Special Issue on ICT Innovation in India - Understanding Future Growth : October-December 2009 Issue by i4d magazine

Vol. VII No. 8

October - December 2009

The quarterly magazine on ICT4D

Working with ICT innovation

ISSN 0972 - 804X

Special Issue on ICT Innovation in India - Understanding Future Growth

ICT Innovation in India

Using personas to understand users Information for development

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Userminds, Copenhagen, Denmark

Role of European collaborative projects HCI in Indian ICT Education

knowledge for change

Contents

Vol. VII No. 8

October - December 2009

Our Social Media presence

Features 5

Editorial

Editorial Note

ICT Innovation in India

Fueling IT innovation

UNESCO’s Comparative Study of CSC’s and CMC’s in India RAJiv project in Andhra Pradesh Pratap Vikram Singh

From the Guest Editor’s pen Sudhanshu Rai, Mogens Kuehn Pedersen and Krithi Ramamritham

Working with ICT innovation Sudhanshu Rai and Mogens Kuehn Pedersen

Dept of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

The Road to Copenhagen

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Teaching IT inspiration Rasmus Ulslev Pedersen and Michael Pedersen

Userminds, Copenhagen, Denmark Using personas to understand users Anja Thrane

20 24

The Euro-India Knowledge Mapping Project My Experiences Sunish Raj

Columns 41 42

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What’s on In Fact HIV/AIDS Facts and Figures

HCI in Indian ICT Education Role of European collaborative projects Pradeep Yammiyavar and Torkil Clemmensen

ICT Policy in India

ICT in India

UNESCO’s Comparative Study of CSC’s and CMC’s in India

A stakeholder view Ashok Kar

Infrastructure or content-driven Rajen Varada

CSCs in Andhra Pradesh Pratap Vikram Singh

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i4d | October - December 2009

n Editorial Fueling IT innovation

Advisory Board Dr M P Narayanan, Chairman, i4d Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Karl Harmsen United Nations University Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Nagy Hanna e-Leadership Academy, University of Maryland, USA Richard Fuchs IDRC, Singapore Walter Fust Global Humanitarian Forum, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France Editorial Board Akhtar Badshah, Frederick Noronha Editorial Team Editor-in-Chief Dr Ravi Gupta Research Assistant Subir Dey Sr. Graphic Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Graphic Designers Om Prakash Thakur, Shyam Kishore Web Programmer Zia Salahuddin i4d G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India Phone +91 120 250 2181-85 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net Web www.i4donline.net Printed at R P Printers, Noida, India

Its a fact universally acknowledged that India is the hub of software development for the world. But what’s needed now is to urge the very talented pool of IT professionals to engage in innovative use of the technologies that are at our disposal. ICT is another field where India has been very active and is among the frontrunners. But we cannot rest yet, a lot more has to be done in the ICT4D space. This is a domain where we need even more focused growth and innovative use of the knowledge and technologies that are available. This issue of i4d has been brought to you in association with the Euro-India ICT Co-operation with Sudhanshu Rai as the Guest Editor. The issue presents the experiences of the study conducted in India in their attempt to understand the Indian ICT arena and it’s capacity for innovation. The articles talk about how quite a few enterprising individuals have started thinking out of the proverbial ‘box’ and come up with ingenious ways in which IT and ICT tools can be used for various applications. Sudhanshu goes deeper into the theme of this issue in his editorial which is in the next page. Not limiting themselves to talking about the developments being made, the articles talk about the challenges that were faced and how they were overcome, discussions that will undoubtedly help the future innovators to learn from their predecessors and come up with more evolved strategies that will benefit both from the ground that has been covered and the new paths that will be covered by the future innovators. We hope this issue inspires the ICT practitioners in India and abroad to think of new ways in which these tools and technologies can be used to bring about a more just and equitable world for the disadvantaged. Do send us your feedback on this issue. I sign off with the prayer that we, the ICT practitioners, continue to evolve and look for ways to make development an all-encompassing phenomenon.

i4d is a monthly publication. It is intended for those interested and involved in the use of Information and Commnication Technologies for development of underserved communities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing network by keeping the community up to date on many activities in this wide and exciting field. i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.

Dr Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2008 Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

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Editorial Note

From the Guest Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pen Welcome to the special issue on ICT innovation in India. Over the past two years we have been toiling away trying to understand the Indian landscape and capacity for innovation within the ICT sector. When we talk of the ICTs we indicate this sector to include, the core of IT which is software development, hardware design, embedded systems, micro systems, systems development and those instances where IT is used to improve particular processes and systems. The purpose of this special issue is twofold, first it aims to share some of our experiences during the past two years, when we were engaged in collecting and understanding the ICT Innovation experience in India. All those engaged in the project were at times surprised by what we learnt, we were intrigued by the nature of energy in the ICT sector which was palpable and easy to gauge. In a study of this nature there are always challenges that we face, confusions that we needed to address and clarifications that we needed to provide to our motive and purpose, in all of these instances we were always supported by those who came in contact with us. To all those who took part in this study we thank you wholeheartedly, for without your support this project would not have gotten off the ground. ICT innovation is not a simple idea. The role of innovation in enabling and creating new enterprises has been well documented. What is challenging, is that the term innovation is understood very differently in different contexts and industries. This, in effect, was our central challenge when we first embarked on this journey in January 2008. We were consistently asked to define innovation and we consistently refused to be drawn into the definition game, for two reasons. First, we believe that the definition of innovation has an economic bias, meaning innovation more often than not is defined and understood using economic language. Second, innovation is multifaceted consisting of a constellation of ideas beginning with research and development, increments, improvising, ideation, iteration, each of these notions explains innovation to some extent and has a clarifying effect on innovation but is not solely innovation itself. Our problem was that of trying to conceptualise IT the process of innovation, but cannot be envisaged as the whole, but only a part of the whole, where innovation is the whole and each of these ideas a part, playing an important role on the road to innovation. Well that was then, 2008. We are now at the end of 2009 and we have a story to tell. We acknowledge the story is not all encompassing, meaning we have not studied the entire ICT sector in India but only those companies that came through and was highlighted by the historical module, which was the creation and

vetting of the baseline. Well this is not the forum to debate whether the baseline was representative of the ICT industry but only to say that what we conjecture about ICT Innovation in India reflects on those companies we had a chance to work with. In what follows you will find a number of very interesting articles. The first article is a narrative with three short case studies that indicate how innovation occurred in these very different contexts. The interesting feature of this narrative is to note that ICT innovation does not follow a predetermined path, it is multidimensional. The second article is from LEGO, a very innovative Danish company that has pioneered the use of its MINDSTORMS generation of building toys for educational purposes at the University level. The third article is a very interesting case from a company called UserMinds, they are dedicated to improving design of the interfaces and illustrate usability challenges with the help of two very interesting case studies. The key feature to note in this article is the way innovation is perceived and implemented in terms of usability. The fourth article is a theoretical conjecture outlining the challenges of studying usability design in India. It sketches out the history of usability design and explores the role of collaborative projects between India and Europe in bringing about a shift in thinking of usability design in India. The fifth article relates to illustrating how Manthan awards in India has resulted in encouraging small and medium companies and entrepreneurs to begin innovating. The award is given annually and is aimed at encouraging ICT innovation. The best companies are identified and presented with a reward and so are the team members. This is one way to reward and spur innovation in India. The sixth article addresses policy issues in India and its impact on ICT innovation in India. The seventh article is a narrative provided by one of our partners about his experiences in helping gather data. We believe in reading these articles, you, the reader, will not only get a glimpse of what other countries and companies are doing but will also get to understand the challenges faced by day to day innovators in companies. n Sudhanshu Rai sr.inf@cbs.dk

Mogens Kuehn Pedersen mk.inf@cbs.dk

Krithi Ramamritham krithi@cse.iitb.ac.in

i4d | October - December 2009

ICT Innovation in India

Working with ICT innovation This article brings out the summary of the research conducted by the CBS on the capacity for innovation in the Indian ICT arena

Sudhanshu Rai Department of Informatics Copenhagen Business School Denmark sr.inf@cbs.dk

Mogens Kuehn Pedersen Department of Informatics Copenhagen Business School Denmark mk.inf@cbs.dk

October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

So is there an Indian ICT innovation story which is sufficiently interesting for us to share? At the onset it would be presumptuous of me to claim this to be true, however in the article that follows I will share some of the insights from interviewing IT companies in India that encourages me to speculate that a positive answer to this question could be convincingly articulated, although not here in this article. The purpose of this article is primarily to share with you the nuggets of those experiences, which I have gathered while interviewing CEOs, CTOs, founders, directors, of innovative start ups, small and medium companies and large IT enterprises. The subsequent narrative illustrated through simple cases tries to explicate three ideas. First, that the motivation for innovation is multifaceted, they occur out of ambiguity, mitigation and impact, among others. We will narrate three case illustrations indicating the role of these ideas in enabling innovation as we experienced it. We address innovation in a much wider sense than the classic one of a new device or gadget. Innovations today take place over the whole range of products, services, processes, organisation, business models, environmental and climate compatible changes. In all of these ICT emerges as a critical ingredient in enabling the creation of innovation, in hardware, software, networks and in sensors, accelerators, nanotechnologies, etc. We thus engage with ICT innovation in India with a broad-minded approach. What are these experiences? What do these three cases tell us about ICT Innovation in India? We serve three different cases, each having its own distinct motivation for innovation. By sharing these experiences we intend to draw your attention to how each of these companies addressed the challenge

of innovation, then speculate about how, if at all these experiences point towards an Indian innovation story. The three case narratives bring out three key ideas that drove each of these companies to embark on their journey of innovation, these key drivers were, ambiguity, mitigation, and impact. We conjecture that ambiguity are instances where all ideas have unclear determination, are muddled with some direction or path but without a specific goal. Ambiguity is a period in the innovation process when thoughts and ideas are churned to gain clarity of a perspective in a casual context. Mitigation; is instances in an innovation process where the idea is clear, its objective and purpose identified. Here the innovation has a level of maturity where a set of skills is required to leverage the idea. Mitigation has two components, first managing risk and second negotiation. The latter is critical as the innovator or the innovating group needs to negotiate with the decision maker to the merits of the innovation. Negotiation that appropriates the innovation is critical for the innovation to see the light of day, demonstrating how the innovation purports to generate value. Innovation management is critical for the mitigation process as it develops procedures, mechanisms to take the innovation from a proof of concept to prototyping stage. Impact; is the expected as well as actual take-up of an innovation in all contexts and scenarios, backward and forward linkages meaning impact of innovation in regard to either or both in domestic and foreign markets; in civil society or government. Repositioning the organisation by default or by coincidence (meaning products ultimately define company positioning and competitive and/or social environment). Being innovative means to redefine and

renegotiate the boundaries as the innovation matures. We take these perspectives as pointers to enable you to reflect and engage in a discussion. The first of the three cases discusses the role of “ambiguity” in this company’s innovation experience; we will refer to this experience as Case 1. We then explore the role of “mitigation” in the innovation process using a second case study which we will refer to as Case 2 and finally, I will introduce the role played by “impact” in enabling innovation in the ICT sector referring to this experience as Case 3.

