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8 | COVER STORY Shailender Kumar, MD, Oracle India

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VOLUME NO. 28, NO.5, PAGES 20, MAY, 2017, ` 75

15 | EVENT Express Technology Sabha: Going Digital for transforming India

10 | CASE STUDY

11 | CASE STUDY

12 | CASE STUDY

13 | CASE STUDY

RailTel increases transparency, efficiency and productivity through robust ERP system

All India Council for Technical Education increases fee payment revenue by 200%

Health Sciences South Carolina improves community-wide care quality and research

On the road to sustainability

HOW ORACLE IS PLANNING TO MAKE INDIA ‘SMART’ With India poised to become the global hub of innovation, Oracle is helping the country become more competitive in the global marketplace

OceanStor Dorado V3 All Flash Storage Lightning Fast, Rock Solid • 10x increase in storage performance • 99.9999% field-proven availability • 3:1 data reduction guarantee • 4 Million IOPS For more information, please visit e.huawei.com Leading New IC ICT, T, The Road to Digital Transformation

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Contact us : 9599 110 156 I Website: panasonic.net/psn/products/hdvc/index.html I E-mail: kaushal.singh@in.panasonic.com

EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

6 | EDIT MORE INSIDE

EXPRESS COMPUTER Vol 28. No. 5. May, 2017 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Sr Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas Editor Srikanth RP* Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Ankush Kumar, Mumbai Nivedan Prakash, Abhishek Raval Bangalore Rachna Jha

COVER STORY Nivedan Prakash nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com

Accelerating the national digitization agenda

DESIGN National Design Editor Bivash Barua Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble Senior Graphic Designer Rekha Bisht Layout Vinayak Mestry, Rajesh Jadhav Photo Editor Sandeep Patil

CASE STUDIES

MARKETING Regional Heads Harit Mohanty - West and East Prabhas Jha - North

10 | Increased operational efficiency of Commercial Taxes Department, Govt of Rajasthan

Marketing Team Kailash Purohit Ranabir Das Ajanta Sengupta Mathen Mathew Navneet Negi Circulation Mohan Varadkar Scheduling Ashish Anchan

Improved information security results in 20 % faster IVFRT transactions and enhanced customer service at NIC

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8| IN 2017, IT COMPANIES WILL TWEAK STRATEGIES TO GROW REVENUES FROM NEW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

Computerisation of Postal Life Insurance and Rural Postal Life Insurance, Department of Posts increases efficiency 11 | Department of Medical Education, Rajasthan improves patient care with Arogya Online

I

ndia as a country is entering into an ‘era of engagement’ which will be the engine of value creation to the country and its people. In line with this vision, the Government of India has come up with innovative initiatives like Digital India, Smart City, Make in India and Startup India.

The government’s thrust on taking our economy towards global standards of governance has encouraged private vendors to take the lead in innovating and enabling government departments to start harnessing the synergistic potential of digital technologies like cloud, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, and machine learning among others.

All these initiatives need a strong technological

Oracle is closely working with the government to usher in a new era of good governance, accelerate economic growth, and inclusive social development infrastructure, which is being supplemented with budgetary support from the government. All the leading global IT giants including Oracle are aligning themselves with the government’s vision and accelerating the national digitization agenda by offering the latest technologies.

While playing a key role in enabling the government’s digitization, Oracle is closely working

Navneet Negi Mobile No. +91 8800523285 Email: navneet.negi@expressindia.com CHENNAI Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, 8th Floor, East Wing, Sreyas Chamiers Towers New No.37/26 (Old No.23 & 24/26) Chamiers Road, Teynampet, Chennai - 600 018 Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com BANGALORE Kailash Purohit The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 502, 5th Floor, Devatha Plaza, Residency road, Bangalore- 560025 Mobile No. +91 9552537922, Email: kailash.purohit@expressindia.com

with the government to usher in a new era of good governance, accelerate economic growth, and inclusive social development. One of the recent examples has been Oracle’s partnership with the Government of Maharashtra to accelerate the state's digital transformation initiative and develop a Smart City program that will be powered by Oracle cloud solutions.

Apart from Maharashtra, Oracle is in talks with various state governments for Smart City implementations in areas like health management, traffic management, travel management, and more. In fact, it has developed prototypes with some of its public sector partners.

As the major focus of Digital India is cloud computing, Oracle with its family of cloud offerings, is strongly aiding the country in this ambitious effort.

According to Shailender Kumar, MD, Oracle India, the government’s Digital India initiative can only be successful if cloud plays a key role. The cloud is the force-multiplier that India must embrace with purpose and clarity.

Underlining its commitment to further the government’s Make in India and Startup India initiatives, the company recently unveiled a state-ofthe-art campus in Bengaluru last year and shared plans to open nine incubation centers throughout the country to support entrepreneurship and development of innovative start-ups by providing software, tools, and training to new software and technology companies.

As rightly put up by the tech major’s CEO, Safra Catz – “We ‘Make in India’ for the rest of the world.”

While Digital India is a very clear pathway for Oracle, the company is thinking beyond the Digital India initiative and assessing other government’s programmes on ICT to help state-run institutions to leverage technology.

HYDERABAD Kailash Purohit The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 6-3-885/7/B, Ground Floor, VV Mansion, Somaji Guda, Hyderabad – 500 082 Mobile No. +91 9552537922, Email: kailash.purohit@expressindia.com

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AHMEDABAD Ranabir Das The Indian Express (P) Ltd. 3rd Floor, Sambhav House, Near Judges Bunglows, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad - 380 015, Mobile No. +91 9820097606 Email: Ranabir.das@expressindia.com

Chhattisgarh Infotech and Biotech Promotion Society improves citizen satisfaction and saves US$125,000 with real-time insight for decision-making 12 | LADWP simplifies access to online city services by consolidating directory infrastructure 13 | On the road to sustainability

INTERVIEW

14 | Debapriya Nandan, Senior Director & Head of Public Sector, Oracle

BHOPAL Prabhas Jha The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India.

Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270 Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com JAIPUR Prabhas Jha The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India.

Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270, Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email : prabhas.jha@expressindia.com

20 of the 20 Top Governments United States, China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, India, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Republic of Korea, Australia, Russian Federation, Spain, Mexico,

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EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

8 | COVER STORY

IN 2017, IT COMPANIES WILL TWEAK STRATEGIES TO GROW REVENUES FROM NEW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES WITH INDIA POISED TO BECOME THE GLOBAL HUB OF INNOVATION, ORACLE IS HELPING THE COUNTRY BECOME MORE COMPETITIVE IN THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE

L

et’s begin by considering a happy thought in the New Year.

The Global Innovation Index 2016 (GII)—the rankings report released recently by Cornell University, INSEAD and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)—rated India number one in the world as the primary exporter of information and communication technology services, suggesting further that the country has all the makings to become a global hub of innovation. These rankings partly confirm that India is beginning to recognise that new inventions and discoveries are as crucial as services because they can complement national development programmes such as Make in India, Smart Cities and Digital India to truly help India make its great leap forward.

The past year bears witness to the results of a slew of measures undertaken over the last two years by the government to usher in transformation in governance and accelerate socio-economic development through the optimum use of intelligent technologies and networks, including those that sit on the cloud.

Digital India, the government’s flagship umbrella programme, has already triggered significant growth in the expansion of technology infrastructure in India to help address, among other things, the challenge of last mile access, provide location-specific WiFi access in educational institutions and the public Wi-Fi, and finally develop applications that provide cloud-based services-on-demand to citizens.

In terms of numbers, however, the IT industry had a somewhat mixed year in 2016. This appears to have put major IT vendors under pressure. But analysts at Gartner India predicted in November a somewhat optimistic forecast for software spending at 12.8 percent buoyed by emerging digital business strategies that Indian firms were quickly adopting.

Indeed, among other things, these numbers and other trends indicate that digitisation will dominate much of how we work, play and live next year. In 2017, new economic models will emerge to create the optimum conditions that publicprivate partnerships need to create sustainable and connected infrastructure like Smart Cities, among others.

India’s private, public and government sectors have been making use of digital technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing in traditional strategic growth sectors such as manufacturing and power, but they are now well-poised to succeed in domains such as Smart Cities, healthcare, water, education and agriculture, where India has the potential to be a global leader.

Cities, as history shows, are the hotspots that drive growth in an increasingly inter-connected economy.

Cities matter to India because of their present stage of development, especially because future growth, which must come from industries, must be generated from India’s cities and towns. In this context, the government has rightly demonstrated its intent to walk the talk on urban planning. The plan to build 100 smart cities that sit on an advanced, digital backbone mirrors the high priority that the government has attached to the role of a technology-led, city-based economy in the broad framework of India’s new development paradigm.

In the truest sense of the phenomenon, in 2017, we could be witnessing the early signs of what is being called “smart life in an interconnected world”, where technology will be the gateway to our lives. For instance, a fully ‘intelligent’ and ‘networked’ home in a Smart City implies that electrical systems will now be linked with electronic gadgets such as TVs and refrigerators, while a solar-based electrical system ‘knows’ when to put the TV on standby mode as it maintains a log of your schedule when you are at home.

The Indian digital experiment is not a new phenomenon anymore. There already are many proof points in India’s marketplace. Cloud-based email and mobile applications are helping ease healthcare delivery services, often making them much more effective, while farmers are already beginning to apply the cloud to access data literally in the middle of a harvest.

India’s e-commerce and online retail sector is another good case in point. The success of e-commerce enterprises such as Makemytrip.com, Flipkart.com and Bookmyshow.com have shown how they have benefited by, for instance, the unlimited potential of the Oracle Cloud. A new forecast by Forrester Research recently said India is the fastest-growing e-commerce market in the Asia Pacific region, but adds a cautionary note about its underdeveloped logistics and challenging last-mile connectivity, including a cash-based culture that still poses a huge challenge.

At Oracle, we foresaw digitisation and how it perfectly ties in with our vision for the cloud years ago. Today, it is starting to make its presence felt by allowing Indian companies and individuals to become far more agile and productive as they scale up and down with significantly higher elasticity across compute, storage and workforce environments. It is also helping India become far more competitive in the global marketplace. In 2017, as digitisation expands further, Indian companies will tweak their strategies to grow their revenues from new digital technologies to gradually offset the decline in revenues in traditional IT businesses.

The author of the article is Shailender Kumar, MD, Oracle India The article was originally published in the Financial Express on January 2, 2017

For Oracle, India is much more than a market. Oracle has been at home in India for over 25 years and we now employ nearly 40,000 people in sales, development, consulting services and our internal operations. And more is yet to come. Oracle is committed to India. We are investing over $400 million USD in Bengaluru, opening 9 incubation centers, and training half a million students each year to support India’s tremendous growth. We ‘Make in India' for the rest of the world Safra Catz CEO, Oracle

India is at an exciting phase of growth, innovation and development. Through Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator, we want to be the catalyst for new business ideas. We are committed to furthering the Government of India’s ‘Startup India' initiative Thomas Kurian President, Product Development, Oracle

ORACLE'S INITIATIVES IN INDIA ◗ Oracle and Government of Maharashtra have signed a MoU to accelerate the state's digital transformation initiatives and develop a Smart City program to be powered by Oracle Cloud solutions.

◗ In order to support the country's global digital leadership, Oracle has unveiled a state-of-the-art campus in Bengaluru with $400 million investment, 9 incubation centers throughout India (Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida, Pune, Trivandrum, and Vijayawada), and an initiative to train more than half a million students each year to develop computer science skills.

◗ Oracle Academy and Telangana

Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) signed a partnership agreement in 2016 to introduce Oracle Academy curriculum into 150 engineering colleges in Telangana.

As part of this initiative, Oracle Academy resources including software, academic curriculum, hosted technology, educator training, support and certification resources will be made available to students and faculty. The initiative is expected to help 2,000 students and 150 faculty members over the next three years.

◗ State Bank of India SBI

and Oracle India have launched the 'D-Change' programme to support education and learning, women’s empowerment and rural skills development in India. 'D-Change' will merge SBI’s financial expertise and expansive reach with Oracle’s technology leadership to help local communities drive substantial change and develop a skilled economy.

◗ In 2016, Oracle signed an agreement with ICT Academy of Kerala (ICTAK), wherein 125 colleges in Kerala will become members of the Oracle Academy program. Over the next three years, ICTAK intends to leverage Oracle Academy resources to create strong computer science education pathways for 6,000 students.

