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2014 ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-governance ` 75 / US $10 / ISSN 0973-161X
JULY 2014 | VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 07
special Interviews
Ameya Abhyankar District Magistrate, New Delhi
V K Gupta
Member, Railway Board, Government of India
Chetan Vaidya Director, School of Planning & Architecture
Yogender Chandolia Mayor, North Delhi Municipal Corporation
Jagan Shah
Director, National Institute of Urban Affairs
Niraj Verma
Joint Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, GOI
Smart Cities The urban tomorrow
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july 2014
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Contents
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volume 10 n issue 07
Susheel John
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MD - Document Imaging, Asia Pacific Region, Kodak Alaris
34
Chandrashekhar Ghosh CMD, Bandhan
32 viewpoint JnNURM Gets the PMIS Push 36 Cloud tech Indian Industry is Tech-Ready
38 Cloud tech
Smart Cities - The Urban Tomorrow
40 cloud tech Technology is What Works for People 42 cloud tech Cloud Security Linked to Customer Profile
interviews 12
Time to Rewrite the Script
44 cloud tech Let us Reboot the System
20
46 cloud tech Bridging the Govt-Citizen Gap
48 cloud tech Poor Connectivity Hampering eGovernance
Niraj Verma
Yogender Chandolia
Joint Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India
Mayor, North Delhi Municipal Corporation
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26
50 cloud tech No Less but not Enough 52 cloud tech Get More for Less
53 cloud tech I, Me and ‘My Web’
54 cloud tech Flying High on Cloud Wings 56 cloud tech Future will Walk on Cloud
57 cloud tech
Ameya Abhyankar
V K Gupta
Railway Board Member (Engineering), Government of India
District Magistrate, New Delhi
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Safer, Faster, Cheaper 58 cloud tech When Ignorance is not Bliss
59 cloud tech It’s User’s Trust that is Phished
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60 cloud tech New-gen Technology to Remain Afloat
Prof Chetan Vaidya
Director, School of Planning and Architecture
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egov / egov.eletsonline.com / July 2014
Prof Jagan Shah
Director, National Institute of Urban Affairs
61 cloud tech Public Cloud Suitable for G2C 62 cloud tech On Time, Every Time with ‘Sakala’ 63 event report Green Cities Forum 2014
Thinking Smart
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n a fast-urbanising world, India is setting the pace. Over the next 10 years, over 100 million Indians will move from villages to cities, seeking schools for their children, healthcare for their families and jobs for themselves. But, are the Indian cities equipped enough to embrace those neo-urbanites? Well, another data suggests India today has only 20 percent of the total floor space it will need by 2030 to accommodate the millions expected to migrate to its cities. So, the figures are scary and requirements humongous, to say the least. Urbanisation being a global phenomenon, countries across the world are toying with the idea of smart cities: while brand new smart cities are in the making in China, the UAE and South Korea, cities like Barcelona in Spain and Montpellier in France are implementing smart city solutions to deliver better services to their citizens. In tune with the needs of the time, in its election manifesto, the BJP had promised to build 100 hi-tech cities, and the Narendra Modi-led NDA government has gone a step further towards realisation of the smart cities vision by allocating `7,060 crore for the purpose in the Union Budget 2014-15. However, since raising a city from scratch is both time-taking and fund-intensive proposition, the government has added a tinge of pragmatism to the idea by announcing retrofitting some of the existing cities to turn those into smart ones. Urban planners also insist on creation of ICT-enabled smart cities for sustainable urban management, resource conservation, offsetting the impacts of climate change, vulnerability assessment, and above all, ensuring safe and secure for the urban dwellers. In line with the new government’s initiatives and to give shape to the concept of smart cities in the Indian context, Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd—the publisher of India’s premiere magazine on ICT in governance, eGov—decided to organise a Smart City 2014 Conference, Awards and Expo in New Delhi on July 18, 2014. The event, which will see representation from all over of the country, is meant to bring together the major stakeholders of urban development and eGovernance to discuss and deliberate on the various models of Smart City. This summit will take forward the government’s agenda of developing smart cities by finding out the best possible contribution from each stakeholder towards the development of high-tech cities across the nation. The July issue of eGov is dedicated to the cause of sustainable urban development culminating into a smarter urban space, where there is enough housing infrastructure for the city dwellers, sufficient energy and water conservation measures to meet the present and future needs, and adequate ICT applications to make traffic move smoothly, and more. Let’s push for economic, social and environmental sustainability. Happy reading! ravi guptA Ravi.Gupta@elets.in
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ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-governance
july 2014 volume 10 n issue 07
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cover story
Smart Cities The urban tomorrow In its election manifesto, the BJP had promised to build 100 hi-tech, smart cities, and the Modi-led NDA government seems only keen to fulfill that promise, writes Nirmal Anshu Ranjan of ENN
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ndian cities are today home to about 31 percent of the total population, i.e. about 410 million people live in urban areas, suggests the headcount of 2011. Of this, half the number resides in metro cities, thereby putting excessive stress on the urban infrastructures, including housing, water, energy, transportation and other services. Another study by apex industry body Assocham recently said the urban population of India grew by 2.8 percent during the 2001-2011 decade, adding over 9.1 crore people annually to the country’s population in cities. At this whopping growth rate, the urban population is expected to grow up to 590 million by 2030, accounting for nearly 40 percent of India’s population as compared to the present 31 percent or 410 million. In other words, the next 30-40 years will see an unprecedented transformation in the urban landscape; in fact, impacts of this new phase of urbanisation on the existing urban infrastructure and resources are already being felt. But, with necessity invariably playing the inventor, the rapid urbanisation has also spurred innovations in urban design, technologies and services, which have together culminated in the concept of Smart City, where synergy of people with space, ecology and infrastructure leads to economic growth and happy living. Even globally, the concept of smart cities— where infrastructure network and delivery of services are more efficient across telecommunication, logistics, water and gas supply—is being looked upon as a possible solution to the swelling urban population and the problems that come along. Today, it is possible to create smart cities with intelligent networks that manage basic citizen services and create living spaces—instead of sprawling concrete jungles—that are walkable, bikeable and above all, liveable.
What makes a city smart? A smart city is essentially a technology-driven urban space. Here, the Information and Com-
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cover story
munication Technology (ICT) is applied to the built environment, which not only addresses the common city problems like congestion and wasted energy, but also helps stimulate the much-needed economic growth and job creation. Such a city empowers its citizens with the right tools to connect to the right information through data aggregated from various sources like electronic sensors, general statistics, social networks, etc. It helps its people become informed citizens and take part in policymaking and service developments in their surroundings. Furthermore, a smart city has no barriers between sectors like energy, transport, ICT, water, waste management and healthcare, as integration of these sectors can bring benefits to all of those and deliver better living experience to the people. Water-energy saver: Consumption of scarce resources like water and energy is also optimised through advanced technologies and high-tech devices. Installation of smart water
meters helps monitor and reduce wastage in the system, saving 10-15 percent water per household. Similarly, smart grids fitted with sensors and instrumentation improve distribution network efficiency, and in conjunction with smart metering, those help match energy demand
Smart Cities and India l The concept is still quite
new in India, although it has received a lot of attention in the last few years l Several Indian cities have already begun deploying a few smart technologies to efficiently provide civic services l Cities such as Hyderabad, Surat, Coimbatore, Bengaluru, Mangalore, Jamshedpur, Kanpur, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai have launched initiatives related to deployment of advanced
communications systems, metro rail systems, traffic management systems, smart meters, GPRS for solid waste management, GIS to manage property tax, online water quality monitoring, online building plan approval schemes, etc l Several new smart cities – Kochi Smart City, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City and Lavasa – are being developed as model cities through private sector participation
l Seven smart cities are
under development by states with foreign aid as part of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC); work on two of these has begun; 24 new cities by 2040 have been planned under the project l The Narendra Modi government has unveiled plans to develop 100 smart cities across the country; made an allocation of Rs 7,060 crore for development of 100 smart cities in the Union Budget 2014-15
and supply. Better energy management systems also help people automate the energy-consuming systems in buildings, and building sensors and controls pinpoint the faults. There is also stress on the use of renewable sources of energy, like solar power and wasteto-energy generation, so as to conserve the natural sources of energy, as also the environment through lesser emission of green house gases. Moving cities: Coming to people’s movement, smart cards can link multiple modes of public transport, making it convenient for both users and transport personnel, who can understand mobility patterns. Real-time transport displays can provide visibility and information on availability of public transports to users, thus, encouraging uptake of mass transportation, and also give information on condition of traffic on various routes accurately. Smart cities are visualised to have an integrated transit corridor, where BRT, metro and trains are linked with pedestrian and cycle lanes. Personalised rapid transit systems use pods that can carry people directly from point to point, with no stop and no waiting at stations. Metro, trains, subway and primary roads run underground for easy bike and pedestrian movement. Subterranean parking spaces near commuter destinations reduce the need for ground parking. Digital parking meters send information to mobile-phones when a space July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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cover story
opens up, thus reducing traffic caused by drivers trolling for space. Centralised control: Centralised control centres through sensors and CCTV cameras are known to play a pivotal role in smart cities. They can provide real-time inputs on availability of water, electricity, public transport, healthcare and education. Smooth passage of traffic and public safety is also ensured from the control room itself. Intelligent communication tools enable administrators to manage and respond to emergencies faster. Such cities use technology to transform their core systems and optimise the return from limited resources.
A trillion-dollar opportunity With more and more people streaming into cities in search of better opportunities for education and employment, and urban spaces turning into engines of growth, urbanisation is a reality – for now and for the foreseeable future. So, it will be only in the fitness of things not to look upon urbanisation as a challenge; rather it should be treated as an opportunity to raise infrastructures and generate employment for all-round prosperity and well-being of the people at large. It was realisation of this very urbanisation-
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spurred necessity to create more cities to accommodate the increasing number of urban masses that led the government to pumping huge money into the project to create numerous smart cities along the DelhiMumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). The planners are looking to change the economic face of the nation through the world’s largest infrastructure project. When completed, the
City will be integrated by a central command centre and managed by smart devices using sensors and other intelligent communication tools. It will record and respond to events faster and anticipate and prevent problems. A resident’s smart device will be alerted to traffic conditions or residents can check parking availability, or even a natural disaster like flooding.
The NDA government has made an allocation of `7,060 crore in the Union Budget for developing of as many as 100 new smart cities across the country US$90bn project will have 24 new hi-tech cities along nearly 1,500 km course of the corridor, improving the living standards of about 180 million people. Incidentally, one initiative to develop a smart township in the country has been undertaken by the Wave Inc in Ghaziabad of UP, with technical knowhow from the IBM. Clean water, energy, transportation, public safety, education and healthcare in the Wave
The govt push The erstwhile two UPA governments had spoken of their intention to develop at least two smart cities in each state equipped with a host of modern features — intelligent transport, e-services and carbon neutral status — under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM). Since the existing mega cities are groaning under the weight of lack of planning and mismanagement, it had planned to develop medium-size cities with half-amillion to one million population. But with the ascension of the Narendra Modi-led NDA to the seat of power in Delhi, the proposed creation of smart cities seems to have got a fresh impetus. In keeping with its promise made in the election manifesto, the new government has made an allocation of `7,060 crore for development of 100 smart cities in the Union Budget 2014-15. Besides, with an eye on both creating and strengthening infrastructure in the country, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has also proposed setting up of an institution called ’3P India’ with a corpus of `500 crore. This will help in mainstreaming public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the smart cities segment, among others.
IN PERSON
Niraj Verma
Joint Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India
‘ITS Pill for Traffic Ills’
C
reation of world class urban infrastructure is on the radar of the new government, wherein the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways plays a vital role. Tell us about the mandate of your department.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has got two important verticals. One is related to transport wing and another to infrastructure wing. We basically look after proper implementation of the Motor Vehicle Act throughout the country when we deal with transport-related issues. Besides, the ministry is also engaged in formulating policies for the transport sector, including road safety, in the country. On the other hand, for the infrastructure wing, we construct national highways and we declare certain road stretches as national highways based on various certain criteria. Institutions like the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), which falls under the ministry, has been given the mandate to construct national highways, and ministry also builds up part of various roads in the country in consultation with and help from the state governments.
Urban infrastructure development is said to be essential for a country’s economic growth. Your comments as someone associated with one of the major infrastructure-related ministries? First and foremost, I would like to clearly state that our mandate is to construct roads in both rural and urban areas in the country. But it is true that urban infrastructure development is crucial. We have to address the issue of congestion in the urban areas. I think we need to have roads in sufficient numbers and designed efficiently to handle this problem.
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The government is going to start a pilot project on Intelligent Transport System (ITS) in India soon, says Niraj Verma in conversation with Souvik Goswami of ENN
IN PERSON
What is Intelligent Transport System? The coming into picture of Intelligent Transport System (ITS) holds promise for a sustainable and balanced transportation solution. ITS is essentially application of computer and communications technologies to fight transportrelated problems. ITS technologies enable gathering of data or intelligence and then providing timely feedback to traffic managers and road users. It results in improved safety for drivers, better traffic efficiency, reduced traffic congestion, improved energy efficiency and environmental quality, and enhanced economic productivity. Some examples of ITS include Advanced Traffic Management Systems, Advanced Traveller Information Systems, Advanced Vehicle Control Systems, Electronic Toll Collection Systems, Advanced Public Transportation Systems et al.
What kind of ICT initiatives are being implemented by your ministry? We have successfully implemented ‘e-Vahan’ and ‘Sarathi’ projects under the Mission Mode Project in the transport sector. As the names suggest, these projects deals with registration of vehicles and providing driving licences. These processes have been computerised up to 95 percent in the entire country and we are now collecting and sharing these data with various agencies like traffic-police and transport departments for effective implementation. We are also working on providing hassle-free services to the citizens with the help of these data. Apart from that, we are also implementing Electronic Toll Collection Centre plan for smooth flow of traffic on highways. We have already implemented the pilot project. Now we have decided to implement it nationwide in a phased manner. All the vehicles will have
passive RFID and the present experience of waiting in long queues at toll gates will become a thing of the past. We are hopeful of implementing it completely by 2016. The ministry is also looking at various measures to ensure passenger comfort while travelling through the national highways. We have conceptualised a new project called ‘RAHI - Road and Highway Information System’ for the purpose. We are focusing on Intelligent Transport System as well.
Tell us something about the Intelligent Transport System (ITS) concept. In developed countries, one can see detailed information about a particular highway, like weather forecast and traffic congestion updates, are available with the person who is driving a car. That is what we call Intelligent Transport System. In India, we are also thinking to use this kind of
advance technological system for better and safe road journey for the citizens. There will be a control room which will have an eye over particular stretches of road. We have already decided the stretch where ITS pilot project can be started and we are now looking at the various components for better implementation of the pilot project. In principle, we have agreed to start the pilot project. We have to also see whether we need ITS throughout the country. My own view is that we may not need ITS in the entire country. Presence of ITS will depend on that particular stretch’s volume of vehicular traffic. I think ITS can be very helpful in the urban areas where congestion is a factor and it will be also handy to have ITS in the hilly areas which are prone to natural disasters. We are hopeful of starting the process of pilot stage of ITS in the next five-six months.
The Modi Government has announced to develop 100 smart cities across the country. What is your opinion on IT-aided creation of urban infrastructure in India? I think the aim and use of IT for urban development is to provide comfort to citizens. There will be greater use of IT in the coming years for development. In the context of smart cities, I am sure there will be extensive use of ICT. Other components will be there for sure. But in relation to the transport scenario, ITS will play a pivotal role in the future smart cities.
What are the challenges in construction of road infrastructure in the country? One of the challenges is uncertain flow of investment. Sometimes economic situation also affects adversely. Problem of acquiring land for roads is also there as we need to acquire huge land to build highways. As far as the application of IT is concerned, one of the challenges would be to have a national-level IT architecture.
Please share your vision about the road infrastructure in the country. My vision as part of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is to have a good network of national highways and expressways in the country and we want to ensure hassle-free movement of vehicles. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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NDA govt’s maiden budget aims at ‘Digital India’ The new government has embarked on a major digital drive with its announcement of the Rs 500-crore “Digital India” programme, announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his maiden Budget speech. The idea, however, remains an extension of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of an “inclusive India”.