Case 1: Ambiguity - an instance for innovation Company A, is a research laboratory established by the Government of India to provide technical solutions to the Indian industry. In this instance, I was introduced to a project that was developed over a five-year period to make scientific the process of tea tasting. The idea was to combine tasting, smelling and texture verification empirically so as to determine the quality of the tea leaves. The lead scientist came up with the idea when he observed the inconsistency of the tea tasters, in their ability to determine the quality of the tea consistently over time. He wondered whether there would be a set of technologies that would be able to perform this task. His idea at first was born out of a mere curiosity which later got translated into an challenge that acquired the frame of consistent validation to tea quality, which did not exist according to him. The idea, though simple in its intent was not clear in his mind, as the following statement indicates, “I did not know where to start, which set of technologies could be involved and how to combine them, all I knew was that I wanted to build this solution for the tea industry, not because they asked for it but because I thought it could make the judgment of quality consistent” Tea tasting is a very critical job in the valuation and sale of tea. Tea tasters are specialised people, tasters that determine the quality of tea after having tasted the tea for real. The challenge as observed by the scientist was that even though tea tasting is a critical event in the valuation of tea, its arbitrary unscientific manner of value determination puzzled the scientist. When he introduced the idea to his colleagues on how to make tea tasting more scientific he received a number of responses, from outright amazement, coupled with the attitude, “it cannot be done” with some tacit support from his colleagues. “I only knew that the present system was not scientific, I wanted to introduce a more scientific, transparent and a method-based approach to tea valuing. What I did not know was the how question.” The first thing the scientist did was to collect a team of converts, but then, “I had a problem, I was not sure what technologies are needed to build this imaginary product I was talking about, I had not talked to the tea manufacturers, all this was just in my mind, I know I did not have the answers but I was convinced that it was a good idea and doable”. The scientist approached the system that he worked with. “The first question I was asked was, what do you want to make, the answer to this question was not clear to me. I knew I wanted to introduce a scientific way to conduct tea tasting. But I was not clear in my mind what the product will look like, who will it serve and why would a scientific way to conduct tea

tasting be better than the existing way. The management was sceptical and allowed me to continue work in a very limited way. “My colleagues too were confused, we talked a lot about what the product should do, what challenges it should address and how”. The team that the scientist built to look into this matter was itself wondering about the outcome whenever they discussed the ideas. They came up with very vague notions of the product and it’s functionality, very unreal and totally imposable to attempt but they kept discussing and bouncing ideas. This went on for over a year with several ideas being rejected. “The funds were running out and I had not yet conceptualised the product, its purpose and functions. I was in deep trouble after a year, not much progress had been made and no results to show for. I only had a lot of ideas of how this product could look like and would do. The scientist continued to soldier on, preventing the state of confusion to affect the seeking of a solution. The scientist continues to address the basic questions and the answers continued to be vague, directionless and confusing. However, by now the team members had been convinced that it was a good idea and wanted to find a solution. The solution came in the second year of the project, one day a group of scientists asked a question, it is not about tasting, it is about a combination of sensory inputs that are to be analysed, it is not about a set of technologies that can be done, but it is about talking to the manufacturers who actually face this challenge every season. Ask them how best they would like this idea translated and whether one of them would participate in this development. The design team quickly zeroed in on a few tea factories that produced high quality tea. Once they involved the manufacturer they realised that their vacillation in the absence of a clear causal path was indeed useful in sharing the final requirement for product prototyping. Because they were able to think of various ideas to solve the problem without the manufacturers influence, meaning it was useful for them not to have talked to the tea factories at the outset but very late in the process when their own ideas about the project were sufficiently addressed. What the manufacturer facilitated was the contextualising of the idea. “The manufacturers shared with us about how a tea taster does tea tasting. After five years, of which the first two years were spent wondering how we might achieve our goal, to the rapid development of the prototype after the joining of the manufacturer into the team made the team more confident in their belief that they can deliver and that their creation will make a difference in the manner they imagined at the onset of the project some five years ago.

i4d | October - December 2009

So how did ambiguity facilitate the process of innovation? First, while the team had little focus they not only bounced ideas among themselves thus developing a shared understanding of the problem space, they also created a common goal among themselves. Second, when they were finally introduced to the manufacturer they all had a very clear understanding of what needed to be communicated and done. The manufacturer understood precisely what they were trying to achieve and helps them in the process irrespective of who in the team talked to the manufacturer and third, they were not unsure of their idea of making the tea tasting process a scientific one. In terms of innovation, while ambiguity may seem difficult to address, allowing for ambiguity in enabling the creation of a shared understanding, a better appreciation of the problem set and an increased awareness of the role of other stakeholders as equal contributors to the problem set creates a constructive framework for addressing the challenges during an innovative activity. When actors like firms focus on innovation one of the important ideas they subscribe to is the reduction of risk, mitigating risk during the uncertain process of innovation is as important to firms as it is to scientists pursuing research in order to innovate. Uncertain, because there is no guarantee that the

innovation will succeed in the market. The challenge for many companies is therefore to ensure a balance between continuing to innovate and mitigating risk, that is minimising the unintended consequences of exposure to innovation. Limiting exposure implies that during innovation the company could be vulnerable to a multitude of dynamics, so it needs to manage that process. In the second case study, I illustrate how one company has mitigated its risk from innovation processes and how it has continued to innovate over the past several years.

Case 2: Mitigation for innovation Company B, works in the media space, it is skilled in developing media streaming technology. It’s strength was in developing codecs for DVD players. They wanted to create an online digital viewing product which they would use to target the broadcasting companies. To help them achieve their task the management team identified a group of individuals who they thought are creative and would be able to address the challenge. To ensure that there is a management oversight on this very critical endeavour for the firm they hired a R&D Head from outside. This person was qualified and understood what R&D is all about. He had set idea about the process, while the management team had a more loose understanding of the process. The Head wanted systems in place while the management team wanted a loser approach to the process of R&D. There was a fundamental difference in their approaches leading to the clash between the CEO and the Head, R&D. The CEO was of the opinion that the innovation process need not be separate from the day-to-day life of the company while the R&D Head disagreed, wanting a dedicated team insulated from other regular duties engaged in the process of innovation. While the CEO’s point was to have a broader perspective of innovation embedded among all employed the R&D view

was to carve out a role for the specific innovative team. The CEO’s point was not to put all the eggs in one basket, so if the innovation did not succeed then the company had other means to earn its livelihood from while the R&D perspective was to ensure that the innovation team succeeds and thus all resources were directed on that team. The management team had difficulty in reconciling the CEO’s view of encouraging a lower profile innovation activity which was different from the R&D Head’s innovation activity. Of course, one might speculate that the job of an R&D unit is to create new solutions and therefore the Head’s emphasis on a separate team for R&D. Both these leaders had a mitigating strategy, though they were different from each other. The result was that the management team decided that it is better to go along with the CEO’s perspective of low emphasis on innovation where each department will be charged to come up with some innovation in their own context as opposed to the R&D Head’s view that a separated entity be created that has full support of the management. The result of this disagreement translated itself in the R&D Head being marginalised leading to him leaving the firm. The company went on to innovate based on the CEO’S model and today commands a large share of the market for multimedia and broadcasting technology.

i4d | October - December 2009

Both these views have merit as mitigating innovation, meaning insulating the company for extreme risk while the process of innovation continues. The CEO’s low intensity risk mitigating approach to innovation tended to resonate among the management team’s overall beliefs on the direction the innovation should continue. The result was the shifting of the emphasis from high profile innovations to low profile fast delivery products. While there was a R&D department, it slowly merged into functional areas in order to develop new innovation while providing service or developing new products. From this case study you notice three things, first, two distinct models of mitigation for innovation. Second, the belief that innovation is as much formal as informal, thus the insistence of a loose approach to innovation across the organisation and third, that a mitigating strategy that focuses on diversifying the risk to all employees has a fairer chance of addressing risks from innovation.

Case 3: Working on Innovation through understanding impact Case 3 is where the innovation activity gets initiated by the threat perception from the introduction of a new set of technologies namely “cloud computing”. The resulting innovation is a consequence of the company considering the impact this technology will have on their business and moving to adopt cloud computing for creating new opportunities for themselves. Here, the resultant movement on the innovation trajectory is a consequence of the company’s impact perception from cloud computing as a threat as well as an opportunity. Consider company C, In the past, that is before the advent of cloud computing, its main objective was to provide localised web-enabled content management services. Over the past five years the success of cloud computing has made it reflect on the opportunity created by such an impact on the Indian market. Anticipating the increasing relevance of cloud computing this company is actively involved in bringing out innovative ways to imagine services in the future within cloud computing. One of the management team members was engaged in a discussion about how cloud computing will change the way we work and store data, making a reference to Google; he engaged in a passionate discussion with his interlocutor taking the view that people like their data stored locally as they own them, and it is not a matter of convenience but privacy. People according to him look at data ownership like buying clothes: “You do not buy clothes for yourself and then store it in a wardrobe in a third location, so when you want to access it, you will not be able to because of low bandwidth in India” he said. His companion took an alternative view indicating that “well that might be the case now, but that will change in a few months, believe me, you can have your clothes and store it in Three important ideas emerge from the above narrative, first, that innovation here is not necessarily the pursuit of a passionate dream to create new technology and improve the world, it is rather mundane, it is to survive in the market place for products and services. Second, that threat and opportunity are both part of the impact landscape, some companies react to new technologies from a standpoint of threat, other companies react to changing technological landscape taking it as a challenge to change themselves and their portfolio of offerings to the market.. In this case the initial reaction was one of refusing to believe that cloud computing will have an impact in India or it is relevant to the Indian condition. It was not considered relevant; upon further October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

a third location, then access it as and when you want without any additional hassle” he said. The next day the Manager formed a taskforce from among his colleagues in the company to look into the role cloud computing will play in the future for firms that have his type of business model. The taskforce reported in two weeks and “thus began a whole new experience for me”, the taskforce recommended that the company change it’s business model, create new products and services dedicated to the Indian market, they indicated that businesses would be interested in outsourcing these kind of services to a reliable firm with up-to-date infrastructure. The challenge for the manager was two-fold, how to conceptualise a process that will shift the focus of the company from it’s present location-based service model to a service model based on cloud computing and second, how to manage the delivery mechanism of the new products and services. “I quickly realised that I had embarked on a process that would change the focus of my entire company and that I needed to reflect. The first thing I wanted to know was the nature of the impact, meaning what is the precise challenge to my existing business model with the introduction of cloud computing. Further investigation indicated to me that my company was likely to be impacted in a very substantial way and that if I did not act, the company would no longer be relevant for the market, it was my acute understanding of the impact of the new technology that got us to where we are, now I have several products built up on the cloud computing model and we are doing very well.” investigation the Manager quickly realised that it was not only relevant but also a threat and an opportunity. The Manager then acted fast from a standpoint of opportunity and looked to taking advantage in mastering the technology. Third, correct impact perception was instrumental in enabling the shift and the innovation that this company then embarked on for addressing the challenges. Two important ideas for innovation are relevant and worth discussing. First, the ability to perceive an impact as an opportunity, this is very critical in enabling the company to survive and second the ability to take collective action and creating a shared understanding of the ensuing impact is critical for innovation.

What we take away from this case is impact as a preview of how new technology platforms may open new product or service markets, here due to new applications that need the attention even before the market has emerged and matured. Moving into a market creation position where the exposure to unexpected competition increases dramatically. Management alertness, agility and exposure to new sets of technology is critical for initiating ICT innovation along with the Managerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to create a shared understanding of the impact of the new technology on the future of the company from a standpoint of opportunity and not threat.

more widespread in the latter scenario as in the former view. From the third case innovation persisted because the management considered the emerging challenge from new sets of technology as an opportunity. They quickly organised themselves and focused on the challenge ahead. The innovation activity was spurred by three instances, correct analysis of the likely impact from the new and emerging cloud computing technology. Second, involving others into the innovation process and third, making the innovation transparent. The insight for innovation here is twofold; companies whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Managers are sensitive to the changing technological landscape are in a better position to initiate innovation by interpreting the market condition as a opportunity. And companies that initiate a shared problem solving approach are better placed to take advantage from a changing market condition.

Some reflections on ICT Innovation in India IT innovation is not necessarily well-defined and does not take a predetermined path. From the three cases above a few ideas emerge. First, opportunities for innovation can take hold at any level of the organisation, in which case the management should be sensitive to inputs from all levels as well as the main organisational structures. Innovation in the first case emerged from ambiguity, meaning the scientist wanted to make tea tasting a more scientific process but did not know exactly how to go about it and where to start. The management, in not wanting definitive structural explanations to the final goal of the project enabled the scientist to inhabit the ambiguous space along with his project partners, enabling him to bring new stakeholders into the project, allowing the redefinition of the project and listening to the potential buyers. From the second case the innovation was spurred by a disagreement in the process of innovation. One set of ideas thought of innovation as a separate focused activity, separate from the rest of the company. This view can be associated with the R&D view of innovation. While the other perspective thought of innovation as a free flowing all-encompassing phenomena, where it was not one group that was charged with bringing the innovation but the entire company was involved in the process of innovation. The two perspectives, the R&D view of innovation and the free flowing view of innovation are able to mitigate risk in different forms. The R&D view of innovation while concentrating the resources in one group also predetermines an outcome; this involves a large resource commitment. Whereas the free flowing of innovation view, which looks at innovation as a all-encompassing companywide activity allows individuals to take initiative and is less expensive thus less risky for the company. In effect, innovation is likely to be

What can we say about the innovativeness of Indian IT companies? I suppose from the above we can draw four insights. First, individuals in the innovation game need to be on the lookout for new opportunities constantly; second, innovation is as much about how you relate to other individuals as opposed to your own community, in effect innovation needs to bring in other disciplines, other than your own for cross-fertilizing ideas. Third, innovation is a tension-laden experience and therefore individuals involved need to manage tension in their own contexts and fourth innovation is about prejudging its impact. These appear to be the key insights from the three short cases presented here. Does this mean they are uniquely Indian, well we do not think so. We believe that innovation in India is still a nascent activity and IT companies are increasingly recognising IT innovation as an important value addition activity. However, we detect that Indian ICT innovation is increasingly playing an important role in most Indian firms and we expect this activity to continue gaining importance in the time to come. n

i4d | October - December 2009

Dept of Informatics, Copenghagen Business School, Denmark

Teaching IT inspiration At Copenhagen Business School (CBS) we teach IT innovation with LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT. Read more to find out how.

LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT is used at Copenhagen Business School to teach IT-innovation. Our thesis is how can we possibly teach students at a joint IT/business program how to connect computers to the physical world such as healthcare, business information systems, environmental monitoring systems, global warming warning systems and so on? The answer in our case has been the robotics development kit from Danish toy manufacturer LEGO Group. They produce the well-known LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT robotics kit (see Figure 1). It is an educational system that first and foremost allows its users to experiment with a dynamic system and program it to reach some objective. This can be an objective as simple as producing robot that follows a black line with its light sensors. It is called a line-follower robot and is the basis of many competitions involving team collaboration toward some stated goal. At the Department of Informatics (INF), CBS, we have used the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT (LMS) for a

number of things. Its versatility is very high since it is packaged in an appealing plastic design making is suitable for other groups that would otherwise be targeted with the traditional electrical engineering development kits. Basically LMS is made safe for kids, so it naturally also fine to use with young adults in the age category of 2025 years, which are the age profile at INF. Starting from the top down listing all the projects we have used LMS for, is to begin with a master thesis project. The two students in this project wanted to innovate a robot that could find its way out of a box with doors in it. A specific technical challenge was to interpret the feedback from the ultrasonic sensor, and see from the feedback if it would change when a door opening was swept with the robot. Besides that challenge the students used the open source code that comes with LMS to program this decision structure in the programming language C. This was made possible with the open source project called nxtgcc (http://nxtgcc.sourgeforge.net). The students robot is in Figure 3. LMS was a very good system for the

Rasmus Ulslev Pedersen Embedded Software Laboratory Dept. of Informatics Copenhagen Business School, Denmark rup.inf@cbs.dk

Michael Pedersen CBS Learning Lab Copenhagen Business School Denmark

October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

Figure 1: Some of the new NXT 2.0 models (Source: http://mindstorms.lego.com)

is our choice because the business leader of the future must be able to understand how the engineers work, how many resources go into this sort of project, and staff his or her company with the best possible people from around the globe. On the first semester itself, we have previously used NXT to teach basic programming skills, because the NXT-G programming language is very easy to get started with. The core programming understanding is supported by the introduction of the relevant iteration, computation, and decision programming blocks as in many other text-based programming languages. A secondary goal of using NXT is that our students arrive at the INF programme with substantially different backgrounds. Some of them have already been programming at secondary school using C++ for example. The majority has not been programming before, and therefore the prerequisites of the class are to have not been programming. This interesting didactic challenge is met by using NXT, because those who are inclined toward programming will find this educational toy stimulating. This is illustrated in Figure 6. A IT innovation team will consist of both skilled people with a computer science background, and others who see the innovation from a broader perspective. We capture the interest of both profiles in this way at INF. The competition among educational institutions have to be addressed as well; to this end we regularly invite high school classes

Figure 4: Using LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT to simulate a windmeter (Vindretning: wind direction, Vindhastinghed: wind speed) in a 3rd semester class.

students because the general idea could be prototyped very quickly with the graphical programming language NXT-G. Then the more advanced functions was implemented directly in a modified firmware (the open source operating system on the ARM micro processor on NXT). Further down the education line we have used LMS for programming new kinds of systems which have connections to the physical world. The motivation behind this is that each of us are already interacting with a number of sensor equipped systems many times every day (GPS or mobile phones for example), and it is important to prepare the IT students of tomorrow for this sensor-level information source. Therefore, we have an object oriented analysis and design (OOA&D), which includes a LMS which will act as a wind speed measurement station. The overall task is to program a reservation system for a local sailing club, but we have also determined that the wind velocity plays a significant role in the reservation process and this can be modeled with a LMS set that each group borrows. One the first semester we indirectly use NXT for crosssemester collaboration, because these 90+ students participate in a longitudinal effort, where they act as an outsourcing company for the 3rd semester OOA&D students. These first semester students participate using Netbeans and Eclipse to interface with the OOA&D students. We use the popular leJOS project (http://lejos.sourceforge.net/), because it allows us to use Java all the way from the LEGO sensor to the Java Enterprise Edition programming of a web system. To be specific, the task is to implement the windmetre algorithms that is going to be used by the 3rd semester students (see Figure 5). It serves the purpose of exposing the students to the difficulty of working with other entities with a different skill set and not being located physically around the same computer. Instead these students are using the core tools of any outsourcing company: versioning control systems , which is a way for programmers to share source code in a project. From a motivational and innovation perspective, we do this because it builds up the skill set necessary for international collaboration. Most business schools would not be able to teach detailed programming skills and source versioning tools, but that

Figure3: Master students with a custom programmed LEGO® MINDSTORMS® at a community event (Source: Large Danish business newspaper named Børsen).

i4d | October - December 2009

to the department and have them play with NXT. Such a theme day is composed of both an IT case from a theoretical point of view, because the majority of the educational programme delivers this kind of Figure 5: NXT-G program to read a light sensor and teaching, and using control the motors accordingly. NXT to complete a task. We compose teams and within 30 minutes of instruction, the visiting high school students are able to compete against each other. They have to create and program a robot to follow a line. Since the lines these robots have to follow are not straight lines, the students have to engage in a trial and error effort to tweak the motor parameters. Our future plans go in the direction of using LMS NXT for other educational programmes than the IT/business

programme, because the hands-on experience with such systems are excellent for team building exercises and other learning activities. The use of LMS NXT supports the stimulation of innovation skills at all levels in our educational programmes. We can Figure 6: First semester students experimenting use this system, together with LEGO® MINDSTORMS® as part of the with online learning introductionary programming classes (Source: system like Moodle, Copenhagen Business School newspaper Kræmmerhuset). to create more situated knowledge experiences (Diana Laurillard, Rethinking University Teaching). The benefit is that the decentralised nature of IT innovation is nurtured in optimal conditions. Trial and error is a natural component of this sort of work, and that is why the experimental nature of LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT is well-suited in this endeavour. n

China backs India on emissions cut stance

China on Thursday said it supported Indian measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions and was ready to strengthen cooperation with India on climate change. “We understand the current situation in India. China supports India to take adaptation and mitigation measures based on its national conditions and capacity,” Xinhua reported quoting October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang. “China is ready to strengthen communication, coordination and cooperation with India on climate change,” he said. India announced on Thursday that the country will significantly reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by cutting the emission intensity by 20 to 25 per cent.

“China and India are both developing countries and victims of climate change. The two countries do not have the obligation to binding emission reduction targets on climate change,” he said. Last week, China announced it is going to reduce the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP in 2020 by 40 to 45 per cent compared with the level of 2005.

Userminds, Copenhagen, Denmark

Using personas to understand users Personas are an increasingly popular tool for developing successful ITsolutions such as websites, intranets or software applications. Learn more about personas and how they are used in two very different solutions.

Imagine you are responsible for creating a successful intranet to thirty thousand health care employees located in fourteen different hospitals. The intranet has to be an effective tool in increasing employee effectiveness and job satisfaction as well as promoting corporate values within everyone from chief surgeon to the maintenance man. Or imagine that you must create a website promoting financial security products in different life phases. A site that appeals to graduates starting their careers as well as their grandfathers ready for retirement. In both cases a thorough understanding of the users’ behavior and needs along with presenting this understanding insight to the development team is necessary for the creation of a successful solution. A very effective tool in this process is the construction of personas. Personas put a human face on demographics and user statistics Personas are fictional representatives of the target audience or in other words, user profiles with human characteristics

such as; name, age, family status, job title and other personal details that are relevant for the solution. Personas make the target audience come alive, which makes it easier for management and the development team to understand the target audience and develop useful and desirable products. A persona does not represent an actual human being but is constructed on the basis of a collection of data regarding a specific segment of the target audience. When constructing an intranet for thirty thousand employees we used only seven personas since these represented the various segments of employees. Creating a common intranet for 14 hospitals The Capital Region of Denmark has 14 hospitals, which vary in size. From ‘The University Hospital’ which is the country’s leading hospital for patients needing highly specialised treatment to local hospitals with a capacity of no more than 150 patients. In all, the 14 hospitals have 30.000 employees that include health care

Anja Thrane CEO and Founder of Userminds

Personas are based on user interviews and data collection

i4d | October - December 2009

professionals such as doctors and nurses to maintenance personnel and administration. The challenge was to create a user friendly and effective intranet that meets the needs of the large central hospital as well as the small local hospitals. The intranet also had to take into consideration that the it had to fit the usage patterns of the chief surgeon as well as the maintenance man. The IT-development team of the hospitals had already conducted initial research such as questionnaires and qualitative research, but needed expert advice on how to analyse the data and construct personas. With a starting point in the existing research we conducted additional interviews with employees and field studies at the hospitals. Our findings showed that employees could be divided into three categories according to their job function and their degree of mobility at work (Table 1). The analysis revealed that the tasks performed on the intranet differed most amongst of the health care personnel and least between maintenance personnel. As a result we created seven personas (Table 2). The primary personas are Charles, the chief surgeon and Heather, the head nurse since they have the most complex tasks on the intranet. A scenario for Charles could be that he has to look for research articles relevant for his own research projects. A scenario for Heather could be that one of the nurses on her ward has fallen ill with the flu, and Heather now has to revise next week’s work schedule. The intranet automatically informs the other nurses about the changes. Table 1: Job categories and degree of mobility Health care personnel Administration (mobile) (stationary) • • •

Doctors Nurses, care takers Other health care personnel

• • • •

Maintenance (mobile)

Top level management • Middle management • Administrative workers • Union representatives

Porters Cleanings staff Canteen workers

The personas were adopted by the IT-development team and the management group supervising the project to the degree that they started to refer to the various personas by name only. Instead of chief surgeon and head nurse they referred to ‘Charles’ or ‘Heather’. The personas were used throughout the development process from scoping intranet functionalities to creating the information architecture and design. Every time new ideas for Table 2: Overview of personas for hospital intranet – Charles, Chief surgeon and Heather, Head nurse are primary personas. The names have been altered to fit an international context. Health care personnel Administration (mobile) (stationary)

Maintenance (mobile)

•

• • •

Charles, Chief • surgeon (54) Asha, Doctor in • training (34) Tina, Young nurse (27) Heather, Head nurse (42)

John, Assisting manager (43) Lisa, IT-worker and union representative (31)

October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

George, Porter (45)

Conducting usability tests with users

developing the intranet were discussed the personas were included and helped to determine whether or not to include more features or change layout. For example, by referring to Charles’ need for a list of published research or discussing Heather’s use of schedules. We also used the seven personas when recruiting test participants for usability tests of the intranet. Three years later the personas are still in use for further development of the intranet and are used as inspiration for hospitals in other regions. Creating a new website for an insurance company An international insurance company that offers financial security products like life insurance and pension plans needed a new website in order to attract new customers and service existing ones. The challenge for many companies offering financial security products is that customers find it difficult to understand the products and tend to focus on more reassuring aspects of life than death, terminal illness or growing old. Furthermore the end user is often not the decision maker, since life insurance and pension plans are often a part of a salary package. The employer (i.e. the CEO, CFO or HR manager) are the decision makers when it comes to choosing financial security products for the company salary package. The insurance company felt confident that a new and appealing website would inspire more people to become customers and existing customers to upgrade their products. We were asked to research exactly what kind of features and content would result in a successful website. The relevance of the insurance company’s products varies through life: a young person tends to focus on the here and now; retirement, illness, and death are too distant for them. An older person will be more concerned about securing living standard when retirement starts. It was therefore obvious to construct personas in order to determine what kind of content and features each segment of the target audience needs. We conducted focus group interviews with respectively young customers, middle aged customers and customers close to retirement. Our analysis of the interviews showed that in each age group there were engaged, potentially engaged customers and disengaged customers. We also did interviews with business managers because of their role as decision makers. We found that business managers are quite similar to end users, as managers

How are personas constructed There are different approaches to constructing personas, but it is most common to interview users or potential users and on the basis of this research construct various personas. Many companies already have collected mostly quantitative data about their target audience and this data is a valuable foundation for conducting qualitative interviews with the users. We usually describe our personas using some or all of the following categories depending on the kind of solution in question: • Demographic, geographic, biographic background information • Sp e c i f i c g o a l s , n e e d s , a n d attitudes • Specific knowledge and proficiencies • Usage context and patterns • User experience • Attitude and relation to product(s) and the company • Relationships among personas