◗ Oracle and ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu (ICTACT) signed an agreement last year to implement Oracle Academy curriculum across 450 educational institutions in the state to teach students industryrelevant skills. Oracle Academy aims to train 45,000 students and 750 faculty members across these institutions in the state over the next three years.

◗ Last year, Oracle announced major sales transformation and cloud expansion across Asia Pacific. As part of this plan, the company introduced cloud-focused 'Oracle Digital' team and aimed to hire 1000 professionals across APAC to drive mid-market growth. In India, Oracle will hire 200 professionals as part of this recruitment initiative.

◗ The company has introduced Oracle Cloud at Customer in India, a new suite of offerings that remove some of the biggest challenges organizations face when transitioning to the cloud. Oracle Cloud at Customer provides CIOs with new choices in where they deploy their enterprise software and a natural path to easily move business critical applications from on-premise to the cloud.

Push a Button Move Your Database to the Oracle Cloud

Same Database Same Standards Same Architecture

… or Back toYour Data Center

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EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

10 | CASE STUDIES DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

RailTel increases transparency, efficiency and productivity through robust ERP system

R

ailTel Corporation of India (Mini Ratna Company) is a Government of India enterprise focusing on providing

broadband and Virtual Private Network (VPN) services. It was founded in September 2000 under the Ministry of Railways.

Passing through around 5,000

stations across the country, RailTel’s network covers all central business districts, towns, cities and mini/majormetros.

Challenges ◗ Adopt an ERP system that can leverage technology towards promoting transparency, accountability

and efficiency. ◗ Implement ERP applications for Finance, Sales and Marketing, Human Resources, Operations & Maintenance and Project & Procurement. ◗ Streamline, integrate and standardise the business processes, templates and methodologies across all regions and improve overall operations through optimum utilisation of resources and faster access to data and application. ◗ Provide real time information access to all designated officers operating the business processes. Define roles and responsibilities that would be aligned to the current work of officers as well as the ERP process needs. ◗ Provide technical and functional support to deal with employee apprehensions and ensuring their active participation during all the project phases. ◗ Sustain enthusiasm in regional offices and the field

for ERP implementation as the project was based out of corporate office located in Gurgaon.

Solutions ◗ Implemented a seamless and integrated flow of information with Oracle Financials, Oracle HRMS, Oracle HRMS Self Service, Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Advance Procurement, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Projects and Oracle CRM. ◗ Swift decision making and empowerment of the core working group assured critical decisions were taken on time and prevented slippage on project schedule. ◗ Strengthened key functions and processes across all regions through standardisation. For data collection and migration, a separate data team comprising officers who handled the corresponding data themselves was formed to ensure validation of data.

◗ Automated functional operations with work flows and electronic approval processes. Provided real time status of key performance indicators for review by senior management. ◗ Mapped key business processes with standard modules of the ERP package. ◗ Conducted awareness sessions at different regions helped in the participation of the field representatives and in propagating the benefits driven by ERP. ◗ Celebration of quick wins and leadership messages sustained the project momentum and enthusiasm. ◗ All regional officers were kept abreast of the project news through a dedicated web portal. Change Champions were identified from regional offices to ensure smooth communication flow and engagement among the project team and the other key stakeholders.

Increased operational efficiency of Commercial Improved information security results in 20 % Taxes Department, Govt of Rajasthan faster IVFRT state government.

T

he State of Rajasthan was formed with the merger of former princely government states and centrally administered territories of Ajmer and Marwar.

The Commercial Taxes Department of Rajasthan

administers seven important laws: The Rajasthan Value Added Tax Act, The Central Sales Tax Act, The Rajasthan Entertainment and Advertisements Tax Act, The Rajasthan Electricity (Duty) Act, The Rajasthan Tax on Entry of Motor Vehicles into

Local Areas Act, The Rajasthan Tax on Luxuries (in hotels and lodging houses) Act and The Rajasthan tax on Entry of Goods into local Areas Act. The Department contributes nearly 50 percent to the tax revenue collected by the

Challenges ◗ Help the Commercial Taxes Department of Rajasthan achieve their vision of improving operational efficiency of the department and enhance the experience of dealers interacting with the department. ◗ Provide uninterrupted, efficient e-services for various activities such as registration of new TIN, payments, returns, refunds, declaration of goods (VAT), CST forms (ROCS), RIPS, export forms (VAT and CST) and communication. ◗ Cater to the needs of an estimated 50% of the current 4.5 lakh dealers who would be filing e-return over a fixed period of time. ◗ Deploy a robust system that could deliver services where majority of returns are filed in last 4-5 days of the deadline. ◗ Install a scalable system which could cater to potential changes such as

introduction to GST and an increase in the number of dealers using the system, resulting in a multifold increase in e-transactions.

Solutions ◗ Oracle database and real application cluster provided the robust infrastructure eliminating the single point of failure resulting in reliable 24x7 eservices for dealers ◗ Oracle real application cluster delivered the required scalability to handle current and ongoing increase in e-transactions. ◗ Grid based architecture provided a platform which the department can use for both dealer- centric services and departmental operational activities. ◗ Reduced the time taken to resolve technical issues with the self-managing capabilities of Diagnostic and Tuning pack, resulting in increased operational efficiency and increased service availability.

Computerisation of Postal Life Insurance and Rural Postal Life Insurance, Department of Posts increases efficiency

T

he Directorate of Postal Life Insurance under the Department of Posts is the apex body for the formulation of all policies, products and administration of the Post Office Insurance Fund. The procurement of business, after sale service and all types of claims management are performed in the field, i.e. Circles. The Office of Director, PLI, Kolkata under the Directorate of PLI functions as the Central accounting Office.The Investment Division, PLI is headed by the Chief Investment Officer, PLI and is located at Mumbai.

Challenges ◗ Support, enhance and maintain the capabilities of the existing application software for Postal Life Insurance (PLI) & Rural Postal life Insurance (RPLI). ◗ Ensure that the software can

◗

◗

◗ ◗

be accessed from 23 Circles, 37 Regions, 450 Divisions, 22 DA(P) offices, DPLI, Kolkata and 812 Head Post offices of the country. The database size of PLI/RPLI is around 400 GB having 30 million policies with around 20,000 users accessing the server on a daily basis.

Provide better control on the PLI/RPLI fund investment by integrating the core PLI application and the investment module.

Record all the Internal Communication and set workflow & approval process.

Create role based MIS reports.

Integrate the Business Functions of DAP &DPLI with Core PLI/RPLI Modules and help top management in their decision making process.

Solutions ◗ Implemented DAP/DPLI

modules across the country for PLI/RPLI to interface with fund investment with Oracle Database 10gR2, Oracle 10 g Application Server, Oracle Application Server Web cache 10g. ◗ Helped with data reorganisation for Decision Support System by aligning IT needs according to business process improvement.

◗ Handled the MIS reporting requirement and User Training Module. ◗ Integrated with other DOP Applications like Meghdoot, ePost office with core PLI/DPLI Modules. ◗ Provided a high availability solution in terms of RAC, Dataguard and various replication methods like logical standby, streams, golden gate.

◗ Made monitoring and troubleshooting easy as Oracle provide various tools inbuilt with Database software. ◗ Ensured handling of large size of database like financial and minimum downtime in disaster cases. ◗ Provided critical patches in each quarter to enhance the security and efficiency of software.

transactions and enhanced customer service at NIC

N

ational Informatics Centre (NIC) is the premier science and technology institution of the Government of India. NIC promotes and implements IT and communications infrastructure for central and state governments, administrations and non-government bodies across India. Some of these IT systems are used by the Indian Government to issue passports and visa documents at 37 offices in India and 160 offices abroad which further extends the service to 360 FROs and 13 FRROs, and process around 200,000 transactions at 77 immigration checkpoints across India each day.

Immigration, Visa, Foreigner Registration and Tracking (IVFRT) is one of the MMP (Mission Mode Projects) under the National e-Governance Plan, the flagship program of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

Challenges ◗ Upgrade an existing database for the Government of India— which supports core in housedeveloped visa, and immigration systems—to handle increases in transaction volumes, and serve customers faster. ◗ Ensure system issues are detected in test environments before new applications are moved to the production environment, to avoid unplanned downtime and loss of revenue from visa and immigration applications. ◗ Increase database security to protect an applicant’s personal information from being accessed by unauthorized staff.

Solutions ◗ Upgraded to Oracle Database 11g to more efficiently store and retrieve information generated by 30,000 visa and 200,000 immigration transactions every day. ◗ Enhanced the Government of India’s customer service to citizens or visitors by processing visa and immigration transactions around 20% faster. ◗ Enabled the Indian Government to handle around 15% per annum increase in application and database transaction load over two years effectively with minimal change in manpower. This increase has happened due to the growth in visa applications. ◗ Ensured sensitive, personal information about thousands of Indian citizens and foreigners is stored securely by introducing case-sensitive password algorithms, intelligent compression, and file encryption, and better auditing capabilities. NIC has been able to achieve using security and auditing capabilities of Oracle. ◗ Avoided unplanned downtime and any kind of service disruption resulting in better confidence and service to endbeneficiaries. Use of Oracle has also helped IT project teams to evaluate system changes—such as updates to its online passport issuing application—in test environments before they go live. ◗ Provided a database that can easily support increases in transaction loads and service level expectations in the future.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

|11

CASE STUDIES DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

All India Council for Technical Education increases fee payment revenue by 200% up to eight forms when they apply for establishing, approval extension, accreditation, or funding. ◗ Reduce the time it takes for staff at AICTE’s regional office to evaluate and approve each application. ◗ Generate reports on number and type of applications received, programs of study, and fee payments.

I

n October 2009, AICTE engaged Oracle Partner L&T Infotech to build an e-governance system, comprised of a portal developed using Oracle’s Siebel Partner Portal and Siebel Public Sector, an analysis system based on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, a payment gateway, and an identity management system

incorporating biometric technology. Since the gateway was implemented, the number of approvals for new and existing institutes has increased by 20% to 25%, while fee payments have risen by 200%.

Challenges ◗ Remove the need for institutes to visit an AICTE office and submit

Solutions ◗ Improved efficiency by building a portal that allows institutes to submit online applications for establishment, accreditation, and funding, rather than filling in up to eight paper forms. ◗ Increased the number of approvals for new institutes and extensions by 20% to 25%. ◗ Cut the time for site visits by

Oracle partner, L&T Infotech, helped AICTE in building an e-governance system

◗ ◗

◗ ◗

panel members by 8 to 10 hours.

Boosted revenue from fees by 200% by introducing an online payment gateway.

Increased transparency by standardizing assessment and approval processes and tracking the status of applications as they move through the approval chain.

Reduced the number of helpdesk staff from three to one.

Processed 8,000 approval extensions for existing institutes and 2,176 new

◗

◗

◗

◗

institute applications in 2010-2011, without the need to recruit additional staff.

Expected to process 13,000 approval extensions for existing institutes and more than 1,000 applications for new institutes in 2011-2012, without the need to recruit additional staff.

Saved 3 million sheets of paper by enabling institutes to fill out one online form instead of eight paper forms.

Supported the council’s aim of ensuring quality technical education by conducting regular analysis of institutes’ resources and capabilities.

Deployed the e-governance system in six weeks by engaging L&T Infotech to design, build, and manage the implementation.

Chhattisgarh Infotech and Biotech Promotion Society improves citizen satisfaction and saves US$125,000 with real-time insight for decision-making

C

hhattisgarh Infotech and Biotech Promotion Society (CHiPS) is run by the Government of Chhattisgarh, which became India’s newest and tenthlargest state in November 2000. With an 80% rural, geographically dispersed population, and outdated, predominantly paper-based administrative services, Chhattisgarh faced significant infrastructure and efficiency challenges.

Recognizing the strategic importance of information and communication technology as a key to enabling socio-economic development and improving service delivery, the government established CHiPS to develop and maintain IT services, assist the state secretariat in its role of supporting major policy decisions, and manage the digital interface between the government and citizens of Chhattisgarh.

Challenges ◗ Replace out-dated, paperbased filing system with a robust, centralized content-management platform to capture, secure, store, and share documents across departments to support faster policy decisions for construction and the government’s development projects and to reduce costs. ◗ Automate document workflow to enhance transparency and consistency in decisionmaking and to meet statutory requirements. ◗ Enable anytime-anywhere access to information to increase productivity and improve public services to the citizens of Chhattisgarh, such as education, housing, and employment.