Comprising some ambitious programmes, the Digital India programme has been envisaged to be launched
nationwide to ensure broadband connectivity at the village level, improved access to services through IT¬enabled platforms,
Railway Budget proposes major IT initiatives The Indian Railways will soon revamp its online reservation system and introduce several IT-based operations, Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda’s has said. Presenting the NDA Government’s maiden Railway Budget 2014-15 in parliament on July 8, the minister said E-ticketing system will be upgraded to the next generation, which will support 7,200 tickets per minute to allow 1,20,000 simultaneous users. Further outlining the IT initiatives, Gowda said the railways will be turned into a paperless organisation in the next five years. “We will provide wi-fi services at A-1 and A category stations and in select trains, real-time tracking of trains and rolling stock, mobile-based wake-up
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call system for passengers and mobile-based destination arrival alert system,” he added. Private FDI Gowda’s maiden budget, which spared passengers of any further fare hike, proposes to attract private domestic and FDI in infrastructure projects and pursuing private-public partnership to boost the finances of the cashstrapped railways. However, rail fares were hiked only recently by a whopping 14.2 percent. Gowda said he plans to leverage the PSU’s resources by bringing in
egov / egov.eletsonline.com / July 2014
their investible funds in infrastructure projects. He announced plans to introduce a bullet train in Mumbai- Ahmedabad sector and setting up of a Diamond Quadrilateral network of high speed rail connecting major metros and growth centres. A sum of Rs 100 crore has been provided for initiating the project. Increasing the speed of trains to 160 to 200 km per hour on nine select sectors was another highlight of the budget, which proposes to allow all experimental stoppages to lapse after September this year.
greater transparency in government processes and increased indigenous production of IT hardware and software for exports and improved domestic availability. A National Rural Internet and Technology Mission for services in villages and schools, training in IT skills, and e¬Kranti for government services delivery and
governance schemes have been proposed with an allocation of Rs 500 crore. Traditionally, India has not enjoyed any great reputation of being a business ¬friendly nation. With a view to breaking this notorious image, an eBiz platform has been proposed to be floated, which aims to create a business and investor- friendly ecosystem in India.
Railways’ e-Plans to Push Telecom Sector The telecom sector is sure get a boost as the government makes efforts to ease travel for railway passengers by offering mobile ticketing, SMS alerts, cleanliness monitoring and wi-fi at stations. “The e-governance initiatives of the government, including the ones spelt out in the Railway Budget 2014-15, would easily improve the sectoral revenue by at least 2 percent,” said Rajan Mathews, Director General, GSM industry body COAI, adding that this could just be the tip of the iceberg until these services pick up. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) represents top mobile phone operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular. India’s mobile phone and broadband revenue is currently close to $30 billion (`180,000 crore) and is growing
10-11 percent annually. Delivering the budget speech on July 8, Railway Minister DV Sadananda Gowda said the focus is to bring a total change in the delivery of railway services. He said the railways would introduce destination arrival SMSes, ticket booking through phones and wake-up calls, among others. The railways also proposes to provide workstations in select trains on payment basis to add value to business travellers.
IN PERSON
Vineet Kshirsagar
Sr Director & Group Head – Government Business, Oracle
H
‘We Help Cities Modernise’
ow would you define a smart city?
According to UN statistics, over two-thirds of the population will be urban dwellers by 2050. Urban capabilities do not depend solely on hard infrastructure; knowledge communication and social infrastructure have begun to play a pivotal role in creating an urban eco-system. The concept of ICT-aided smart cities has been devised in this background. The current global economic downturn, fluctuations in tax bases and unfunded mandates have created severe budget constraints on local governments. True leaders in government and community organisations know that real integrated intelligence requires integration of government and constituents, a prerequisite for a city to become truly smart. These leaders recognise that city governments must establish clear policies that can be implemented as automated and streamlined processes. This requires changes to culture, organisations and the way technology is used by government and constituents. It also requires integration of the multitude of channels through which citizens and business communicate with government.
In which segments of a smart city do you offer technologies? Businesses and citizens require efficient and intelligent platform to interact and engage with their local authorities or administration. Oracle’s Solutions for Smart Cities, which is based on our experience with local government as customers, and best-in-class technology and applications, enables governments to do the following: • Smart Innovation - Resolves up to 90 percent (or more) of most government service requests through integrated multichannel services, including self-service Web/chat; local single numbers such as
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With a tech-friendly government determined to push for smart cities, we should expect a completely new India over the next decade, says Vineet Kshirsagar in an interaction with ENN
IN PERSON
311, 1823, 133, 115; Facebook; Twitter; e-mail, and so on • Smart Processes - Analyse and streamline key areas—service delivery, infrastructure expenditures, constituent feedback, and others—to determine which services to prioritise, extend, consolidate, or even discontinue • Smart Infrastructure - Modernise IT infrastructure to enable integration and interoperability with the city’s existing siloed legacy IT infrastructure and embedded intelligence into city infrastructure to enhance service delivery. Oracle has successfully supported local governments by developing and implementing innovative products to fortify their public services mission. Oracle iGovernment is in conjunction with our vision of the future of
Haryana are only some such examples. Globally, Oracle has been helping multiple governments modernise and transform their delivery of citizen sources. By developing a better technology infrastructure, India can leapfrog to the level that developed economies like the US are at in terms of government services delivery.
What are the drivers and barriers for smart city development in India? India ranks 68th out of 144 countries according to the 2013 Networked Readiness Index, compiled by the World Economic Forum for its Global Information Technology Report. This report ranks economies based on their capacity to exploit the opportunities offered by the digital age. Despite the fact that India has a
The new government has plans to bring about complete transformation. With 100 new smart cities planned...we should expect to see a completely new India over the next decade public sector with respect to ICT (Information, Computers and Telecommunications).
Which Indian projects have you lent your expertise in and where do those stand now? We have done a significant amount of work in India. While smart cities is a relatively new concept and initiative in India, we are working on providing the best infrastructure to modernise multiple cities. In India, we have worked with almost all states in one aspect or the other. Delhi Jal Board Revenue and Billing, power-grid projects in Gujarat, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, and taxation departments in Punjab and
considerable low level of willingness towards the adoption of technologies compared to other countries, we see an extremely high level of potential. With the recent changes in the political arena, there has been an increased focus on modernising departments and evolving citizen-centric services. On the bedrock of the digital age, governments are recognising the role of ICT in driving growth. This new environment is leading to a fundamental shift in customer expectations. These expectations are increasing the pressure on government to perform rapidly and meticulously. Today, governments are laying roadmaps for shaping a better
future which opens the doors of opportunity. Governments are looking at building an integrated, efficient and transparent service delivery platform across all programmes covering all services delivered to businesses, citizens and municipal employees. Oracle provides public-sector leaders with a complete, open and integrated suite of applications, servers and storage solutions engineered to work together to optimise every aspect of government operations.
How has been your Indian experience, and how would you describe the future of smart city development in India? Oracle has been in India since 1987. For the past 27 years, we have been investing and expanding in this country. We have grown here from strength to strength and realise the importance this country holds for businesses across the globe. It would not have been possible for us to not only survive but thrive in this country unless India offered great opportunities. We have had a successful run till date and intend to continue this in the future, too. The new government has plans to bring about transformation. With 100 new smart cities planned, it only goes on to show the potential this space has and how India will evolve in the next few years. If things go as planned, we should expect to see a completely new India over the next decade.
Do you feel some policy-related changes are required to fasttrack the concept in India? As a developing economy and with times changing fast, some tweaking of policies is always required. Smart cities is high up on the agenda of the new government, which has been riding the development wave. Therefore, we are confident that wherever policy changes are required, they will be made and implemented. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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IN PERSON
Ameya Abhyankar
District Magistrate, New Delhi
‘Rural Migration an Opportunity for Smart Cities’
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plagued by poverty and booming population? hat is your idea of a smart city?
Today’s urban landscape has a very diverse demographic profile. It is composed of people from different religions, cultures, professions and languages, coexisting and cohabiting in the same space. Besides, the density of population is quite high. If contextualised for a country like India – which is midway through the process of development – one finds that the aspiration and expectation level of the population is on a swing vis-à-vis- the available resources of the nation. Although we do not have resources at par with the European and the Western countries, people compare things with China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. There is a huge gap between the aspirations and expectations, and the ground reality. And, it is in this backdrop that the concept of smart city comes into play. I would define a smart city as one where decision making is based on sound information made available in an easy and intelligent manner to the decision makers. This helps in freeing up the process of decision making, and making it more objective and rational. We will be able to justify projects in terms of necessity and also define the outcome. I think this is where a smart city fits in.
Do you think the concept will work in India – a country
Actually, it’s the booming population that necessitates creation of smart cities. Such cities give the right tools to the decision makers to identify gaps in infrastructure and services, and identify patterns of public behaviour and that of public requirements, so as to rationalise the resources accordingly. It helps one in taking intelligent decisions. Patterns also help one simulate what a city would be like in the future. In that way, you have an organic conception of growth. In that sense, smart cities will definitely help. For instance, let’s talk about poverty alleviation schemes. If an anti-poverty scheme targets a mobile group of people in an urban area, actual assessment becomes difficult. But in a smart city, things are relatively more accurate. Even if it is an intra-city or inter-city movement, or a movement across the borders of a state, a tab is kept on those people. So, it becomes easier to provide them the benefits of the poverty alleviation programme.
Is it imperative for smart cities to operate on a high technofriendly concept? Definitely! That is the way the future of governance is headed in. There is an increasing use of electronic and IT process in governance... and this is how it would go in the days to come. We have to bring it into our process and system as best as we can.
As people from all directions head for urban areas in search of job opportunities, education, healthcare, better civic amenities and thus a better quality of life, smart cities seem the way forward, insists Ameya Abhyankar in a tete-a-tete with Gautam Debroy of ENN
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Can Delhi become a smart city? Delhi as a city has all the potential to become a smart city. The problem with Delhi is that it has a multiplicity of authorities on account of coexistence of two separate governments, Central and state, within the same territory. So, smart city concept would in a way help bridge the multiplicity of authorities. I feel in any capital region, you must have a chain of command, where the buck finally stops with a single person or a single agency. I think the concept would help the decision makers identify the problems areas better. Traffic department, for example, has staff crunch. If you have a system which gives you patterns about movement of people from one
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Can an ordinary citizen contribute to the making of a smart city?
location to another, volume of that movement and the time spent over the movement, it would help planners deploy their resources suitably. Delhi has all the ingredients for making a smart city — information technology infrastructure, stable power and the key decision makers staying close by. So, no wonder that it has always led by example in the egovernance domain.
Smart cities are also about better connectivity and better environment. Does Delhi have all that? If we compare Delhi with other metros in India, it will score high on all counts. As for connectivity, Delhi Metro is the only metro rail that has seen continuous expansion. It’s a huge success. Now it is moving out to the NCR region and satellite towns. We have a worldclass airport that is comparable with airports globally. In terms of transport infrastructure like roads, Delhi is the best compared to other metros cities of the country. As for availability of power, we are well placed. We have a population which is not only aware but also has upward expectations. Then, the population here is an aspiring one... whoever comes here becomes a Delhite, and compares the facilities available with the best in the world. Being the capital of this country, Delhi has the presence of several diplomatic offices. Also, lots of student exchange programme keep happening between the SAARC and Asian countries...lots of foreign delegations visiting the city. In this way, the exposure level of an average Delhite is much higher than his counterparts in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, or other metro cities. If you look at these aspects, you find that Delhi is already emerging as a smart city.
Delhi is also struggling with problems like water and power shortage as well as security of women. How will you cope up with these? Let’s take one thing at a time. All urban areas
across the world are facing numerous problems. Beijing, for example, has huge traffic problems. Total number of cars there is over 50-60 lakh and parking spaces are being sold for thousands of dollars...in fact, urban areas across the world are under stress. Water problem, for example, is there due to a gap between its demand and supply. If we have smart water meters, the exact amount of water required in a particular area can be determined as also the usage pattern. Such high-tech devices not just help regulate water supply, but also plug the wastage. The same applies to electricity, transportation and security issues in a smart city. And, Delhi would be no exception.
Don’t you think such huge migration volume in Delhi will affect its transformation into a smart city?
Yes, of course. Citizens can, in fact, contribute immensely to good governance. Governance is not one-way. Each action of a resident impacts the efficiency of the government. If, as a citizen one takes part in civic programmes, one can help manage the city better. There’s an effective partnership between people and government. The reason for most of the discontent today lies in the fact that people do not know the results of an individual’s action on the entire system, as there’s an information gap. But a smart city has the tools to bridge that info gap, as people know that they are part of the system.
How does the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model relate to the smart city concept? PPP is the way to forward. It accommodates stance of the government while giving space to the private sector. We require private sector today...we require private sector for investment, for example. PPP model gives access to the best technologies, more flexible thinking, and the ability to deliver on time. Public sector and private sector interactions are happening in most of the developing countries, as it is the demand of the time.
Smart cities give the right tools to decision makers to identify gaps in infrastructure and services, and identify patterns of public behaviour and their requirements, so as to rationalise the resources accordingly This is something that every smart city project will have to factor in. Migration is not going to stop. People come to the cities, because they don’t get in rural areas what they aspire for, be it better job opportunities, better education for their kids, better medical treatment, etc. They come with a hope for a better life. But no scheme can give results overnight. It takes time to build schools, roads and hospitals, and more importantly, it takes time to instil confidence in public that things will work correctly. Urban planners have to factor in migration for an inclusive development, and it should be converted into an asset, rather than a liability. If the migrants are coming for jobs, they are also contributing to the economy.
Elets Technomedia is organisaing a national event on the smart city concept. Any message? This kind of an event is very much necessary. The concept of smart city needs to be crystallised thoroughly today. And, this crystallisation can happen only when there is a forum for discussion, a forum for sharing ideas and a forum for professionals from different areas to interact with each others. Since smart cities require integration of diverse knowledge, and I think the initiative taken by eGov magazine is a right step in the right direction. It will provide the necessary platform and help consolidate the ideas for being translated into action at the earliest. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Yogender Chandolia
Mayor, North Delhi Municipal Corporation
‘Delhi will Make Perfect Smart City’
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hat is your idea of the applicability of smart city concept in India? People are moving to cities from the far-flung areas of the country in search of better prospects. So, crowding is a common phenomenon in the cities and various urban infrastructures are under extreme pressure. So, we need an urban planning that can be suitably tweaked to have more out of the fewer available resources. We need smart cities across the country. We don’t have many metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad with good facilities for urban living. Until and unless we develop smart cities, we won’t be able to accommodate the burgeoning urban population. Running on information and communications technology, smart cities will offer the best facilities to its dwellers.
with all the facilities one needs for a quality life. But that is not possible without creation of new cities, possibly smarter ones. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been insisting on strengthening urban infrastructures, and developing new cities and satellite towns. Moreover, the government has even made generous allocations for in its very first
Budget for the purpose. So, the way forward is developing our existing cities and adding new ones for the neo urban dwellers. We should not forget that this new ambitious lot coming from the rural areas will not just work towards self-development, but also make substantial contributions to the economy, as cities are the new economic hub of the country.
Is creation of smart cities a feasible idea in a country like India which is still fighting with poverty and booming population? Even after so many decades of Independence, we have not been able to attain progress in the real sense of the term. We are still haunted by the menace of poverty and population explosion has been plaguing India since the preIndependence times. It is a sad commentary on the apathetic attitude of the past governments. But we can’t hide behind the poverty veil and ignore the ground realities of the day. The present-day fact remains that there is a continuous influx of people from the far-flung rural areas to the cities in search of better job opportunities and other amenities of life. And, this trend is going to continue even in the days ahead. They need to be accommodated and provided
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With its impressive metro rail and road network, and a sound ICT infrastructure in place, the national capital is a perfect case of a metropolis waiting to be converted into a smart city, Yogender Chandolia tells Gautam Debroy of ENN
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Can Delhi be developed into a smart city? O yes, definitely! If we talk about Delhi, metro rail as an efficient mode of mass transport has today become a symbol of smart transport. It is expanding with every passing day. Road network in the capital is also an extremely good one. Then, we have one of the best information and communication technology network. However, due to wrong policies of the past governments, we have not been able to ensure a holistic development of Delhi. If we had had a futuristic vision, the Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) would have not been a failure here. All we needed was linking it with other transit hubs like metro and railway stations.
nity to raise all sorts of infrastructures rather than crying over the spilt milk.
PM Modi has also talked about developing city suburbs. How do you look upon the suburbs of Delhi? Unlike many other suburbs, the NCR region of Noida and Gurgaon are developing really well. These locations are today comparable with New Delhi and other developed cities, and fast turning into IT hubs as well as centres for job opportunities. The example of Noida and Gurgaon is also a pointer to the fact that if balanced development takes place across the states, people would not rush to cities like Mumbai and Delhi in search of opportunities.