After collecting and analysing information, we prioritise the personas according to primary, secondary and unimportant users. It is important to select a few primary personas and focus the design and development process on them. Presenting personas The primary goal of constructing personas is to give the development team a thorough understanding of the user’s motivation and behaviour. Be careful to choose a picture, a name and personal details that fits the persona and creates empathy. If management and the development team achieve a feeling of knowing what that person is like, the presentation has succeeded. We usually include the following when describing personas: • A name and picture • Demographics (age, education, family status) • Job title and main areas of work

•

Goals and tasks in relation to the product or solution • A quote about the personas’ relation to the product or solution Below are two examples of personas we created for a hospital intranet: the chief surgeon and a hospital porter. They have very different roles at the hospital and very different usage patterns of the hospital intranet. Predicting persona behaviour – creating scenarios Personas are the starting point for creating scenarios of typical actions the persona will perform when interacting with a given solution. A scenario for the chief surgeon described previously would be to use the intranet to post a message for his staff or check for news from the administration. Creating scenarios are effective methods to decide if the business strategy is corresponding to users’ needs and what features to include in the solution.

also find financial insurance products difficult to understand and based their decision on their own situation. The family situation determines the level of financial security needed and therefore all personas have a short description of their family relation. Based on the research we were able to construct 8 personas (Table 3). The personas were then compared to the client demographics of the company to ensure that the personas reflected all major

the personas. Due to client confidentiality we have altered the example slightly. Our research and the personas were presented to the marketing and communication department at the insurance company. The marketing team became very engaged in the personas and even requested that a picture should be replaced, as it didn’t resemble the persona in question - even if personas are purely fictional! The presentation of personas was used to Table 3: Overview of personas for insurance company convince top management about the need for a redesign of the website and Decision maker Indifferent client Potentially engaged client Engaged client was later used in workshops when Susanne, 61 – has 3 adult Mark, 29 - about to establish Joe, 43 – divorced. Robert, 54 - business discussing features and content on sons and 9 grandchildren a family Has two children. Is in manager. Married the new website as well as planning a new relationship and and has two adult for marketing campaigns. Personas has two stepchildren. daughters. became very valuable when different Anita, 38 – has a young Anette, 31- mother to two small departments within the company had daughter from a previous children marriage. Is now living to collaborate, as personas helps keep with her boyfriend the users in focus. Holly, 51 – has two adult children Henry, 58 – has an adult daughter and two grandchildren

Personas are the first step to a great solution It is our experience, that personas are a very useful powerful technique when researching communicating users’ needs and communicating these to management and the development team. Especially when engaging with companies who havesn’t yet been convinced of the value of involving the users in the development process and

segments of the customers. We then chose to focus on ‘Potentially engaged customers’ as primary personas since the ‘Engaged client’ and the ‘Decision maker’ already had their needs fulfilled in existing client solutions. Table 4 shows an example of one of

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Table 4: Example of persona Mark – younger, potentially engaged client

Mark Mark Woods, 29 years Business consultant at AMI Consulting Mark is 29, has a Bachelor degree in Business administration and is employed as business consultant, at AMI Consulting. Mark is living with his girlfriend Catherine, 28 who is an Art student. They live in his small flat in the inner city.

Mark’s pension plan Mark needs advice on: Payments on pension plan Mark got his first pension plan when he started working for AMI Consulting and a pension advi- Mark has a tight economy with student loans and a mortgage on sor talked him through his options. Mark is not the apartment. He is also soon that informed about pension plans but he liked providing for his family, so he is the idea that he could choose investment funds not able to put more money aside and follow the results after logging in to the for his retirement. insurance company website. Supervised his investments – in the beginning … Insurance coverage Mark was quite satisfied with the guidance and The coverage of Mark’s life insurinformation from the pension advisor. He now ance and health insurance has to knows that he can adjust his investments accordcorrespond to his debt and his role ing to the development in the market. He has a bread winner the next couple of only logged in a few times in the beginning to years. check the performance of his portfolio, but he hasn’t traded yet. He expects that he will use more time to invest in the future. He has to provide for Reminder: Update his investment profile and his child and girlfriend and likes the idea that he investment tips is financially secure.

”It is not important to me in my everyday life, but I feel that it should be.” Personal overview and status Mark would like to have a quick overview of his Mark and Catherine are expecting pension plan and life insurance when he logs on their first child in a few months and are looking for a more spacious home. to the insurance company’s website. He wants to know his savings and how much he pays in administration fees. It has to be easy to get an Mark spends his spare time playing overview and to look for more detailed informafootball with friends from high school. tion, and he would like not to get all the update letters from the insurance company that’s always cluttering his desk at home.

Upgrade his insurance coverage since his is providing for a child soon Preferred channels of communication: E-mail and online access to his personal information.

Mark would like to calculate how much he has to pay to his pension plan every month in order to have a pleasant retirement. It would also be great to get investments tips – perhaps on email with a link to the company website. acknowledging the importance of user experience. Personas have a very strong narrative and are a powerful tool to establish team empathy into the users’ world. Companies like Microsoft use personas for exactly this reason: because they get better insight into their customers’ world and as a result get improved product quality. Based on our experience here are a few tips when constructing personas. 1. Collect relevant data about the target audience: Use both quantitative and qualitative research methods to learn about the target audience and set up specific criteria for data collection October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

before you begin. 2. Personas must correspond with the data collection : Personas consist of some fictional elements (typically the biographical details), but important characteristics must be in accordance with the data. 3. Make personas part of the common knowledge of the solution: Engage the organisation in the personas by presenting them to everybody from management to development teams and make sure that everybody understands the personas . Personas are relevant from the planning of the solution through to the launch. n

The Euro-India Knowledge Mapping Project

My Experiences What are the driving forces behind innovation? What do the innovation activities mean for Indian ICT organisations?

Sunish Raj Founder and CEO Acadinnet Education Services India Pvt. Limited sunish@acadinnet.com

The Euro India Knowledge Mapping project was indeed an enriching experience for alI of us at Acadinnet and I can proudly say that we put our best minds to support the knowledge mapping study in south and east region. We hope our efforts have added value to the overall objective of this research project. The objectives of the study (mentioned below), served as key drivers of our dedicated efforts • Networking a wide range of actors from Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to promote Indian RTD potential. • Increasing participation in the EU Framework 7 programme from India. • Mapping Indian ICT knowledge, research & innovation landscape and potential to collaborate. • Providing input to strengthen policy dialogue between Europe’s i2010 strategy and Indian ICT society. • Collaboration with a large group of experts and launch joint research projects Acadinnet Education Services India Private Limited is a startup organisation focused on improving the research potential of academic institutes by helping institutes in the domain of higher education, crossdisciplinary research, cross pollination of experts and active collaboration with industry on Research and Development. There is a synergy between our philosophy and the objectives of Euro-India project and today I feel delighted that we were a part of this study. We often talk of innovation as being critical to every company. However, not much was known about who was engaged in what kind of innovation and how these innovations are taking place in Indian companies? What are the driving forces behind innovation? What do the innovation activities mean for Indian ICT organisations? While the objectives were

challenging, it was equally challenging to execute the project at ground level. There were a few challenges in the survey support which included identifying the right resources from each organisation that participated in the survey. The fact that innovation surveys are so common in Bangalore added to our challenge in demonstrating how different the Euro-India Innovation Mapping study was from them. I would also like to a c k n o w l e d g e s u p p o r t f r o m Pr o f R Srinivasan from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) and Prof Anjula Gurtoo from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc). They made it easier for us to conduct the survey. Based on my experience on how organisations work in India and the time constraints senior business and technical experts go through, I feel, the survey could have been little shorter. Moreover, as most of the organisations were startup firms which work on tight resource utilisations, they found the survey a bit too cumbersome and long. While they were convinced about the objective of the study and were more than willing to participate, the length of the survey dithered a few. Data captured in south and east region shows that about 66 per cent organisations responded to the survey with more than 75 per cent responses to questionnaire, 8 per cent organisations did not want to be a part of the survey where as about 26 per cent organisations though were keen, yet could not finish the survey in time. The overall trend shows that in general, organisations were convinced about the objective and saw great value in responding to the survey. While the innovation mapping study has come to an end, I sincerely hope that the Indian and European ICT organisations make use of this study to establish fruitful and result oriented collaboration under the European Union’s Framework 7 programme. n i4d | October - December 2009

Few instances during the survey support of Euro-India Knowledge Mapping Study

CEO of Company A (name changed) mentioned that they are a startup and though he would be personally keen to take up the enterprise level survey, however could not ask anyone in his team to take up the project level survey as all were very tied up with project deliverables. Director Technology of company B (name changed) mentioned that after spending long time into recession, the market shows signs of picking up and he does not have time to take part in the survey. He also mentioned that, had we approached him little early, he would have been more than willing to take part. CEO of company C (name changed) was so prompt that he mailed his team member who was on vacation, to respond to the project level survey, while he was responding to enterprise level survey. We got both the responses in no time. Director of company E (name changed) said after taking up the survey, “Survey was too long and I am not sure how will this help in achieving the objective mentioned for the study”. Senior Business executive of company D (name changed) mentioned that their organisation has taken a stance not to respond to any surveys as they feel this as a waste of their quality time. A lot of organisations finished the survey in the last week, as the survey kept on being pushed as a low priority activity.

Sea level rise threatens Sunderbans

Rising sea levels have forced thousands of families to leave their ancestral houses and lands in the Sunderbans area of West Bengal, India, and many more are living in the constant fear of losing theirs. At least 10,000 inhabitants have been turned into environmental refugees and another 70,000 are in the danger of meeting the same fate over the next thirty years, environmental experts say. After a 10-year study in and around the Bay of Bengal, oceanographers say the sea is rising at the rate of 3.14 mm a year in the Sunderbans against a global average of 2 mm, threatening low-lying areas of India and Bangladesh. Satellite image of the Subdarban delta Sugato Hazra, director of the School of Oceanography at the Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India, who led the team that conducted the study, said an increase in the sea temperature was compounding the problems for the islanders. “In Sunderbans, the impact (of global warming) is very high because not only is the coastline retreating but we are also losing islands and land; in 30 years we have lost 90 sq km area including two islands. A lot of people October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

have become environmental migrants; high intensity cyclones are increasing in the Bay of Bengal because of the rise in the sea surface temperature,” said Hazra. According to a United Nations climate panel report, human activity was causing global warming and it predicted more droughts, heat-waves and rising seas. But for the Sunderbans, made up of hundreds of islands, crisscrossed by narrow water channels and h o m e t o In d i a’s tiger population, the threat is more immediate. At least 15 islands have been affected, but erosion is widespread in other islands as well, Hazra said. A combination of drought followed by heavy rainfall this year and increasing soil salinity have made it impossible to grow enough food to survive on traditional agriculture alone. At least four million people live in the islands spread across 9,630 sq km of mangrove swamps.

The Road to

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i4d | June 2009

Copenhagen

June 2009 | www.i4donline.net

23 Photo Credit: Subir Dey

HCI in Indian ICT Education

Role of European collaborative projects HCI – HumanComputer Interaction is an emerging area of great potential in India.

