and there was an important need to discuss the indicators of a positive RoI and the various benefits of using cloud by the government. He said it was important to create cloud infrastructure and cloud middleware. Both tangible and intangible savings, better infrastructure, less use of too many separate data centres, provisioning of on-demand resources were some important advantages of the cloud technology, he said. The biggest concern highlighted was that of security. Also, performance of the cloud depended on the availability of the resources. He put forth the concern that the current usage of data centres
else’s responsibility to keep adding the hardware. CSR Prabhu, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre, Hyderabad highlighted that all models were developed independently by different agencies and that there was no interoperability. He emphasised upon the need to develop the technology locally and make things integrated, and opined that data centres can be made available in the state and servers can be made available locally in remote areas. Prashant Chaudhary, Consulting Manager— Government, CA, informed that cloud services should be leveraged on demand and be used when needed through cloud, depending upon the need at a particular stage. He advocated that at the moment it was too early to talk of RoI in the Indian context as there was not much usage of the data centres and servers. Ravi Joseph Pinto, Principal Architect, Strategic Architecture and Programs, Oracle, focused on IaaS and PaaS as the cloud models. The focus is also on the private and the public cloud and on the emergence of the hybrid cloud going forward, he noted. He pointed out that it was important to have the consolidation of data centres.
Security concerns deter cloud-thinking as much as the view that availability of resources can be a question mark was only 15 percent and hence it was difficult to discuss the RoI on cloud computing. Ashok Kumar Meena, Commissioner and Secretary, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department, Government of Orissa, emphasised that for the RoI on cloud computing it was important to have a dedicated IT setup. Sanjiv Mittal, CEO, National Institute for Smart Government, pointed that lot of government departments were in the stages of their automation processes. He emphasised on Software as a Service (SaaS) as a model, as for transactions to keep going, it’s then someone
Sethumadhavan Srinivasan, Deputy Director—Network Strategy, Huawei, said that cloud computing was all about security and offering reliable services around private, public and hybrid clouds. He pointed out that for better utilisation of services the security aspect had to be addressed properly. Sumeet Bhatt, Director, Nextenders was of the view that cloud computing and e-Governance could be a revolutionary idea for India. The main challenge was security and the possible tampering of data. He advocated security measures to be independent of any human involvement. September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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egov india 2010
Financial Inclusion
Banking for all There is a crying need for building infrastructure that makes financial services available to masses at affordable costs
(L - R) RS Sharma, Director General, UIDAI; Ajay Singh, CEO Forbes Technologies; B Sambhamurthy, Director, IDBRT (Chair); Prof S Subramaniam, Chairperson, ACMFI, Santanu Sengupta, Director, Corporate Affairs & Finance, ACMFI; Satyajit Nath, Chief Architect, FamilyHat; S Kuberan, Project Manager (Electronic Benefit Transfer) Rural Development, Andhra Pradesh
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n India, a large section of the population is poor and lives in rural areas. A large number of this population is financially excluded due to factors such as lack of information, insufficient documentation, lack of awareness, high transaction charges, and lack of access and illiteracy. So there is a huge need for financial services where banks can deliver banking services at affordable costs for the excluded section of the society. The session on “Financial Inclusion for Effective Governance� aimed to take care of these problems with the help of ICT. The session was chaired by B Sambhamurthy, Director, Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDBRT) who briefed what is financial inclusion, and discussed its conceptual framework, the progress made so far, and implementation and operational challenges. RS Sharma, Director General, UIDAI gave his perspective of financial inclusion taking into account Adhaar, the unique identity number
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not only for the rural masses but also for the economy at large. Prof S Subramaniam, Chairperson, African Centre for Mobile Financial Inclusion (ACMFI), spoke on the broader perspectives of financial inclusion, focusing on the need to improve the state of the services. There is a need for both public and private sectors to work in close collaboration. He pointed out that the shortfalls in the system are because of the various unmet commitments, and there was a need for transparency in the management of the resources. For effective governance, not only technology but effective and viable policies are needed too, he said. Santanu Sengupta, Director, Corporate Affairs and Finance, ACMFI compared the Indian scenario of financial inclusion with other successful models, globally. He emphasised that the main challenge faced in India was that a huge population was bankless and illiterate. This needed to be addressed to make financial inclusion work in rural areas. Satyajit Nath, Chief Architect, Family Hat spoke about the various challenges faced in rural areas. The distance to the nearest bank is a major challenge faced on the demand side, i.e. by the
There is a need to develop A financial inclusion framework for enabling public and private sector organisations to collaborate program for Indian residents. He highlighted that the extent of financial inclusion in Indian villages was only five percent, with the main challenge in rural areas being non-availability of banks and the high cost of operating bank accounts. There is an urgent need to create the national infrastructure to make the electronic money transfer easy, said Sharma. Ajay Singh, CEO, Forbes Technologies, pointed out the main challenge in the financial inclusion is at the front-end or at the delivery end and typically pertains to the high transaction cost. The need is for a viable model that can be sustainable for all stakeholders, he stressed. Financial inclusion is important
consumer, especially in the rural areas. Also, the products provided are not so very useful for the people. Another important challenge that is a barrier on the demand side was illiteracy and had to be addressed seriously, he added. S Kuberan, Project Manager, Electronic Benefit Transfer, Department of Rural Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh was of the view that financial services should be for the disadvantaged and the low-income groups. He spoke of the various successful financial inclusion models used by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, particularly the branchless banking model.