The example of Noida and Gurgaon suggests if balanced development takes place across the states, people won’t rush to cities like Mumbai and Delhi in search of opportunities Also, due to haphazard and unplanned regularisation of slums, a number of areas are still awaiting even the basic amenities like water, power, hygiene and medical facilities. All this presents before us a perfect case of a metropolis waiting to be converted into a smart city. In fact, I would like to describe it as an opportu-
Do you think that greater thrust on PPP model can help in development of smart cities? The Public Private Partnership (PPP) model is a welcome concept on today’s context. In the Kamala Nagar area of Delhi, we have established a parking facility through the PPP
model. The private partners used some of the latest technologies to build that parking slot, which is not always the case in a governmentexecuted project. Also, large scale creation of infrastructure calls for massive investments, which is many a time difficult for the government alone to meet. The private sector can bridge that investment gap. The PPP model also brings in the element of greater responsibility and accountability. Perhaps, it was this very thinking that encouraged Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to propose setting up of an institution called ’3P India’ in his maiden Budget with a corpus of `500 crore. This will help in mainstreaming public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the smart cities segment, among others.
Elets Technomedia, in association with the eGov magazine is organising a national summit on smart city. Any message from you? This is a commendable job. Now that the Narendra Modi-led central government has already endorsed the agenda of creating smart cities, offering a platform to all the stakeholders to discuss and find ways to give shape to the vision is a highly laudable effort. I believe in the 3rd Smart City 2014 summit, people from the cross section of society will come together to share their ideas on the urban future of India. In fact, such summits are the need of the hour. My best wishes to the organisers. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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IN PERSON
Prof Chetan Vaidya
Director, School of Planning and Architecture
‘Mixed Land Use Must for Smarter Cities’
W We are still planning our cities the British way, where we make segregated use of land, says Prof Chetan Vaidya in an interaction with Gautam Debroy of ENN
hat is your concept of Smart City in India?
Smart city idea should be part of overall goal of an urban development plan, which is sustainable and inclusive. But before that we have to remember that India does not live in rural areas any more. If you want economic development and jobs for the youths, we have to improve urban infrastructure and governance. Once we improve our cities and economy and address social issues properly, we can have the concept of inclusive, sustainable and smart city. In fact, the whole concept of smart city should focus on planning that helps cities reduce non-sustainable consumption. If we consider water, huge supply pipelines and treatment plants have been constructed, but what is important is a focus on distribution. If we can bring down leakages from 40-60 percent to somewhere around 20-30 percent, then that will be an achievement. In the smart city concept, the ICT-based solutions are extremely helpful. We can reduce non-revenue water (leakages), conserve energy and bill everybody who uses water. Here, the use of GIS and GPS linked to cloud sourcing and providing updated urban information will be of immense help. We need a system where there is complete data on billing collection. With the help of modern technology, we have to make the water availability 24/7. Communication with the whole community through various apps is the need of the hour. In this context, “cloud-based technology” can come in handy, through which they can upload information to the central data system. Ironically, our cities are still being planned in the British way, where we have segregated land use, like we have separate residential, office and commercial areas in three different locations. Here, we need to go back to the mixed land use where we can have all the three in the same area. Another issue is public transport system. We require metro, rapid transport, bus and auto rickshaw, and footpath for walking. And, all these could be linked to through the ICT.
Don’t you think that country’s poverty and illiteracy could be stumbling blocks in implementing the idea of smart cities? To me, Smart means technology-based efficient systems. Even a poor can connect through his mobile to the job market. If somebody based in Delhi can connect all the maid servants of Delhi in the job market,
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they don’t have to depend upon the so called employment agents. If we can decentralise the ICT systems among young boys and girls, this could be an added advantage for them in the job market. Even a baby-sitter, who can read and write little bit English and has some information technology knowledge, will get an additional source of income. If we can use ICT for skill improvement, it will give us job scope and regular income. Similarly, ICT in the health sector can help improve lives of many poor people.
You support creation of a smart city or an existing city being converted into a smart one? The smart city concept should be relevant to the existing cities through retrofitting. Developing these cities into smart cities will be a cost-effective proposition. City is mainly an agglomeration of people from different locations. If an existing city can be connected with the ICT tools, it would become a smart city. New cities will certainly come up, but those will be fewer in number.
You represent the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA). What is the role of planning and architecture in a smart city? At the city level, we have to change our mindset about land use planning and public transport. ICT tools should be the fourth infrastructure to the cities. And when we talk about buildings, all the buildings should be green buildings, which should be energy-efficient with proper space utilisation. All these should be part of our planning education.
I believe the NDA government’s smart city programme will be the JnNURM in a new format – a reform-based investment programme entailing the latest technologies like GIS, GPS, etc What is your view about the agenda of the central government to develop 100 smart cities across the country? When the party (BJP) put smart city in its manifesto, it was a fashionable term. But now they are practising the idea. I sincerely believe it will be Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in a new format; it will be a reform-based investment programme entailing the latest urban technologies like GIS, GPS, etc. It will be a combination of all these systems. For example, GIFT city in Gujarat. It’s between two cities...between Ahamedabad and Gandhinagar. It’s not an independent city. The state government is creating a centre of excellence between these two large cities. For me, it is an extension of the twin city concept and not a completely new city. But I believe that in future, the GIFT city would be the second financial capital of India. That way, MysoreBangalore and Vijayawada-Guntur could also be twin cities.
Don’t you think that a smart city can accelerate country’s economic growth? Sure. The smart city can really help us improve
our Gross Domestic Product rate. We need to create jobs and for that we have to bring skill development besides having a good academic learning. ICT and technology tools can assist in improving urban skills.
How can technology and innovations be utilised in a smart city? The word “smart” itself includes innovations. If we are talking about smart, which is technology based, we have to look up to the new technologies. It could be even, say, wastewater disposal. Decentralised disposal of wastewater and its reuse is also an innovative technology. We are rediscovering the traditional technology. So, innovations and technology are linked to smart cities.
Would you like give any message for the national summit on smart cities being organised by Elets Technomedia? It’s a crucial event for city officials and for policy makers in the urban sector at the national, state and local levels. The technical people in e-governance as well as private sector must attend the summit as they will get to know divergent views of participants from across the country. I wish the event all success! July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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V K Gupta
Member (Engineering), Railway Board, Government of India
‘Railways will Aid Urban Mobility’
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hat are the thrust areas of the Railway Budget 2014-15?
Our first major thrust area in this rail budget is introduction and implementation of IT. Be it ticketing, project management or hospital management, technology is going to be the buzz word. Utilisation of proper IT technology will bring efficiency as well as transparency. We will also be using it in the procurement and parcel sector. The need of the hour is to bring in total change in the work culture of railways and delivery of railway services by adopting large scale
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integrated computerisation of major functions of the Indian Railways. Second is the introduction of bullet trains, for which pilot project study is already on along the Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector. We are also going for semi-high speed trains. For this, two sections have already been identified and the trial is on. Another focus area is bringing in private players. It may be achieved though FDI or through PPP projects. Wherever possible, we would like to have some extra money available for tackling the projects. Apart from these, the other thrust areas are
safety, passenger amenities with focus on food services and on-train cleanliness as well as resource mobilisation.
If we talk about safety, how do you propose to tackle it? Safety has always been an area of concern. It has always been the endeavour of the Indian Railways to provide safety to the passengers. We are also planning to introduce self-closing doors in the coaches. In fact, pilot project is on for automatic door closing in mainline and sub-urban coaches. We are also working
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on the construction of railway overbridges (ROBs) and elimination of unmanned level crossings. We have also made a provision of Rs 1,785 crore for ROBs and road-under-bridges (RUBs). We are introducing more and more Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches, which are safer in case of an accident. We are spending more money this time round to make the railway journey much safer. We will also be recruiting 4,000 women RPF constables in addition to the existing 7,000 in the railways. Coaches for ladies will be escorted as well as care will be taken for the ladies travelling alone. We are also providing mobile phones to the escorting RPF teams to help passengers in distress. We will also explore the possibility of building of boundary walls around stations through the PPP route.
You have not increased passenger fares. Are the existing fare rates good enough to make the ministry financially stable? Sometimes people say the fares are very low, why don’t you increase? And, sometimes they say it’s too high, it should have been lower. The fact of the matter is that you pay more money when you come from home to the railway station, than what you spent for travelling to Allahabad from Delhi. Currently, the fares are quite low. In fact, we are trying to make the fare more rational. I can tell you that financially, the railway ministry is not in poor health. We have hardly any liability, we have lakhs of crores of assets to pay salaries and pensions to the employees on time. We are also making provisions for pension funds and we will also pay dividends besides generating resources despite transporting passengers at very low rates. Over a period of time, the railways have developed lots of new line projects, which are not remunerative. Now, where do we find the money for doing those unremunarative works? If such financial burdens were not there on us, we could have found more money for modernisation. We are also paying arrears of `7,000 crore following the implementation of the 6th Pay Commission recommendations. We have huge rail projects, which are not financially viable, though socially desirable. So, these are some of the factors that we have to keep in mind.
As your ministry is already working on the PPP model, any new thinking on that mode?
V K Gupta talks about the opportunities and challenges before the Indian Railways, and the measures thought about in the Railway Budget for making train journey a more pleasurable experience. Excerpts from an interview with Gautam Debroy of ENN
There has been a lot of talk about public private partnership for raising resources. The railways being a capital-intensive sector have not been successful so far in raising substantial resources through the PPP route. But bulk of our future projects will be financed through the PPP mode, including the high-speed trains, which require huge investments.
There seems special emphasis on the northeastern states in the budget? Your comments. For the expansion of railways in the northeastern states, we have allocated sufficient funds for the projects in the region. There are 23 projects underway in the Northeast, of which 11 are national projects. For the year 2014-15, we have earmarked `5,116 crore for different projects in the region. This is 54 percent jump over allocations in the previous year. There are law and order issues in the Northeast. There are not many local workers as well as local contractors. So, we have to manage such people from elsewhere. In spite of that work is going on. I hope in the next three years, all the projects will be completed. We have also incorporated the northeastern states in the railways tourism sector. There is a huge untapped potential in the field of domes-
tic tourism in the Northeast. We plan to take up eco-tourism and education tourism in the northeastern states.
If we talk about smart cities, how can your ministry help in this regard? As far as railway is concerned, the immediate thing which comes to my mind is the high speed corridor, a corridor which will be a separate one. It will be joining the cities but not from the existing railway stations. Smart cities can come up along the highspeed train routes. With the challenges posed by the steadily increasing urban population, a holistic approach to urban transport is required. A smooth and seamless inter-model access is essential to improve urban mobility and, therefore, a passenger-centric focus will be given to urban transport infrastructure creation. We will coordinate with other transport-related ministries and urban bodies to develop optimal systems of integration of the railways with other transport modes. In fact we have already started doing a study to explore possibility of enhancing the existing Indian Railways network in Bengaluru for meeting better connectivity needs of the city with its urban areas. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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G
ive us an overview of the overall functioning of the National Institute of Urban Affairs. The National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) is a think tank that works closely with the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Our mandate is to inform the policy making of the Government of India on matters related to urban development. The Institute also takes up research work pertaining to the housing infrastructure in the country. Our functions include research work as well as advisory on policy matters. Besides, we also organise networks of stakeholders in the urban sector in India on behalf of the ministry. NIUA manages the ‘India Urban Portal’, which is India’s premier portal on urban development-related matters. In addition to this, we also work closely with international multilateral agencies to do research work on emerging issues like impact of climate change on cities and the effect of migration on cities. I would say that NIUA works with a broad mandate on every aspect of urban development. Personally, I am interested in the concept of smart cities, and ever since I took charge of the Institute as the Director, the institute has started research work on smart cities.
The Government of India’s plan is not only about creating 100 green-field smart cities, but it also entails the vision of making existing cities ‘smart’, Prof Jagan Shah tells Souvik Goswami of ENN
Prof Jagan Shah
Director, National Institute of Urban Affairs
What kind of research work has the NIUA initiated in the field of smart cities? At present, we are looking at doing focussed research for the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO). It is India’s largest development corporation. CIDCO is interested in making all of their cities ‘smart’. We have to define what that ‘smartness’ is going to be. They have already initiated various measures in Navi Mumbai. We are on the
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Smart Cities ‘Not a Choice, but Necessity’ verge of commencing work on the CIDCO Smart City Chair programme, and it will do focussed research on CIDCO’s own development work as well as train the functionaries within the organisation in the field of building smart cities.
The Government of India has envisioned creation of 100 smart cities. Share with us your opinion on that. Smart city development is no more an option; it is actually a necessity. But let me clarify that
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the Government of India is not only looking at creating green-field smart cities. In my opinion, the government has also envisioned the concept of making existing cities ‘smart’. We must understand that the existing cities suffer from various endemic problems, such as multiplicity of agencies, overlap of functions between local and state governments, finance, etc. In this kind of scenario and given the rate at which cities are growing, we must realise that we do not have time on our side. I think that Private Public Partnership (PPP) model is the only way forward. Private sector players, who are interested in investment for building smart cities, they will want balanced book of accounts. They will also look at mitigation of risk and that is only possible if there is intelligent management of urban systems. Smart cities are basically cities which are managed in an intelligent manner.
In this context, will Information Communication Technology (ICT) play a vital role? The Information & Communication Technology will play an important part in making city management systems more intelligent. Real time data can be generated simply by tracking various systems like transportation, water supply, tax collection, etc., and then that data can be used to inform decision making. We need this kind of smartness and intelligence in our cities. ICT allows us to do things faster and in a more accurate manner. Citizens are not willing to accept discretionary decisions, as they want decisions based on evidence. It brings accountability and transparency. Technology has transformed the world and now it’s is transforming India.
Do you think that the process of creating smart cities should be started with pilot projects? I believe you are asking me this question because you have a doubt in your mind that if we don’t start with a pilot project and attempt a larger scale, then there will probably be problems. But how do you justify piloting it in just two or three cities, when we are dealing with more than 4,000 cities? Try to understand that pilots take time. By the time a pilot project is finished in 5-10 years, everything will have changed. There is no reason to hold back. I think that is why the government has planned to create 100 smart cities, and that is not a big deal if
ICT plays an important part in the making of a (smart) city... Real-time data can be generated by tracking various systems like transportation, water supply, tax collection, etc., and then that data can be used to inform decision making we take the number of states in our country. It would work out to an average of three cities per state, but larger states can develop more cities.
What according to you will be the main challenge in creation of smart cities? Willingness of the state governments, I would say. That will be the main challenge, according to me. There will be a kind of fear of the unknown. States will be apprehensive about how will things work out. Uncertainty will prevail. We have to overcome all of that. We also have to address the issue of relations between the government functions and ICT service providers. Then there will be issues of data privacy. It will be a challenge also. But I think all of these challenges can be addressed efficiently as these exist in the realm of the known. In terms of infrastructures, a lot of
them like broadband and mobile telephony are already in place or on the verge of getting implemented. At the end of the day, I believe that if there is vision and commitment, all challenges can be overcome.
Where do you see India in next 10-15 years in terms of urban development and creating worldclass urban infrastructure? We have to provide basic services to every citizen in the country. Even villages need to be smarter and need to be managed in a better way. We have to reverse the distress migration in the country. Minimum standards of services have to be provided to every citizen. I think within a decade India can achieve what it aims for. But it has to be through and in partnership with the citizens. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Susheel John
MD - Document Imaging, Asia Pacific Region, Kodak Alaris
‘We’ve Mastered Digital Imaging’
K We have stuck to our slogan, ‘you press button and we do the rest’, and followed that through over the years, says Susheel John in an interaction with Rachita Jha of ENN
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odak has been in India since long. How do you find your journey here?
First of all, I would like to make a few clarifications here. Unlike the common perception, we are neither under the Kodak umbrella nor we are the Kodak company as such. We both have ‘Kodak’ common to our names — they are Eastman Kodak company and our company is Kodak Alaris. We are two business companies — one is into document imaging, which has been divested from Kodak, while Kodak is itself today focussed on commercial printing. We focussed on what we call document imaging to help businesses and governments manage their paper document. We are not new in the document imaging segment in India. In fact, Kodak is itself some 80-90 years old company in India. It existed in various forms. We had also been into the microfilm technology. Actually, there are lots of government records that need to be stored for a long period of time in digital footprint in microfilm. We have been associated with the government in many projects, like passports, company affairs, census, Unique ID, Income tax, etc. From our perspective, we don’t think that we have achieved the right potential yet. We are still in the early stages of implementing technology. Although there has been lots of digitisation, yet a lot of content is today created on paper, which all will go digital. So, from our point of view, we have seen just the tip of the iceberg and that there is lot more to explore in all the sectors. Kodak Alaris delivers superior systems and solutions to automate business processes, enhance customer interactions and enable better business decisions.