Pradeep Yammiyavar Professor, HCI and Usability Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology - Guwahati, Assam, India pradeep@iitg.ernet.in

Torkil Clemmensen Associate Professor, Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark tc.inf@cbs.dk

Introduction Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Education has come a long way in India. Indians have taken to IT (Information Technology) as though it was an ‘Indian’ Technology (IT). In the history of India no other technology has been absorbed as quickly and has involved the population en-mass as what ICT has done, be it telecommunications, education or governance. ICT related educational programmes in Indian institutions are offered under a wide range of disciplines such as Commerce, Management, Information Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology and Creative Design. Long before the advent of Computer Science or IT discipline in the Indian educational scene, Design schools in India were already teaching and practicing one or the other forms that constitute the core of today’s HCI/User Experience (UX)/ Usability Engineering (UE)/Interaction Design (ID). Elsewhere in the world, HCI is more associated with Computer Science (CS) and Information Technology (IT) disciplines, rather than with Design. From observing discussions in web groups 11, web journals 13 and popular articles in the press12 as well as papers presented in several conferences, it can be inferred that in India HCI has a more human-centred orientation within ICT environments rather than computingcentred focus. It also indicates that Design schools have taken the lead over their computer science and IT counterparts as far as HCI education and activism is concerned. Though the Technology and Computer Science departments across the country are larger in number than Design schools, it is the Design schools/departments that have formed the

foundation for skilled and trained human resources in the HCI field.1,2,3,4 The evolution of HCI in Indian educational institutions Academic activity surrounding HCI as a serious specialization can be traced back to the work done, either in ergonomics of products or in graphical interfaces, at three or four Indian Design Schools. The first dedicated Usability Engineering Research laboratory in a higher educational institution to admit research students in HCI was initiated at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IITG) in the year 2002.1, 3, 4 This research unit at IITG accepted its first PhD scholar, and started offering courses in HCI, UX, UCD and Interaction Design in 2003, offering the first formal specialization stream in HCI/ Interaction design under an umbrella term ‘Usability Engineering’. Since then over ninety undergraduates, postgraduates and PhDs have successfully specialised in this stream, and IITG has a 100% placement record since 2002 for its HCI Usability Engineers cum Creative Designers. Many of them pursued higher studies in HCI at the Masters and PhD levels in US and European Universities and are now working as Usability experts all over the world.` The uniqueness of the IITG experience in HCI education has been its multidisciplinary nature incorporating, Design, Social Sciences, Computer Sciences and IT within its curriculum. 3.4 Figures 1 and 2 illustrate some interaction design and HCI projects executed at the IITG’s – Usability Engineering Lab. By 2006 and 2008-09 other institutions like National Institute of Design (NID)14 and Industrial Design Centre –IITB (IDC) started offering specific degree programmes in New Media Design and Interaction Design. NID and IDC had i4d | October - December 2009

been teaching in this area for a decade, but as part of Design, and not as specialised HCI streams. In general, design schools in India prefer to use the term “Interaction Design” to label this area. 2,5 The first awarded PhD in HCI to a Designer was by Birla Institute Fig 1. (a) Mobile phone o f Te c h n o l o g y interface for Construction trade and Science in workers 2005. 6 Besides the a b ove m e n t i o n e d institutions, Information Technology Institutions like the Indian Institutes of Information Technologies - IIITs,9 and Computer Science Fig 1. (b) Interface for collaborative learning and playing system using multiple mice in a class room Departments of Universities, have now initiated research activities in HCI. A large number of was hosted by C-DAC in Pune, (see figure 3). The second IEEE Indian students have also started acquiring Masters and PhDs in International conference on Intelligent Human Computer HCI from institutions abroad from the year 2000 onwards. Interaction is scheduled in January 2010 at IIIT, Allahabad9. Another international event at Mumbai, organised by IITB, IITG, Research activity in HCI through collaborations with NID, CDAC under the aegis of IFIP, is being planned for 2010.12 the European Union International collaborations like the CULTUSAB project between It has been less than a decade since India started its journey in Copenhagen Business School, IITG and Chinese Academy of this very crucial area of HCI research and practice within ICT. Science as well as the IESUP have played a catalytic role for Institutions that are involved in serious research in Usability are research activity in HCI in India. Similar collaborations are being few in numbers, with IITG having taken the lead since 2002. planned between German institutions and the Computer Science In the HCI area IITG has over 60 publications in Journals/ department of IIT Madras, which is setting up a new entity for Refereed International and National conferences besides HCI research. Based on a survey of information depicted in the winning international awards for its design concepts. Many of Indian institution websites and based on the list of publications the publications were the outcome of the Cultural Usability the following categories and areas of research can be broadly (CULTUSAB) project that was initiated by Copenhagen Business identified as those that are currently being pursued in Usability School.10 A number of other European Institutions too have been in India. By no means is this list complete in its representation. collaborating with IITG by offering internship to IITG HCI • Digital Conservation and Library Tools students. Often the students continue working on their internship • Language and Multimedia tools projects after returning to India. Other institutions like C-DAC, • e-Learning systems, content Tools IIT Bombay, IIITH too have a significant track record of research • e-Governance output as measured by publications, industry interactions and • Medical applications of ICT international research collaborations. • User personality, emotions, attitudes and mental models in The first pan-Indian conference on HCI, Systems Usability, HCI and User-Centred Design was held in Bangalore on December • Usability testing 6 and 7, 2004, under the aegis of the Indo-European Systems • Information Architecture and Graphic User Interfaces Usability Partnership (IESUP), in co-operation and association • Mobiles and PDA Interfaces with the Computer Society of India, the British Computer Society/ • ICT in Social Systems with a focus on Culture HCI Group, ACM/SIGCHI, and the International Federation • Retail, Banking and Service industry for Information Processing (IFIP).8 • Cognitive Models for Human Computer Interaction This was followed by workshops, symposiums and exchange • Signal and Vision Processing programmes held in India under the Cultural Usability project.10 • Language Processing The Danish Science Council with the involvement of the • Intelligent Methods and Interfaces Copenhagen Business School and IITG funded this project. • Computational Semantics Since then more than 10 international and national conferences and events have taken place in India within a short span of 5 years, Experiences from the CULTUSAB project mainly in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Pune. The CULTUSAB project10 aimed at understanding issues in Most recently an international working conference on usability HCI and in particular the usability of ICT that matter in cross October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

cultural situations, and mainly when it came to testing. Many IT companies expressed lack of tools and testing protocols for testing situations in cultural settings not familiar to the professionals responsible for the testing. From an academic perspective, there were indications that usability testing procedures developed for use in, e.g., Europe or the USA, did not give reliable results in countries such as India. The project was an in-depth investigation of the cultural specifics that go into usability test situations in different countries such as Denmark, India and China. In a second phase, the project explored possible developments of the testing methods in order to avoid cultural bias and produce comparable results across countries of the world. The proposed project was a collaborative one, involving senior researchers in all three countries, as well as advisers from world wide companies based in US and Europe and from institutions elsewhere. The results from the project10, helped clarify how culture impacts all the different components of a usability test. The results showed that the cultural background of moderator and test user, the language and gestures used during the test, the language of the software being tested, and the description of the tasks that users of the designed software had to do, all play important roles in finding usability problems, and in defining quality of cultural usability in information and communication technology across country and stakeholder groups. These results indicate that India-based innovation in the area of HCI and usability evaluation, which is based on the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cultural diversity of ICT user groups, may potentially contribute significantly to our knowledge of what is a good quality of ICT from a user point of view.

Fig 2. (b) Interactive music table for social

working alongside software teams. Along with the multinational corporations it is the medium and small firms that are pushing the Usability envelope by sheer enthusiasm and hoping for the business model to click. Professionals in HCI come from diverse backgrounds ranging from Design, Arts, Engineering, Information Science and Management. In 2006, the most comprehensive and useful survey7 that was carried out gives an overall view of the usability profession in India. A whole range of job titles are used by the companies. However, there is a dearth of PhD qualified professional researchers. Apart from educational institutions various associations managed by highly dedicated and enthusiastic usability professionals are active in India. Attempts are constantly being made by these associations to form an apex association for the Indian Usability professional as seen from active on line Usability discussion forums.

Usability practice in industry A survey7 of HCI and related professionals in India indicates the total number of professionals in 2006 was about 600 with diverse professional titles. Currently there are more than 2000 HCI professionals,11 working in software service companies, product companies, Internet companies and educational institutions. These companies have established HCI departments with interaction design, graphic design, usability testing labs and user research teams. A number of HCI consultants have started offering services. As a rich pool of HCI/UE/UX/UCD talent in a very niche area of IT starts growing in size, the Indian IT industry has been quick enough to spot it and offer service and expertise to IT companies the world over. The IT industry too has been actively practicing and evangelising Usability as an important part of the product being delivered to the costumers. Every big corporate name from IBM to Nokia to Honeywell to Google and many others have offices in India. Most of them by now have Fig 2. (a) Gesture Interface Usability teams

What needs to be done to get the area of HCI research flourishing? There may be three areas that will require a lot of focus in the coming years to get the area of HCI research flourishing in India. First, there is a need for developing an indigenous Indian HCI approach that takes into account the need of both the urban and rural populations in India, and also is sensitive to the peculiarities of a multicultural population. This should, for example, include the development of more Internet-based content in local languages, the design of green and sustainable interaction with computer devices that can be used by illiterate and computer illiterate users at extremely low cost, who are living in environments that are not secure, and lack of stable electricity supply and no airconditioning, etc. To define usability and user experience criteria under these constraints is a challenge for the emerging science of HCI in India. Cultural issues do play a far more crucial role in ICT implementation than previously assumed. Secondly, it is very important that the existing and emerging HCI research and practice communities in India continue and expand on the multidisciplinary approach, e.g., as being attempted at IITG. This is essential for HCI to develop its own local knowledge base. The existing collaboration between design and computer science researchers and practitioners should be formalised,

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and an effort should be made to build on Indian social science knowledge such as indigenous Indian psychology a n d p h i l o s o p h y. By including social scientists, the designers and computer scientists will get the necessary basis for understanding how to support new uses of the Internet. One thing here that could be of potentially great importance in the coming years is how social interaction is going to be enabled by the Internet, so to speak, what defines Fig 3. (a) Usability testing session at UE lab –IITG for a tactile interface for learning Maths. good quality of Internet usage when References: we talk about a community/group of users, or about a family as 1. Pradeep Yammiyavar, HCI and Usability Research in Indian Educational a unit, instead of talking about a single PC user, which used to Institutions; in Katre, D. et al.: HWID – Pre Conference proceedings -Working be the de facto representation of human computer interaction. Conference on Usability in Social, Cultural and Organizational Contexts, This change will require a re-conceptualising from an Indian, CDAC-IFIP , ISBN 978-81-909383-0-3; Pune 2009. multidisciplinary point of view of what it means to interact with 2. Anirudha Joshi , Interaction Design in India – Past, Present and Future ; CHI a computer. 2004, April 24–29, 2004, Vienna, Austria. ACM 1-58113-703-6/04/0004. Third, for Usability/HCI/UX/UE/ID to evolve into an 3. Pradeep Yammiyavar: Development of an Interdisciplinary curriculumindependent branch of study in educational institutions, more instructional activities and examples from Usability engineering and HCI courses graduates, postgraduates and PhDs must be trained as specialists at IITG. Invited Key Note address. HWWE 06; Proceedings; IIT Guwahati, in this area. Thinking about user-centred design in one way or the Assam.. International Ergonomics Conference HWWE. 05 IITG. 2005. other should be integrated into the school education curriculum 4. Pradeep Yammiyavar; Incorporating HCI in the curriculum – a case study; CSI very much from when people are in school, and as teenagers they Communications; Vol. 29, September 2005 No 3. Computer Society of India. should already have an understanding about usability, because 5. Sameer Chavan, HCI in India 2008 ; HCI International News, Number 32, one way or the other it will impact their lives much more than November 2008. URL: http://www.hci-international.org it has done in the past. Technology will be much more pervasive 6. Dinesh S Katre; Visualisation of Interface Metaphor for Software : an in everybody’s lives. engineering approach; PhD Thesis, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Finally, the industry – institution interaction needs to become Pilani, 2005. manifolds than what it is now. 7. HCI Professionals Salary Survey 2006 – India ; Usability Professional’s

Conclusions Vast unexplored potential exists in India for Usability Research. India offers a unique context for live research especially in cultural issues. It also has the world’s largest pool of IT professionals. However, for Usability/HCI/UX/UE/ID to evolve into an independent branch of study in educational institutions, more graduates, postgraduates and PhDs must be produced. \All said and done, there is a dearth of trained researchers and practicing professionals in HCI, and its closely related areas. India probably has less than 10 researchers with a PhD actively researching in HCI/UE/UX/ID. More research collaborations through EU projects and internships need to happen. n October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

Association, Hyderabad ; http://www.upahyderabad.org Interactions, September – October 2005 ; ACM 1072-5220/05/0900; Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad website http://hci.iiita. ac.in 10. Cultural Usability project at CBS. Retrieved on 2 11-09 from http://www. culturalusability.com 11. HCI groups; Retrieved on 5th Nov 09 from http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/ group/hciidc/ 12. Jhumki Iyengar; For a User Friendly Interface ; Financial Express October 6 2007. 13. Call for HCI Conference. Retrieved on 4th Nov. 09 at www.indiahci.in 14. HCI Vistas On line journal accessed at www. hceye.org. 15. Retrieved on 5th Nov 2009 at http://bangalore .nid.edu/academics_dde.htm 8. 9.

ICT Policy in India

A stakeholder view It is safe to say that the perceived need for innovation across the board, its potential impact and power to change the meaning and quality of life are of proportions never seen before.