egov india 2010
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GTZ workshop
Blueprint now, no e-blues later
rico apitz Managing Consultant, ]Init[, Germany
Standards and frameworks lay the foundation so essential for an effective delivery of future e-Governance services
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ven as the Indian government prepares to roll out new information technology schemes to deliver faster, better public services to its citizens, formidable challenges remain for the successful implementation of its e-Governance systems. The ability of e-Governance to deliver on its promises tomorrow will largely depend on aspects related to standards, architectures and interoperability today. But how have other countries addressed these issues? It is against this backdrop that the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) organised a session at eINDIA 2010 on the European experience with e-Governance and compared the best practices there with the Indian experience. The session was organised in association with the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification Directorate (STQC), Department of Information Technology. Showcasing the German experience through “e-Governance Standards and Architectures,” Rico Apitz, Managing Consultant, ]init[, shared the current status, scope and goals of standardisation in the country while also elaborating on future possibilities. He spoke, for example, of SAGA, which provides the blueprint for any IT project taken up by the German federal government and contained recommended standards, architectures, infrastructures, specifications and technologies for e-Government applications in the country. “No longer does SAGA simply represent Standards and Architectures for e-Government Applications; with the onset of SAGA 5, its scope has gone beyond e-Government applications and now addresses all software systems,” commented Apitz. Moving beyond German best practices, the session also showcased speakers from STQC to bring in a comparative framework with which to look at the path taken by India in implementing e-Governance systems. A case in point is the Quality Assurance Framework (QAF), developed recently by STQC in collaboration with GTZ.
It addresses similar issues that SAGA does. Sharing the experience of developing a standardised code for quality in the Indian context was Alok Sain, Director of STQC IT Services in Kolkata. He highlighted the transformation of public sector’s internal and external relationships through Net-enabled operations, IT and communications, among others. He was supported by NE Prasad, who currently heads STQC IT Services in Hyderabad, and by Dr P Balasubramanian who is working on the ‘Open Technology Centre (OTC) Project’ of the National Informatics Centre. The session then came to a close with an interactive Q&A session with the audience, drawing out similarities, differences and good practices emerging from the comparison of experiences. In cooperation with Cluster Pulse, GTZ also organised a workshop titled ‘ICT 4 SME—A Sustainable Approach to the SME market.’ It focused on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) within small and medium enterprises (SME) to increase their business opportunities. The speakers, representing academia, industry, and development organisations, looked at the three main aspects of the ICT 4 SME approach. While the first aspect represented the main challenges SMEs in the country were facing, the second showcased the approach GTZ chose to establish a sustainable business model to penetrate the SME market and increase ICT adoption. As a special focus, the third aspect provided an insight into the role of BDS providers as an adoption catalyst with respect to ICT in the SME segment. The workshop concluded with examples from the field and the practitioners sharing their experiences. As Professor Amir Ullah Khan, Research Director at the Bangalore Management Academy, summed up, “The session was useful as it presented an insight into the productivity increases resulting from the use of ICT in the SME sector. Increased ICT usage and exposure leads to higher skilled and unskilled employment too, though the rate of increase in skilled employment is more. Ease of ICT penetration will depend of availability of power, pricing of hardware and training of manpower. “
ritobaan roy Senior Project Officer, GTZ
N E Prasad Senior Director, STQC
alok Sain Director, STQC IT Services, Kolkata