IN PERSON
Any major challenge for your role in terms of sector-wise technology, which is very often overlapping? One challenge we answer for businesses today is imaging of paper documentation, from where we capture information, digitise and put it in a manner so as to be useful for the businesses. All of that we do for our customers fast and at low costs. We have been associated with a French project for quite some time, and since they have adopted our technology, we reduced cost by 65 percent and became five times faster in terms of capturing information.
Even for simple document scanning, lots of tools have come up. How do you think you have an edge over the rivals? We follow the slogan: you press button and we do the rest. We followed that through irrespective of whether it is for a consumer product or otherwise. That has been our motto and we do it with every product. So, we built lots of image processing technologies and tried to automate all of them, so that it is used as per usage in the backend. We developed the digital imaging technology; we are its pioneers and enabling them at a technology end-point.
You have worked with various departments over the years. Which segments within the government have good potential? From the moment we work in the government, the first thing we do is to study the details. There
are lots of papers with the government, and hence, I strongly believe that every department in the government has more or less good potential. If you take the case of census department, for example, they process 1.2 billion people’s records and it is a huge quantity of records that needs to be processed in a short period of time. To overcome that challenge, they adopted the technology. If you take a company which stores all its records, it is critical for them to preserve it properly, or else there could be instances of malpractices like corruption taking place. Then, there are some low-hanging records like land records. When we all go to register our property, they will give you the property document and those documents need to be stored for a long period of time. The respon-
can also help move the files from desk to desk in terms of computers. We can also force people to respond to the files in a stipulated time, and spot the people who are more responsible for that work to be completed within the time limit. So, we can change the way to work and bring productivity.
What challenges have you faced while working with the departments till now? Look, if you ask me from the technology adoption standpoint as to what is the hampering factor, I would say it is partly our legislation, because even today the Evidence Act of India clearly says that primarily evidences need to be produced on a piece of paper. We can produce
There has already been lots of digitisation, yet a lot of content is today created on paper, which all will go digital. So, from our point of view, we have seen just the tip of the iceberg
sibility of land records department is to make sure that they store your records for your heir, children, grandchildren and so on. So, in whichever department there is need to preserve documents for long, there is greater potential from our point of view. There are number of areas: you take the case of crime records, police records, anything that touches government, or secretariat. What happens there? You make files, and those files pass from desk to desk. We
the digital record as fact and other forms as secondary evidences, but ultimately for the case to be resolved, you need the primary evidence put down on the original piece of paper. So, that is a little bit of roadblock. However, things have seen a little change since 2000, with the government bringing the IT act legislation, according to which digital records can be accepted as primary records of evidence provided those are digitally signed. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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viewpoint
e-Governance
JnNURM Gets the PMIS Push Introduction of PMIS has brought transparency and speed in the urban infrastructure project management and monitoring, writes Prem Narayan, Director, Foreign Procurement, Ministry of Railways, Government of India
T
he government is striving to provide its services to the common man in an efficient, transparent and reliable manner. e-Governance is one of its major tools deployed for this task. Through optimal use of Information Technology and digital data, the delivery and monitoring of services is constantly being improved in an open and transparent manner. In fact, e-Governance has a huge potential for reducing the information asymmetry which exists between the government officials and the common man. Implementation of Project Management Information System (PMIS) for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission or JnNURM by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) has resulted in providing online and up-to-date information to the States and the Ministry for management and monitoring of projects approved under both the components, viz. Urban Infrastructure and Governance (UIG) and Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT). The MoUD is also ensuring implementation of e-Governance across the country through its mandatory e-Governance reforms to be achieved for claiming funds for urban infrastructure projects under the JnNURM.
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ment of India on 3rd December, 2005, envisaging an investment of more than US$ 18 bn during a period of seven years from 2005-06 to 2011-12 with a committed Central Government share of US$ 12 bn. JnNURM is a reform driven, fast track programme to ensure planned development of identified cities with focus on efficiency in urban infrastructure/service delivery mechanisms, and through community participation and enhanced accountability of ULBs/parastatal agencies towards citizens. The programme has resulted in facilitating large-scale investments in the urban sector and ushered policy and institutional reforms, leading to sustainable socio-economic growth in the cities. The programme focuses, higher level of resources and management attention to 65 select cities across the country. 35 cities with million-plus population, other state capitals and cities of heritage and tourism importance comprise the 65 mission cities under the Urban Infrastructure & Governance (UIG). The other towns of 32 states/UTs are eligible for funding under the Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT). There are 619 projects at a total cost of `66,671 crore sanctioned under the UIG for 65 Mission cities and 1,135 projects sanctioned under UIDSSMT at a total cost of `26,612 crore for more than 850 small & medium towns across the country during phase-I and transition phase of JnNURM. A total of 227 projects under UIG and 452 projects under UIDSSMT have been completed and resulted in improved service delivery to citizens.
Prem Narayan
Project Management Information System (PMIS)
Under e-Governance reforms, urban local bodies are ensuring online birth and death registration, property tax, accounting, water supply and utilities, citizens’ grievance redressal, personnel management system, building plan approval as well as procurement and monitoring of projects. This has led to transparency, better information management, improved service delivery and overall improvement in urban governance across departments at all levels.
The PMIS website ensures step by step process flow right from detailed project report (DPR) submission, State Level Nodal Agency (SLNA) appraisal, project approval by SLSC and approval by the Ministry. SLNAs are submitting utilisation certificates as well as Quarterly Progress Reports (QPRs) on-line for Ministry to take appropriate action for release of subsequent instalment to the states. SLNA are uploading the completion certificate on the PMIS website once the project is completed. In the process of PMIS development, the responsibility of state/ ULB includes registra-
Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission The JnNURM was launched by the Govern-
viewpoint
tion of ULB, submission of Detailed Projects Report (DPRs), appraisal of DPRs, submission of Utilisation Certificate and QPRs and completion certificates. The Ministry of Urban Development is responsible for further appraisal of SLSC approved DPR through its technical wings, disbursement of Additional Central Assistance (ACA) and incentives. On release of instalment, MoUD updates the states on PMIS along with scanned copy of the release order issued by Ministry of Finance (MoF), Department of Expenditure so that SLNA may utilise the funds for implementation of projects.
Special features in PMIS PMIS allows the users i.e. officials from MoUD, TCPO, officials of SLNA to easily access and use the website. On-line user guide is available on the home page of the website so that the users may understand the process flow and smooth navigation of the website. The homepage has the facility for user to register on-line by creating his user id and password for further access to the PMIS website. The facilities of forgotten password, transaction history as well as helpdesk are also available on the home page for user-friendly application of the website. A special feature has been created on the home page so that the summary of number of projects sanctioned under the sector, number of projects completed, approved cost, ACA committed and ACA released is displayed in a box once the mouse is brought on that particular sector. The overall summary of UIDSSMT is automatically displayed once the mouse is brought on the circle in the centre.
Project ID Nomenclature For the ease of understanding, the facility of online generation of alpha-numeric project ID has been created and project ID is generated once the project is approved online by the ministry. Project ID contains first two digits for the state code, next two digits for the district code, next two digits represent ULB code of the district, next is the urban sector code and the next three digits represent running serial number under the particular urban sector. For example, project ID UP/10/01/SWM/018 is for a project in the State of UP under sold waste management sector.
Uploading of Documents on PMIS On utilization of 70 percent funds and completion of urban sector reforms, the utilisation certificate submitted online by the SLNA is processed for release of subsequent instalments and the sanction letter is sent to Ministry of Finance. On release of the instalment by MoF, the release order is uploaded on the PMIS website for information of the SLNA, which can then withdraw funds from the state exchequer for further implementation of the project.
Management Information System The MIS link provided on the PMIS website has further links – (i) Project at a glance (ii) Details of ACA released and (iii) Registered States and Users. On navigation of project at a glance link, information can be retrieved on state-wise and sector-wise status of projects showing number of projects, number of projects completed, approved cost, total ACA and ACA released as well as project status – completed / in progress. On further drilling down on this page, summary sheet of individual project and ULB is retrieved. The facility of retrieving release order of Ministry of Finance and completion certificate on clicking on the links instalment date and completion respectively exits. Under the link – Details of ACA Released, financial information for a particular state, particular sector for particular financial year is available. Multiple
options for choosing financial year(s), State, Sector, Project Status, etc., can be exercised to have desired information required for dealing with matters relating to Parliament Questions, VIP references, etc.
Online generation of UC and QPR QPRs are generated online by the SLNA that shows the extent of funds utilised, stage-wise project implementation including percentage of progress by end of every quarter. The QPR also provides information on progress of all 23 reforms at ULB level, State-level as well as optional-level reforms. The reform achievement determines further release of instalment to the state by the Centre. PMIS has brought transparency and speed in the urban infrastructure project management and monitoring at the state and Central level. The availability of the documents on funds releases by MoF and completion certificate by the states could be ensured to the fullest extent. Information could be extracted from the MIS for smooth handling of Parliament Questions/ VIP references etc. Data analysis on funds releases, project completion and for the purpose of future line of action relating to approval of new projects, optimum utlization of funds, etc., is possible with the help of PMIS. Comparison of States based on completion of projects as well as utilization of funds can also be done with the help of PMIS. This IT enabled tool is thus facilitating smoother and more efficient implementation and monitoring of the JnNURM. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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IN PERSON
N
ow that Bandhan has got ‘in-principle’ approval by the RBI to set up a bank, what are the plans you are working on?
I thank the Reserve Bank of India for recognising the last 13 years of activities of Bandhan. All these years we have been working in 275 districts across 22 states of the country, and helped 55 lakh families. Almost 50 percent of these non-bank areas have economically poor families and 90 percent do not have any bank account. The objective of the financial inclusion programme of Bandhan is to improve these areas. We are offering services with our vast network that comprises 2,016 branch offices and 13,000 employees. We serve only one product now that is credit, but as a financial inclusion company, we should also provide three other services — deposit, insurance and remittance. However, as a Non Banking Financial Company (NBFC), we are not yet eligible to provide the other three services. But now that we are going to get the banking licence, these services will be enabled shortly. We will provide our services to each and every citizen as aimed.
Any specific region that you intend to focus on after getting the banking licence? If you look at India in terms of banking penetration or reach of financial inclusion-related programmes, southern India scores high. The eastern, northern and north-eastern parts have
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After getting in-principle approval from the RBI, Chandrashekhar Ghosh gives an insight into the future banking plans of Bandhan in an interview with eGov Editor-inChief Dr Ravi Gupta
Chandrashekhar Ghosh CMD, Bandhan
‘We have Network Advantage’ low banking penetration. The organisations, which have financial inclusion as an objective, should focus on areas where people do not have bank accounts. Bandhan aims to serve these people and then gradually move to other states where people do not have bank access.
Financial inclusion operation and banking operation are
two different things. How do you plan to re-engineer your organisation? Several factors need to be considered here. First and foremost is regulatory or compliance issues. As an NBFC, we are focussed to certain compliance-related issues, but as a bank, we are not. These differences will be identified and processed. Then comes the issue of IT...what-
IN PERSON
ever we are using now is good only for micro finance institutions. But, as we become a bank, we need a CBS platform through which we can meet the RBI’s banking norms. We are in the process of getting a good CBS-based platform from the market. The third part is about training our 13,000 employees. Currently, they are providing only credit services, but soon they’ll be providing the other three services as well. So, their training is crucial, for which we have set up 8,000 training facilities across the country. Every month 1,500 people are getting trained. Simultaneously, we are also recruiting people who have good experience in the banking sector. I hope that way we can be the bank we want to be.
Banking is a highly competitive sector. How do you plan to converge the diverse ideas of banking and financial inclusion? Firstly, I don’t think that there is any competition, because almost half the area we are serving now does not have banks. Another advantage is that we have a good network of people consisting of 13,000 employees, who meet 1 million customers daily and 55 lakh customers over a week’s time. On an average, one customer meets our staff 50 times a year. Fairly good interaction
with the customers has made us well-versed with the customer needs. Therefore, our accessibility to the various strata of people in the society is comparatively better. And, even if competition does arise in the future, we will be having our network advantages.
What is Bandhan’s vision for the next 5 years? The bank in its first year has to adjust to the customers’ requirements, and it takes off from there. In the next three to five years, we intend to reach a larger number of customers and products.
Do you have the figures in mind as to how many customers do you want to reach? No, we don’t have any number as such. But we plan to start the bank with 600 branches and 1 crore accounts. This is a big number compared to the initial figures for any new bank even in other countries.
How do you think your products/ services are different from others in the domain? We provide quick service, easy process and a friendly behaviour. Apart from that, we have built for ourselves a reputation and people
know us. That puts us in a relatively better position than others.
Once you become a bank, will you offer some benefits to your existing customers? When we become a bank, all our existing customers will also merge with the bank. As for benefits, till now the customer has been getting only one service, but later they’ll get three to four services. After turning into a bank, we will be eligible to take deposits from the public. And, if we take direct deposits, it will reduce our cost of fund. Once that goes down, whatever benefit the bank will get will be passed on to the public in the form of interest.
Are you planning to facilitate schemes like the governmentinitiated DBT in partnership with the government? This is an opportunity for us to link the government and the poor. We have about 55 lakh customers, who are below the poverty line, and they have been getting funds from the government. But in the interior rural areas, there are no banks. So, when we become a bank, we can give the opportunity to channelise these types of services to the customer. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Cloud tech
Indian Industry
is Tech-Ready
P
resent times are the times of democratisation of technology. Technologies hitherto alien to the country register their advent, and prove their relevance by percolating down to the lowest strata of the society. Mobile telephony is one of the best examples of technology democratisation in India: right since its advent, the cost of usage has kept dropping dramatically from the level of about 30 rupees a minute to 30 paise a minute. And, so did the cost of devices that came substantially down, and today one can get handset devices for a thousand rupees. Talking about handheld devices, a tablet like Akash is available for 50 dollars. The point is that all of these have lowered the cost to a level where even in a country like India, which is not that developed economically, is beginning to make financial sense in terms of what is the value being delivered and at what cost. Using these devices, one can access various kinds of services that are basic to life — be it good quality of education or reasonable level of health services. I have been long enough in the government to know that this is not going to happen by government programmes alone; it can happen only through a paradigm shift in the way we do things today. But while defining that paradigm shift and the linkage between democratisation of technology and cloud technologies, one needs to look at not only the government but also how the Indian industry has grown today. We have an industry which has a USD120 billion turnover today. It is still growing at 15 percent where the domestic
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We have young and inquisitive mind in abundance, and we have an industry that is equipped well with the latest in the tech world; it’s time to combine the two, says President, NASSCOM R Chandrashekhar
Cloud tech
economy is growing at below five percent, global economy at below four percent, resurgent US economy below four percent and even global outsourcing economy is in the range of seven to eight percent. So, we have a really strong IT industry, and which today commands a 52 percent of the market share globally. The even more exciting part is the emergence of a whole setup of startups and innovative segment of the industry. Today, that portion accounts for less than 10 percent of the revenues of this industry, but in fact constitutes over 90 percent of the number of companies operating in this sector. And, behind those companies are some bright and smart young people, who come across numerous day-to-day problems and look for innovative solutions to them. They offer a unique window of opportunity for the country to evolve a fix for a lot of these problems in a manner which will both solve the problems as well as launch us into a different orbit in terms of being a provider for such solutions. A lot of such things can be put together in a manner that makes sense. The cloud offers a unique opportunity to do that. At the same time, there are a certain set of concerns which is where government should focus on and be able to come out with policies which will enable the vast amount of innovative and technical capabilities being built in India by people whose biggest problem today is that they do not have a market. They can see the problems, they can see the solutions, they can see the revenues and they can see that people are prepared to pay for it; but they have no way to connect to that, as that can be done only through a forward looking government policy. And that is one of our recommendations to the government in terms of what can be done by them to make India the Digital India that has been talked about. But there are concerns with regard to privacy. From the government’s point of view, it has the responsibility for the data. In any case, a distinction has to be made between the kind of information and the kind of responsibility which the government bears. So, finding the right balance between the quantum of security or privacy that is required for the data to be controlled and tracked is important. It really doesn’t matter whether the data is sitting inside a government cloud or somewhere else; it can actually be sitting anywhere because the intent is to make it available.