Solutions ◗ Reduced paper and document-management

costs by US$125,000 in one year, and decreased reliance on paper-based documents by 75%. ◗ Increased productivity by deploying a dynamic and user-friendly, self-service portal that enables officials to easily access, upload, and review documents online instead of retrieving files manually from the records room. ◗ Enhanced citizen satisfaction by ensuring

the consistency and transparency of decision-making to meet statutory requirements. ◗ Gained real-time insight into decision status instead of waiting until end of the week, month, or even year, as previously, enabling officials to identify resource bottlenecks and take corrective actions earlier.

◗ Enabled mobile access to critical documents, accelerating decision-making and improving constituent services. ◗ Ensured data security and a higher level of system availability by implementing Oracle WebLogic Server, Enterprise Edition with Oracle Web Tier, ensuring business continuity and reducing costs.

Department of Medical Education, Rajasthan improves patient care with Arogya Online

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he Department of Medical Education, Government of Rajasthan took the initiative to automate hospitals in the state in order to improve patient care.

Arogya Online was launched with the objective of automating the complex tasks in hospital administration such as billing, bed management, admission of patients, discharge of patients, transfer procedures etc.

Challenges ◗ The need was to create an aesthetically pleasing yet practical system. ◗ Provide an integrated solution to manage the central lab, Out Patient Department (OPD), In-Patient Department (IPD), Operation Theatres (OTs), Store and Blood Bank as well as the treatment modalities offered by more than 44 clinical and non-clinical departments, 70+ wards with 2500 + beds. ◗ Manage an average of 10000 OPD patients on a daily basis and approximately 15000 daily investigations with errorless reporting mechanism. ◗ Provide the highest level of flexibility and operational efficiency for hospitals through access to a centralised system. ◗ Design a system with high availability and scalability as the application would be extended to more hospitals over a period of time. ◗ To manage distribution of medicines under MNDY as well as free investigations under MNJY. ◗ MIS of the financials being spent on various activities like investigations of patients, etc. ◗ The information filtered through HIMS application is used by the public, own employees and by the management for decision making.

Solutions ◗ Deployed Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, Oracle Real Application Cluster and Oracle Diagnostic and Tuning Pack to provide a centralised system that connected people, process and data in real time across the hospital on a single platform. ◗ Allowed for display of IPD’s investigative report on the ward’s computer and increased efficiency. ◗ Displayed investigation reports of all the patients on the Internet with 1.18 lac + hits within 9 months. ◗ Computerised the Hospital Central Lab and the Blood Bank. Provided control over professional blood donors with use of bio-metric donor registration along with bar coding for identification of bags. ◗ Centralized OPD counters enabled patients to register for any department/ doctor at any of the 14 counters. ◗ As per the statistics, registration takes only 40 seconds and billing for investigation is done within 90 to 102 seconds which includes taking of cash by the operator. ◗ Display of investigation reports of all the patients on the Internet (at medicaleducation. rajasthan.gov.in/) with 2 lac+ hits per yr. ◗ Continuity of HIMS application with an up time of 99.997%. ◗ Electronic Medical Record: reduction of cost, improve quality of care, promote evidence-based medicine, record keeping and mobility. A complete standard International Classification Diagnosis (ICD) is used to build up the data for medical records.

Maintain diagnosis, treatment advised and surgery/treatment details. ◗ Control over the costs incurred on investigation-related groups.

CRIS delivers high-performance e-ticketing system to support 200,000 concurrent users and double daily peak-hour sales

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ounded in 1986, the Center for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) is an organization under the Ministry of Railways that develops IT applications for Indian Railways. Its portfolio of IT projects includes reserved and unreserved passenger ticketing systems, freight operations systems, and crew management systems. To meet increased demand for an online rail-booking facility, CRIS also developed a next-generation e-ticketing system and Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), another Indian Railways subsidiary, manages e-ticket sales.

Challenges ◗ Improve the performance, reliability, and scalability of

existing ticketing system to support 120,000 concurrent users and increase train ticket sales. ◗ Enhance customer satisfaction by enabling passengers to rapidly book online train tickets during peak periods such as holidays, festivals, and the daily window for premium Tatkal ticket bookings, instead of queueing at ticket counters. ◗ Provide an easy-to-use management tool for IT staff to rapidly identify and resolve system performance issues and ensure smooth railway operations.

Solutions ◗ Improved customer satisfaction by deploying Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Web Tier to

provide a highperforming, secure, and scalable e-ticketing system, enabling passengers to book etickets 10x faster—in less than a minute instead of more than 10 minutes—even during peak periods ◗ Increased daily peakhour bookings to 140,000 tickets—doubling previous daily peakhour sales—by processing 10,000 transactions per minute rather than 2,000 transactions. ◗ Increased the proportion of e-ticket sales to total ticket sales by 1.25x— 55% compared to 45% two years ago—and boosted Tatkal tickets sales by 1.6x—to 80% of total e-ticket sales instead of up to 50%—by exceeding the concurrent-user target

and supporting 200,000 concurrent users instead of 40,000 users previously. ◗ Enhanced customer service by enabling developers to easily deploy or modify the e-ticketing system thanks to Oracle WebLogic Server’s advanced API for application innovation. ◗ Ensured high application availability by using Oracle WebLogic Suite's integrated management console and Oracle

WebLogic Server Management Pack to automatically detect performance bottlenecks and track real-time configuration changes, allowing IT staff to easily manage and diagnose issues for Oracle WebLogic Servers. ◗ Improved IT productivity by using Oracle Database options, including Oracle Diagnostics Pack to selfdiagnose database performance and Oracle Tuning Pack to provide automatic application tuning, enabling IT staff to focus on strategic initiatives. ◗ Ensured smooth railway operations by using Oracle GoldenGate to enable near real-time data replication between two Oracle Database instances—transaction and reporting

databases—and achieve seamless migration to the new e-ticketing platform.

Implementation Process CRIS first implemented Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition with database options—Oracle Diagnostic Pack and Oracle Tuning Pack—for the e-ticketing system. It then deployed Oracle WebLogic Suite as the application server and used Oracle WebLogic Server Management Pack to monitor performance issues. CRIS also used Oracle GoldenGate to migrate the legacy platform to the new Oracle platform. The nextgeneration e-ticketing system was one of the largest Oracle Fusion Middleware deployments for the Government of India.CRIS also received

strong support from Oracle’s A-team to rapidly identify issues and provide patches throughout the implementation process. It completed the production rollout in just four months and launched the new e-ticketing system on time.

“With Oracle WebLogic Suite and Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition, we built a high-performance, reliable, and scalable e-ticketing platform to support 200,000 concurrent users and double daily peak-hour e-ticket sales.

Customers can now book online tickets 10x faster, significantly enhancing their satisfaction," said Suneeti Goel, Chief Project Engineer, Center for Railway Information Systems.

After evaluating various major application-server vendors, CRIS chose Oracle Fusion Middleware

solutions because Oracle offered the most competitive pricing and functionality and best met CRIS’s business requirement for streamlined management of the Government of India’s largest e-commerce platform.

“By deploying the latest version of Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle WebLogic Server Management Pack, we easily boosted application performance during peak periods and significantly improved response times, which, in turn, helped us to elevate customer satisfaction,” added Goel.

CRIS engaged Oracle Platinum Partner, HCL Technologies Ltd. to assist with infrastructure installation and configuration for the new e-ticketing system project.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

12 | CASE STUDIES SMART CITIES

Health Sciences South Carolina improves community-wide care quality and research

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stablished in April 2004, Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC) is a statewide, public-private collaborative of four universities and five health systems utilizing health sciences research to improve the health and economic wellbeing of South Carolina residents. Using Oracle Healthcare Master Person Index (OHMPI) to identify patients across its multiple facilities, HSSC created a distinctive view of its patients and connected patient records with clinical, lab, and translational data.

OHMPI also helped HSSC build cohort groups for population health initiatives by comparing information from its translational and clinical data warehouses.

From these comparative beginnings, Health Sciences South Carolina Integrated Platform for Research was formed. It is an unprecedented statewide initiative for translational research and quality improvement.

Challenges ◗ Eliminate duplicate patient identities in multiple hospital systems caused by patients reaching several points of care for their healthcare needs. ◗ Identify a single patient identity across multiple healthcare systems to achieve a unique view of his/her demographic data, a task not possible with HSSC’s existing applications. ◗ Link a patient’s clinical records (such as lab results, discharge summaries, and other medical information) with his/her current patient data. ◗ Gain a singular, crossreferenced view of patients that could be used to develop appropriate services in the clinical data warehouse for cohort identification.

Results ◗ Met pressing need for interoperability across HSSC’s multiple facilities. ◗ Provided Oracle Healthcare

With Oracle Healthcare Master Person Index, we achieved interoperability across multiple facilities.

OHMPI’s trusted Enterprise Master Person Index provides us with sophisticated matching capabilities and unified patient views through multiple channels, without restricting innovative usage of processed data Rick Larsen CIO, Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC)

Master Person Index (OHMPI’s) trusted and sophisticated matching capabilities to create and manage unified patient views through multiple channels, without restricting innovative usage of

processed data. ◗ Empowered HSSC with a highly reliable, single source of truth within and across all of its hospital systems. ◗ Created a unified view of patient demographic data which is used extensively to link clinical records across multiple episodes to the unique patient and serves as the system of record for researchers to identify cohort groups and individuals. ◗ Created a cross-referenced index connecting a patient’s Medical Record Number from all participating source systems to a unique enterprise identifier— consolidating patient data from various points of contact across the four hospital systems into one place— OHMPI. ◗ Met the requirement set by HSSC for select fields to match, to set appropriate matching weights, and to cater to HSSC’s unique needs—enabling HSSC to select the desired match fields easily, scale the level of matching, and seamlessly incorporate the customized matching approach for identifying and matching twins. ◗ Enabled HSSC to achieve data governance, increase patient data quality, and improve analytics adoption between loosely federated, siloed systems. ◗ Provided HSSC with the highest level of flexibility, with multiple web and services APIs—allowing easy access to OHMPI and the ability to move data in bulk through ETL operations— giving HSSC a number of channels for the unique view services.

LADWP simplifies access to online city services by consolidating directory infrastructure LADWP benefits from many of Oracle’s products and offerings. We found Oracle Identity Management created a roadmap and direction with product simplification that was a natural choice for our city portals Matt Lampe CIO, LADWP

L

os Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal water and power utility in the nation. LADWP was established over 100 years ago to deliver reliable, safe water and electricity to nearly 4 million residents and businesses in Los Angeles.

Through LADWP.com, MyLA311 and LACitySan portals, the city provides water, power and city services to both citizens and customers.

Challenges ◗ Simplify citizens’ access to water, power, and services through LADWP.com, MyLA311 and LACitySan portals. ◗ Consolidate identity repositories to simplify deployed infrastructure and reduce administrative costs and management. ◗ Leverage one tier LDAP directory including embedded data storage, avoiding any additional external storage capability.

◗ Deploy a flexible deployment architecture ensuring components meet LDAP’s exact business needs now and in the future. ◗ Manage real-time replication between two data centers to ensure high level of service availability to Los Angeles citizens and LADWP customers.

Solutions ◗ Simplified online systems for City of Los Angeles citizens and customers providing a single user ID to access and interact with both LADWP and the city’s public services via MyLA311. ◗ Deployed a one tier solution managed by a single administrator—reducing the complexity and eliminating costs and resources associated with doubling infrastructure. ◗ Replicated identities between data centers via multi-master replication ensuring high availability with no single point of failure. ◗ Increased system

performance by transitioning from an older directory solution to Oracle Unified Directory— improving search response time by 350% and overall performance improvement by 95%. ◗ Created a flexible environment that will expand with the City of Los Angeles.

Partner LADWP utilized Oracle Platinum Specialized Partner, AST Corporation, to design and implement the new architecture and develop a process to transfer information, including passwords, from the old directory server to Oracle Unified Directory.

“Oracle Unified Directory as the key component to LADWP IDM implementation helped in simplifying directory consolidation and significant performance gain for near four million userbase,” said Shyam Kumar, Vice President, AST Corporation.