Ashok Kar ashok.kar@free.fr

Innovation is the buzzword in everything between physical needs such as food, energy, healthcare and higher human pursuits such as education, knowledge, recreation and societal wellbeing. While one must be on the side of caution in making ‘innovation’ the ‘be-all and endall’ of everything, it is safe to say that the perceived need for innovation across the board , its potential cross-domain impact and its power to change the meaning and quality of life are of proportions never seen before during human existence. In other words, mankind is not anymore taking things as they are, but talking about things as they should be. No tool or technology other than ICTs have the capacity, versatility and power to bring about innovation in almost everything that impacts life and wellbeing on earth, save the human brain. How does India innovate across the ICTs and the multiple domains where they play a determinant role? How does policy impact, harness innovation in ICTs and in application areas enabled with ICTs? Looking at the government’s record of identifying needs, foreseeing technological evolutions and establishing an enabling policy framework to innovate across ICTs and harnessing their power, it would be fair to say that two of the three foundation chapters of India’s ICT evolution are products of government policy: • The telecom revolution that took India from analog rotary telephones serving less than 1 % of the population in the early 1980s to wireless communication reaching half the population today. A massive ICT enabling of government and the public sector industries and services (railways, telecom, banking, etc.) that created widespread awareness and market opportunities • The economic liberalization and the consequent technological upgrade of Indian industry and society that launched a new chapter in India’s development

•

The IT services and software domain which took off in the early nineties, almost entirely on private initiative, and makes India today a global IT powerhouse And a fourth policy chapter is still being written. Government policy has started to make a serious impact on domains touching governance, education, healthcare, citizen services, rural connectivity, knowledge and bridging the digital divide. Innovation remains the cornerstone of these initiatives alongside government will and investment and societal acceptance. Role of policy in ICT innovation – the enterprise view Innovations today are proliferating in most areas of ICTs and domains that they power and impact. When asked how policy impacts innovation, a sample of about a hundred ICT enterprises across India sheds interesting light on the connect (and disconnect). Opinion is equally divided on the question of whether policy has a bearing on their innovation activities. In the western region, the business hub of India, there are more that feel that it does not, whereas in all other regions, those who feel it does outnumber those who feel it does not. National policy has the biggest impact followed by worldwide policies (standards, IPR law, etc.). State level policy (or the absence of it) appears to be of minimal impact. The policy drivers in India are seen to be national priorities (nationwide needs, national and international competitivity, exports, knowledge creation, technological edge) for half of the respondents. Local needs (locally relevant innovations in products, services, applications, processes), international cooperation imperatives and national pride/identity (knowledge centre of the world) are seen to be the other policy drivers When asked how they would you like to see policy formulation, about half the i4d | October - December 2009

respondents argue for a public/private consultative process. A quarter would like Industry to set the tone and the government to formalise policy and the remaining respondents are divided between International consultation/synchronisation for worldwide standards/benefits and the Government taking the lead in the best national interest. Role of Policy in ICT innovation – the expert view A panel of Indian experts drawn from across industry, academia, research, government and NGOs were polled on a series of questions relating to the role of policy in ICT innovation. Their views provide a whole new insight into the linkage between policy and ICT innovations in India. Opinion is almost equally divided between those who agree that there continues to be a disconnect between Indian ICT policy and ICT industry development because of a weak role of industry in the policy process. The ones that agree argue that Industry is not yet working in a consortium mode to have a credible policy advocacy. They also believe that large ICT firms must lead innovation, instead of concentrating almost totally on providing IT services. They need to bring in smaller firms, which are more prone to go into building products because their size does not make them credible service players, into collaborative innovation alliances. Such a change of attitude and focus on the part of Industry would legitimise their seeking a role in policy. They also believe that Industry would continue to have limited leverage on policy matters because the prevalence of IT in government processes is not yet widespread and most decision makers in the government are not ardent users of IT. Those who disagree concur that industry and, more directly, industry associations such as NASSCOM and MAIT which are October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

very active have been playing an important role and are closely involved in policymaking. Industry thus plays a reasonably good role in advising on policy matters. The middle view is that policy in the ICT domains is, in general, reactive, not proactive. While there is close involvement of the industry in policy making for certain sectors such as IT, Manufacturing, Software Exports and Telecom, this is not true for others such as Education, Governance and Public Services and Utilities. And the liberal view is that less regulation has been a boon for the industry. There is overwhelming agreement between the panelists that major political parties across the whole spectrum espouse the cause of the ICT industry and the role of ICT in the economy and society, because: • their constituencies are becoming more and more aware of the potential of ICTs and their power vis-à-vis wealth creation and development, new economic and professional opportunities and a better society • the landmark Right to Information Act (RTI) is beginning to change public perception vis-à-vis the power of IT and the transparency it can bring in • Although a few years back, it was not in the agenda of political parties except for telecom, now with induction of young politicians, ICTs are gaining in share of voice within political parties • In the last national elections, ICT emerged as an important issue and a number of political parties incorporated it into their election manifestos But the dissenting voices argue that the pace is woefully slow and the commitment shallow. ICTs seem to be put upfront by the political establishment with misleading arguments (both in

support and in opposition) as to what they can do for people and society and, alternatively, what miseries they will bring in. Politics will remain politics, for the times to come. In fact, the question of ICT is not as passionately debated as most other facets of Indian public life. Government agencies are seen to have successfully developed and coordinated policy for supporting innovation across ICTs in a limited way, although there is undeniably momentum and initiatives. Yet, the government is seen to be dispersed in its efforts and policy is not seen to be driving a large enough spectrum of innovative endeavours. But new initiatives such as the Unique Identification (UID) and ICT infrastructure projects are seen to be bold policy initiatives that would create a critical Info Day at IIT Chennai mass in ICT usage and trigger innovation. Of late, many central ministries and states have The National Knowledge Network is an example. Low priced realised that technology can decisively contribute in domains such access to mobile telephony, in particular in remote and rural areas as healthcare, utility, land records, communication etc, touching is cited as another successful policy measure. The creation of the the lives of common people. Centre for Development of Telematics (CDOT) that changed the The Indian IT Act has been in place for nine years. India was face of telecommunications in Indian the 1980s could well the among the first few countries to have enacted such legislation The starting point of the information revolution in India. Although National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) was put in place in 2006 the massive scaling up of technical education which came in with 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs). These call for large scale response to the ever increasing manpower requirement of the IT innovation, particularly to reach the last mile. sector is cited as a successful policy initiative, the action is largely It is widely felt that policy makers do not fully grasp the attributed to the initiatives of the private educational sector. potential of ICTs as a platform for development, not merely Views are divided as to the government’s policy in technology a bouquet of technologies. It is beginning to change though; education. The prevailing opinion concurs with the government’s government efforts like UID for better plan implementation focus on elite institutions (enhancing quality and increasing and socio-economic development demonstrate that the enabling capacity) and leaving the bulk of market-oriented education and aspects of ICTs are being factored into policy. training to the private sector is the right policy. The dissenting view is that there has been a lot of momentum The dissenting views still point out to the relatively modest in developing policies to support the ICT industry per se and numbers and the inability to bring about qualitative and primarily from an export perspective. But policy making is yet to curriculum changes that trigger a culture of knowledge, excellence weigh in decisively to foster widespread innovation in critical areas and inventiveness rather than employable calibre. such ICT for better governance, social and pervasive education The dissenters feel that the government could do more, beyond and balanced economic development. Some feel that the linkage enacting norms and standards and putting in place the regulatory between ICTs and development is still being debated! Policy framework whether it is in telecom or in IT education. It has also does not crystallise when the overwhelming focus of the Indian been pointed out that the government’s investments are driving IT firms is export of software services and not so much tacking innovations in adapting ICT to the needs of developing countries, domestic challenges: technological and societal. There seems to but are not driving primary innovation. be a lack of policy champions within large businesses to argue the With respect to policies and regulation in support of intellectual case of ICT in societal domains, such advocacy being left to stray property rights, views are in favour of the Indian policies going academics or tiny start-ups. towards alignment with the international norms. The disconnect is not between ICTs as technologies and as a The alignment of Indian IPR laws with international norms is platform for development but more about understanding how? seen to have facilitated the availability of and access to a number It is about creating knowledge, attitude, awareness and vision of technologies and software in India, but it is yet to promote beyond oft-repeated populist measures. Policy is also what meets innovation in the industry, although it has helped in developing the eye and not only what is written. The government’s initiatives the domestic ICT market. in pushing for ICT infrastructure across the country through Yet, some dissenting views argue that for developing countries, private and public investment, making substantial investment weak IPR regimes are actually better. The IPR regime, especially in elite higher education institutions are seen to be a conscious in the US, may have gone too far. IPR protection in the ICT policy meant to create markets, opportunities and high calibre domains needs to be different from that in the manufacturing talent, all factors that could foster innovation. industry, some experts feel. n

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ICT in India

Infrastructure or content-driven Consider the mobile rickshaws which go around the world famous Puskhar fairs providing mobile connectivity at the last mile. This is ICT at its rural best.

Rajen Varada rajen@tftpeople.org

October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

This article would like to set forth a landscape for the future of ICT in the Indian context. Will the investment being made in infrastructure by state and central governments result in ICT becomes an integral part of government business or remain as an innovation in isolation? Information and communication technologies in India have been much debated and discussed in the past few years. To understand the Indian ICT scenario, a background of the evolution of the ICT movement in India needs to be understood. What was the process of the transition from small pilots by innovative individuals, CBOs and NGOs to a government development agenda and a national focus? The commencement of ICT in the government agenda stated in the 1990s when many state governments realised the potential of ICT in governance and made concentrated efforts to establish good governance as part of their development goal. Since there were already many small initiatives across the country which had shown promising outcomes such as the ITC e-chaupal, narrow casting of community issues by community radio groups and some initiative by multinational agencies using handheld devices etc. The promise of a transparent government mechanism was well accepted by the people and voting patterns inclined towards development oriented political parties. This brought about a sea change in political agendas. Thus the change in the government attitude to service delivery mechanisms through e-government became the norm for all state governments. There has since then been a constant endeavour to provide better government to citizen services through ICTs. The large investment by government in infrastructure for ICTs and the opening up of the Indian economy

induced business to invest to tap into the potential rural market of India. The central government in Delhi also commenced various schemes and through the department of information technology was able to develop a vision to connect villages in India on a broadband network with delivery points called the Common Services Centres (CSC). The reference to the CSC here is not to argue its merits and demerits but to look at the investment for the CSC infrastructure as a catalyst for development. ICTs have brought in a new set of technologies which were unheard of twenty years ago. Just as the railways were introduced in India by the British, which set a paradigm shift in the ways people behaved with this new way of being connected across the length and breadth of the country. It brought about new rules and society oragnised itself along the railways lines with new norms and structures. ICTs will and are doing to India the very same thing the railways did. Consider the mobile rickshaws which go around the world famous Puskhar fairs providing mobile connectivity at the last mile. This is ICT at its rural best. I would be idealistic enough to assert that regardless of the challenges of the government infrastructure, the old and new will continue to co-exist in this transitory time just as bad transport systems co-exist with mobile cell technologies. To consider the picture of a women in interior India communicating on a mobile phone while commuting on the roof of a bus is still accepted norm is a telling point of the two Indias that co-exist. Rather than examine the end delivery mechanisms, such as the CSC, (which would require an article in itself ) the one great success which will really matter in the long run is the establishment of the

backbone network which will enable multiple service delivery points in the future. It would really not matter if the CSC delivery points fail as there will be other initiatives which will tap into the wide area network backbone and go forward. The backbone network set up for the CSC may very well serve the burgeoning creative content market which is emerging. This will, I believe fill a much needed gap in the ICT sector. It will spur further investment in making ICTs an enabler with content at the core rather than infrastructure. The World Summit Awards on e-content is a UN body which documents and acts as a catalyst for e-content development across the world. The India chapter called “Manthan Awards” commenced in 2005 throws a very interesting light on the content evolution of ICTs in India. The nominations for content in the year 2005 were just 95 with participation of a few states most of whom were from the southern part of India which are considered the developed states. The year 2009 has seen nomination from 24 federal states across the categories of Community Broadcasting, e-Business, e-Culture and Entertainment, e-Education, e-Enterprise and Livelihood, e-Government, e-Health, e-Inclusion, e-Learning, e-Localisation, e-News, e-Science and Environment and m-Content. The range of content development itself is mind boggling and puts at rest the argument that India will not be an innovative creative content developer. The total nominations for 2009 have been 360. This is an indicator of how much the various players in the ICT space have invested in not only technology but content to enable the effective use of ICTs. One interesting fact is that in 2005 there were only 26 nominations for the e-government category. In 2009 there were 89 nominations for e-government including those from the socalled BIMARU (sick) states, namely Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh . The mindset that underdeveloped states cannot achieve or contribute and take advantage of ICTs to leapfrog into better governance needs to be examined against the light that the best e-governance award for 2008 went to the State Government of Chattisgarh, a state considered backward and low on development indicators. Their very innovative, “Unified Ration Card Project” through the Department of Food and Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs of Chhattisgarh Government has computerised the entire food grain supply chain in Chhattisgarh,

starting from paddy procurement from farmers, its storage, milling and distribution of rice and other commodities to 3.4 million ration card holders through fair price shops. In the current year the best e-governance projects for 2009 came from the state of Madhya Pradesh which got 3 awards and one each from Bihar and Orissa. It is revealing to note that ICTs have not only helped accelerate the change in government but enabled “backward” governments to make a quantum leap into good governance through ICTs. The current focus by the government will spur growth in the education and health sectors. Both are poised for a growth through multiple delivery points such as community service centres, telemedicine centres and the proliferation of cellphones. Business will need to be innovative to take advantage of this edynamic landscape. There is the oldest ICT of them all, the radio. Community Radio seems to be emerging as a surprising player in the ICT scenario in India, with civil society adopting Community Radio as a means to disseminate knowledge and share information. The freeing of the Community Radio policy has seen a jump in the number of applicants. A proactive endeavour by the government has induced many community-based organisations to use Community Radio as an effective tool to inform and empower local people on local government issues. The Right to Information Act and its impact is seen through the number of CR stations which broadcast the RTI details to citizens. Mobiles phones have enabled a larger phone-in audience The co-existence and advantages of both ICT technologies will probably be a enduring feature of ICTs in India. There is no doubt that the sector that will see the largest investment in hardware in the coming years are telecommunications. The cellphone market has beaten all assumptions of numbers. The number of players in the market has ensured a competitive market giving the end user multiple choices and spurring the number of subscribers. The future of ICT in India will probably have mobile technology leading the way with the Internet and Community Radio not far behind. The reach of mobile has far exceeding any forecast and no one was able to predict the immense jump in use of cellphone in India.