We have an industry which has a $120 billion turnover today. It is still growing at 15 percent where the domestic economy is growing at below 5%, global economy at below 4% and a resurgent US economy below 4% …we have a strong IT industry We have a law which says we have the Right to Education, and therefore, any information or content which is created under it can be located anywhere. Once the services are available across the globe, it does not have to be under the government or anywhere in the country either. Without discriminating, we should see which services can be directly opened up for innovation in the private sector. One example of the key changes that we have been seeing in the last couple of years is that there has been a much greater democratisation of politics in general. When I say that I do not mean only political politics, I mean the whole basis of mobilising people around any cause, be it social cause or political cause. And the user of social media in that sense has become the key aspect of it. In the run-up to the elections, we saw how the social media has become a major tool in political mobilisation. But the question is, can it stop with social mobilisation and political mobilisation, or does
it have to become a part of governance itself. And, how do you enable citizens who demand and want to be more engaged in the government, to be a part of that by creating such an engagement platform? Again, these are the areas where the innovative capability, technology and the cloud can actually enable a lot of these solutions to come up. And for this, they do not need to go through the conventional route in which government thinks of a project, architects a project, and then goes through a very complicated process of inviting RFPs before the final execution. Today, our industry is fully capable of playing the enabler in these areas. All we need to do is to find out a way to harness it, as even the government doesn’t necessarily have to pay for it these days. This is a golden opportunity for the country to be able to leverage these developments, not necessarily from the perspective of the industry or the government, but from the perspective of the citizens. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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cloud tech
Time to Rewrite the Script Given the convenience and speed the cloud applications can provide, it is time to substitute the old with the new, says Ram Sewak Sharma, Secretary, DeitY, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India ‘MeghRaj’ initiative
I
n fact, people have lots of concerns about how secure cloud is. Considering that some of our data is very confidential and we would not want to share it with others, people are not sure about its fate if shared on cloud. Concerns surrounding the usage of cloud are all the more in the government departments. When we implemented the e-governance projects in states, which we have been doing for the last 10-15 years, one of the issues was where to put the data. As part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), the Government of India had then just started creating certain basic infrastructure and State-Wide Area Net-
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works (SWAN) at transmission ends to transmit the data, apart from the state data centers to park this data. But the efforts required for making the data center buildings consumed a lot of energy. These buildings would never get completed on time and even if those did, there would always be some problems. When I was working in Jharkhand five years back, we had started building state data center. When I went back after a year as a Chief Secretary, I found the data center was still not ready. In building these data centers, many states face problems, and in the meantime, they keep getting their requirements met through some ad hoc arrangements.
But today, we have the Government of India cloud—MeghRaj—and all one needs to do is to migrate one’s application to this cloud. Also, wherever we have data centers ready, those must be integrated and made part of this cloud. Our procurement system is so cumbersome that procuring hardware for our data centers becomes a huge exercise. No wonder that many a time systems/computers become outdated no sooner than those are purchased. So, basically, rather than getting bogged down into making buildings for the data center, procurement of the hardware for keeping your data, this concept of the cloud represents a very neat and welcome departure from those problems, so that one can focus better on application building rather than focusing on building data centers. A common problem with the data centers has been that people book and block storage without actually making its use. So, we have decided that if you require 20 racks, you would have the assurance for that space. But you cannot claim that space as your own and say that nobody should use those 20 racks. Basically, the very purpose of the cloud essentially is to provide flexibility in terms of usage.
Flexible usage There are peaks in every application. For example, if you are into taxation, there is a huge peak in the month of March or July when you file the returns. Similar is the case with examinations when results are out for competitive examinations. But data center takes care of all this, because while there is one application that has peak requirement, there is another that is not going through a similar phase. So, it becomes
cloud tech
like the Consolidated Fund of India, where revenue is deposited and you take out only when required. What is required is that we should put in place very clear guidelines for our states, and I think industry can help us in doing that. We need to create an environment and capacity building of our people at the state level and figure out as to how they can ride the cloud. Unless that is done, we would keep on talking about cloud and nobody would be able to accept it. Another way to disseminate the right information on cloud at the state level is through workshops. If capacity building of the officers, who are the potential users of the cloud, can be achieved, they can be prepared for using the cloud. Responding to FAQs about the cloud is how we have to start.
Changing the tack When I joined DietY recently, I came across Mission Mode Projects (MMPs). There are about 34 of them — some central projects and some integrated ones. Some of these projects use technologies which are pretty obsolete. Some of these projects actually predate the NeGP that started in 2006. It is surprising to know that on the one hand we are talking about the cloud, while there are some projects which are being done on client server technology. For instance, data in the RTO’s office is parked on a client server mode. On asking why it was operating in that mode, they say connectivity is an issue. But when you ask the connectivity provider, they blame it on someone else. So, many of these applications require to be
Our procurement system is so cumbersome that procuring hardware for our data centers becomes a huge exercise. No wonder that many a time systems/computers become outdated no sooner than those are purchased
restructured, revisited and probably rewritten to leverage the latest technology. All the applications must also be able to deliver the information and services on the mobile platform. Moreover, there are many new services that can be built, as at that time neither mobile was there, nor was the cloud. Therefore, it is time to restructure them now. One effort that we are making in the IT department is to evaluate all the MMPs which are there and see if there are possibilities for technology upgradation. If there are possibilities, then
we must leverage them and make them cloud compatible. Another area that can be leveraged is that of applications, which has multiple extensions housed in multiple data centers of each state. Each one is trying to mutate and modify that application, so today we are 35 versions of the same application. Now, given that the cloud is there, it is possible to have a single application hosted in a single server having different data bases.
New times, new tunes The new government has put a lot of emphasis on technology, e-governance, and governance and development. Even the President in his speech stated that efforts on e-governance would be the focal point. I am sure all of us together, in all the departments, states, central and municipal governments will make efforts, so as to really leverage the latest and best in technology. Aadhaar cards are actually a case of a digital identity on the cloud which can be accessed by anybody, at anytime and from anywhere, and which can be combined with any application. We must have intelligence in the local system as we have the advantage of the cloud today. The cloud is the order of the day and we need to move on to the cloud. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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cloud tech
Technology is What Works for People
R
elevance of a technology lies in its practical application. No matter how good or bad a technology is said to be, what matters eventually is its impact on the intended beneficiary. That is why, for all the schemes that government runs, or for all the technologies that we talk of, I have been vigorously emphasising on their evaluation in the context of the benefit that it has on the ultimate recipient. Let’s take the example of Aadhaar Card. What exactly did a consumer get by having an Aadhaar Card? Has there been any third party evaluation of the 60 million Aadhaar cards that have been issued? Of these, how many actually got the benefit? We need to find all these out. Also, for an idea or a technology to work in a democratic setup, it is important that it gets political backing, without getting politicised. If it gets politicised, there is every possibility that the next government would dump it. Therefore, while opting for a technological application, two things need to be kept in focus: firstly, whether the ultimate beneficiary is getting any value out of it, and if that value is good enough to sustain the idea; and next, whether it is socially desirable, technologically feasible, financially viable and politically acceptable. But I repeat that the idea should not get politicised. In this context, I am reminded that I was involved with a scheme called Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), which was not getting any attention in India, but internationally it did get noticed. When the government discovered that this scheme is happening, they
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No matter what technology you have, if people are not present in the scheme of things, it will not work, since any technology is only as good as its impact on the ultimate beneficiaries, says Anil Swarup, Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat
cloud tech
It is easy to run a pilot project because everyone puts energy there...and somehow it happens. The real test is to walk the talk, as this is the way you realise the problems on ground took me away from serving the poor, and placed to serve the richest of the rich. A group was constituted to monitor and facilitate projects that had an investment of `1,000 crore or more. Here, I ensured out that whatever is done is transparent, so that no one is able to point a finger. Despite not knowing anything about technology, we used it, and ours is the only office that does not have a single file. All our business happens on the portal. Even in the Cabinet Secretariat, a normal letter goes under a sealed cover. But by not adopting that, we were not only making it transparent but also publishing on the portal for everyone to see. We did not want another scam, so, we wanted everybody to know what we are doing...so much so that even my errors would be known to everybody. My point is about making everything transparent. I am an operations man, and
not into technology. But I am very thankful and indebted to people who bring technologies to me and make me understand how to use. Any industry, with an investment of more than `1,000 crore, having any problem may go to the portal, register themselves, list out the problem, ministry-wise, that he has. The moment that project is accepted by us on the portal, automatically these problems go to the designated officers. The officers are mandated to put their comments on the portal which are visible to the industry. That is how information flow happens. We have 12 sub-groups based on the problem-creating ministries, which we would euphemistically call “recipient ministries”. India does not have a problem with the technology as billions of software are running here. Before embarking on a new project, the first thing they do is to buy hardware. Only
then they proceed for the software and then the process. However, what we do is exactly the reverse. On a fixed day of every week, we meet the concerned ministries, and minutes of the meeting are put up on the portal. Every Monday and Friday our teams would travel to states and discuss the issues with them. The advantage of such meetings is that you do not discuss it with just one person, as the whole team of officers would be present. And, that is what matters, as no matter what technology you have, if people are not present, it will not work. The environment surrounding the technology is more important. Same theory applies to cloud: while it is common knowledge that it should be used, many people won’t be able to use it because they do not understand the utilities, efficacies, the potential of cloud computing, and how cloud can be useful to them. It is extremely important to educate those using technology not only in terms of how to use it, but also why they must. Consequent to what we did here in one year of operation of project monitoring group, we managed to facilitate the clearance of 155 projects entailing an investment of `5.5 lakh crore. Because of this, perhaps for the first time in this country, presidents of both FICCI and CII wrote to the Prime Minister stating that this is how it should be in states also. Fortunately, states are on board also. Jharkhand is about to launch its state project monitoring group. Overall, 14 states have agreed to set up their own project monitoring group. This is important not only in the context of technology, but also in context of the ownership of their technology. If stakeholders own the technology you are giving, your job is done. But if it is seen as being pushed down the throat, it will not sustain. We also keep talking about pilot projects, but unfortunately in India, pilots don’t fly literally and otherwise. So, the true test of any idea is its applicability on a scale. If it is not scaled in a country like India, it has to be run into millions for it to be tested. You need to test it on a large scale, and not through pilots. It is easy to run a pilot because everyone puts energy there...and somehow it happens. But those energies cannot be replicated elsewhere. So, the key test is whether an idea is replicable and scalable. We are good at ideas but we have to understand the ground realities. Most of the time, we have the diagnosis and prescriptions, but the problem is application. The key is to walk the talk, as this is the way you realise the problems on ground. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Cloud tech
Cloud Security Linked
to Customer Profile Those being attracted to cloud computing and those running away from it have the same reason to justify their action, says Aneesh Dhawan, Regional Manager – VMware India (North & East)
A
survey says the main reason people adopting cloud computing is security, and ironically, this is also the reason for people not adopting it. The fact remains that nothing different has happened from the security point of view, and threats continue to exist in the physical world to the virtual world to the cloud-ed world, if I may put it like this. However, one thing has happened for sure: the exposure of data was less when limited to an organisation, but after moving to the cloud, the surface area has increased and so has the exposure level. The survey said that the people who opted for the cloud felt that their service providers are fairly competent, and the ones who did not, said a lot needs to be done. And, as for the cloud service providers, they asserted that security is never enough, and that it is defined by the requirements of the customers they carry. Moreover, the threats perceived change from the way you consume services. A survey of the cloud network available worldwide by Cloud Security Alliance threw up nine threats, of which two are the major ones. One of those is the insufficient knowledge of the person who will have the cloud as a service. One should know what to look for. It might be simple to think of it, but to have an understanding of what are the cloud service provider’s responsibilities is also necessary, so that one does not end up getting into something in which damage is inevitable. The second one is technology vulnerabilities. This is more relevant to people who
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provide cloud services, like the NIC. The older way of defining security does not gel with the dynamics in a cloud environment. Cloud security has to be layered. When you think from a management perspective, there are three layers which define security. The first one is enforcement layer where you put all your software, which are going to enforce changes or protect you, intrusion detection systems, your anti-virus software and multiple others; the next one is control management, i.e. how do you control these software which you have deployed; and the third layer is policy-based as to how the software are going to work in an automated fashion. In a physical deployment fashion you have to have a layered security system around a data center when you are delivering it to the end user, or in the case of you are consuming it, you should verify if they are offering layered security. It is important to buy both hardware and software which are certified to run cloud computing. They are relatively easier to find
because all of them actually have their compatibility and certification lists. To date, anti-virus is the only way to secure your infrastructure in a server or a desktop. But in a cloud environment, that is not required. We do not provide anti- viruses, but we do provide a platform for anti-virus solution providers to come up on. All they need to do is to have one virtual machine that is secure enough to do the anti-virus scanning of the cloud infrastructure and secures the perimeter from the anti-virus perspective for the entire environment. Compliance is a big issue in the corporate world. But from an IT perspective, how do we ensure compliance? It becomes much simpler when you have a cloud or a virtualised environment. One just has to create a profile of how one wants their environment to be compliant and define the standards. The software available today scan and tell the vulnerabilities, the compliance breaches and what all can be corrected. It is simpler than going across to every system and checking whether it is compliant or not.
Department of IT Government of Maharashtra
The
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Let Us Reboot
the System Surendra Nath Tripathi, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, Government of India, talks about the role of cloud in better governance
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aharashtra’s cloud experience is impressive. Its model should be replicated elsewhere, as Greater Noida, in UP, is doing it by accomplishing the change of ownership of a plot in half-an-hour after a buyer uploads all the documents. The Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) represent eight percent of the total GDP and about 45 percent of the total exports of the country. But, sadly though, in a study conducted across 22 cities, it was found that in only four cities, just two percent of the MSMEs were aware of e-governance. This is the area where IT-enabled manufacturing, supply and management can be a game changer. If there is an IT application based on iCloud, costing a dollar a month, an enterprise can easily prepare its account. The Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises gave this thought a shot, worked this plan out and placed a virtual cluster platform. For one MSME unit with three users, the application was available for US$10 a month. The government is negotiating that it comes down to a dollar, because if it is economical, millions of units will start using it. A virtual cluster platform is being created for interacting with the MSMEs, who are widespread. The ministry applied it in the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), where only online application forms were to be accepted for credit-cum-enterprise setting initiative. Surprisingly, the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises got more than six lakh applications from 600 districts of the country. However, only 85,000 cases were to be considered. Therefore, the applications
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A recent study across 22 cities suggested that just two percent of the MSMEs in only four cities are aware of e-governance
were transferred to the district level task force, chaired by respective collectors. After their recommendation, it went to the bank then
branch, and finally, to the persons concerned. Right now, the idea of putting up application forms for bank loans, etc., on the MSME ministry’s website for the convenience of all the 36 million enterprises in case of different needs is under the government officials’ consideration. At MSME credit seminars, enterprises say they do not get loans, bankers say we didn’t get good cases and the finance ministry says they did not get any complaint. To avert this situation, the MSME ministry is working in line with the above idea. Cloud computing has come to a level today, where there is a win-win situation for both buyer and seller. It provides speed to enterprises by providing services at good pace and negligible cost. But many of our government cloud services lag way behind. The time has come to reboot the system at the government level.
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S
ome 10 years back, when I was with the Election Commission of India, I realised that finding one’s polling booth in a place like Delhi is very difficult. I felt there should be a software, which is able to locate my polling booth on a map as soon as I type out my name and address there. So, I enquired with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) if they could prepare such an application, to which they replied that it could be done but it would take three years and cost `3 crores. I enquired with another company, but they also came up with a similar reply. However, later I came across a small company called Map My India being run by fourfive kids from a house in Hauz Khas. They told me that they just did a project for the education department and that they had a database in which 8,000 polling booths and 2,200 locations of Delhi were present. They said they would give me the database. Two days later, the website was operational. Maps were coming in from a US server and they charged me `1 lakh per annum. And, this is what the cloud is all about.
Simple and effective In July 2012, a team from the Employment Exchange Commission of Maharashtra approached me with a project to computerise all the employment exchanges. They said they wanted to bring transparency in the ITI (Industrial Training Institute) admission process. It was a `30-crore project. I told them that we had just made our cloud operational, and therefore, needed to see how the costs could be curtailed. Later, it turned out that most of the things they wanted were listed on our cloud rate chart, so we gave them those for free and bought down the costs to `5 crore. The tender was passed and in a matter of four months, and the software was rolled out. In February 2013, ITI admissions in Maharashtra were computerised for the first time. So, instead of three lakh candidates, nine lakh ITI aspirants applied online. The results were declared the next day. The cloud not just reduces cost and brings in transparency, but it also makes things move much faster.