Ciudad de Buenos Aires gains visibility into storm water runoff and flood preparedness systems

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uenos Aires is the capital and largest city in Argentina. With approximately three million residents and three more million people that go to work or do different activities. It is also the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the Americas. Known for its European atmosphere, the city is the financial, industrial, and commercial hub of Argentina, accounting for nearly a quarter of the country’s economic activity. The municipality has some of Latin America’s highest quality-of-life indicators and per capita incomes. It is also the top tourist destination in South America.Situated on the estuary of the Río de la Plata on the continent’s southeastern coast, Buenos Aires has a modern and diversified services sector economy, accounting for 76% of the city’s total output. While traditional industries are still prominent, the city has witnessed the development of a vibrant startup and technology scene in the last decade.

Challenges ◗ Enable real-time monitoring of rainfall, river water levels, and storm water runoff system performance, while incorporating newly constructed drainage infrastructure projects to existing ones, ensuring public safety. ◗ Improve insight and decision-making regarding weather-related developments with an easyto-use analytics and reporting system that covers various aspects of storm

water management, such as prompt information during rainfall and details on the development of major climate events. ◗ Create effective water contingency models to substantiate and design successful new large-scale public works, such as storm drain infrastructure projects. ◗ Enhance monitoring of floodprone areas to ensure more effective and timely preventive work and maintenance routines.

Solutions ◗ Enhanced the city’s capacity to adequately manage its monitoring of rainfall, river water levels, and storm runoff system performance, by providing technological capacity via several applications working under a stable, highly-available Oracle Business Intelligence Applications environment. ◗ Improved understanding of the behavior of storm water runoff systems and optimized early warning dispersal procedures with expanded visibility into operational data thanks to a real-time, cost-effective, and highly available business intelligence environment that leverages historical, current, and future data projections. ◗ Empowered city officials to respond effectively to weather events and keep residents updated thanks to the ability to transmit stormwater flow data collected via remote sensors to a unified warehouse without data loss or communication failure.

◗ Laid the foundation to develop more sophisticated storm water and river flow models with Oracle Policy Automation-supporting plans for large-scale infrastructure projects aimed at preventing flooding and damage to roads and bridges. ◗ Supported continuous expansion of the city’s weather surveillance capabilities, such as working with the local environment protection agency to install of a new network of sensors

to measure additional climate variables, by

Orace BI Applications efficiently manage the city's complex storm water and flood watch management systems

providing the needed technological base. ◗ Enabled the city to share real-time weather-related information with other levels of government to advance public safety initiatives. ◗ Improved IT and field staff productivity and efficiency by allowing them to create their own reports with minimal IT team support.

Implementation Process “The city was looking for a solution sanctioned by other top global cities with scalability

well beyond its initial requirements. Oracle delivered the specific software functions we required as well as a robust database solution capable of processing enormous volumes of information in real time,” said Rodrigo Silvosa, undersecretary of maintenance of public spaces, Ministry of Environment and Public Spaces, City of Buenos Aires.

“We conducted an extensive study and implementation project that took almost two years to complete. We had to design

our system from scratch because we did not have one in place before. We connected the sensors while the datacenter was installed. We then created the framework for our systems and control panels. The deployment was performed with the staff who works directly with it, therefore training and habituation with the system was a natural process for everybody,” added Silvosa.

“Oracle Business Intelligence Applications provide the foundation we need to efficiently manage the city’s complex storm water and flood watch management systems. We now have realtime access to reliable information on a variety of subjects, such as precipitation forecast models and river level prognostics, which allows us to quickly respond to potentially hazardous situations and ensure the safety of city residents," asserted Silvosa.

The city engaged with Oracle partner BGH S.A. to implement its integrated system to capture, administer, and manage weather information and storm water runoff and river flow data.“BGH was a strong partner throughout the initiative-from planning through go live. We rolled out the system as we battled one of the worst storms in recent memory, and our internal and BGH teams demonstrated their commitment and excellence.

We are very satisfied, and BGH has become a strategic partner for the city. The same can be said about Oracle,” stated Silvosa.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

|13

CASE STUDIES SMART CITIES

On the road to sustainability REDISA

146,000 T O N S Amount of waste tire REDISA has kept out of landfills

3,023 J O B S The organization has created 3,023 jobs and is supporting 225 small-to-midsize businesses

225 Number of small-to-midsize businesses the REDISA plan supports

SOUTH AFRICA’S plan to clean up the country and provide economic opportunity for thousands runs on Oracle technology

I

n South Africa, people historically dumped them in landfills. Sometimes they burned old tires for heat or to extract the small amount of steel housed inside, which could then be sold for cash. This uncontrolled burning released toxic fumes and liquids into the atmosphere and ground, compounding the environmental problem that cars pose. The estimated 60 million tires that haven’t been burned are still sitting in unsafe, illegal stockpiles or open fields, creating fire hazards and breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry disease. And every year in South Africa, 11 million more tires join the heap.

In 2009, the South African Parliament passed the National Environmental Management Waste Act, which required waste generators and disposers to minimize the environmental impact of any waste they hold or create.

That’s when a group of thought leaders had an epiphany: With a bit of innovation, they could tackle the tire problem and begin to address the country’s 26.4 percent unemployment rate at the same time. They developed the Recycling and

Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA).

REDISA is a nongovernmental organization based on a unique plan to turn South Africa’s tire problem into an environmental and economic success story. It comprises a national network of collectors, storage depots, recyclers, and producers in secondary industries—all small businesses and individuals—funded by a simple waste management fee on each tire produced in, or imported into, the country.

That fee is ultimately passed on to consumers by manufacturers, so a small contribution from each consumer pays for the system.

The levy is designated only for the use outlined in the REDISA plan, and it’s spent in an auditable, accountable way. Plus, the government doesn’t have to find a new revenue stream to support recycling or put more people to work.

“Our plan was to create jobs,” says Ian Beaton, who developed REDISA’s IT infrastructure and serves as its CIO—and is also the CIO at Kusaga Taka, the consulting company that implements the REDISA plan. “By getting people involved in the economy and giving them the opportunity to run a business, you help them put food on the table for their families. So this project has a massive social impact.”

The REDISA plan received government approval in November 2012, and Beaton and his team immediately began putting the plan into action. That meant not only building a national network of transporters and tire depots,

By getting people involved in the economy and giving them the opportunity to run a business, you help them put food on the table for their families. So this project has a massive social impact Ian Beaton CIO, REDISA

but also building an IT infrastructure from scratch.

For that task, Beaton decided to deploy a technology stack built entirely on Oracle solutions, from hardware to virtual machines, database, middleware, and applications.

From the Ground Up Building an entire infrastructure from scratch— and in just 180 days—might sound like a daunting task. But in this case, the ability to start from scratch was an opportunity: no clunky legacy systems or processes to integrate with. Beaton had worked with Oracle technology for 15 years as a consultant with KPMG and Accenture, and he knew Oracle offered everything REDISA needed to run its supply chain, transportation network, and financial systems.

Hermann Erdmann, REDISA’s CEO, agreed with the single-vendor approach. “We are a startup with no legacy systems to worry about, so the Oracle stack concept of database, middleware, and applications made perfect sense for us,” Erdmann says.

“After we got government approval of our plan, we had to deploy a first-of-its-kind waste management plan across the entire country as quickly as possible. Oracle made that possible.”

Scalability was another draw. By deploying a serviceoriented architecture based on Oracle technology, Beaton could ensure that every bit of code his team wrote would be reusable. That was particularly important when they considered the future of REDISA. While the organization will always have employees, some of the work— like that of the 980 microcollectors who pull tires from landfills—will eventually disappear as those areas are cleaned of tires.

“When REDISA was conceived, we knew we wanted to be able to scale up and possibly do similar things in other geographies and with other waste streams,” Beaton says. “We wanted to choose a technology that would be able to scale, and that’s why we ended up with Oracle.”

In July 2013, Beaton and his team engaged iFactory, an Oracle implementation

partner, and got to work.

Tires Get New Life The REDISA process starts with the collection of a small waste management fee on every kilogram of new tire produced in or imported into the country. Producers and importers register and pay their fees via the REDISA website. This fee is set as a revenue stream in Oracle Financials.

When vehicle owners are ready to get rid of their tires, they leave them at collection points around the country, such as tire sellers, car dealerships, and mechanics’ garages.

Someone at the collection points notifies REDISA that tires are ready for pickup, and the REDISA system—which captures all of this information in Oracle Database—then schedules the collection with an appropriately contracted transporter. Transporters then pick up the tires and take them to regional depots for temporary storage. Oracle Transportation Management handles the scheduling, contracting, and billing components. Payment is handled through Oracle Accounts Payable, creating an auditable record and ensuring that no cash needs to change hands. Next, depot managers receive loads and check them in.

“Once the transporter delivers the load to the depot, I input the information into the system via a tablet,” says Stanley Mangoegape, manager of the Midrand depot, which is near Johannesburg. “I log the name of the transporter, how many tires were delivered, the system records date, and the time. The system we use keeps track of all of the data and the payments made, which makes our work easier.”

All of this data collection happens on a simple front end that runs in Oracle WebCenter Portal and hides the complexity of the underlying back-end processes. Depot managers then stack and store the tires according to health and safety protocols until a REDISAregistered processing plant is ready for a batch. As part of the plan, processing plants receive tires free of charge, which helps to ensure that recycling remains a sustainable business. The Oracle system then schedules transporters, who pick up tires from the

SNAPSHOT OF REDISA Location: Cape Town, South Africa Industry: Professional services Employees: 120 Oracle products and services: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition; Oracle Business Process Management; Oracle Content Manager; Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition; Oracle Database Vault; Oracle e-Business Suite; Oracle Financials; Oracle Procurement; Oracle Human Resources; Oracle Payroll; Oracle Taleo Recruiting Cloud Service; Oracle Transportation Management; Oracle Spatial and Graph; Oracle SOA Suite for Oracle Middleware; Oracle Identity and Access Management; Oracle Weblogic Suite; Oracle VM; Oracle Database Appliance; Oracle SuperCluster

depots and take them to various processing facilities where—depending on the facility—the tires are either consumed in a form of energy recovery (tire-derived fuel) or crumbed and turned into new products and materials.

What the tires become depends on where they go. One type of processing plant is a cement kiln, which recovers energy from the tire to fuel the cement-making process.

Cement kilns are often coalfired, so in this process, tires can replace up to 20 percent of coal usage. While emissions from tires are not nearly as bad for the environment as emissions from coal when burned in retrofitted kilns, this process isn’t a long-term solution—so REDISA is working to reduce its dependence on kilns.

Another type of processing plant involves pyrolysis, a process in which the tire is heated in a chamber and reduced to steel, low-grade bunker fuel that is turned into diesel fuel, and carbon char.

Unfortunately, the carbon char

currently has very little value—which means this process has created another waste problem to solve.

The third type of processing plant—and the type that REDISA prefers—turns tires into rubber crumb. A machine devulcanizes the tire, creating small granules of raw rubber that can be used in many products: paving bricks, children’s playground surfaces, roof tiles, shoes, and rubberized asphalt for paving roads. One of REDISA’s goals is to push for the creation of more rubber crumb plants that turn tires into a product of real value.

Beaton and his team used the architecture designer within Oracle Business Process Management Suite to create a system that earned them a 2014 Oracle Sustainability Innovation Award. It is simple in the eyes of front-end users and simple for IT personnel to maintain— for example, they deployed Oracle software out of the box with no customizations. But that simplicity belies the impressiveness of what they created.

“If you talk to the technical people about what is going on, it’s mind-blowing,” Beaton says. “Understandably it will take time for everyone within the REDISA business network to fully understand how the technology has been hooked together to make such an impact, but most important, the business is allowed to continue in the successful development of a new industry and create thousands of jobs—which is the way it should be.”

Erdmann says the underlying technology enables REDISA to work with very different types of users.

“We have to deal with highly sophisticated tire manufacturers who have highly sophisticated IT systems, and on the other side we work with waste pickers, some of whom can’t read or write,” Erdmann says. “Oracle allows us to work with both seamlessly.”

REDISA Changes Lives Since launching in 2013, REDISA has made enormous progress. The organization has created 3,023 jobs and is supporting 225 small-tomidsize businesses including depots, recyclers, and

companies that make products from the recycled tires.

Collectors pick up tires from 1,385 dealers, and REDISA is already directly responsible for diverting more than 146,000 tons of tires from landfills.

Some of these numbers come from Oracle Spatial and Graph, which REDISA leaders use to demonstrate the value of their work by region. They can use the application to visualize, for example, how much tire waste has been recycled in a specific area, and how much money has been invested in the respective community.