i4d | October - December 2009

Regardless of the global recession the telecommunication industry in India saw unforeseen growth. Mobile ownership surged in December 2008 with a record 4.5 million new users making India the 3rd largest in the world. Indian operators added another 15.41 million customers in January 2009 and 13.45 million users in February 2009 taking the mobile users to 391.8 million. The market is just the tip of the iceberg as businesses start exploring local language markets both in voice and standards in text messaging in local language. The mobile industry has opened up call centres for local language users and a new market is set to grow in this sector. Rural BPOs are already emerging as local markets grow. To return to my point of view that content will drive the ICT industry it is obvious that mobile content will grow to meet the demands of the end user. Taking the data from the Manthan nominations, the category for mobile content did not even exist in 2005. It was introduced in 2007 taking into note the emerging mobile content in India. There were 6 nominations in 2006 for M-Content. In 2007 there were seven nominations and in 2008 it has jumped to 19 nominations. The numbers speak for themselves and will continue to grow. To quote Shashi Tharoor from his book ‘The Elephant, The Tiger and The Cellphone’. While commenting in defense of New Delhi “For all its inadequacies, it is a symbol of a country on the move, the urban flagship of a better tomorrow. It will lead India into the twenty first century, even at the price of forgetting all that happened in the other twenty.” The same could be said for the ICT movement in the country as well. Where does all this lead to and what will be the future key areas that ICTs will continue to drive and affect? A small Primary Health Centre (PHC) is in the process of developing a website with the sort of content unheard of even a few years ago. It is putting up all its day-to-day operations on a website in the local language of Chatttisgari. The PHC is located

in a remote corner of interior Chattisgarh.- a so called backward State Yet it hopes to show the way for other Primary Health Centres with transparent use of drugs, list of doctors available and timings and most important, the supply chain of medicines stocks. All information will be available on the website or can be requested for via a text message. They also plan to use the local Community Radio to disseminate information of health and disease breakout. This initiative will plug the possibility of the leak of drugs into the local medical, provide citizens with information and be more accountable. Whether it sustains or fails is not important. What is important is that the PHC has set a trend in the health system to bring about transparency and accountability. which I believe will continue in small pockets making small ripples but in the end making a big difference This is a telling example of how ICT can bring change and effective content can change how government functions at all levels. n

Rwanda: ICT Bus Excites Gisagara Revelers District residents early this week welcomed the arrival of an ICT bus, an initiative they say will promote the usage of information and communication technology in rural areas. The ICT Bus that was received by district authorities is equipped with 20 laptop computers which are connected to high speed wireless Internet connection. Léandre Karekezi, the district mayor, said that apart from creating computer awareness among residents, the ICT buses would also considerably contribute to better and quick service delivery in local administration. “Apart from benefiting the local population, this bus will facilitate sector and cell leaders who work in remote areas to access ICT services in order for October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

them to fulfill their duties,” said Karekezi. Local residents who talked to The New Times were upbeat about the benefits that come with the ICT Bus in their district. “This is a big breakthrough for a district which has no electricity. We will no longer have to travel to Huye district to access Internet now that the bus is here,” Beatrice Photo Credit: www.flickr.com/people/rorycellan Muzirasoni said. H a s s a n Ya h a y a , t h e I C T social development. Bus coordinator at the Rwanda Gisagara district is the second in the Development Board (RDB) reiterated Southern Province to receive an ICT that the project is meant to boost ICT- Bus after Kamonyi. based development in the country by The two buses which cost over facilitating communities in the rural Rwf300 million were offered by the areas to easily access basic information World Bank through the e-Rwanda that they need for their economic and Project.

UNESCO’s Comparative Study of CSC’s and CMC’s in India

CSCs in Andhra Pradesh Introduction

Status of CSC in state

De p a r t m e n t o f In f o r m a t i o n a n d Technology (IT), Government of India launched the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) in 2006, with the prime objective to deliver “government services to citizens at their doorsteps”. More than one lakh CSCs (nearly 1,13,000) will be covering 6 lakh villages of the country. Out of the total cost of Rs. 5,742 Crore, the Centre would be contributing nearly Rs. 856 crores and the state governments about Rs.793 crore and the rest will be from the private players. Within one year of signing the deal between the state government and the bidder or the state implementing agency, all the stipulated number of CSCs have to be put in place and made operational. Unfortunately, in many of the states where CSC deal has been finalised, even after couple of years of it, the case has not been so. Moreover, as is the case in many other states, CSCs in Andhra Pradesh too are struggling with the issues like financial viability and long-term sustenance.

Pan India, till date, nearly 36000 CSCs are operational. Two states, namely, Haryana and Jharkhand have implemented the required number of centres. But the actual issue is not the delay but the reason behind the delay. Even in many of the 36000 centres, the availability of services is an issue, neither government to citizen (G2C) nor business to citizen (B2C). And Andhra Pradesh is no exception. Till this date, in Andhra Pradesh, out of the total 4,687 CSCs covering 28000 villages, nearly 319 CSCs are operational, according to the data made available by the IT & Communication Department. In early 2008, two bidders were finalised out of the bidding process as state implementing agencies for CSC implementation, namely, CMS, which has 3 zones, and 3i Infotech, having one zone. Apart from these two, TIMES and BEL were given a zone each because of their involvement in establishing RAJiv Centres in rural Andhra Pradesh, which are being subsumed into CSCs. BEL did not take

up the given zone and that zone has been given to TIMES, since no other private player appeared during the bidding process even after scheduling time for it at least two times. Out of the total operational 319 CSCs, 309 has been done by TIMES and 9 by CMS, reportedly. 3i Infotech has planned to quit, failing to erect these centres in the existing situations. Highly placed sources in Department of IT and Communication commented on the appropriateness of the provision of setting up of all number of CSCs after 12 months of deal finalisation. “It’s a false assumption to have all CSCs operational within an year, while most of the departments are still far from digitisation and BPR. To have the desired result, policies should be realistic and consider field reality, he added.

Bank guarantee and penalisation To set up CSCs in each zone, the state implementing agency has to deposit Rs.1.8 crore as bank guarantee with the IT and Communications Department. This amount is kept as security money, which in case can be deducted if the service level agreements related with CSCs are not kept as per the deal. One of the provisions in the SLA also discusses the case of delay in implementing CSCs in the stipulated timeframe that is within one year. CMS has three zones, so it has kept Rs.5.4Crore as bank guarantee. However, TIMES has been relieved of this security amount because of reason that it is a non-profit organisation, which has worked, in rural Andhra Pradesh in crop insurance and training of youth in IT and Communications. So, now the implementing agencies are at the mercy of the government, and they have already put their requests to the government table to not to penalise. i4d | October - December 2009

e-Service availability, ownership and BPR issues According to government agencies, it’s the business to citizen (B2C) services that would bring income to these centres and make them sustainable. However, they admit to the need to ensure a minimum number of transactions, with the availability of G2C services. Echoing same concerns more firmly, the implementing agencies tell that the rural masses are rarely affected by the availability of B2C services. It’s the government services like land records, birth and death certificates, caste certificates, utility bills, filing grievances, driving license and many others which attracts masses to these centres for which they have to shell money and time for visiting the respective offices in town and cities. Moreover, the agencies are more concerned on the lack of willingness to eEnable services in many of the government departments. Most of the departments are yet to be digitised, data centres are still to be put in place and with the given situation the assumption of the extension of services to rural areas is nothing else but false. As in the case of RAJiv Centres, where the opening of service outlets had not gone hand in hand with the availability of electronic government services, the situation has rarely improved. In the given condition, it can be easily gauged that Business Process Re-engineering in government departments is still a distant dream, at least in AP, if not in other states, which again will be a too optimistic assumption. A senior official related with ICT implementation in government departments in Andhra Pradesh described the issue, which has been grossly undervalued in the NeGP and said, “The key issue of process re-engineering has been clearly ignored, without which the technological deployments may not give their desired results.” He stressed on the need to transform the way government departments work, in dark shade, hiding information, and opined that the issues can only be addressed with process re-engineering and not just bringing in technology.

Viability Gap Funding and 3i-Infotech’s negative bidding DIT, Government of India has smartly included the provision of subsidy of Rs.3,000 to operators, as a viability gap funding, because of the unavailability of government services in the initial days. But this has not translated into a smart move for most of the states, including AP, since the private bidders, mesmerised by the lucrative Request For Proposal (RFP), and with assumptions of making money immediately after setting up these centres, rejected the subsidy amount at the time of bidding and had even gone to the extent of making their bids in negative. Now, the private players have a strong feeling that it may not be a viable business, with the existing situations. Resultantly, the enthusiasm with which they entered into CSCs have faded and this has made the implementation rate of CSCs considerably slow. A live example of this can be found in AP. Out of three bidders for CSC, CMS made its bid at zero. 3i Infotech went many steps ahead and made its bid in negative, precisely, - which means that the company would be paying to the government Rs.351 per centre. Now the situation is that reportedly 3i Infotech is planning to quit the CSC project in the state. CMS is struggling in setting up centres, and till date it has to its credit just 10 centres (by June 2009) out of the total 2344 in a year, by which it was supposed to complete all of them. On its October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

part, TIMES has been able to set up 309 centres (by June 2009), more than any of the other implementing agencies. However, a fresh commitment and interest has been shown by CMS and TIMES to continue with CSCs and in the coming months they are planning to come up with many more centres.

Decentralised and need specific bouquet of services A year after signing of deal, the stakeholders are increasingly realising that a solution can be a bouquet of services (especially B2C, given the fact that even in coming years there are doubts if the government services will be made available to these centres), improvised according to the local needs and necessities of the people, if the centres have to be made viable. CMS and TIMES are working, on coming up with such services, which can be bundled with these centres to make it viable at least in non-IT services area. There is no dearth of examples of bundling of non-IT services to CSCs in many parts of the country. Like in Palamau district of Jharkhand, the Deputy Commissioner has utilised the centres in the election times, for making videos and appointing the operators as civil monitors of the elections campaigns. Besides, DC also provided the work of digitisation of some departments to these centres, which resulted in new lease of life to the centres, which were struggling with same reasons of unavailability of G2C and lack of interest for B2C in rural areas. Gujarat is another place where e-Kiosks set up by dairy authorities, popular as Dairy Information Service Kiosk (DISK) have been used to sell milks and have an up to date account of the sales, reducing time of the each farmer in selling to these centres and people purchasing milks at reasonable rates to these centres. Earlier the queue of people coming for purchasing purpose was longer, but after the setting up of thousands of kiosk, the queue of farmers selling milk to these centres increased and queue for purchasing decreased with speedy and fair business. Similar things can be done anywhere, viewing the local needs of the people.

Financial Inclusion (FI) and CSC Financial Inclusion is a fascinating concept for many of the academicians but linking of it to CSCs has not been given much importance. Also, reportedly, the banks are not very interested in opening up zero balance savings accounts for the rural masses, besides opting an indifferent attitude in providing micro credits and loans to the masses. Though, through CSCs the banks can opt for branch less banking, and can have these centres as business centres, but its all easier said than done.

Concluding The potential of an ICT enabled kiosk in providing employment, business, education, services, information on health and agriculture are quite apparent and huge. But this can not be realised until issues surrounding CSCs like - lack of basic infrastructure; slow pace of BPR and lack of digital data, lack of will in e-Enabling the processes in government departments; viability gap funding, unavailability of need specific B2C services, and lack of awareness about the ICT4D concept are resolved. n Pratap Vikram Singh, pratap@egovonline.net.

