Download - eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
1/12
7egov OCTOBER 2009
INAUGURATION
The eIndia 2009 conference was held at
the Hyderabad International Convention
Centre in Hyderabad from 25th-27th August
2009. This is an annual event organised byCentre for Science, Development and Media
Studies (CSDMS) along with the Department
of Information Technology, Ministry of
Communications and IT, Government of
India, in partnership with several Government
agencies and departments, Civil Society
Organisations, International bilateral and multi-
lateral agencies, the academia, and private
sector companies. This year, the event saw
320 speakers across seven thematic tracks
and more than 3,000 delegates representing
more than 35 countries.
The inauguration of the event was graced
by D Purandeswari, Honble Union Minister ofState for Higher Education, Ministry of Human
Resource Development, Government of India.
Other guests of honour included: Subhash C
Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Ministry of HRD,
Government of India; S R Rao, Additional
Secretary, Department of IT, Ministry of
Communication and IT, Government of
India; Reshan Dewapura, COO, Information
and Communication Technology Agency
(ICTA), Sri Lanka; Charles Clarke, Member
of Parliament and Former Education Minister
and Home Secretary; Prof V N Rajasekhar
Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National
Open University (IGNOU), India. Dr MPNarayanan, President, CSDMS welcomed
the dignitaries and the participants. The
luminaries inaugurated the event by the
traditional lighting of the lamp.
D Purundeswari Devi also inaugurated
the eIndia 2009 Exhibition, another popular
component of the eINDIA conference, which
showcased the latest e-Solutions, services,
initiatives and case studies from India and
beyond of more than 100 exhibitors that
comprised a diverse group of professional
service providers, technology vendors,
egov INDIA2009 REPORT
D Purandeswari lighting the lamp at the eINDIA 2009 inauguration
consulting firms, government agencies and
national and International development
organisations.
In her speech, Honble Minister, D
Purundeswari congratulated CSDMS and its
associates on a job well done in organising
the international ICT summit which was a
sign of Indias growing role in the world ICT
and development networks. She announced
the launching of a National Information
Highway Authority (NIHA) with the main
aim of increasing various e-Activities of the
government. As the apex body for suchinitiatives, NIHA would clear and monitor
all future projects and budgets and would
become an ideal vehicle to promote such
initiatives effectively in a time-bound manner.
S R Rao in his speech elaborated on the
potential of Indias growing economy and
the valuable role that IT will play in further
fueling the process. He announced that it
is the intention of the government to reach
out to the length and breadth of the country
in the next three years by connecting it
through technology.
Reshan Dewapuran his speech elaborated
about ICTA and eASIA2009. The eASIA 2009
brochures were presented to the Chief Guest
and the dignitaries giving way to the official
launch of eASIA2009 , which will be held
from 2nd-4th December 2009.
Charles Clarke talked about effective
strategies for bridging the digital divide.
He said, We need to join hands to bring
technology to all...laptops can be made
affordable and we need to ensure that we
can bring one laptop each to every child.
Subhash C Khuntia opined that by integratingtechnology in a wide array of services
including health, education, governance and
banking facilities, the provision of all these
essential services can be made simpler,
faster and more citizen friendly.
Prof V N Rajasekhar Pillai underscored the
importance of IT in several sectors including
skills training and improving the quality of
education. Dr Ravi Gupta, Executive Director,
CSDMS and Convener of eINDIA2009
thanked the Hon Minister and the eminent
dignitaries for their gracious participation.
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
2/12
8 www.egovonline.net
KEYNOTE SESSION: ACHIEVING HIGH
IMPACT E-GOVERNMENT:
KEY SUCCESS FACTORS
The egov INDIA 2009 track began with the
keynote session on Achieving High Impacte-Government. Dr. Debesh Das, Honorable
Minister, Department of Information
Technology, Government of West Bengal,
began the session by defining e-Governance
as the transformation of the government to
provide efficient, and transparent services
to the citizens and businesses through
Information and Communication Technology
(ICT). The acceptance of technology
depends upon the geography, culture, and
heritage and hence the applications should
be developed in a way they are utilised by
masses and is not limited to small groups of
people, Dr Das said. As 70% of populationin India lives in rural areas, e-Governance
must focus on rural areas by introducing
e-Governance to the panchayat system.