Time-tested Similar was the case with auto rickshaw and taxi permits, which were not being issued and
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Bridging the Govt-citizen Gap Be it ease of operation, cost-effectiveness, speed in service delivery or transparency in governance, all come easy through the cloud, feels Rajesh Agarwal, Principal Secretary IT, Govt of Maharashtra the demand was high. I told the Transport Commissioner that we could use the model of MHADA lottery system for house allotments to issue permits to the taxi operators; the only difference would be that instead of houses, it
will be taxi permits. A week later people were filling applications on the Net and after 30 days, the lottery was conducted. I informed the Chief Minister that it was a `900-crore lottery, with market price of each permit working out to `3
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lakh. And yes, the process adopted was transparent enough to satisfy every stakeholder. Recently, we started identification authentication using the cloud. Actually, we found that people had to visit government offices in person so that the clerk could establish their identity for various official purposes. But now, all one needs to do is to place one’s finger on a biometric device from anywhere in the world, and the person’s identity is confirmed. Online authentication through the cloud has, thus, made people’s life easier, as they can complete the process from the comfort of their home now. In fact, there are examples and examples of how the cloud and its applications have made things easier as well as faster for both people and governments. One major advantage of switching to the cloud is that you do not need to create infrastructure, like buying servers, desktops, bandwidth, etc. The world has moved much beyond. You just need to assess your requirements of space and applications, and have it within no time. This hassle-free, readily available infrastructure will also enable us to focus more on easy and simple software creation mechanism, more so in the government eco-system.
Online authentication through the cloud has made people’s life easier...now instead of visiting government offices to confirm their identity for various official purposes, all they need to do is to place one’s finger on a biometric device from anywhere in the world, and it’s done
SMAC concept However, there are certain legal operational issues associated with the cloud, and if you do not master that, you can possibly lose more than you can gain from the cloud. In the modern times, governments need to learn using the term SMAC—Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud—as frequently as they can, since that is the way forward. Another important thing is encouraging citizens to put their data on the government servers. Following this practice would eliminate all the lines between the government and
the citizen in any sphere of service delivery — be it with issuance of driving license, passport, and the likes. It also reduces the need to stand in long queues outside government offices in case one wants some discrepancy, like misspelt name in a document, rectified. Here, the chances of mistakes are substantially minimised as the person concerned himself enters the data. So, I would say, our organisations, like the NIC and DeitY, need to reboot to bring about the changes required in tune with the changing times. Cloud is already a game changer today. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Poor Connectivity Hampering eGovernance Fear of the unknown, circuitous budgeting system and poor optical fibre network are only some of the challenges states face while adopting new technologies, says Bipul Pathak, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, IT and Science & Technology, Government of Jammu & Kashmir
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doption of new technologies and the challenges involved in the implementation of egovernance initiatives are immense, especially in the states where Information Technology is still in the early stages. Speaking from my experience in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, the biggest challenge a state government faces is the process of reengineering to implement initiatives like cloud as it opts for the path of egovernance. Many of the government departments are unable to understand the modalities on how they can avail these services in a pay-as-you-go format, or the likes. Besides, for that to happen, they also need to change their budgeting systems, which involve lots of consultation with several other departments. So, initially, it is difficult for the information technology department to try and convince the user departments to change their way of working, way of thinking as well as the manner of budgeting, so that they are able to adopt these new technologies, platforms or infrastructure.
Fear of the unknown The states, which are lagging behind in terms of egovernance, have a lot of apprehensions in terms of privacy of data and its protection. So, these kinds of initiatives are a big challenge for the civil servants at the middle and the lower levels to understand as they are not exposed to the new IT initiatives and new systems. Another apprehension reigning high in the mind of top level civil servants while adopting these technologies is about data privacy, han-
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dling the breaches in line with the law and their suitable implementation. My experience about the ability of police in handling cyber crime issues is marred by scepticism. They struggle to understand even small technological things. So, to expect them to convert a cyber offence into a foolproof prosecution case may be like asking for too much. It is also one of the issues that need to be kept in mind while escalating egovernance. The police department should understand data privacy in the global context and bring it at par with the international standards. As for the Government to Customer (G2C) services to go onto cloud in states like J&K, the major hurdle is connectivity. In my experience, I found out that even in a state like Andhra Pradesh, which rates high in terms of Information Technology, telecom connectivity becomes deceptive barely 50 to 60 km away from Hyderabad - either the signal is very low or it is simply nil. Even the initiatives taken by the Government of India in terms of connectivity would not help
because of low penetration levels. And, owing to this, the G2C services are unlikely to be able to use the full potential of the cloud technology in the near future; maybe, that happens sometime in the distant future.
Leveraging pvt cos A suggestion to the Government of India would be to make the penetration of the national optical fibre network at the panchayat level fast as that would leverage the capacities of private sector telecom companies also, and not only the public sector firms. Some public sector companies like BSNL and MTNL have been regulated and licensed, and similar things can be done even in the case of private companies. In fact, there are private telecom operators with huge operations in several parts across the country. But funding and licensing is not there for them. The fact remains that licensing and regulation of private telecom companies can possibly take the penetration of optical fiber network to panchayats at a much faster pace.
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No Less But not Enough Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik says despite making significant strides in cloud, India still needs to go miles before having full claim over the technology
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ven as we work with the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) on the cloud strategy and use jargons like cloud, social networks, mobility and analytics, interestingly, consumers actually adopt all these without even questioning the how’s and why’s of these. This could not have been possible without some major decisions on the part of the Government of India. It should be credited for adopting certain policies like “Cloud First” to ensure that all future applications are going to be developed in the cloud. A look at the present government’s manifesto is good enough to suggest that it intends to leverage IT in each and every segment, without an exception. And, that suddenly pushes the standards bar up of what needs to be done. The pace at which this government wants to move is also very high, which makes the challenges really big. However, if we look at the private sector, and large enterprises and SMEs, their adoption of cloud and any of these technologies has been rather slow. Notwithstanding our achievements as a nation in the field, I would like to underline that we have just touched the tip of the iceberg, and that enormous challenges lie ahead.
State of affairs Talking about a general perception about cloud applications, after a recent conversation with CEOs and Secretaries in the Government of India, the first thing they wanted to know was the safety of their applications and data in a public cloud. They also asked whether it would
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A look at the present government’s manifesto is good enough to suggest that it intends to leverage IT in each and every segment, without an exception increase their regulatory risk and justify their moving to the cloud. Data access at present has a lot of restric-
tions, although the government has plans to release some of it through its open data policy. Currently, our use of cloud technologies is at the enterprise scale. For example, if you sum up all the servers across all the state government departments then the number would be less than 10,000. But in order to avail the maximum benefits of the economy of cloud, the government should install at least a million servers. That is the number of servers Microsoft has to provide cloud services on a global basis. Most of the applications for egovernance were written in the era of client server. So, there is a very tight coupling trying to split up the applications to make it multi-talented, so that the same application could be used by multiple departments across multiple states, which would not be an easy task.
The challenges As the reach of cloud applications is measured in a national or global perspective, fibre optic networking requirements are massive. So, we use commodity hardware to keep the costs low. One of the key features of cloud is that it is provisioned by the user, it is elastic and it can be metered, so that you can charge on usage basis. But most of the applications we come across currently do not have these features. For enterprise grade cloud services, one requires globally redundant data centers, and they should comprise massive networks of dark fibre between the hubs with multiple international edge points to minimise latency. Speed is going to be important especially for education and where video playback is required, even communications of the kind where you want to interact through a video right down to the district level with a citizen will require huge
Cloud tech
dark fibre capacity. And, looking at it from a national perspective, one also needs to make sure that there are data centers in other parts of the world, so that in case of a catastrophe, one could actually move it across.
Security concerns All the data centers in India today are ISO-certified ones, but we need the European Union model clauses for the privacy of data. There is not a single data center in India, government or otherwise, which can match up to the EU model. So, as said earlier, what India has to offer today is only tip of the iceberg, and we need to move fast and create more safe and secure data centers. Multiple levels of security for networks, software and applications are required. If there are thousands of servers in a data center, lots of care needs to be taken about how those are designed and built, because the current generation of data centers have efficiency that is two to four times better than what we are seeing currently in India. And, on account of being an energy-deficient country, India needs to make generous investments to match the requirements.
The private data remains either in the public-private cloud or the government cloud, but at very reasonable costs. Here, infrastructure and applications are on a public cloud, which is an optimal mix of cost and control, it is agile and secure, scalable and costeffective, and citizen service-oriented.
Time to upgrade
Pre-requisites Most of the data centers in India – whether in an enterprise or in a government – are all about virtualised hardware and software, with certain elements of security. Although the applications are mostly client server-based, where it is not user-provisioned, it is still somebody in the data center providing those applications and services. To make things truly cloud-enabled where applications and software become a service, platform becomes a service and even infrastructure becomes a service - it must be ensured that while a private data center is built, the applications are also created around identity, virtualisation and management.
All the data centers in India today are ISOcertified ones, but we need the European Union model clauses for the privacy of data
Available options Talking about private cloud, it is owned and operated by the government, and provides greater control, more customisation, though enables sensitive and confidential data to be protected. There are many private applications where national security is dependent and those need to run and reside in these government data centers. There is also an option that I would call private, but is actually government and public, in
which somebody else is providing the public server cloud infrastructure. It is managed by the government but hosted by a cloud service provider. This model can be highly secure and can be extremely cost-effective because the capital infrastructure and the investment are all done by organisations outside the government. Coming to the public cloud, there are a host of citizen services, which can be put up here.
The way client server applications were developed in the past seems primitive by cloud standards today. The tools required to create multi-talented, user-provisioned, highly secure applications that can scale across hundreds of thousands of servers is still not being used in the country. One suggestion for the government would be that they should start adopting some of these modern tools which would enable them to design these next-generation applications. These tools will enable them to actually create the documentation, enabling them to ensure that those meet certain process and quality standards, and can be modified as per requirements. Common directory services and service management devices are a must to manage these huge data centers. Our recommendation to the government is that G2G and G2C services adopt the cloud services first, and both private and public sector be facilitated to build cloud-ready applications. We should move from commercial applications to more government-oriented applications. For this, we would need to accelerate growth by providing incentives to MSMEs, as cloud is highly cost-effective. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Cloud tech
Get More for Less Over a short span of time, the Government of Maharashtra has managed to make huge savings on time and cost, and brought about transparency in governance. Balaji Rao, Director - Sales, India & SAARC, VMware has more...
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Through the implementation of cloud, huge savings can come about in terms of costs, and virtualisation brings in a lion’s share of savings as servers are virtualised from physical state. Some of the advantages of automation of the cloud in terms of delivering self-service can also bring down costs for some of the components. So, there is also an advantage in terms of manageability and scalability, and also there is the cost advantage of the cloud itself. Apart from our claims of savings, even the government has admitted to have achieved huge savings amounts by employing the cloud in Maharashtra. It was only recently that the state’s Principal Secretary, IT, Rajesh Agarwal informed the media about the savings.
he bedrock of cloud is virtualisation; it is the first step to cloud computing. In fact, it is virtualisation that helps in expansion and collapsing of infrastructure, as the need be. Virtualisation can save on floor space, power and cooling, and on the amount of floor space in data centers and administrative costs. To quote a recent ICT study, no less than US$ 4 billion can be saved through the cloud.
MahaGov initiative Talking about the MahaGov cloud, an initiative of the Maharashtra Government’s information technology department, it provided services like IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, and facilitated cloud in various departments of the state. What is more, setting up of a cloud does not take time. For example, we started talks with the government representatives in December 2011, and by June 2012 the cloud was fully commissioned and now it is running in the state government. Talking about itemisation of products in cloud, there is a successful model for rate charge for IaaS and it has been put up on a public site, which various departments can subscribe to. The advantage of this model is that it brings about a huge amount of transparency in operations, and also curtails the long procurement process, as any interested department can make its choice just as one does from a menu card of a restaurant. More importantly, what cloud has brought in here is the ability to manage everything from single straightforward console. In short, we are delivering information technologies as a service and the ability to simplify information technology using the cloud infrastructure.
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Charge-back model
A successful model for rate charge has been evolved to curtail the long procurement process
Another thing achieved by the cloud is the charge-back model. The next most important step after the delivery of services is to measure and quantify those services and charge the departments accurately, based on their usage. The Maharashtra Government is much ahead in terms of using the charge-back model and there are bills being produced to various departments. It is metered like an electricity bill based on the consumer’s usage of power. If you look at the cloud as a service, we are trying to simplify the delivery of information technology, simplifying to achieve scale, flexibility and to align with the needs of the government. So, we are here offering another service, called Analytics, again through the cloud. So, instead of going after various infrastructure components and creating complexities, in your data centers, you can simplify all these things to achieve a service-oriented model using the cloud.
Cloud tech
I, Me and ‘My Web’ R Balasubramanian, National BD – Cloud Solutions, HP, says the concept of SMAC is all about collaboration and synchronisation, leading to the evolving concept of ‘my web’
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e live in a world of mobile, so everything should be connected to the mobile. Going by the SMAC—social, mobility, analytics and cloud—thread, it is all about collaboration, and we are headed for the ‘my web’ concept. That is, if you as an identity are present and need services, then everyone comes around and delivers you the services. Digital e-governance, from the perspective of a citizen, is all about the ‘my web’ concept. As we aspire for greater innovations from the cloud, we also keep in mind the operations side of it, which would make it happen either from the infrastructure or the application angle. The operations part is not something miniscule, it explodes; the complexity, the number of tools – they all explode. The cloud came up with a promise to show the way to optimise the operations and a way to deliver service-oriented architecture in a selfservice model. The traditional journey to ramp up the cloud has been used by many organisations, and all of them have gone through multiple ways and deployment models. But what is important finally is the ‘my web’ concept. You need to have the view of all of them together, you need to have applications that work across deployment models. The cloud-based digital governance is a concept of a massive community cloud, and a community-based cloud deployment for large scale digital governance would have multiple deployment models in it. Public, private and hybrid are probably some of the core, confidential, mission-critical services that would be present in a secure data center. If we go further and see how digital governance evolved from being admin-centric to citizen-centric, we find that it started off from
the nascent stage, and passed through the development and matured stages to reach the innovate stage. Today, innovate stage is cloud and cloud-based ‘my environment’ and ‘my services environment’. On that path, we from HP have also grown — we learn, we implement and we move forward.
HP cloud story Even before cloud was known well in the industry, we did a project for the Government of Karnataka’s e-procurement process, which we manage even today, and the innovative thing is the pay-per-use model, which is the basic feature of the cloud-based service delivery model, practised by different groups. We put a framework and worked with various governments across the globe where we have many success stories, one of them is Australia, where governance runs on a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Another example is about the Singapore Government, which along
with us developed the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) — a collaborative platform through which the government is able to serve various e-governance facilities. In May this year, HP announced a big strategy known as Helion and we invested around a billion dollars for this open source-based interoperable cloud. HP believes that this is a very strong contribution to give a framework and a platform for an interoperable cloud. Seen from another perspective, other key levels of the MeghRaj is about developing an app store. We need to have applications developed in an interoperable way, and that is a big standard coming up. It will give a new definition to how applications are deployed seamlessly across the development models, across the platforms right up to the automation levels where we need to find out ways and means to make the application work in a multi-talent way, so that there are uniform service levels across the cloud. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Flying High on Cloud Wings Cloud applications in day-to-day governance add not only speed but also efficiency to service delivery, says Renu Budhiraja, Senior Director & HoD, State Data Centers, DeitY, Govt of India
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loud is no longer a buzzword today; India has moved much beyond. The Government of India has not only come up with various strategies and policies in this regard, but it has also a cloud of its own—MeghRaj—available to various departments for use. In fact, it all started a year-and-a-half back. We had data centers all across the country and implementations were taking place. We would visualise as to where those centers would stand after a period of five years and how far the infrastructure utilisation would go. But with data centers coming up in a year’s time today, we found that only 50 percent of the infrastructure is being utilised. As the prime model was colocation, optimum generalisation of infrastructure was not happening. We also found that the operational costs, including licensing, AMC, maintenance, etc., were increasing and adding to the overall cost of the data centers. Now that so many departments need to bring their applications on board, it was felt that apart from the huge infrastructure we created, including the National Data Centers set up by the NIC, we also needed to utilise them optimally. And today we see that if we can actually leverage new technologies, like cloud, the existing infrastructure itself could be optimised in such a way that we could utilise the available rack space to serve many more departments at the Centre or in the states.