The impact on South Africa as a whole is undeniable, but the way REDISA has changed individual lives is equally important. Some of the collectors and transporters have received bank cards for the first time in their lives through their work for REDISA, which has enabled them to care for their families in ways they were not able to before.

“Working with REDISA has changed my circumstances and given me a new lease on life,” Mangoegape says. “They gave me an opportunity when no one else would, and I am now able to provide for my family. I have also learned a lot about waste, and my view on waste has changed.”

Beaton estimates that 240,000 tons of tires come into the country each year. Some disappear—people use them as bumpers on boat docks or for erosion prevention on farms, for example. That leaves about 175,000 tons of tires that will ultimately become scrap, and REDISA currently collects 120,000 tons of those each year.

Under the plan, REDISA will grow to collect all 175,000 tons within the next two years—all without funding from the South African government. The challenge is now to aid in and encourage the creation of more rubber crumb processing plants. After that, REDISA has the scalability to move into other waste streams and geographies.

“The opportunity is there to do this in other places,” Beaton says. “As the landfills are cleaned of tires, some of the work will disappear—but with another waste stream like plastics, this becomes a sustainable employment creation opportunity well into the future.”

EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

14 | INTERVIEW

“Oracle’s solutions for Smart Cities have helped governments and agencies improve their operational efficiency and productivity”

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he world’s cities are going through a period of phenomenal change. Every day, urban areas grow by more than 150,000 people, either due to migration or births. It is predicted that between now and 2050, the world’s urban population will rise by 72% from 3.6 billion to 6.3 billion.

Over the next few decades, cities will need to become ‘smarter’ to deal with changing political circumstances combined with economic pressures. This transformation needs to cover all aspects of local government while tackling the rising costs that result from a combination of manual services, paper based records, limited information availability, and new cloud based services. In addition, they will have to compete to attract the most skilled residents, companies and organizations.

Closer home, India is gearing up to develop its first 100 smart cities across the country by 2020. Initiated under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Smart Cities Mission is an urban renewal and retrofitting program developed by the Government of India with a mission to develop 100 cities all over the country, making them citizen friendly and sustainable. The Union Ministry of Urban Development has been tasked to implementing the mission in collaboration with the state governments of the respective cities. As a result, new cities will be built and existing ones will be retrofitted to create economic development and improve the lives of citizens. No doubt, these are exciting times for us.

Pike Research forecasts that investment in smart city technology infrastructure will total $108 billion during the decade from 2010 to 2020. The Smart 2020 report is even more bullish, claiming that related technologies and industries will grow four-fold to become a $2.1 trillion market by 2020.

We caught up with Debapriya Nandan, Senior Director & Head of Public Sector, Oracle India to find out what Oracle is doing to support this national agenda.

Tell us about the opportunities and challenges in the smart cities space in India?

As a technology player, I can say these are exciting times for us. Oracle has been operating in India for more than 20 years, serving the public and private sector alike. The Modi-led government is making revolutionary changes in the IT infrastructure of the country with their proposed initiatives to accelerate India’s digitization at a rapid pace.

While Oracle has been supporting a variety of smart city projects across the globe, we are excited to see India embarking on this journey and look forward to working with them on various projects.

Just like the opportunities, the challenges for developing smart cities can be overwhelming. The first big challenge I’d say is to augment existing city infrastructure.

The next would be timely clearances to complete projects, which usually arises when different departments are involved. Another significant challenge would be to work in a multi-vendor environment, especially when it comes to integrating technology and processes.

Finally, the paucity of expert manpower, which I believe, is a

REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

INTRA-GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATIONS

1

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

5 VOLUNTARY

CITY PLANNING

REVENUE GENERATION AND COLLECTION BUSINESS

PRIVATE SECTOR

LEGISLATION AND REGULATIONS

CITIZENS

CONSTITUENTS

2 3

FACE TO FACE ($$$)

SELF-SERVICE ($)

4

CALL CENTER ($$)

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

CITY BULIDING AND PERMITS UTILITIES

SOCIAL SERVICES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

HOSPITALS AND CLINICS

PUBLIC SAFETY AND COURTS

CONSTRUCTION SITES

DEPARTMENT OF WASTE/ ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT FIRE AND SAFETY

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

DEPARTMENT OF PARKS, RECREATION AND CULTURE UTILITIES INFRASTRUCTURE

SERVICE BUILDINGS

SCHOOLS

RSECYCLING AND WASTE SYSTEMS PRECINCTS AND JAILS

prerequisite, to make and sustain a smart city, could pose another challenge.

As a technology provider, how can your company help in building smart cities?

For more than 30 years, Oracle has followed the course of change across the entire public sector, helping governments overcome the challenges of aging infrastructures, shrinking workforces, and declining tax bases. By developing and implementing innovative products for the city platform, Oracle helps local government leaders to redefine their objectives, rapidly respond to changing circumstances, and transform their human, material, and infrastructure resources.

Oracle offers a modular, incremental solution set for local governments that provides a roadmap for transformation. This solution set includes technologies and applications that consolidate already-complex IT infrastructures, rationalize service delivery processes, and support current and future operational systems, as well as supply an intelligence layer to monitor performance and improve service delivery, program planning, and budgeting.

Another point I would like to highlight is that we live in a world where billions of connected devices, from smart vehicles to intelligent utility meters are generating exponential quantities of data. This data can be harnessed to make smarter decisions, enable new services and business models and reduce costs. It’s the beckoning of a new era, popularly known as IoT or

SAFETY INFRASTRUCTURE

PARKS, MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

ORACLE SOLUTIONS FOR SMART CITIES FIT WITHIN THREE KEY PILLARS ◗ Smart Innovations: Helps resolve up to 90 percent of service requests through integrated multi-channel services, including self-service Web/chat; local single numbers such as 311, 1823, and 133; Facebook; Twitter; e-mail; and so on. Implementations around the world include New York City’s 311 and Hong Kong’s 1823 integrated services delivery platforms. ◗ Smart Processes: Helps analyze service delivery, infrastructure expenditures, constituent feedback, and other key areas to determine what areas to prioritize, streamline, extend, consolidate, or even discontinue. Implementations in cities including Boston and Shanghai have yielded real operational savings. ◗ Smart Infrastructure: This helps modernize the underlying IT infrastructure to enable better integration, interoperability, and the provision of shared services around core back-end ERP functions including payroll, procurement, and HR functions.

Successful implementations can be seen in Reading Borough Council, U.K.; St. Petersburg, Florida; and Municipio de Chihuahua, Mexico.

Internet of Things. The possibilities of using such data to develop innovative solutions from smart homes to smart cities, are almost endless.

What are some of the smart city solutions you feel can be implemented easily and right away?

Governments all over the world are working towards empowering their citizens by using technology to provide them with more efficient and transparent services. One of the key challenges in this process is to move legacy IT deployments from information-storing silos to information sharing environments. This is possible only if the deployment architecture is flexible enough to gather and deliver information across devices and applications. This deployment also requires to be easily scalable, so as to enable governments to transition seamlessly to the smart city model.

Most government departments have automation enabled in varying degrees, including “single-window services”.

Implementing technology deployed over cloud computing platforms is a natural process for

governments that aspire to be globally competitive and to provide better facilities to businesses and citizens. In order to reap these benefits, it is important that technological innovations be implemented in a phased manner.

Some of the smart city solutions that Oracle offers are in the fields of: ● Smart waste management: Combating pollution continues to be a key concern for citizens and governments alike.

Dealing with emissions from vehicles and factories as well as dealing with waste generated by the latter, pose enormous challenges for civic authorities. Smart waste management is one of the key components of any smart city solution. Some cities are using technology to convert this challenge into an opportunity to re-use/re-cycle waste and create more job opportunities in the process. For example, Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA), a non profit organisation, is transforming used tires into a business opportunity and helping communities.

mankind. Buenos Aires is using this technology to monitor rainfall and river water levels to avert flood-like scenarios in the city. ● Smart Health: As Indians experience the benefits of technology in every aspect of their lives, the demand for access to smarter technologies in healthcare is more now than ever before.

For smart technologies to take off in healthcare, there is a need to eliminate duplicate patient identities and have a single point of reference that would include information about the patient, his/her healthcare needs, doctor and other healthcare entities. This single point of reference enables real-time availability of unified, trusted data for strategic healthcare initiatives including: population health management, care coordination, patient satisfaction and healthcare analytics. Health Sciences South Carolina has been able to achieve interoperability across multiple facilities with help from Oracle technology.

Smart Energy: Organisations are looking up to utility companies to deliver the promise of the smart grid.

Customers are looking for instant and digital gratification, and demand personalised communication, customized billing plans and shorter response times. As a result, with aging systems that have limited to no self-service capabilities, utility businesses are facing a challenge in enabling their customers to save energy and money. They have the opportunity to increase customer satisfaction and drive competitive advantage if they adopt smart technology. Louisville Water Company and Exelon Utilities are some global firms that have benefitted from smart city solutions from Oracle.

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Emergency Management: Emergencies wait for no one. A city can face an emergency situation in the form of a flood, an earthquake or man-made forces, which may be out of the city administration’s control.

Therefore, they need to be equipped, not just to face these emergencies, but also to foresee these situations ahead of time. Smart use of technologies like business intelligence or predictive analytics can enable city administrators to foresee emergencies and take remedial steps to keep the losses to the bare minimum. It is unbelievable how technology is empowering the entire world to deal with some of the greatest challenges of Mother Nature and those triggered by

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Project Management: Smart city projects should enable local authorities, ministries, city planners, administrators and managers to analyse and prioritise projects across their portfolio.

Authorities should be able to identify risks and take preventive steps. As city authorities plan and execute simultaneous projects, real time visibility is needed to reduce the complexity of delivering smart city solutions.

Correct technology, if put in place, can enable organisations to tightly control public-works project budgets, as well as provide seamless access to related information, resulting in important savings.

Chicago Park District has been able to effectively manage and execute more than 400 annual parks projects across 30 departments.

Oracle’s solutions for smart cities have helped governments and government agencies improve their operational efficiency and productivity. They provide a complete solution, by bringing together best practices and processes from around the world into a solution architecture incorporating the breadth and depth of the Oracle portfolio of engineered systems, enterprise servers, and storage, data management and analytics technologies, middleware, and applications across on-premise and on cloud.

Oracle also offers the choice of Oracle Cloud at Customer in the customer’s data center.

This is a cloud solution based on a flexible subscription model which is fully managed

by Oracle. Its biggest advantages are control over data sovereignty and governance concerns, integration with customer’s network security and low latency interaction with other on-premises applications and data.

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EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

|15

EVENT EXPRESS TECHNOLOGY SABHA:

Going Digital for Transforming India THE 21ST EDITION of The Express Technology Sabha continued with its tradition of being India’s premier e-governance forum, with several thought leaders sharing their excellent insights

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n its 21st edition, given that there is a huge wave of technological transformation happening around Digital India, Smart Cities and Skill India, this year’s edition was focused on “Going Digital for Transforming India”. The focus was on showcasing how the effective implementation of

digital technologies was transforming India into a digital powerhouse. Some of the key thought leaders who graced this year’s Sabha included J Satyanarayana, Chairman, UIDAI and Advisor-eGov, Government of Andhra Pradesh; Pradeep Kumar Jena, Principal Secretary, Department of Electronics & IT,

Government of Odisha; Atluri Rama Rao, Executive Director, AP state Fibernet; Purushottam Sharma, ADGP, Government of Madhya Pradesh and Sandeep Bandhu, Additional Commissioner of Income Tax (CPC-TDS).

We present below highlights of the conference:

DAY -1

Inaugural Address

Keynote Address

J Satyanarayana, Advisor – eGov, Government of Andhra Pradesh and Chairman, UIDAI

JA Chowdary, Special Chief Secretary, CM & IT advisor, Government of Andhra Pradesh

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n his keynote address, JA Chowdary, Special Chief Secretary, CM & IT advisor, Government of Andhra Pradesh, emphasized on some of the latest achievements of the state. Fintech is a major focus area for the state, and Chowdary stated that there is a great opportunity for the country to become the Fintech leader of the world. The newly announced FinTech Valley, Vizag is being developed as a self-sustained global ecosystem that will host a plethora of businesses looking to expand their Fintech capabilities – from start-ups to established corporations. The network formed between the

n his inaugural address, J Satyanarayana, Advisor-eGov, Government of Andhra Pradesh, spoke on the subject of “Transforming Governance”, highlighting the volume and velocity of data with respect to Digital India.