Dr P Balasubramanium Open Technology Centre Project, NIC
September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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Thought Leaders Conclave
Three ‘C’s to cheer e-Governance Connectivity to the network, capacity building for govt employees and change in peoples’ mindset—these are the big factors
(L-R) CD Arha, Former CIC, Andhra Pradesh; Commdr Shyam Kaushal, Regional Director India, WiMax Forum; Suresh Chanda, Commissioner Commercial Taxes, Andhra Pradesh; Ashank Desai, Founder, Mastek (Chair); K Ratna Prabha, Principal Secretary–IT, Andhra Pradesh; S N Tripathi Commissioner-cum-Secretary Information & Public Relations, Orissa; Rajiv Aggarwal CEO, e-Governance Spanco; Dr Ajay Kumar, Principal Secretary, IT, Kerala; Susanta Mazumdar, Joint Secretary, IT, West Bengal; Rajesh Verma Principal Director, IT, Sikkim
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shank Desai, Founder, Mastek, discussed India’s standing in e-Governance compared to other countries in the world. He spoke about the e-Gov development index comparing the performance of India with the developed countries of the world. He further discussed about the Indian government’s online participation, which is way behind various other countries. Commdr Shyam Kaushal, designation, WiMax Forum, emphasised that it was important to have the will of the government to make changes in the system to meet the set targets. It was equally important to make the masses literate to ensure the required services reached the right individuals at the right time, he added. Suresh Chanda, Commissioner, Commercial Taxes, Government of Andhra Pradesh, said that to bring changes in the system, a political demand and awareness among the government officials needs to be created. It’s also important to
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Government of Orissa, said it was important to have good governance before having e-Governance. To improve the scenario in India, it was very important to create transparency among government officials at all levels, he added. Rajiv Aggarwal, CEO e-Governance, Spanco, opined that to improve e-Governance in India it was important to create awareness both at the public and the citizen levels so that the right services reached the right people at the right time. Capacity building was equally important to make sure the right methods were used to deliver the services. He also discussed the need for change management at all levels among government officials. Dr Ajay Kumar, Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Kerala, advocated for the need of political commitment along with the capacity building to make e-Governance a bigger success. Susanta Mazumdar, Joint Secretary, IT, Government of West Bengal, discussed factors such as poverty, education and peoples’ mindset in rural areas. To improve the state of e-Governance improve in our country, he emphasised that that there was a need to work upon these factors. Rajesh Verma, Principal Director, IT, Government of Sikkim, pointed out that lack of computerisation in the backend in govern-
it is important to create awareness at the public and the citizen levels so that right services reach the right people at the right time have pro-IT leaders in the system. To make e-Governance a success, awareness among citizens is equally important, Chanda noted. K Ratna Prabha, Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Andhra Pradesh pointed out that there was a huge digital divide in the country between the rich and the poor. A major lacuna in the system was the nonavailability of services for the common man in regional languages. The government is working towards providing citizen-centric services for the common man but illiteracy comes as a hindrance. SN Tripathi, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Information & Public Relations Department,
ment departments was one of the main reasons for insufficient success of e-Governance in the country. He further pointed out that to bring improvement, Internet connectivity in all places at all times was needed and the mindsets in rural areas had to be changed. CD Arha, Former CIC, Government of Andhra Pradesh, pointed out that the pressure from Right to Information (RTI) will enforce better e-Governance. NK Pradhan (not in the photograph), Minister—IT, Government of Sikkim, spoke on the need for transformation in the overall administration to keep pace with changes happening in the rest of the world.