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Procurement rigmarole Procurement processes are quite lengthy in the government ecosystem – starting with a cycle of having a consultant, developing an RFP and other entailing hassles before an application is finally acquired. MeghRaj is primarily meant to accelerate the system. If you really want to deliver services fast, it is extremely important that you are in a position to acquire the facilitating technology fast — visit a store, select the required CPU, RAM, storage…and you have the application. Delivery of services can be effectively expedited using the cloud.
Cost optimisation Whenever we buy a technology infrastructure, we keep the peak usage in mind. This is what we see in a lot of applications, like income tax, examination results, etc. But the peak usage
is only for one or two months or at the most, three months’ time, and for the rest of the period, only 20-30 percent of the infrastructure is utilised. It is, therefore, extremely important to keep resource sharing in mind, so that whenever any government department needs it, they can procure the infrastructure, and the same resource is utilised and in turn optimised. Lastly, the use of cloud helps in keeping duplication of official records at bay. Since every state is an independent entity, 27 versions of land records were found across the country. But if you have this kind of a technology, only one record would do. So, just imagine the amount of savings on investment and time, which is otherwise wasted on upkeep of so many versions of records. If you have an application which is configurable, fit for multiple usage and can be hosted centrally, then the whole cycle of deployment and maintenance can be hugely reduced. That way, cloud is an extremely important and relevant technology for the Government of India; it is capable of bringing about a paradigm shift in the way we procure IT and applications, and deploy them across the country In June 2013, our policy and strategy was looked over and we came up with a clear vision to accelerate and optimise the cost using the benefits of the cloud. Our policy clearly says that applications have to be cloud-ready. We felt that the ecosystem has to be such that it provides fair competition in the country for both government and private cloud service providers to put through their services. Fortunately, the government has the
cloud tech
required policies, guidelines, frameworks and mechanisms in place to ensure that necessary concerns in the cloud, like security and privacy, are taken care of.
MeghRaj directory The architecture of MeghRaj is such that it has space for multiple national and state clouds, and that of all other categories. The only binding principle is that these clouds would follow the norms laid down by the government. But the important thing is that if there are several cloud providers, then how does one choose? So, we came up with the MeghRaj directory, wherein all those accredited to the Government of India to provide services would be registered. Besides, a single place was envisaged where everything would be available to every provider.
Integration challenges One of the challenges is to integrate an existing application to the cloud. But today, we are still at a stage where we still need to have the relevant capacities. This is a highly specialised area. The private sector should also work in this area. We have set up a governance mechanism to address the issue, called MeghRaj Apex Committee, which gives the necessary policy directions. Then we have an expert group where industry is going to help the government in formulating the policies and guidelines.
If you really want to deliver services fast, it is extremely important that you are in a position to acquire the facilitating technology fast — visit a store, select the required CPU, RAM, storage and you have the application We are in the process of setting up a cloud management office to address the issue of accreditation, standards, capacity building, etc. Our first national cloud MeghRaj was launched on Feb 4 this year, and currently, as many as 24 departments are accessing the cloud services. Besides, there are many more
requests coming in. So, demand for cloud services is rising.
Beyond MeghRaj Although we have the NIC national cloud, we want to see more cloud providers coming forward with their services. We are soon going to do a demand assessment across the country for the central and the state departments to understand their requirements in relation to the existing applications, nature of data and their willingness to go forward with new technologies. This all will give us a complete idea about their specific requirements. We have also launched an app store, which we want to see as a market place — a place where the user departments can bring their requests, go and have a look and choose the application they want. In case it is not available there, the private players across the country serving the Government of India can provide their applications. I think this will provide a fair chance to the SMEs, because today it is very difficult for them to qualify in free bids. We would like to work with the industries to get ideas and know the directional strategy they think would be a win-win for both government and private sector. This kind of platform will transform the way the government procures the applications across the country and I think that is the vision we are looking at. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Future will Walk on Cloud The government cloud has everything - speed, economy, flexibility, and all comes at a reasonable cost, stresses Neeta Verma, Chief Executive Officer, National Institute of Smart Governance
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fter the years of experience we have of running government data centers, we basically focus on two things. One is that whatever architecture we work on has to be generic in design, so that we are able to integrate any cloud technology solution available in the market today or in the times to come, including the open source technologies, into it. Secondly, it should be very simple for the government to use. Earlier, there was a cumbersome system of procurement - you have a requirement, you give it to the IT team, then there is an RFP‌ and so on. Now, if you go to procure the cloud services, you simply need to select as per your requirement and make the payment. With that concept, we have built the cloud portal. To make the best use of the resources we have deployed, we have tried to segregate our infrastructure in a way so that different kinds of machines are of different redundancy. It is costefficient, resource-efficient and simple to use. Operations in the portal are also simple. The first four operations are done once in a lifetime and the fifth operation is an address over the secure network. There is a dashboard on which you work. As we need to comply with the procedures of the government, identification of the user and things like that, all this has been built into it. All this is available through a common portal. Everybody signs in whether it is a user or an administrator. But as you go, your requirements of authentication keep getting complex, depending on what kind of role you want to play on that cloud. Our focus is more on SaaS. To begin with,
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We launched the cloud in February 2014, and as of today, we have requests for services from over 150 central and state entities, without any publicity we have the Government of India search, wherein anyone in the government can do a local custom search of any government website, there is no need to Google it. This is a common
search platform which can be simply integrated as a service and already more than 200 government websites are using this service. We have started an open data platform, and once completed, it is available for the central government. If any organisation or state government or district administration wants to launch its own data platform, it will have to simply fill in a few forms and also mention the theme, and the data plan goes live. It is already configured, optimised and secured, without complexities. Web analytics is a service we have been learning for quite some time, but recently we moved to the cloud, because its resource requirement is variable. We launched the cloud in the first week of February 2014, and as of today, we received requests for availing the cloud from over 150 entities without any publicity. These requests are coming not only from the central government departments, but also state governments, municipal corporations and district administrations. We have got a couple of panchayat requests as well. So, this all shows the kind of interest and enthusiasm people have to use the cloud services. We have started doing workshops in seminars across various states to familiarise organisations and individuals with these things. We are now telling our people and colleagues in the NIC and otherwise that if you develop any application, please develop an application which is cloud enabled. And, if you do not develop a cloud application, which has the characteristics to be scaled up and down, you will not be able to make any sense out of it. The present mechanism is going to give effect a lot of innovations in the way government has been delivering.
Cloud tech
Safer, Faster, Cheaper Prakash Kumar, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India, cites a series of examples to hammer the point that concerns about security of cloud are nothing but unfounded fears
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logans like ‘less government, more governance’ and ‘do more with less’ are in vogue these days. But this would not have been possible without the cloud. The cloud removes the burden of building and maintaining large computer systems, provides unlimited computing and storage capacity, increases disaster preparedness by building backup, reduces cost and time commitment upfront and simplifies access with secure capabilities. That is the reason governments are also adopting the cloud in a big way. Cloud has grown to 300 percent in six years worldwide, from a business volume of US$46 billion in 2008 to US$150 billion in 2014. The global cloud computing industry growth rate is five times higher than that of the IT growth rate. Two recent surveys suggest that out of every 10, eight CIOs (chief information officers) were delivering their infrastructure through
It’s secure
Microsoft’s cloud Azure has a billion servers and huge revenue comes from there… if that were not secure, then the business would have gone somewhere else
Another milestone in cloud computing is that half of the US government has moved to it. And the same survey also found out that the biggest activity happening on the cloud is banking. And banking in the cloud is not a general view keeping the security concerns in mind. Contrary to the popular belief, more than half of the IT professionals rank security as the top reason for migrating apps to the cloud. Microsoft has a cloud offering called Azure in which a billion servers are present and a huge amount of revenue comes from there. Now if that were not secure, then naturally the business would have gone somewhere else.
Pace-maker cloud, and six out of 10 considered cloud computing their top priority. There are 50 billion servers worldwide today and 60 percent of them have been virtualised. Of the every thousand companies globally, 30 percent are expected to use cloud for both internal and external usage.
Disaster and crisis management is something where you need to bring back services, and the time taken to do that is very important. After an earthquake in Japan, the government there used the Azure to put up applications for providing information and services to those who were affected by the disaster. Similarly, for enhancing government delivery system, an open government and big data are required. An example of big data is weather and disaster relief data which is now used to verify insurance claims. So, if you claim for crop failure, then they cross check it with data coming from weather and other sources. The cloud brings flexible storage, recovery, on-demand infrastructure and also a new feature, which is the identification of users, whether internal or external, wherein based on identity the role of the person/user could be decided. The cited examples are a testimony to how the cloud and its applications are being used effectively all over the globe. If it can happen elsewhere, we can also do it in our own country. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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When Ignorance
is not Bliss A candid Peeyush Pande, Inspector General, Special Protection Group, Government of India exemplifies the reasons that hold people back from using technologies like cloud, especially in a government setup
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s a user I would like to have as much ease and efficiency as any technology can offer. My adversary is not a hacker, not somebody who is going to exploit or learn, but someone who is making that system. Suppose, I have a data which needs to be secured, but I am not very convinced. Even if you encrypt it, my concept would be my encrypted data, unencrypted data and encryption algorithm, along with the key, exists; so what stops anybody from hacking into it? How do I know how secure and how valuable is my encryption? Who would evaluate that encryption? Those who work in the government know that certain evaluations need to be done, and there are people, who develop those encryptions ready for such evaluations. My concern is not whether my data is secure in a data center; I am concerned about who is securing it. Is it the employees who have access to that data? Or, is it the people, who are not only my employees, but also those of the service provider? What accesses do they have? And, it is these concerns that prevent a lot of us from using the true potential of the cloud in an efficient manner.
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The ignorance of the user in a government setup is phenomenal. For example, when I was in the Calcutta Police, in 2002, there was an attack in front of the American Center, in which we lost five of our constables. All the communications between the persons initiating that attack on the police personnel were based in Dubai, all the calls were routed through the US and all emails were routed through various servers. We got all the details and went through those. But, the first task was educating my men on what the things were about and how do they happen. After doing that, it was important to educate the public prosecutor for presenting the case, and after that we had to educate the judge, because he did not know what a user ID or a password stands for. The first prerequisite for effective use of cloud as a technology in the government sector is adequacy of knowledge of the user, who is going to use the systems. If I am distrusting the user or the service provider, I am distrusting myself, because that way I am making the whole system exposed and vul-
nerable to all the leakages that may happen. For me, it is important not only to trust them—trust the person who has made and presented the system to me—and trust myself because if I am not confident of using it, I might expose my secrets. As for the level of security, suppose I have an armour that will protect me from a bullet, but if I use the same armour against a tank, it won’t work. In various government departments, different levels of secrecy are required. But, how do I evaluate what is the level of security that I need, and how do I evaluate the service provider that I look forward to? That is where we need the industry to guide us as to what are the questions I need to ask, like what is that I am using, where I am storing, what are the security protocols that they are using. It is very important that people like us are taught what questions to ask the cloud service providers, as we don’t have the standards which will help us know the fundamentals of cloud computing. And, if those questions are answered in the affirmative, then you are free to provide us those services.
Cloud tech
It’s User’s Trust that is Phished Mannu Kalra, Director, Product Management, Asia Pacific & Japan, FireEye, talks about two interesting ways in which attackers or hackers pierce through the cloud security mechanism
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eb attackers or hackers are a persistent threat to cloud applications. They are resourceful individuals sponsored by nations to go after one’s assets in the cloud or elsewhere. They penetrate through the security shield in various ways, of which trust model and workflow model are only two. The trust model exploits the user’s trust in an application hosted in cloud. The attacker exploits a vulnerable web application and plants malicious code in cloud, and when an unsuspecting user visits the service, it gets infected by the code. The exploit code then executes its objective of downloading a bigger portion of malware on the end-user system. The malware then passes the control to the attacker, who can either use the old system to expand laterally or execute all data scaling. It is simple as data encryption and other masking technologies are rendered useless from the perspective of the client or the end user. The second one—workflow model—exploits the trust model itself. Most of the sites encour-
age the user to upload files and data. The attacker phishes the end user, plants an exploit code in the data the user is going to upload and then puts that in the cloud. The unsuspecting back-end processing engine opens the exploit code and thus gets compromised. A simple way to prevent these exploits is to see them from a user’s perspective. There are
An attacker plants an exploit code in the data the user is going to upload and then puts that in the cloud. The unsuspecting back-end processing engine opens the exploit code and thus gets compromised
products and technologies that emulate an end user’s behaviour and let you investigate the incoming or outgoing data stream in its entirety. In such cases, the best way is to set up data diodes — a mechanism that ensures a one-way exchange of information from a non-trusted source to a trusted one. The other way can be setting up a virtual machine-enabled security platform that can go out and proactively scan the websites and identify any malware used by the websites and alert the administrators at the back end. In both methods, the beauty lies in their simplicity, the way they end up exploiting an enduser’s system. They exploit the trust between the client and the server or the service provider, and likewise, they exploit the work flow. However, to date, we do not have any single silver bullet remedy for such exploits. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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New-gen Technology
to Remain Afloat With old players resorting to dubious ways to beat the competition, Vishwanath Alluri, Founder & Executive Chairman, IMImobile, believes that the only way to survival is adoption of new age technologies
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he new wave of technology, comprising Social, Cloud and Mobility (SoCloMo), is trending everywhere and even government is keen to bring in this change to its departments. But to reap the benefits of this new technology, one must also understand its functionality. Previously, it used to be hardware and software, which needed internal investment. But now, it is just about operational expenditure — pay as you go; you like it, you pay for it, or else you simply don’t.
New companies are riding high on “cloud capitalism” with people in their 20s becoming billionaires. The gang of four new generation organisations—Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon—have toppled the previously ruling IT companies. If government is looking to provide and implement mobile governance, then they must look how the new generation companies work. Another important factor is to have an integrated platform for all the government services. We have provided a state government an integrated platform for its services—as many as 300—of all the other departments. In fact, providing more services on a single platform saves both time and energy. Adopting this model also makes it easy to integrate various data sources into a single platform.
SoCloMo mantra When we talk of the new wave of technology, we think of governance on finger tips. In India, mobile phones have penetrated in a big way in a very short span of time. Today, the best way to reach out to your citizens is through mobile. The Internet usage on laptops is on the decline in the wake of easy availability of smart phones. So, SoCloMo is the need of the hour. In this context, the IT service companies that were born and flourished in the previous technology era, who have traditionally been vendors of IT to governments, are not the right vendors. They try to force-fit the requirements of the new age into irrelevant legacy technology, and waste customers’ time and money as their delivery models are not fit for today. Recently, some big names in the IT field lost a 600 million dollar CIA contract to a new cloud provider. As the earlier generation companies lose their edge, they have been trying
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Need for mobility
Computerisation in the intragovernment setup alone won’t do, as it takes mobility to reach the masses today to make their way into these new generation companies with phoney methods.
The incumbent government has decided to do away with file work, and this is the first generation to do so. However, computerisation in the government is an intra-setup exercise, but to go public, it needs the mobile platform. Here, deployment of an integrated platform can become the medium for the government where the citizens can interact with its departments on multiple channels. Such platform is also helpful in government-to-government interaction. For example, if government personnel are sent to inspect Aanganwadi progress, they can find out how well has the inspection fared. These are only some of the numerous advantages of an integrated platform.