For instance, the amount of data that is being generated by 1.15 billion Aadhaar and close of one billion smartphones present in the country is huge. Talking about digital transactions he focused on the national e-transaction count through eTaal - a web portal for dissemination of e-transaction statistics of national and state level eGovernance projects.

He said that the country in the last

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year did approximately 12 billion transactions, 100 crore a month and three crore a day. He believes that these 12 billion transactions can easily become one trillion with the kind of population the country has, giving enormous opportunities to everyone.

Satyanarayana showed a

dashboard where 130 schemes were being monitored on real-time basis.

For example, the dashboard can show in real-time how the energy is being consumed in the state. The street lights which are sensor enabled can also be monitored and in case of an outage situation in the city, the CM will also come to know.

Power & monitoring solutions Building future cities by for WAN connectivity harnessing the power of technology around five percent of the sales to its

Anubhav Sabharwal, General Manager – Sales – Govt.

Vertical, Schneider Electric IT Business

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he company specialises in energy management and automation solutions, spanning hardware, software, and services. Schneider Electric IT Business was awarded the highest exporter award for the 9th consecutive year by the Government of India for IT hardware. Sabharwal informed that the company has done around 26.6 billion sales in 2015 out of which 43 percent was in new economies. It has a total strength of 160 thousand people in 100 plus countries. The company has devoted

R&D. He also talked about the MP SWAN case study which is a highway of connectivity between G2G, G2C, G2B providing round the clock connectivity of minimum two Mbps between 50 districts and 313 blocks/ tehsils.

In his presentation he displayed different power solutions that the company can offer for different needs. The company promises to provide solutions for every application; for IT application in PC/thin clients in an office environment it provides line interactive UPS with quasi sine wave output UPS : 600 VA to 3 KVA. For IT application in non critical servers and low end switches it provides line interactive UPS with pure sine ware output UPS:1 KVA to 3 KVA (with monitoring over network). For IT application in servers, storage, networking and communication equipment for online UPS it provides single phase input and single phase output of 1- 20 KVA. For IT application in complete facility IT load and server room and data centre it provides an online UPS with three phase input and three phase output of 20 KVA to 1.6 MW (single UPS).

Rajesh Goel, Country Manager, BEST

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ajesh Goel, Country Manger, BEST, HPE, highlighted how data integration layer is helping in building citizen services.

He said that we should not invest on what we need today and should think about the requirement arising after 4-5 years like smart parking, waste management, innovative use of analytics, etc. Talking about future cities he touched upon the components of command and control center that includes IoT platform for citizen service, IoT platform with

Towards a future powered by intelligence

Sanjeev Gupta Country General Manager – Public Sector, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd.

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he fourth industrial revolution is going to change the world, pointed out Gupta.

Cloud is accelerating India’s

institutions, corporations and startups is one that the government is committed to nurture, where startups will act as enablers, with established businesses as advisors.

“As most global Fintech companies are struggling to get skilled manpower in their country, we have invited these companies to partner with the Andhra Pradesh government in developing skilled workforce for them. And around ten global companies are already working with us.”

He further added that the state has a strong focus on Blockchain technology, which is tough to be hacked. Blockchain will soon be introduced in some of the ePragati projects. The state is even eyeing to provide cost effective manpower to some of the startup companies based in the US.

transformation in Industrial Revolution 4.0. He stressed on three components: physical that comprises 3D printing, new materials; biological which is about genomic diagnostic and treatment engineering; and digital that focuses more on IoT, Blockchain and disruptive business model. He added that because of the transformation happening so quickly the decision making power is instant and has increased. He gave an example of how nurses of paramedical staff use the hospital email id to address complicated issues on real-time.

Gupta mentioned how AI and machine learning is being efficiently used for coronal transplant. LVPEI

has performed 20,000 corneal transplants, the highest in the world.

Technology is also empowering India’s farmers and the government to help reduce crop failures and increase yield. He spoke about the transformation of Harisal into a smart village aimed at inclusion of people, development of livelihood, providing health-care, and skilling.

The pilot project to transform Harisal into a digital village, which has been adopted by Microsoft in partnership with the Maharashtra government, is part of a larger project to bring communication and connectivity to all backward tribal villages across the state. He also emphasized on building a skilled workforce via cloud technology based training solution.

respect to video management and video analytics, eGovernance with respect to land, property, helpdesk, ehealth, etc.“We should look for a common aggregation layer so that there can be a common analytics,” he stated.

The HPE Universal IoT Platform is a single platform to enable multiple applications. With the HPE Universal IoT Platform, customers acquire an industry, vertical, and client-agnostic solution with maximum scalability, modularity, and versatility. This enables customers to manage their IoT solutions and deliver value through monetizing the vast amount of data generated by connected devices and making it available to enterprise-specific applications.

Further, use cases both within a vertical industry sector and across multiple others, enable new business models and revenue streams. He also touched upon the HPE eHealth centers that leverage cloud-based IT and data-sharing systems to deliver 21st century healthcare services and medical diagnostics to people in remote, resource-poor locations anywhere in the world.

Delivering mission critical applications for Digital India

Anand Venkatraman, Regional Director, India Web Business, Akamai

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nand Venkatraman – Regional Director, India Web Business, Akamai, started his address by saying, “Akamai's goal is to make the Internet fast and reliable.” The company's advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses

optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. He shares that every day on the Akamai platform three trillion incoming transactions happen, logging and storing 315 PB of data into an archive and interacting with more than 1.3 billion unique client devices.

Giving an insight about the incidents of cyber crime in India he mentioned that the country is witnessing increased number of web intrusion and DoS attacks.

DDoS based extortion is on the rise in the BFSI sector. Ransomware attacks are also increasing over the years. Adoption of IOT is increasing the attack scale to upto 600 GBPS. It is becoming easier for attackers to launch an attack. Knowledge of application vulnerabilities is spreading very fast. Number and availability of attack tools proliferating is also on a high note.

He stated that the idea is to move the content as close as possible to the users when the bandwidth is limited. “We are able to extract static and dynamic content over the internet. We do not allow any of the malicious traffic enter the data centre.”

Leading new ICT, building a better connected world Nikhil Sharma, Huawei Telecommunication India Pvt Ltd.

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ikhil Sharma, Huawei Telecommunication India Pvt Ltd began his presentation by emphasizing how important information communication technology (ICT) has become to the world. He said that immense progress that has been made in different fields of life, ICT has played a key role and his organization is committed to research, innovate and bring new things for the welfare of the people.

“Huawei invests a lot of money on

research and innovation and we will keep on doing this to ensure that we bring solutions that helps you,” said Sharma.

Praising the initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, specially focused on digital, he said, “Programmes such as Digital India, Make in India and demonetisation are steps in right direction. If India could continue, the days are not far when the country would fully digitized. He added, “We believe in India and have invested heavily in the country. We aim to help Indian companies and the government in their journey of digital transformation.”

EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

16 | EVENT Plenary Panel Discussion: Going Digital for transforming India

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tarting the panel discussion on the topic “Going Digital for transforming India”, J Satyanarayana, Advisor – eGov, Government of Andhra Pradesh and Chairman, UIDAI said, “Digital transformation is a disruptive change in the way things are happening.” He was of the view that this transformation could happen by changing the mindset of the people and changing the business process. “The government also needs to understand to avoid starting from scratch, which can lead to lot of silos,” he added.

Pradeep Kumar Jena, Principal Secretary,

Department of Electronics & IT, Government of Odisha was of the view that technology has changed the way people used to interact with the government. But there are many people who do not have access to Internet, so the government as well as technology firms need to ensure that they also become part of digital transformation of the country. “We must invest in connectivity infrastructure as it is the first step of digital transformation.

Today people’s aspirations have changed. Hence, government organizations and private firms also need to change their strategy,” said Jena.

Participating in the discussion, Atluri Rama Rao, Executive Director, AP state Fibernet gave the broad overview of technology adoption by the Government of Andhra Pradesh. He shared details about the recently launched AP State FiberNet project which aims to provide on demand, affordable and end-to-end broadband connectivity of 15 to 20 Mbps for households and 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps for institutions and enterprises by 2018. On how digital transformation could help, he said, “There is a lot of migration happening to cities as people are not able to get jobs and decent lifestyle in

rural areas. Therefore it is required that technology should be used in such a way that it helps in stopping migration by offering employment and improving the lifestyle of people in rural India. The Government of Andhra Pradesh is trying to do this through the Fibernet project. ” Anuj Kudesia, General Manager- ITB, Schneider Electric was of the view that people are comfortable with old things and habits. He said that transformation takes time but continuous focus on education, infrastructure and changing mindset are the key for digital

DAY - 2

Power Breakfast with Schneider Electric

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he power discussion began with a presentation

by Amod Ranade, General Manager - Data Center Business Development, Schneider Electric IT Business. He began by highlighting that it is critical for a data center to have the best possible design that ensures optimal utilization of all the key components. He said, “It is only through such an understanding that an organization would be able to harness the best out of a datacenter and deliver 24x7 uninterrupted

services.”

Emphasizing on the key areas of high performing computing (HPC), Ranade informed that Schneider’s new technology for datacenter design encompasses all critical components that are needed to run a hassle free datacenter.

Ranade also highlighted that components such as battery and CPU are going through a transformation phase.

Enterprises are moving from non-modular distribution and legacy systems to modular

systems. He informed that Schneider products are being made in India for India and also serving

global customers, while adding that all the plants of Schneider Electric are Six Sigma certified.

Technology for Digital Monitoring

Sitharama Raju Sagi, Managing Director, Indian Bridge Management System (IBMS)

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itharama Raju Sagi, Managing Director, Indian Bridge Management System (IBMS), began his presentation by stating that India is one of the two

Asian giants with a large economy and population of 1.33 billion with higher economic growth. For the last two decades, India has grown at twice the global rate. If this trend continues for next few decades, with the vast labor supply, favorable demographics, and aspirations for reaching the developed world per capita income and consumption standards, this economy can be expected to have a significant impact on the world economy.

He said, “Infrastructure, with its critical input in this spectacular performance, remains in the background. The innovative inputs of the civil engineers of the country are critical for infrastructure growth. Now it is the need of the hour to ensure that the infrastructure that has been built and to be built in the future has to perform satisfactorily for the designed period, efficiently with

Digital transformation begins here Ajay Kaul, Director & GM- Head Government Business, Dell EMC India

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jay Kaul, Director & GM- Head Government Business, Dell EMC India started his presentation by highlighting the fact that technology is transforming the way the world lives. He said, “All the development is happening around people and all the development is aimed at making things smart and trillions of dollars are being spent on IT.” Pointing out that digital transformation requires transforming three key areas - IT, workforce and security, Kaul said that Dell EMC after merger has created a technology powerhouse by combining industry-leading capabilities and global expertise, a value-focused global supply chain and the world’s leading data center innovation engine. He added, “Dell EMC is the world’s largest privately-held technology company with world-class enterprise sales and support team.”

He assured the audience that Dell EMC would support all the organizations - be it government or private enterprises in their journey of digital transformation. He stated, “Digital transformation is the reality. It is not about when, but how soon one can go digital.”

Purushottam Sharma, ADGP, Government of Madhya Pradesh

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urushottam Sharma, ADGP, Government of Madhya Pradesh began his presentation by stating that in the twenty first century, technology is reshaping both the criminal justice system and policing at an unprecedented rate. He said, “The latest technologies not only make practical tasks quicker, more efficient and more functional, but also enhance the perception of police as high-tech crime fighters.”

From the perspective of society as a whole, the best and most useful task that law enforcement agencies can carry out is crime prevention such as surveillance, crime analysis, and offender tracking. Police surveillance is one activity justified by its potential effect on crime prevention. New technological innovations have been developed to prevent crime and improve the performance of the police. In India, despite the adoption of seemingly sophisticated technologies and methodologies, police investigational work remains relatively low-tech. Changes in both the hard and soft technology of policing appear to be transforming local, state, and federal policing departments in a number of fundamental ways.

services and improve the life of citizens, the government has a huge role to play as it makes

policy decisions. He explained this by giving examples like the use of technology for healthcare

and how it has streamlined the process for hospitals and doctors and made it hassle free for the patient.

Power Discussion by Dell EMC

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he Power Discussion by Dell EMC centered around Digital India and Smart City projects.

Ravinder Pal Singh,Director of Mega Projects for Public Sector Vertical, Dell EMC emphasized on the power of data analytics and how it was impacting eWallets, health records, education, airline bookings, etc.