egov india 2010
Public safety & security
Modernise policing, with ICT A safe and secure state is not only comforting for citizens but also gives fillip to economic activities and growth
(L-R) Ajay Sharma, Global Head -Pre Sales & Solutions, TCS; Puneet Gupta, Vice President, Public Sector, IBM India; Prakash Kumar, Director Internet, Cisco Systems India; Sanjay Sahay, IGP, Police Computer Wing, Karnataka; Loknath Behera, IGP, National Investigation Agency, Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI (Chair); T Krishna Prasad, IGP and Director, Police Communications, Andhra Pradesh
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he session discussed the state of modernisation of security forces, especially of the police force, which is poor to say the least. It was moderated by Loknath Behra, IGP, National Investigation Agency. In his opening remarks, Behra said that a safe state would foster growth. “The Prime Minister has said that unless there is security there will be no development. It is quite essential and the need of the hour to modernise, equip and strengthen the security forces with latest technology and assist in dealing with the security threats in a better manner,” he noted. T Krishna Prasad, IGP and Director, Police Communications, Andhra Pradesh Police,
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kits to access database of various departments. This would help in establishing identification of various individuals,” he stated. Puneet Gupta, Vice President—Public Sector, IBM India, spoke about integrated intelligence solutions which can assist agencies in anticipating and preventing events like 26/11 and 9/11. He laid stress on refining the data into intelligence and said, “We don’t have any dearth of data around us, but we need mechanisms through which we can standardise the data format, and analyse and share it across agencies.” He also spoke about the advanced identity recognition and resolution technologies, wherein the system can throw back data once something similar is fed into it, thus helping in establishing any relationship between identical inputs. Initiating his presentation with brief note on CCTNS, Sanjay Sahay, IGP, Head of Police Computer Wing, Karnataka Police said that Wipro Infotech had been chosen to develop the core application software in 52 weeks. The project is to be completed by the end of the financial year 2010-2011 and would enable the delivery of nine citizen services of the police department. He underlined that the ICT framework for security is mainly limited to the command and control centres and the safe-city concept. Rural India has been quite aloof from the modernisation of security systems. Ajay Sharma, Global Head—Presales and Solutions, TCS, said what is more needed is capacity building and change management for the security personnel. Terming cyber security
Automation of various policing processes is needed and can markedly improve law and order situation in the country outlined the state of computerisation in AP police and said that since January 2009, the first information reports (FIR) were being posted online. “In 2010, the entire investigation process has been made online, including filing of charge-sheets and appeals. We have a database of 17 lakh FIRs and 6,000 criminals and history sheets, unidentified dead bodies and most importantly the investigation tool
as another area to be guarded, he emphasised on a more serious and focused approach towards it. Prakash Kumar, Director Internet, Cisco Systems India, Cisco, brought home the point that in an event of terrorist attack, the most essential thing is to disseminate the real-time information about the event and channel it to the authorities and to have a reliable G2G communication network. September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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egov india 2010
Urban e-Governance
City bodies need geo apps Given the complexities of modern urban development projects, tools like GIS can ease the planning and decision making processes
(L-R) Prakash Rane Managing, Director, ABM Knowlegeware; Ashis Sanyal, Sr Director, DIT, Ministry of Communications & IT, GoI; Rajendra Erande, Director IT, Pune Municipal Corporation (Chair); Sanjay Sharma, GM, IT HUDA, Haryana; Rajesh Mathur, Vice Chairman, NIIT Technologies Ltd; Srikanth Shitole, Vice President - Transformation, Business & Managed Services, Cisco India & SAARC
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n today’s world, management of urban development and governance demands integration and collaboration cutting across different government departments for efficient delivery of services to citizens. The session on Urban e-Governance, which was moderated by Rajendra Erande, Director of Information Technology, Pune Municipal Cooperation, focused on the strategies for leveraging e-Governance in dealing with emerging challenges in the urban governance domain. Prakash Rane, Managing Director, ABM Knowlegeware, described administration reforms as a must for time-bound service delivery in urban local bodies (ULBs). He professed that unless a department went for business process re-engineering (BPR), it was not practical for it to offer effective citizen services. He also led stress on standardisation in accepting citizen data for various services.
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Ashish Sanyal, Senior Director, Department of IT, Government of India pointed out the significance of GIS in governance. GIS enables representation of information in the form of visuals and graphics, which comes as an easy tool for decision making. He threw light on the application of GIS in sales, marketing, distribution, sales profiling, utilities, transportation, demographic trends and types of soil. Talking about the ICT experience at Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), its General Manager–IT, Sanjay Gupta pointed out that the authority with 18 state head offices and 37 divisional offices, and over 300 visitors per day had no mechanism to verify what an official wrote on the given land file. He further informed, “A 24x7 data centre was established. Post the deployment, services like online tracking of applications were offered to citizens. While the number of delivery channels was reduced to five from more than 10 earlier. The deployment enhanced revenue generation by 20-30 percent.” In his presentation on ‘Roadmap for using GIS in e-Governance,’ Rajesh C Mathur, Vice Chairman, NIIT GIS said, “GIS brings ease in the planning process, makes it more transparent and acts like a powerful tool in decision making.” He stressed that GIS served as a platform for collaboration among government departments, “It’s a platform for integration of
Much process simplification can be achieved by standardising citizen data formats across various services This could be achieved by standardising the formats of application forms. An e-Governance project starts after the IT project ends, Rane noted. The IT implementation is about just 40 percent of the project. The rest 60 percent of the project comprises data management, cleaning of data and excessive public scrutiny of projects. The major part of the project is the institutionalisation of IT into the department. Importantly, BPR should have the broad perspective in view that not technology but good governance is the ultimate objective.