UNESCO’s Comparative Study of CSC’s and CMC’s in India

RAJiv project in Andhra Pradesh More than five crore rural citizens of Andhra Pradesh have been bereft of promises of utility payment services, land records and information services and computer literacy, with a key partner walking out of the prestigious PPP-mode RAJiv Internet Village Centres project amid challenges of its sustainability. The RAJiv project was launched with much fanfare in August 2005 by the Y S R Reddy government. Under it, 8,618 e-kiosks were to be made operational within a year covering every panchayat of the 22 districts of the state with the goal of empowering the rural masses. More than two years have passed and the project target is yet to be achieved, with only 600-800 centres operational till date. Even these 600-800 functional centres are now being subsumed into Common Ser vices Centres, under the National e-Governance Plan of the Central government, as they have proved unviable due to failure to deliver much promised G2C, G2B, B2C, and C2C services. Of the two programme partners in the project, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) was assigned 5550 centres and TIMES (an NGO) received the rest 3068 centres. BEL has already quit the project, apparently having failed to establish and run the centres. While TIMES has only been able to keep nearly 600 centres operational across the state. The programme of setting up e-centres in every corner of the state had its roots in the Rural Service Delivery Points (RSDP) project that began in 2001-02 with the intention of providing e-services through selected 1000 plus PCO and STD booths. The project was not a success as many of the kiosks became non-functional due to non-availability of services and financial problems as the target

of minimum number of transactions was not met. In 2005, the state government came up with a Broadband Policy, under which broadband connectivity was to be provided at the village level. The outlets for providing host of citizen-centric services to the villages were named as RAJiv Centres. According to one view, the RAJiv proposition came in the wake of plugging up the loopholes which resulted in the failure of RSDPs.

Availability of Services The number of services provided is a critical factor making these e-Centres operational in the long run. The more the services offered in these centres, the greater would be the number of transactions, which has a bearing on their financial status. As per the Request for Proposal (RFP) for RAJiv project, the government services in these centres were to be made available through e-Seva and AP Online centres, under a special revenue sharing arrangement. But in reality, the situation is different. A top official from TIMES commented on the aloofness and lack of interest on part of the government departments in extending services through RAJiv. “We sent many letters to the department of IT&C and other concerned departments like Land Revenue for extending their services to the Rajiv Centres, but we hardly got any response from them.” Sources in BEL echoed a similar sentiment, “G2C services are very critical in rural areas, since it ensures a minimum number of transactions. Throughout our operation in Andhra Pradesh on the RAJiv project, we frequently approached the administration for providing more G2C services, but it hardly fetched any results. Also, given the fact that people in rural areas have comparatively lesser purchasing

power, you can not rely heavily on B2C services.” A senior officer in the IT&C Department offered a different perspective. He commented that the RAJiv Centres cannot depend solely on the G2C services for its viability. They have to promote more and more B2C services. On whether the government is obliged to provide a set of G2C services in order to support minimum functionality, the official said in an ideal situation the government is supposed to provide as many services as possible. But it is a herculean task to pull every department and put them on Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and ICT mode, given the administrative set-up.

Financial Viability and Sustainability Unlike Akshaya Centres in Kerala, which has evolved across the state with different business models to suit local needs, many RAJiv Centres have failed to shape business models for its sustenance. Like Akshaya, RAJiv too has a provision of providing computer education to atleast one person in each family. But it seems, providing training and education has been undervalued in terms of ROI and revenue. Lesser number of G2C services is a factor strongly corroborated by the implementing agencies for failure of the project. And it seems genuine, considering the slow pace of process transformation and automation going on in the government departments, barring some of them. States like Karnataka have done enormously in IT infrastructure and computerisation of the government departments. Bhoomi, one of the landmark projects of the Karnataka government, overcame the expenses in just two years of its implementation and is now a revenue source to the state. The same was tried in Andhra Pradesh with the i4d | October - December 2009

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) project, but it got lost in the official corridors. One of reasons for the present condition of RAJiv Centres is the lack of financial assistance to the operator till they are self-sustained, unlike the case of Common Services Centres. Giving another reason the IT&C official said: “At the time of bidding, organisations make their bids in negative. In the given situation there is nothing we can do, since it is in our interest to opt for the bidder who quotes the lowest.” However, this development, which was also witnessed at the time of bidding for CSCs in most of the states, has raised questions since the bidders have not been able to continue with the projects within the bids they offered.

Constraints and Challenges A biggest constraint in any of the government projects involving inter-department participation is the lack of co-ordination. Lack of mechanism to pull a department and make them responsive to the change, is a serious issue. In case of RAJiv, all the issues regarding the project are handled by the EDS (Electronic Delivery of Service) section of the Department of IT&C, which has a limited role in advising other departments for BPR and work automation. Broadband Policy failure is another well acknowledged factor that gave a setback to the RAJiv Project in its initial phase. A significant factor is the allocation of a centre for a fixed number of population. In RAJiv’s case, the criterion earlier was a centre per 5000 population. Later to expand the coverage, it was changed to one centre per 2000. Because of providing services to proximate areas of rural households, the viability suffered, another official in IT&C department said.Failure of the private players to bring in B2C services into the picture is another reason. In the given situation where G2C services are not ready, extra caution and October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

endeavour was needed from the implementing agencies for inducing business services according to the specific need of the locals. The inability on part of the state government in providing G2C services to these kiosks is also an important factor. Claims and cooperation penned in the 100 pages of the RFP, like offering services of various government departments to these centres and conducting joint promotional campaigns, were denied to the implementing agencies.

Key Lessons Learnt In the words of the IT&C official, “To make an ICT project like RAJiv a success, we need to understand the value and importance of recognising the specific needs of the local population and accordingly improvise the bouquet of services to the people.” Also, the ratio of a centre to the number of population has to be decreased, say, a centre for 10,000 to 15,000 of population so that the number of transactions can be increased. A government machinery needs to be in place to put the government departments on the ICT mode, if the government is serious about pursuing the ICT4D concept. Over and above, it needs to be understood that if there is a political will at the top level, the chances for the success of the project increases manifold, as in the case of e-Seva (Andhra Pradesh) and e-Gram (Gujarat). The comprehension of ICT4D among many of the political executives has been poor, which is unfortunate for them as well as the citizens. At the beginning of the RAJiv Project, the state government had shown much enthusiasm, which waned over a period of time. With the RAJiv Centres being converted into CSCs in the state, only time will tell if lessons have been well learnt from the past. n Pratap Vikram Singh, pratap@egovonline.net

What’s on

20-22 November 2010 3rd International Conference of UNESCO Chair Higher Education for Sustainable Development Penang http://www.hesd09.org

Africa 25-28 March 2010 3rd International Conference on ICT for Africa 2010 Yaounde, Cameroon http://www.icitd.org

Australia 20-25 March 2010 World Congress of Internal Medicine Melbourne http://www.wcim2010.com.au/

20-23 September 2010 World Computer Congress 2010 Brisbane, Queensland http://www.wcc2010.com

China 22 to 24 January 2010 The 2nd IEEE International Conference on Future Networks (ICFN 2010) Sanya, Hainan http://www.icfn.org

18-19 March 2010 China Crop Protection Summit Shanghai http://bit.ly/6vhCEy

Europe

10-12 March 2010 ICTs and Development An International Workshop for Theory, Practice and Policy New Delhi http://www.iitd.ac.in/events/ICTD2010/

9-11 April 2010 Managing Agri-Food Supply Chain Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh http://bit.ly/60m1il

20 to 22 August 2010 The Second International Conference on Wireless & Mobile Networks (WiMoN-2010) Chennai http://www.coneco2009.com/wimon/wimon.html

Malaysia 1-2 June 2010 National Conference on Knowledge Integration in ICT Putrajaya, Selangor http://www.kuis.edu.my/ictconf/ 1-2 June 2010 National Conference on Knowledge Integration in ICT Putrajaya, Selangor http://www.kuis.edu.my/ictconf/

15-17 July 2010 8th International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Health Samos Island Greece http://www.ineag.gr/icicth

knowledge for change

28-30 April 2010 NMIC 2010 - 2nd International Conference on New Media and Interactivity Istanbul, Turkey http://iletisim.marmara.edu.tr/newmedia

United States 24 March 2010 Agriculture 2.0 Palo Alto, California, United States http://www.newseedadvisors.com

Czech Republic 6 to 8 July 2010 The Second International Conference on ‘Networked Digital Technologies’ Prague http://www.dirf.org/ndt2010/isors.com

Germany 16 to 18 June 2010 IAMO Forum 2010: Institutions in Transition - Challenges for New Modes of Governance Halle, Germany

26-28 February 2010 2010 International Conference on Environmental Science and Development (CESD 2010) Singapore http://www.iacsit.org/cesd/index.htm

Nepal

http://www.newfrontiersinbiofuels.org

October - December 2009 | www.i4donline.net

http://www.icegeg.info/

Singapore

18-20 January 2010 International Conference on New Frontiers in Biofuels New Delhi

http://www.bdu.ac.in/icccb/index.htm

19 March 2010 International Conference on eGovernment and eGovernance Antalya, Turkey

http://forum2010.iamo.de

India

9-12 February 2010 International Conference on Climate Change and Bioresource (ICCCB-2010) Tiruchirappalli Tamil Nadu

Turkey

4 - 6 August 2010 Hyderabad, India http://www.eindia.net.in

27-28 February 2010 2nd International Conference on Wireless Information Networks & Business Information System (WINBIS’10) Kathmandu http://www.win-bis.com

In-Fact

HIV/AIDS Facts and Figures • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

In 2008, a total of 33.4 million people are living with HIV In Sub-saharan Africa, 22.4 million people live with HIV. North America: 1.4 million- worldwide: 33.4 million In 2008, 280,000 children under 15 years died of AIDS 7,000 - 7,500 new HIV infections a day. Mostly in the under 15 years age group. What makes an HIV infection often deadly are “Opportunistic infections” such as tuberculosis For the first time, we have nutrition programmes as an integral part of HIV (and TB) treatment programmes AIDSspace.org - Very cool social networking site for connecting those living with HIV and those involved in AIDS response 60% of the newly HIV infected are women 40% of the new HIV infected are younger than 15 years old 4 million people at the moment receiving retroviral care in middle/low income countries Those on anti-retroviral treatment are particularly in need of a nutritious diet ensuring effective drug therapy http://bit. ly/5uAJMc In Africa, many young women move from rural areas to urban zones, driven by poverty, driven into sex work In Uganda, as one example, sex workers and their clients make up 10% of the HIV infected population It is clear that the spread of HIV follows transport routes In the past years life expectancy for truck drivers in Africa went down by 5 years due to the spread of HIV TNT, WFP, UNAIDS teamed up as the Northstar Alliance to address HIV amongst truck drivers in Africa http://bit. ly/71PFRg Northstar Alliance concentrates on disseminating HIV information along the major African trucking routes http://bit. ly/71PFRg Northstar Alliance also provides treatment in “wellness centers” along major African transport routes http://bit.ly/5gHX2r Most wellness centres are low cost, converted old containers, within 1000 ft of truck parkings in Africa http://bit.ly/ 7QNO5D By the end of 2009, 15 HIV information centres will be open along the main trucking routes in Africa http://bit.ly/71PFRg. Shipping containers used as roadside wellness centers. Check out what North Star Foundation and WFP is up to: http://bit. ly/5qxoET. We target trucking/transport routes in Africa as an effective area to target HIV prevention programs http://bit.ly/7QNO5D HIV prevention projects should concentrate on areas where they are the most effective. Truck routes e.g. http://bit.ly/ 7QNO5D Google Map with all AIDS awareness centers located at truck stops across Africa: http://bit.ly/8HsuTH Food And Nutrition Boost Effectiveness Of HIV Treatment http://bit.ly/8Wknce “Gains made today on HIV prevention are fragile and must be sustained” (Michel Sidibe from UNAIDS) To support AIDS orphans & HIV infected, WFP provides food and nutrition to 2.3 million people across Africa http://bit. ly/5uAJMc “Good Nutrition Makes HIV Treatment More Effective” http://bit.ly/6gVJCs. n

Source: WFP Logistics on twitter (http://twitter.com/WFPlogistics)

i4d | October - December 2009

Asia’s first monthly magazine on e-Governance

in collaboration with

Presents

January 2010, New Delhi

Areas concerning Urban Governance • • • • • • • • • • •

Sustainable Development Integrated Urban Infrastructure Technology Paradigm Infrastructure, Trade and Economy Public Security and Disaster management Transport and Traffic Waste management Housing and Poverty Alleviation Utilities Intelligent/Connected cities Reduce Carbon Footprint

Discuss • Confer • Debate • Resolve • Network • Evolve

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Paper/Contributions are Invited!

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Event Produced by:

Submit abstracts at: prachi@egovonline.net