He also talked about the Dell Boomi Atom Sphere which is an ondemand multi-tenant cloud integration platform for connecting cloud and on-premise applications and data. The platform enables customers to

design cloud-based integration processes called Atoms and transfer data between cloud and on-premise applications.

Each Atom defines what is necessary for the integration.

India is at the cusp of digital transformation. He took the example of ticketing and passport seva project and also added that the biggest transformation is happening in the Smart City project. The company has approximately 60-70 people focusing on government sector.

Adding to Singh’s statement, Ajay Kaul, Director & GM - Head

Government Business, Dell EMC said that the execution of services on the ground had to be done by the people for ensuring the success of Digital India.

Therefore, basic education was a must. He emphasized on the need for alternative training mechanism in the schools. He added that

Connected Cities by HPE

nominal costs of monitoring.” It is essential to manage the structures as valuable assets as they are prone for deterioration. He said, “To ensure that the deterioration is controlled so that the structure is serving the full utility life of maybe 60-100 years, it is essential to have basic understanding of distress management.”

He informed that IBMS which has turned out to be a decision making tool for the department and MoRTH is in the process of attending to these aspects on a priority basis to ensure that the classification count of all these bridges is brought back to safe levels. The firm is in the process of streamlining the portal for movement of overweight vehicles of more than 350 tons.

He also said that the department is now in a position to know how much it is going to cost them when they have to complete the repairs.

Technology and Policing

transformation. Kudesia said over the last few months, there has been an increase in the number of digital transactions.

“These activities are testimony to the fact that people are keen to adopt digital,” he added.

Participating in the discussion, Kamal Kashyap, Country Manager, Public Sector, HPE said, “68 percent of India's population live in rural areas. Therefore, plans like AP State Fibernet are key for increasing the connectivity.” Kashyap was of the view that although private firms have solutions which can help in delivering better

Santanu Ghose, Director, HPE Aruba

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uring his presentation Santanu Ghose, Director, HPE Aruba focused on Connected Citizens & Connected City and how HPE Aruba platform can help organizations in a connected environment. He was of the view that the HPE Aruba virtual network platform will help organizations in better

Analytics driving transparency for Government

connecting to mobile and IoT platforms.

The platform also offers tools to automate deployments of sensors and various end points to connect autos, buildings and cities. He said, “HPE's Mobile Virtual Network Enabler is a platform that is a cloud-based tool that includes established deals with telecom carriers around the world.”

He also highlighted the Universal IoT Platform from HPE, which is designed to push automation to lightweight sensors for things like smart parking. “The Universal IoT Platform can provide device management as well as provide physical and electronic SIM cards,” he added.

Ghose was of the view that for IoT, hardware and software will be integrated across multiple industries and mix and match mobile networks, wide area and local area networks and the Internet. He informed that while organizations look at integrating IoT into mainstream operations, the onboarding and management of IoT devices remains costly and inefficient particularly at large scale.

Identify and Stop the Threats from Within

Fahad Khan, Solution Architect, Qlik

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ahad Khan, Solution Architect, Qlik focused on the importance of analytics. He informed that Qlik is a software company and provides QlikView and Qlik Sense, business intelligence & visualization software to help customers in their digital journey.

He said that organizations can develop, extend, and embed visual analytics in their apps, portals, anywhere - all within a common governance and security framework with Qlik. He said Qlik prides itself on doing the more complex analysis that finds hidden insights typically overlooked by other tools.

He also informed that Qlik offers a true responsive design that lets organizations build once for any device, and then deploy anywhere, on any device. “Responsive design adapts on the fly to the device form factor and interaction method,” he added.

Harshil Doshi, Strategic Security Solutions Consultant, India & Sanjeev Chauhan, Technical Lead, Forcepoint

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arshil Doshi, Strategic Security Solutions Consultant, India & Sanjeev Chauhan, Technical Lead, India, Forcepoint began their presentation by showcasing some of the cases of cybersecurity breaches. They then asked the audience to find out the similarities among the highlighted cases. Insiders were the common factor observed among all cyber breaches.

In his presentation, Doshi advised government organizations to have better understanding and vigilance of their employees who have access to data. Informing about SureView Insider Threat solution from Forcepoint which provide better visibility to the organizations, he said, “SureView is a user behavior monitoring tool that has been protecting the most sensitive government and organization networks. It detects suspicious activity, whether it is a hijacked system, rogue insider or simply a user making a mistake.”

communicating with the people in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities was important and this will happen at the school level. He concluded by saying that if one person is working then atleast seven people were getting impacted. So the network connectivity was the basic building block.

Mobile and Cloud Powering the Digital Economy

Prashant Shukla, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India

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rashant Shukla, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India began his presentation by stating that due to IoT, the world is at the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution.

He said, “Cloud offers many advantages. Security is one of them. The level of security can be layered on the basis of requirement.

Logging can also be done in an advanced manner.” He informed that Microsoft is investing $1 billion in security.Speaking about cloud, Prashant Shukla said that cloud computing has the capacity to provide massive computing power.

Considering the expected spurt of mobility devices in the times to come, the expected computing power would be huge. Prashant Shukla gave the example of farmers using mobile devices to explain the potential of cloud and mobility. “Farmers have mobile devices, and have access to weather related data. This requires huge processing power. The data can be crunched using the cloud and it can be consumed using a mobile device by the farmers.

Important weather related forecasts like rain-withhailstorm, thunderstorms can be sent to the farmer’s mobile.”

EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

|17

EVENT

Enabling Digital Transformation Panel Discussion: Security in the age of Digital India in Government Sector aj Gen Sandeep vulnerabilities. In such an

Sujit Shetty, Director – TSS – South & South East Asia, Alcatel Lucent Enterprise South Asia

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nabling Digital Transformation in Government Sector

by Sujit Shetty, Director – TSS – South & South East Asia, Alcatel Lucent Enterprise South Asia

Sujit Shetty started by giving a brief introduction about the company. He said that Alcatel provided solutions for communications, networking and cloud for businesses of all sizes. He mentioned that digital transformation always started with a strategy and was supported by technology. Sharing about the company's roadmap he informed that the aim was to connect everything, deploy analytics, roll out new business models and become the foundation for of all kinds of innovation.

“A digital enterprise is an organization that uses technology as a competitive

advantage in its internal and external operations,” says Shetty. It focuses on flexibility, collaboration, efficiency and reliability.

Sharing about the kind of solutions that the company provides for the government, he discussed the use-cases about national security. The company will continue to invest in its communications and networking portfolio providing vertical focused solutions to target key segments like hospitality, healthcare, transportation, etc. He added that in 2017, the company will deliver a new generation of network equipment.

Satish Jha, Senior Director & HeadSales, India & SAARC, Sanovi Technologies

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anovi is a niche Cloud Migration, Business Continuity and IT Recovery software company enabling Application Defined Continuity for enterprise data centers and cloud infrastructure. It provides

Sharma, Addl Director General, Center for Communication Technology, Indian Army initiated the talks by giving the example of how Railway was digitized and adopted technology. He said two words 'e' and 'smart' which are interlinked is making the process of digitization very fast.

On the contrary, Brijesh Singh, Special IGP-Cyber, Govt of Maharashtra highlighted the rising concern in the cyber security space as the country moves towards Digital India. He said that India ranks number two in the world when it comes to ransomware

organizations should use technology solutions with maximum return on DR investments. It should give round the clock visibility into the DR, and also integrate with any tech environment. He also shared the example of HDFC bank where the company ensured over 85% reduction in application failover time, 100% increase in frequency of DR Drills, 75% reduction in DR Drill preparation time with realtime alerts on RPO/ RTO deviations.

Explaining about the IT DR Automation, he shared that every IT DR application needs to be provisioned and best practices monitored to ensure it is meeting RPO and RTO levels.

Power Discussion by HPE

Gopesh Maindola, Director Systems Engineering, Brocade

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opesh Maindola, Director Systems Engineering, Brocade, started his presentation by sharing that at Brocade, the firm believe that networks need to be a platform for innovation and networks should be highly automated, open, without

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application delivery in both traditional and new IT environments. It is the world’s first platform architecture for composable infrastructure with fluid resource pools for networking, fabric, storage, and compute.

With the power of composable, enterprises can slash costs where it counts in areas like software licensing.

While discussing about HPE Aruba for building intelligent connectivity, Kashyap explained that the video transmission will be on the same network.

He said that cloud based solutions can only ensure virtualization but also give

security. The company has a huge focus on UEBA (user, end point, behaviour, and analytics). He further added that analytics and cloud are going to play a key role in the software defined architecture.

Kashyap also spoke about Aruba ClearPass, which can profile any device, authenticate any type of user, automate workflows and provide deeper insights across any wired or wireless network. With advanced threat protection features and the ability to integrate with third party solutions, it can automatically remediate any type of device that poses a risk.

he power panel focused on the present status of threat landscape which has shifted over the past few years to one in which reality users, businesses, and government networks are being breached regularly. The presentation especially focused on increasing cases of cybercrime in India. It was told that India’s cyber security agency CERT-IN is receiving large number of cybersecurity case. Trend Micro said that although government was putting lot of effort to combat the challenge but it must give additional technical tools

Power Discussion by Genesys

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evolution in technology, people’s expectations from organisations have also increase. They want similar experience on different devices and channels. The representative also highlighted the fact that most of e-governance programes are aimed at making government interaction with the citizen easy and hassle free.

Therefore, it is important for them to

all countries. It is important to track and nab the people using the Internet for wrong reasons. He said that India needs to leapfrog the world with proper policy and law.

Moderating the panel discussion, Amit Sharma,

MD, SIDCO, Govt of J&K summarized the session by saying that the challenge is with the system that we are using.

He was of the view that cyber security is important but internal security is also equally important.

Software Defined Solutions for Digital-India

Rajesh Kumar, Tech lead, Juniper Networks

K

umar says that cyber attacks are relentlessly escalating and deceiving the users. The SoftwareDefined Secure Network (SDSN) continually monitors for risk outside

and inside the enterprise and transforms the network fabric into a unified, responsive line of defense. SDSN not only delivers detection and remediation but unmatched visibility and management. Therefore, one can focus less on threats and more on growing the business.

He says that for Digital India, everything has to work on one network and there should be interoperability. Today there are lots of devices that are glued by security but the main thing that we need is automation and scalability. Data centers are built on silos and the whole virtualization has just become pool of services.

As the scale and sophistication of cybercrime continues to increase, enterprise businesses need to rethink their defense strategies.

Next-generation security must be built around automated and actionable intelligence that can be shared to quickly recognize and mitigate threats.

to officers to deals with cases efficiently.

The participants were of the view that the adoption of new and varied software platforms, devices and technologies broadens the attack surface available for cybercriminals. While asking the question to Trend Micro representative, Amit Sharma, Managing Director, SIDCO, Government of Jammu & Kashmir said, his organisation is going digital and there is a need to embed security solution.

He said that a paradigm shift in security mindset is

necessary. Agreeing with Sharma, the Trend Micro representative said, “Merely understanding and defending the many

layers of network from outsiders is not enough.

Any network-connected data should be able to defend itself from attack.

This holistic approach, in addition to strong employee education, should strengthen overall security.”

Power Discussion by Juniper Networks

DAY - 3

he discussion over breakfast revolved around customer experience. The representative from Genesys gave broad overview of the work being done by the company with different firms in India to help them improve their customer experience by enabling multi-channel communication for them. Genesys representative said that with the

lock-in, and driven by software. “We need to break the status quo of legacy networks. It takes ecosystems and communities together to navigate this journey and IT should be a strategic innovation center,” said Maindola. He further added that network technology must evolve.

Co-creation is the essence of digital transformation. The company is working with partners to make network as a platform and not as an appliance.” We have made everything automated. We have tried delivering everything as software. We are building a new networking company and are focusing on network function virtualization.”

safer world, we need to take a quantum jump in the areas of capacity building in cyber security.”

Ravi Prakash Meharda, ADG of Police Telecom/ IT, Government of Rajasthan was of the view that the time has come that we need to have protocols for

Power Discussion by Trend Micro

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echnology can enable 'smart' approaches for addressing and managing critical issues relating to urbanization such as city traffic management, waste management, utility management, and environmental sustainability. “Another important factor that is shaping the future city concept is the rampant adoption of digital technology by consumers,” says Kamal Kashyap, Country Manager, Public Sector, HPE. He spoke about HPE Synergy which is a new category of infrastructure that accelerates

era, Singh emphasized the importance of a platform for threat sharing.