information collected from various sources.” Srikanth Shitole, Vice President—Transformation, Business and Managed Services, Cisco India & Saarc, said, “By 2025, 70 percent of the population will be living in urban areas rather than in the country side. This shift will put huge pressure on ULBs in managing the cities.” He advocated change in the role of an ULB as an urban service provider. He proposed an ICT solution that would integrate all other departments with a single network and data centre.
egov india 2010
Technologies 4 government
Infrastructure first Like sound mind lives in a sound body, e-Govt apps too run smoothly on a robust data centre underneath
(L-R) Dr Neeta Shah, Director, e-Governance, Gujarat; Deepak Jain, Head–Data & Storage Solutions, Huawei Symantec India; Arun Shetty, Head, Avaya Aura Sales & Consulting, Avaya; P Venugopal Director STPI, Hyderabad; Sanjay Sahay, IGP, Police Computer Wing, Karnataka (Chair); L Suresh, President, ITSAP; BV Sarma, DDG National Informatics Centre, Hyderabad; Sanjay Kumar, MD, APTS
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ata centre and networking are essential components of an IT infrastructure and can be seen as the head and nervous system of a human body. Effective management of these core IT components in the government was the talking point of the session on “ICT Infrastructure, Data Centres, Network and Communications.” The session was moderated by Sanjay Sahai, IGP, Police Computer Wing, Government of Karnataka. Recalling the dilemma that the state of Gujarat faced way back in 2000 on whether to first create an integrated ICT infrastructure or to take up the applications, Neet Shah, designation, said, “The state chose for creating the infrastructure.” Shah informed that the state had completed one BOOT cycle for the SWAN project and that around 30,000 villages in the state had
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Arun Shetty, Head, Avaya Aura Sales and Consulting, said, “Our focus is on serving citizens and meeting specific objectives established by the government.” Shetty proposed the contact centre model, where the reach can be through an SMS, e-mail, fax or even by posting messages on social networking sites. He said the continuous improvement in service delivery, safety and operational continuity and budget constraints were some of the challenges in realising the objective. Deepak Jain, Head, Data and Storage Solutions, Huawei Symantec India, while proposing that the consolidation of the existing data centres was very important, pointed out the requirements of the next-generation data centres and said that these should be scalable and built for future requirements. Sanjay Kumar, Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh Technological Services, Government of Andhra Pradesh notified about various ICT initiatives taken up in the state since 1999, including the SWAN project that provided 8Mbps connectivity at the state-to-district level and 2Mbps connectivity at the districtto-mandal level. He also informed that a pilot was being done for setting up connectivity in villages through a Wi-Fi system. The pilot would be completed by December 2010, and then would be scaled to all villages having
Way back in 2000, Gujarat toggled on prioritising the infrastructure or the apps. Building the infra yielded good results e-Gram centres. “The data centres became operational in 2008. We are using bandwidth from four service providers including BSNL, Tata and Airtel. Gujarat is the first state in the country to have 3-tier data centre and 4-sub data centres,” he told. On applications front, Shah said, “The government used Integrated Financial Management System to close the financial books for fiscal 2010 by March end. Earlier, the same work used to cross the deadline by a month. Besides, we now publish the budget online.”
population more than 2,000. L Suresh, President, ITSAP presented the citizen’s perspective of the robustness of IT infrastructure and its subsequent impact on citizen services. BV Sharma, DDG, National Informatics Centre, Hyderabad outlined various hosting services being offered to government bodies from by the NIC Hyderabad centre. P Venugopal, Director, STPI, Hyderabad detailed various initiatives taken up by STPI for the promotion of software and IT industry. September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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opinion
privacy
Alok Gupta MD, Pyramid Cyber
A curve to the ‘B’ storm? Government’s real worry is probably that the service could be a backdoor for espionage, yet non-intrusive workarounds are needed
T
here is more to the BlackBerry issue than meets the eye. If we think it’s about security through encryption, we are assuming that the largest cache of wealth lies behind the biggest lock, one we have yet not broken. This assumption is wrong and is leading us on to the wrong track. The BlackBerry issue has seen a series of cover page appearances across dailies, and news and business magazines. Some of the reporting has been biased (even to the point of misinformation) giving PR managers nightmares that may not cease too soon. And some are struggling with what really the issue is—why is BlackBerry behaving haughtily? Still others have remarked that Blackberry is exhibiting double standards as it has given in to other western governments. Truth is never black or white. It lurks somewhere in between and this situation can therefore be no different. Let’s start from the very beginning. BlackBerry’s security architecture is based on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), one that is also adopted by the government of USA and consid-
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ered to be among the most robust in the industry. The government’s demand of ‘unrestricted’ access to information residing on Blackberry servers at one level smells of a bit of ignorance that is not fathomable because it is not a problem they cannot crack. As a matter of fact they have. A statement released by the government nearly a year ago claimed, “The government has decrypted the data on Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry networks. The department of telecommunication (DoT), Intelligence Bureau and security agency National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) have done tests on service providers such as Bharti Airtel, BPL Mobile, Reliance Communications and Vodafone-Essar networks for interception of Internet messages from BlackBerry to non-BlackBerry devices. Initially, there were difficulties in cracking the same on Vodafone-Essar network but that has also been solved.” What it means is that the government can snoop on e-mail messages sent to the BlackBerry through the Internet service and not through Blackberry Enterprise Service (BES). It is this service that the government wants to be opened up.