Cloud tech
Public Cloud Suitable for G2C Srikanth Karnakota, Head, Servers and Cloud Platform, Microsoft India, talks about how the cloud is impacting the various facets of the government business
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he twin issues of privacy and security have become problematic when it comes to public cloud, but the notion of hybrid cloud is truly helping governments and the world. The difference is that while the public cloud has all the advantages, it also has necessary regulations in place, which prevents it from reaching its full potential. Hybrid is about giving control in a data center environment, which is solely run and managed by the user while also giving all the benefits of the public cloud. An example of the implementation of the hybrid cloud is from the State of Barcelona. Almost a million tourists visit during the hosting of massive games, as a result, a lot of private data is generated, which cannot be put on the public cloud run by the State in a hybrid environment. So, they put on the social media platform, like facebook, twitter, etc., all information of the visitors coming in after integration with the login on a public cloud called Azure. But all the private data for its citizens is controlled by its own data centers. The second aspect is about getting insights of the voluminous data. If we see any government department, there is a huge amount of data, some of which is digitised while some in analogue form. All the information has to be funnelled into insights, as insights tell you the right way to move forward. And, the public cloud is the best platform for the purpose. In the healthcare department, pharmaceutical companies have to do clinical trials, which means a lot of private data, which can’t be run on a public cloud, as there are many regulations to be adhered to. But while computing in such a way in a matter of a few minutes,
one can make provision of 3,000 servers to do high-performance computing and bring the workload back to the private environment, without compromising on privacy, security and all those concerns that come in. So, the solution is to run in a hybrid type of an environment. The other option is to structure the unstructured data. Indian defence agencies track numerous voice calls that is unstructured data. What if one has to do video analytics? All this data is lying in an unstructured format today. Microsoft has been working on this issue with several governments worldwide, but we believe that India has a massive opportunity to bring this unstructured data in multiple clouds and structured data in government cloud, and be able to query them both to bring meaningful insights. If the report of the Consumer Survey of India lying in some public cloud is matched with the retailers’ data, they produce fascinating results, which help the retailers make some decisions on the kind of programmes they are going to run. The third aspect is how one enables faster and secure access of data. The public cloud is best suited for massive government-to-con-
sumer (G2C) scenarios like PDS, education, healthcare, etc. But the moment departmentto-department contracts are bought in where strict privacy and regulations are required, it is stored in the private cloud. The hybrid cloud is built on the fundamental fabric of identity, security and management, wherein the core of that security layer lies in identity. So, basically, a person who has access to documents does not necessarily have access to the documents the boss has access to. And this system cuts across all clouds. The fourth consideration is about which application to run where. Large enterprises are going through this problem today. Every Chief Information Officer that Microsoft talks to would tell us that I am not going to move every application to the cloud, I will move some to the public cloud, some to the private cloud and some to a third party data centre. But how do we run a framework where all the app categories are made simple? Break the public, private and hybrid cloud, so that the different application categories can be run in it, to be clear about where to run which workload. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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On Time, Every Time
with ‘Sakala’ Manoj Rajan, Additional Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms, Government of Karnataka, speaks about the various reforms brought through introduction of IT in the government departments of the state
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he Right to Public Services in Karnataka is known as ‘Sakala’, which means ‘in time/Good time’. The Government of Karnataka in 2011 introduced a revolutionary programme whose objective was to standardise and simplify citizen service delivery mechanism. It also made the government accountable to its citizens. And today, the government delivers services to the citizens in a time-bound manner. The innovation of the service delivery model was triggered by an old widow who followed the Chief Minister at his public meetings across the state, just to tell him that she was not getting her widow pension. This sparked off an innovation, and later it was made mandatory to deliver public services to the citizens on time, or else, the officers concerned would be held accountable. Initially, we faced challenges in terms of acceptability of the new system in the government setup. The heterogeneity, red-tapism and unwillingness to learn were some of the major hurdles we faced while making the departments converge on a single platform. To ease the situation, we talked to various departments to understand their concerns. We asked them about their workflow process, timeline required to deliver services, accountability issues and the documents needed from the citizens. After that a dedicated portal was created for all the 47 departments and their 478 services. We made it mandatory that if a citizen completes the documental formalities, the services must be delivered within a fixed period. To deliver these services, all one needs is the Internet.
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‘Sakala’ service delivery model was triggered by an old widow who followed the Chief Minister at his public meetings just to tell him that she was not getting her widow pension The process A citizen goes to a Sakala counter, chooses the service, gives his details for the service required, gets the acknowledgement slip, and soon after, gets the service. There is a display board in front of each office, and delay in services will attract a `20
fine. Although the penalty is less, but after seven such delays a disciplinary inquiry would be initiated against the official concerned. Going by the statistics, Karnataka in the last two years has seen on-time delivery of 98 percent of the public services. Key achievements of the project are 100 percent transparency, 100 percent accountability and empowerment of citizens to avail the services. Sakala model can be applied in other states as well. In areas where there is not enough Internet penetration, private cyber cafés can be engaged to deliver online services. According to a recent survey, 99 percent customers are satisfied with Sakala, compared to 46 percent previously, who said that impolite officials and insufficient knowledge of the available services prevented them from availing those on time. However, of late, following gradual spread of awareness and call center help, it has become easier for them to avail the services on time. Even the government employees’ mindset has changed and now they believe that they must deliver on time.
event report
Vice Chairman & Chief Officer of MHADA (Pune Board) Rajendra Nimbalkar lights the traditional lamp to inaugurate the Green Cities Forum 2014
Green Cities Forum 2014 ‘Plan Green, Build Green, Live Green’ As ‘Green’ turns a vital mantra for achieving the dream of sustainable smart future, stakeholders from the construction sphere join the Elets Technomedia platform to share their views on the shape of things to come. A report… Chanchala Sandeep Kodre, Mayor, Pune Municipal Corporation A direct relation exists between the infrastructural demand of our country and constantly ascending population. This shooting pace of population index has considerably raised the demand bar for
infrastructural requirements in our nation. However, the growing infrastructural demand has brought with it a slew of concerns which hurdles the progressive growth of urbanisation. Pollution, haphazard disposal of waste materials, expanding slum population etc. are among the few prime concerns posed before the pace of urbanisation. In such a scenario, the Green concept has evolved as the ideal mode of operation.
Today, the world is witnessing a Green wave, wherein energy efficiency has evolved as the core mantra of infrastructural development. The progressive technical advancements have evidently contributed to implementing qualitative technologies for utilising the potentials of nonperishable natural resources. Rainwater harvesting, effective sewage treatment plants, solid waste management etc. are the ideal such technologies that need to be positively practised for the development of quality urban civic regions. This prospective pace can be achieved only with the positive participation of all the stakeholders who are contributing towards the development of eco-structures.
Rajendra Nimbalkar, Vice Chairman & Chief Officer, MHADA, Pune Affordable housing is one among the vital elements involved in the urbanisation process. Affordable housing can be divided into two sections – housing for the haves and have nots. Now, MHADA is in the process of expanding and implementing such initiatives across major cities and even at the Taluka level. The issue of population explosion is one amongst the burning concerns faced by the Indian housing sector. The population of our country in 2010 was 1,200 million and by 2030 is expected to shoot up to 1,500 million. A constantly rapid increase is also being witnessed in the urban population in India. The urban population index constituted 10.85 percent of the total population in India in 1901, which has now grown 15 times more and is at 30 percent. By 2030, the urban mass population is expected to further rise to about 40 percent. The situation, hence, demands effective implementation and practice of policies, active participation from stakeholders, improved pricing of raw materials, and support from governing authorities in making available constructional resources, etc. July 2014 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov
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Sunil Mantri, PresidentNAREDCO and Chairman-Mantri Realty Ltd Green buildings is the largest evolving concept today across the globe, wherein India has now emerged as the fifthlargest nation following the green norms. The concept which was initiated in 2003 from the green footprint of about 20,000 sq ft has now evolved into 2.10 billion sq ft of construction area. Development of such eco-structures can be progressively attained only with the active participation of key stakeholders involving governing authorities and private developers. Incentives and concessions on availability of resources, raw materials, construction practices etc. can evidently attract and encourage more developers to actively contribute towards the development of a Green Economy.
Ranjeet More, Vice Chairman & MD, Universal Construction Machinery & Equipment Ltd While the concept of Green is being increasingly focussed upon, the other key element to be considered is the growing threat of
qualitative execution process, can effectively bring about qualitative development. Several new smart cities are being developed along the ambitious Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, and sustainability is the only mantra for qualitative development and maintenance of these structures.
Abdulkader Bengali, Business Head – Large Waterproofing Group, Pidilite Industries Ltd Green Building movement is being witnessed in India for the last 11 years. Sustainability of an eco-structure is not only about implementing energy efficiency but also ensuring strong and stable structure. These structures require advanced technologies and solutions. We need to build and develop technical solutions which can suit Indian conditions and market requirements. Global Warming is another concern as high temperature interferes with the completion of construction project. Our endeavour is to evolve as a Complete System Solution Provider. Pidilite aims to deliver solutions which can prevail as differentiators in changing the landscape of the Indian market towards qualitative pathways. We have introduced low energy consump-
Sustainability of an eco-structure is not only about implementing energy efficiency but also ensuring strong and stable structure - Abdulkader Bengali, Pidilite Industries Ltd environmental pollution. In western countries, maintaining carbon footprints is being practised as a mandatory policy, whereas in India the policy is yet to be implemented effectively. As we all stakeholders and citizens move towards joining the ‘Green Wave’, we need to focus on whether we are actually capable enough to provide a healthy environment to our people. Effective policies, when supplemented with
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tion systems that have helped in extending the lifespan of structures from 10 years to about 25 years. The situation today demands a qualitative mode of operation.
K Raghavan, Director – Product Management, Johnson Controls (I) Pvt Ltd HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) are vital elements of construction
structures. More than 50 percent of energy consumption in a building space is taken by HVAC systems incorporated in the structures. Incorporating energy-efficient HVAC systems is an ideal mode for developing eco-structures. Qualitative HVAC systems can only be installed when incorporated with energy-efficient models. Another vital practice being evolved with the popularisation of Green building concept is the focus towards utilising advanced analytic tools, qualitative designing of structures and revision in indoor air quality. In the air conditioning technical trends, we observed only two prime successful evolutions – VRF (variable refrigerant flow) systems, which is already popular in India for the past 8-10 years, and introduction of magnetic bearing centrifugal chillers. Today, discussions continue on promoting the Green Building concept, but we need to focus upon the actual monitoring of developing these eco-structures. Efficient energy systems and analytic tools can predominantly contribute towards the betterment of these structures.
Anirban Banerjee, Head-PBX SSD, Panasonic India Innovation is the mantra to move ahead towards green and sustainable future. Innovations are required to suit the dynamic scenario of customers. Structures, once seen as mere buildings, are now known as ‘flexi homes’ that have the potential to satisfy respective sustainable needs. A paradigm shift has been witnessed in the development of these flexi homes. The question of ensuring sustainable luxury arises with the development of such structures, where Panasonic predominantly plays a vital role. We do not just cater to the residential sector but have also played a pivotal role in revolutionising the communication networks in the commercial and other realty segments. Each vital aspect has been assured through Panasonic’s effective PBX systems.
Ajit Khandese, Director-KWAN Environmental Solutions Pvt Ltd Sewage treatment is conventionally processed
event report
through a natural ecosystem, involving the air, water and solar energy. The microbes present in the river or the water reserve consume the sewage which is then treated and evaporated back to the solar resource, through the ultraviolet rays from sun. However, the increasing population, industrialisation and the related problems associated with it have increased the pressure on water resources. KWAN, through its advanced and dedicated team of experts, has succeeded in improving the sewage treatment process with collection tank, aeration tank and membrane bio-reactor tank. The introduction of membrane bio-reactor helps in treating the waste sewage water and later reprocessing it into pure water.
JK Bhosale, COO, Amanora Park Town, City Corporation Ltd The role of sustainable structures has evolved as the core agenda of discussion in all pivotal platforms. Amanora is one such success townships which upholds the green concept and is a live specimen of energyefficient technologies. It involves creating and maintaining the entire infrastructure of a township. Upholding the importance of utilising energy-efficient technologies, Amanora maintains a 100 percent zero-waste management and effective solid waste management plants. All the waste water generated at Amanora is recycled and processed into purified water and is later utilised to meet the secondary purposes. The township, thus, prevails as an ideal replica of sustainability.
Nirmalya Chhatterjee, COO & Business Director, Tekla India Pvt Ltd Planning, qualitative designing, controlling the construction wastage and time over-runs in the construction process are some of the prime
elements for undertaking effective infrastructure development. However, the aim towards incorporating all these elements productively in the construction can be achieved only with the utilisation of effective technologies. Tekla being a technology solution provider, it offers unique BIM (Building Information Modelling) devices that assist in construction right since the planning stage. The absolute 3D model helps the developer or contractor in vital product planning and resource management.
Sharan Lund, AGM, Architecture & Design, Ahuja Constructions Amid talks of Green buildings and energy efficiency, Ahuja Constructions has come up with its uniquely developed Prasadam project. The picturesque ideal project implements the concept of Green not just by utilising recyclable raw materials or energyefficient technologies but also by providing vital open space for plantations. The project serves as an example of how the right location, intuitively developed plans, micro-attention to implement details, contemporary facilities, excellent amenities and high development standards can ensure a perfect healthy life.
Ritesh Surwade, Regional Manager, Zydex Industries Zydex stands firm on its operational mantra of ‘Innovation through Sustainability’, which is the prime need of the hour. Water-related damages lead to poor quality infrastructures resulting in compromised strength. Conventional polymer-based waterproofing systems are susceptible to UV, heat and abrasion that fail to prevent such damages in the long run. Zydex’s eco-friendly waterproofing nanotechnology ensures a combination of penetrative and reactive silane technology combined with pure acrylic polymer and modified bitumen membranes to deliver superior waterproofing performance that lasts decades.
Mala Singh, Head Convener – Green Governance (Govt) IGBC Mumbai Chapter and CMD PEC Solutions Green Design The term ‘Green Policy’ is often associated with the environmental clearance policies and procedures in our country. However, India still lacks a mandatory uniform Green code and has only Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) regulations. India has National Building Code and Energy Regulation Code, which is at the pedestal stages of implementation in India, wherein only few states are now practicing these norms. The green building movement in India can be considered as a self-driven momentum which is being powered by dedicated developers focused towards building structures for future generations. However, with the new government coming into place, we, the developers and builders community anticipate more energy efficient norms and practices to support the sustainable infrastructure development.
Atul Goel, Joint Secretary, CREDAI (Pune) & Managing Director, Goel Ganga Group Green buildings and sustainable structure is no more a concept in today’s era and has now become a reality. The green concept that was once a dream is now effectively implemented with the active support and participation of our central, state and even local governing bodies. Green today is a responsibility of all the stakeholders, especially, the developers and players involved in the construction sphere. As a developer Goel Ganga Group focusses primarily on building sustainable structures and creating structures in conformity with the environment norms. Construction is one of the few activities that largely contributes towards environment pollution. Awareness and qualitative training of workforce are the other two prime factors in the development of eco-structures. We need to plan and build for our future and such a development needs a qualitative approach and skilled workforce.
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Participants of the Green Cities Forum 2014 pose for the camera after the award distribution ceremony
NM Tabhani, Senior Environment Engineer, Gujarat Pollution Control Board Gujarat Pollution Control Board, being a regulatory body is actively involved in enhancing the development of environmental friendly and sustainable structures. In Gujarat, 159 municipalities, eight municipal corporations and four local authorities are actively involved in maintaining and controlling the environment pollution, particularly due to the generation of solid waste. In addition, the body also guides and monitors the hospitals and clinics in Gujarat in controlling and managing their bio-medical waste. The generation of bio-medical waste is presently about 25 metric tonne per day, addressed by 15 common bio-medical waste treatment facilities in Gujarat. Gujarat Paryavaran Bhavan is the first Green Building in Gujarat and is powered by solar energy.
Umesh Shurpali, AVP - Planning Architecture and Environment, GIFT City Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) aims to cater to India’s large financial services potential by offering global firms a world-class infrastructure and facilities. It aims to
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attract the top talent in the country by providing the finest quality of life with integrated townships and multi-specialty special economic zones (SEZs). The vision is to develop a global financial hub and building an ideal replica for the development of futuristic cities. Abiding by a Green policy and environmental norms is a vital aspect in developing qualitative structures. The concept of sustainability has to be initiated from the institutional reforms involving the prime level of planning and developing structures.
N K Ojha, University Engineer, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda The concept of developing environmentally sustainable structure is of crucial importance for our society. Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda is one such success study which has today evolved into a sustainable green building. A focussed and planned approach by a dedicated team of experts has effectively contributed to the successful development of this structure. The Green concept, thus, needs active participation from all its stakeholders, who are involved in effective planning and building qualitative structures.
Ar Sarika Vohra, AP-IGBC LEED India, Green Building Consultant India is a country blessed with immense natural
resource; but today, the situation requires a planned approach towards utilisation of those resources. The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda was one such project redeveloped as per the Green norms. Effective waste resource management system, planning the structure as per day-light penetration and ventilation as per the commutation of natural wind were few measures adopted while redeveloping the structure. Green is a concept directly linked with the natural resource and following these norms ensures a healthy and sustainable environment.
Richa Thakker, Project In-charge, SGL Carbon India Pvt Ltd Energy efficiency has been a core operational mantra for a global major like SGL Carbon. Our one such success innovation contributing in sustainable technology is the ECOPHIT Radiant Ceilings. The product provides a new technically powered innovative approach towards utilising renewable resources. It is equipped with expanded natural graphite, which has a very high level of electrical and thermal conductivity horizontally along the carbon layers. These characteristics are ideal for surface temperature control systems. Our future needs such technologies and products which can empower our dream towards achieving a Greener tomorrow.
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