Ravi Amar, Regional Manager, Tech Consulting, HPE mentioned that the vulnerabilities that existed few years back used to be right around us but now people are getting affected across the world.

He mentioned about the latest report of HPE which revealed that 90 percent of the newly discovered malware targeted the Windows platform.

We should focus on prevention, said B.L Soni, ADG, Government of Rajasthan. “Cyber crime is actually a very low risk and high return business for attackers. To ensure a

Building Digital India Network

Assured Disaster Recovery Transformation for Digital Era application aware deployment, visibility and automation of IT DR for tier-1 and tier-2 workloads across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure.

Talking about the benefits of Sanovi DRM, Satish Jha, Senior Director and Head Sales, India and SAARC, Sanovi Technologies, mentioned that his firm provides real time monitoring of RPO/RTO/Health, real time view of testing/recovery, alerts and policy based response, automation of drills/ DR, in-built testing/recovery procedures, support all physical/virtual platforms, and out-of-box support for OS/DB/App/Storage/Replic ation.

Jha said that the

M

use tools and solutions that enable these things from a single platform.

Participants from government organisations asked questions such as whether Genesys had work with any government organisation and how to engage with the company to use their products. Genesys representative replied that the firm is exploring to work with lot of government organisations.

S.Rajesh Kumar, Tech Lead, Juniper Networks

S

.Rajesh Kumar, Tech Lead, Juniper Networks stated that as the speed of change increases, organizations are moving to the cloud for its promise of limitless scale, flexibility, and agility. But the wide adoption of

cloud—plus mobility, the Internet of Things (IoT), and big data applications—is having profound impacts on IT infrastructures.

He explained that the traditional way of implementing networks and services in hardware makes them static, rigid, manual, and unable to respond as application requirements rapidly

change. To pull off this transition with minimum disruption, organizations want to architect their networks to meet the connectivity and service requirements of these increasingly dynamic applications.

They need to be policydriven, programmable, scalable, and automated to connect ideas to opportunities.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | MAY, 2017

18 | EVENT Digital Transformation of India Dr BK Murthy, Scientist G, DeitY

D

r BK Murthy, Scientist G, DeitY, gave many insightful examples of how technology intervention started in villages where having a computer was treated as luxury. And issues such as Internet connectivity and even power cuts added to the trouble. He shared his real life incidents and the inclination towards India's youth in the early

Data center innovation at every level

“U Amod Ranade, General Manager - Data Centre Business Development, Schneider Electric IT Business.

sing IoT to solve complex problems is going to be the future opportunity,” said Amod Ranade, General Manager Data Centre Business Development, Schneider Electric IT Business. By 2020, the world will be a different place and it is undergoing profound transformation to support the enormous data volumes and processing demands that are being generated by the Internet of Things (IoT).

Smart Security for Evolving Threats

Vikash Yadav, Sr. Technical Consultant, Trend Micro

V

ikash Yadav, Sr. Technical Consultant, Trend Micro began his presentation by stating that with the government focusing on smart cities and ramping up of digital infrastructure, the vectors for cyber attack will increase. He emphasised, cybersecurity should not

be an afterthought. It should be embedded at every state of smart cities and smart infrastructure.

On the growing app culture, he said, “It is a time of an app economy and most apps are vulnerable to cyber attacks. So both general public and app creators need to be sensitive toward security and data privacy.” He praised the government push of digitization and said “Government of India's policy of promoting technology in day to day affairs of the government and its interaction with citizens is making life of the people hassle free but at the same, we have to be conscious about cyber security. Adequate training should be imparted and right cybersecurity solutions should be used to mitigate any cyber security issues.”

The Internet of Things and analytics will enable a more effective way to manage and maintain these data centers.

Not too long ago, our industry believed all computing would eventually centralize to the cloud. Recent industry moves shows a pendulum shift back, creating a decentralized, hybrid computing ecosystem. The future is moving to a cloud architecture of centralized, regional, and localized

Kaushal Singh, Head Sales, HDVC, Panasonic

K

aushal Singh, Head Sales, HDVC, Panasonic India started his presentation

Ruchin Kumar, Business Head – Govt. & Defense, Gemalto Security

R

uchin Kumar, Business Head – Govt. & Defense, Gemalto Security, addressed some of the current issues that are bothering most organizations. He said data breaches are rampant and data is moving everywhere.

Hence, the approach to protecting data must change.

Technologies like encryption can only

by giving an overview of Panasonic and its products. He siad, “Panasonic was founded in 1970 and belongs to the Panasonic Corporation which is the world leader in the development and manufacturing of electronic products. He said, “Panasonic has a commitment to create value for customers, offering security, warranty comfort and convenience, contributing to the creation of a ubiquitous networked society while coexisting with the global environment.”

He informed that the Panasonic business structure is divided in four

Government of India envisages paperless, cashless and faceless services across the country, especially in rural and remote parts of India. MeitY further envisages common egovernance infrastructure that will offer end-to-end transactional experience for a citizen, businesses as well as internal government functions, which includes accessing various services and making payments and

receipts through electronic modes.

He also shared the ten demonetization steps that the government has undertaken to make the initiative successful.

NABARD has made available ` 21,000 crores limit to the District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) through State Cooperative Banks for Rabi agricultural operations. RBI and the banks have been advised to make the required cash available to the DCCBs.

P

N Bhattacharya, ED – Technical , Department of IT & Electronics / Webel, Government of West Bengal, spoke about various IT Promotion and Digital Initiatives. He said, “The Department of Information Technology was set up in February 2000 PN Bhattacharya, with a mandate to create a Executive Director – conducive environment for Technical, Department of rapid development in IT Information Technology & sector as well as to Electronics / Webel, Government of West Bengal facilitate ICT initiatives in Government.” He informed

companies – AVC Networks Company, Appliances Company, Eco Solutions Company, Automotive & Industrial Systems Company and these companies are globally responsible for R&D, production and sales.

During his presentation, Singh showcased products from security, display, and IT/communication. He said all Panasonic products are aimed at making business easy and successful. He highlighted different features of various products such as the Panasonic HD Visual Communication System.

that in August 2012, the name of the department was changed to 'Department of Information Technology and Electronics (DITE)' to emphasize the importance of electronics in ICT sector.

He added that the Government of West Bengal with its new ICT policy and Incentive Scheme, 2012 was aiming to position West Bengal to become one of the top three states in India by 2020 in IT/ITeS and ESDM sector. “DITE (Government

D

uring his presentation, Sandeep Bandhu, Additional Commissioner of Income Tax (CPC-TDS) said that digitization has changed many things. He informed that now there is an effort to use data analytics to harness the huge amount of data that income tax authorities across India have for better policy making and

improving tax compliance.

Elaborating on how centralized processing cell (TDC) used to work in the past, he said earlier manual and unorganized process of printing and dispatch of intimations was followed due to limited manpower and hence issue of intimations in all the cases could not be ensured. However, after the digitization of TDC, entire process has completely changed.

He said, “The CPC(TDS) Integrated

SA Srinivasa Moorthy, CEO, Andhra Pradesh Electronic and IT Agency

S

A Srinivasa Moorthy, CEO, Andhra Pradesh Electronic and IT Agency, started his presentation

by discussing about the organization’s strategy.

He mentioned about key focus areas such as: Electronics & IT Industry; governance through industry 4.0; real-time governance through IoT; focus on sunrise technologies; Fintech; cyber security; IoT and integrated manufacturing facilities.

He also shared key initiatives that the organization has taken.

For example, the state has established a CoE for emerging technologies in addition to establishing public private partnerships in critical areas. He also shared insights about upcoming

Platform ensures automation, online tracing, multiple channel communication, document management, and analytics.” According to him this approach has brought uniformity in the interpretation of the laws & procedure, and has simplified and standardized the backend and front-end process. This has also raised the level of accessibility for tax payers and helped in robust collection of taxes.

He said that going

forward, the department would focus on risk management to mitigate increasing cyber security threats and enhance process automation. Other areas where the department is focused on include technology areas such as robotics and machine learning, secured distributed ledger system, advanced data analytics for effective enforcement, artificial intelligence for speedy and cost effective grievance redressal and natural language processing.

Panel Discussion: Connecting the unconnected

T

he power panel discussion began with a brief overview given by Dr B K Murthy, Scientist G, DeitY on the challenge of connecting the last mile and how many attempts in the past have not yielded the desired outcome. He said, “Government of India initiatives such as connecting all the panchayats via fibrenet has potential to change a lot of things. Once people have Internet, lot of services can be offered to them.”

Agreeing with Murthy, Parthasarthi Sen Sharma, Secretary, Chief Minister Office, Uttar Pradesh said that connectivity is key to

reach large number of people. He said, “Although, connectivity is improving but lot of work needs to be done. We have started connecting panchayats and tried to improve our e-gov services and that has really given us good results.”

Participating in the panel, Pankaj Choudhary, SP SCRB, Government of Rajasthan was of the view that people’s acceptance of technology along with connectivity has to be there. He said, “Young people are well versed with technology but still there are a lot of senior people and employees in government organisations who are not prone to fast growing technology,

leading to delay in technology adoption.”

Expressing her views, Sanghamitra Pyne, Head Information Technology, West Bengal State

of West Bengal) has been spreading IT activities across the state, and in the process is making its presence felt in Tier II and Tier III locations in the state as well. Various e-governance initiatives including delivery of government-to-citizen (G2C) services along with expanding, upgrading and strengthening of core IT infrastructure for e-governance sector in the state, have been our focus areas.”

Opportunities in AP for Electronics & IT Industry

Technology for Income Tax (CPC-TDS) Sandeep Bandhu, Additional Commissioner of Income Tax (CPC-TDS)

There are 30 crore RuPay debit cards which have been issued, including those issued to Jan Dhan Account holders.

Transport and Highways department is advising the automobile manufacturers to provide ETC compliant RFID in all new vehicles. And all Government organizations, public sector undertakings and other Government authorities have been advised to use only digital payment methods.

IT Promotion and Digital Initiatives

Video Conferencing Solutions

by Panasonic

Essential Security Practices while going Digital in Government provide data to authorized people.

Companies need to think like a hacker. “We can convert this data into unreadable format. The idea should be to invest in encryption and kill the data for the bad guys.

Once we start taking care of security from the beginning of creating data, all compliance will fall in place. Companies need to have high breach acceptance as they should accept that the breach will happen. We need to protect what happens and how it happens.”

Improving security, slashing ID fraud and identity theft and creating an infrastructure of trust for new online access are high on every government's agenda, with a call for greater security features and the necessary legislation to implement them. Many countries are now upgrading their national documents and rolling out government issued IDs.

edge data centers. Ranade said that Schneider Electric has dramatically simplified the process of designing, deploying and operating the world’s most predictable, dense, and efficient data centers.

Talking about the ‘Data Center: In the Cloud and at the Edge’, Ranade said that Schneider was committed to innovation, and IoT and analytics will enable more effective ways to manage and maintain the data centres.

1990's towards technology which has paved the way what India is today.

“To promote digital payments through the use of credit/debit cards and mobile phone applications/e-wallets, etc, the central government has announced a package of incentives and measures,” says Dr Murthy.

He informed that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY),

Electricity Transmission said that there is zeal among people and organisations to adopt technology but connectivity has to be

there for it. She said that over the last few years things have improved and days are not far when we should have better connectivity.

trends in electronic manufacturing that includes complete outsourced manufacturing; increased focus on supply chain and logistics; trained manpower; captive market and ease of doing business and taxation.

“Our focus is on generating maximum employment in the state,” said Moorthy. He added that Andhra is the only state with terabytes of data waiting to be analyzed. “We have got seven companies in Fintech. We have plans for creating skilled workforce and IoT. We are looking at an integrated platform,” he informed.

The learning from Electronics Service Delivery

G T Venkateswar Rao, Commissioner, eSeva, Government of Telangana

G

T Venkateswar Rao, Commissioner, eSeva, Government of Telangana began his presenation by highlighting some of the recent developments in the area of e-governance in the state of Telangana. He said, “Due to proliferation of technology, people’s expectations from the government has increased, therefore it has become necessary for government organisations to take help of technology to serve the people.”

He said that Telangana is one the fastest growing states in the country and e-governance has been flourishing in the state like never before. “In recent past more government services have been added to e-seva.

People are benefiting from it,” he added.

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