Tomorrow it could be the Internet which can’t be just ‘switched’ off, a luxury that government enjoys with BlackBerry
However, the security built into BlackBerry devices by RIM is based on a system that allows customers to add a layer of security on top by creating their own key, and RIM does not have a master key or any mechanism that will allow it to gain access to crucial corporate data. So if RIM claims it cannot read the encrypted information, the company is not entirely incorrect. The government’s demand that RIM opens this platform amounts to asking a company to let loose a lever on which the very foundation of the company rests. The government is thus asking RIM to put its business model of ensuring safety and privacy of data in transit at risk. And thus it came as no shock that the company’s valuation took a beating when this issue took center stage. Security of its data in transit is exactly the reason why corporate honchos love their berries. They are assured that the ‘sensitive’ data that resides there is vaulted safe. Real-time monitoring of data that flows through the BES ecosystem will create risks of its own to businesses operating in India by exposing confidential corporate information to the eyes of others for potential misuse. Our track record of protecting
privacy
such information is something that we cannot pride ourselves of. And the logic of access to the very corporate BES defeats me, it is largely a preserve of the corporate, and it is very improbable (if not entirely impossible) that terrorists will be able to use a corporate account. And I have reason to believe RIM’s claims that it does not offer even the US government to spy on customers realtime. And there is no reason why RIM should not extend the same measure to India, the world’s fastest growing telecom market. While not many of us know of this, the terrorists are smarter than we often assume. This hue and cry about ‘opening up’ of the BlackBerry will only forewarn them not to use the service at all. And why should they, when they have their own encryption standard, which also has not been cracked yet. Yes, they have their own encryption standard which bears the name Mujahideen Secrets. Early last year, an update to the same was also released. Mujahideen Secrets 2 is an easy-to-use tool that provides 2,048-bit encryption, an improvement over the 256-bit AES encryption supported in the original version. It has a very good Graphical User Interface (GUI) that is targeted at average IT users. The second version of the software is interesting because it allows the user to encrypt not only e-mails but also Yahoo and MSN chat messages. But that’s for the IT-literate terrorists... There is another variety of terrorists—those who are technology-averse. One of them is the grand old man of this trade—Osama Bin Laden. He has been evading authorities not because he has or uses any best-of-breed technology, but because he is a marginal user and therefore leaves no digital footprints. So is the BlackBerry issue really about encryption? The government’s apprehension could be about something else
opinion
A solution is to create an escrow account where keys can be placed, with access being subject to certain conditions
i Recommend A book that goes beyond “geek talk” of hackers to explain what cyber war is, how cyber weapons work, and how vulnerable we are as a nation. Author: Richard A. Clarke & Robert Knake Price: Rs 1,284/-
too. Since all data travels to BlackBerry servers, this may provide for a ‘backdoor’ to other western governments. And governments have in the past used companies to further their goals of this nature. This fear and assumption is definitely worth considering. A backdoor of this kind can make espionage easy and hassle free, albeit with limited results. And if it is this argument that the government is pushing underneath, it may make sense. Yet, the question remains how India should look at addressing such an issue. Tomorrow it could be the Internet and there it would become impossible to ‘switch’ things off, a luxury that the government enjoys with BlackBerry. Will it then be a matter of having institutions or companies listen to the government’s demands? If yes, then the matter will have to be in the realm of compliance. This throws another question: compliance with what? After all, the government’s reaction to the BlackBerry controversy (and I use the stronger sibling to the word ‘issue’ on purpose) is best described as knee-jerk. To continue with the example of BlackBerry, the company operates in nearly 175 countries and its operations in all of these, I assume, are on the right side of the law. So why would BlackBerry want to be any different in India?
Your daily cup of hot tea with hot e-Governance news!
These issues and the risks associated with new-age services can only be mitigated if there is adequate and appropriate legislation in place. However, the law cannot and must not take a lopsided view of any situation, even if it involves national security. For instance, laws in many countries stipulate that companies must open up in case of any emergency. This approach is widely accepted but I feel it is largely reactive and again goes against what governments are trying to achieve, monitoring on a real-time basis. There can be less intrusive solutions. For instance, applying the fundamental principle of an escrow account can help solve such a situation. The keys or whatever IP that needs to be accessed can be placed in an escrow account, the withdrawal or access to which can be subject to certain conditions. Such arrangements can create a win-win situation for all—the government, the service provider (RIM in this case) and the customer too, who will continue to get access to uninterrupted services. And all of this does not challenge the very business models of companies. It’s time that someone in the government sits back and ponders over the system’s weaknesses and the more transparent and democratic ways to address things.
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September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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PATHTAKERS
ashis sanyal
A perfectionist policy maker
S
Nurturing of an idea is more crucial than making strategies, feels Ashis Sanyal, Senior Director—e-Governance at DIT, Govt of India
etting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan,” the famous statement made by Tom Landry, the noted American Soccer Coach, is also the doctrine of Ashis Sanyal, Senior Director—e-Governance, Department
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By Tanu Kaur | Photography Joe
of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in Government of India. An ardent advocate of using technology for the masses, Sanyal strongly believes that one should not even start executing a plan till the process of planning is complete. “I am so obsessed with this thought that in my entire life, I could not go even go to
My Inspiration
The fact that society always moved forward with the sustained efforts put in by unsung heroes who never bothered to enjoy the outcomes
see a movie at a short notice, just because I had not planned for it,” Sanyal shares. Having started his career as an Indian Engineering Services (Electronics) officer in 1976, Sanyal soon joined the M/o Communications and later, Department of Electronics (now Department of IT), through an open interview in 1982. The decision, according to him, proved to be a pillar stone of his career and provided him the opportunity to handle various national-level projects in the areas of citizen-centric e-Governance program design, management and implementation, rural service delivery programs and implementation, and design of last mile connectivity policy, among others. Sanyal has been singularly responsible as mission leader for implementation of policy, planning, implementation and monitoring of the core e-Governance Network Infrastructure Program of USD 850 million—the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) for the entire country. He made vital contributions in
ashis sanyal
Up, close & personal birth December 23, 1950 ANNIVERSARY December 7, 1981 BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT My colleagues, peers, juniors and even some of my seniors (!) take me seriously when I speak on the subject assigned to me SUCCESS
standard-based wide area network architecture including security, interoperability and manageability, which would be made applicable for all the states and UTs in the country. This has led the network and system integrators to provide standard-based network solutions for the wide area network requirements all over the country. He has also been alternate mission leader for policy, planning, implementation and monitoring of the USD 1.6 billion national scheme for establishing 100,000 Common Services Centres (CSCs) across the country. While he was responsible for drafting policy guidelines and development of basic framework for the CSC program, the experience also helped him provide valuable inputs for Telecenters at the global level. The CSC project envisages ubiquitous access to bridge the digital infrastructure divide and to facilitate economic upliftment of various strata of rural community coupled with service delivery mechanism. Sanyal’s contributions in the area of core e-Governance infrastructure projects in the National e.Governance Plan (NeGP) have been significant and continued, and he is closely involved as a senior team member in e-Governance policy formulation. “I was privileged to handle many projects at DIT. I have never believed that e-Governance can be done by government alone. Most of the e-Governance projects need to be on a PPP model,” he says. But isn’t the bureaucratic system itself responsible for making things complicated in the project implementation primarily? “We certainly need smart processes. I mean let’s take the case of issuing a driving license. Why do you need a government person to take photographs or having a separate lamination department? It takes lot of effort and government expenditure. These are the non-core functions and can be outsourced,” Sanyal strongly opines. So, has he ever got frustrated with some of these unending processes?
MANTRA Do not start execution till you finish your planning PURPOSE IN LIFE To be profoundly known as a good human being before I die
PATHTAKERS
“Yes, as a human being. I feel disappointed if I do not see the results. But at the end of the day you are a part of a large system, so it’s important to do your part sincerely and give your best,” he tells. And he certainly has given his best, be it formulation of the broadband access policy for rural service delivery or formulating technology framework for laying of a network for telemedicine services in Africa. In the course of his illustrious and wide-ranging career, he was engaged as the member-convener of the Inter-Departmental Technical Committee on Wireless Broadband Access Policy, mandated to formulate the broadband access policy for the rural service delivery outlets and other government and private entities located in rural India. This important technical committee outlined the appropriate broadband wireless last mile connectivity policy for the government with a long-term vision on futuristic technologies. Recommendations of this committee in August 2006 led the foundation for the rural broadband wireless access implementation framework for the government, leading to large broadband wireless projects currently being implemented across the country by the Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. He was also involved in formulating the technology framework for network design and architecture for the satellite and submarine cable based backbone network for pan-African e-Network which would connect 104 nodes in 52 African Union (AU) member countries and 12 nodes in India, to provide tele-education and telemedicine services for the AU countries. Sanyal feels that this assignment gave him a unique opportunity to design the technology architecture and implementation framework with defined service level requirements for underprivileged countries of African Union with varied e-readiness, opportunities and technology absorption. Despite having stuck with pragmatic work approach throughout his life, his faith in God and destiny is surprisingly undivided. “I am very God fearing. I would always think that everybody is destined to play a particular role in his life. Faith not only keeps you focused but also puts pressure of doing right things in the right manner, which is extremely crucial in the life of any human being,” Sanyal reasons. Hailing from Bengal, he is a voracious reader and has got a great collection of books. He is also passionate about music and though work does not permit him much time he is planning to start practising Sitar, something that he had learnt during his college days, more religiously. And while he is currently spending his valuable time in enablement of citizen-centric e-Governance policy formulation with a specific emphasis on rural service delivery and strategy, given an opportunity, he would also like to realise his theatre skills and direct plays and even movies. “That is exactly what I wanted to make a career of. But now the way things are going on, I do not know whether it’s possible until I take a re-birth!” he laughingly shares. September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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logoff
Shubhendu Parth Managing Editor eGov
Spatial data policy please! We don’t even have a nationwide plan for spatial data, let alone its usage. Time to hurry up
G
eographic information system or the GIS platform that should run across all other development platforms—be it education, health and security or mega projects like Jawahar Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Rajiv Arogyasri or the Unique Identification Number— still remains off India’s and NeGP’s radar. In fact, it’s strange that India is yet to even draft a policy on creating a national spatial data (NSD) platform, not to talk about its usage. And while government agencies have the option of seeking help from the Survey of India for their topo-sheets, they need to get in touch with the nearest Regional Remote Sensing Services Centres (RRSSC) of ISRO or with NRSA, also a division of ISRO for more complex analysis and cases where geo-referenced data (data with latitude longitude information) is required. So what can India do on this front? The government can set up a National Spatial
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Data Infrastructure (NSDI) to support public and private applications of geospatial data—from agriculture, health and transportation, to emergency response and public safety. For example, on the critical issues of land acquisition, the GIS infrastructure can help the state’s land management initiatives, including collecting and indexing digital geographic information like cadastral, terrain, environmental datasets, as well as information on ownership and land use. The collected datasets can be fed into the spatial data warehouse of the respective state land commission that can help states take more informed land planning and management decisions—from land suitability assessment to management of land reserves, development of commercial and residential hubs. In fact, an integrated GIS platform along with common spatial data model and metadata development can further improve the quality of land use data, a critical input when it comes to determining the compensation for citizens for acquisition of their land. Interestingly, the same data, particularly for
rural areas, can be used to chalk out better agriculture policies and infrastructure to improve irrigation, roads, warehouses and agriculture markets or mandis. It can even serve as an input for the MNREGA or the Rajiv Arogyasri program. Or, let us consider its use for the national census that collects humongous socio-cultural and demographic data. The use of GIS as a platform for undertaking the massive census exercise would mean much faster analysis of data, which in turn would ensure that respective government agencies would know how to spend money at the right place and at the right time, and the areas where they would need collaboration and investment from the private sector. Further, the policies, plans, spending or quality of citizen service can be presented as dots on the maps that can be made public to allow citizens to actually give feedback or even register their protests, a concept that would actually lead to a real-time evaluation of all government projects. The GIS-based public scrutiny and feedback mechanism would also make the various government agencies more accountable.
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