He recommended Internet video
conferencing, online submission of data
from gram panchayats to the state, online
guidance to students as some of the
immediate projects, which could be
implemented. He also pointed out that the
main concern was to provide and expand
the existing services, rather than looking for
new job opportunities through introduction of
e-Governance.
S R Rao, Additional Secretary, Departmentof Information Technology, Government of
India, in his keynote address elaborated on
some essential aspects of e-Governance.
He articulated that the basic objective of
e-Governance is to reduce the waiting
period for citizens in availing government
services. He pointed out that those states
where transformation of services from
manual to electronic was done without the
intermediaries were much better as compared
to the states, which still followed the manual
procedure.
Adiare Fox Martin, Vice President- Public
Services, SAP Asia Pacific and Japanexplained the audience about the enterprise
approach and said it was essentially seen
from two perspectives- firstly, to consider
the best practices and secondly, to apply
them to the required projects. She noted that
enterprise approach should have a strong
platform at the back end and the front end
and both need to be integrated.
Speaking about SAP, she stated that SAPs
role is to help the government articulate and
refine the value of what can be delivered to
the citizens from operational, financial and
that the participation and awareness of the
citizens was the key to success for any
e-Governance project, besides bringing
transparency in to the system. Though there
are a variety of expectations from the citizens,
a common denominator of the requirements
should be developed to make the project
successful. He also felt that the participation
of all the stakeholders is equally important for
good governance.Oleg Petrov, Project Coordinator, The
World Bank elaborated on leveraging ICT in
transforming - service delivery through making
information widely and easily accessible and
increasing participation and transparency in
government processes, and governments
through providing cost effective solutions
to improve service quality. Corroborating
the above statement, he cited examples
from Ghana and Korea where after the IT
intervention in the customs and procurement
department, respectively, the revenue
increased by 50% and the processing time
reduced, substantially.Articulating the shortcomings of the
Government 1.0, Petrov said that it had
limited role in back end integration, data
sharing, process re-engineering, citizen
participation and change management. He
advocated the principles of Government 2.0,
which includes a shift from citizen centric to
citizen driven approach, inclusiveness, whole
of government perspective, re-engineering
before automation and greater role of e-
Leaders / Chief Information Officers as key
enablers and change agents.
social perspective and Business Intelligence
is part of finding that value.
Dr. Sameer Sharma, Secretary IT and
Communications, Government of Andhra
Pradesh, emphasised on the use of ICT in
development, and especially in rooting out
corruption through removing the physical
interaction between the government officials
and the citizens, possible through a web
based solution or by introducing citizenfacilitation centres.
He talked about the success of e-Seva
project and apprised the audience about his
departments plan of linking Common Service
Centres (CSC) in the state through eSeva
centres for making the former, much more
sustainable and profitable. Quoting Heeks,
he stressed on the importance of integration
in e-Governance, with the movement from
existing e-Government to i-Government.
Gisela Fuchs, CEO-Public Sector,
Siemens IT Solutions and Services, narrated
e-Governance as the interactions between
the government, government and thecitizens, government and businesses. She
informed about the Organisational Reach,
which requires strong political backing along
with the involvement of the stakeholders.
Its important to bring in people who have
successfully managed the e-Governance
projects and therefore training and
education should go parallel to the technical
implementation, creating skilled resource
pool, Gisela said.
Satish Kaushal, Country Manager,
Government and Education, IBM informed
(L-R) Adiare Fox-Martin, VP, Public Services, SAP Asia Pacific & Japan; Dr. Gisela Fuchs - CEO Public Sector,Siemens IT Solutions and Services; Dr. Debesh Das, Honble Minister, Department of IT (DIT), Governmentof West Bengal; SR Rao, Additional Secretary, DIT, GOI; Sameer Sharma, Secretary IT, Govt. of AP; SatishKaushal, Country Manager, Government & Education, IBM India/South Asia; Oleg Petrov, Coordinator,e-Development Thematic Group, World Bank Group
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
3/12
9egov OCTOBER 2009
Microsoft
Page-9
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
4/12
10 www.egovonline.net
SESSION:ENTERPRISE APPROACHFOR E-GOVERNMENT: PROVIDING A
PARADIGM SHIFT
The second session focused on various
perspectives on how the enterpriseapproach could be implemented and the
challenges faced while implementing it. The
session was chaired by R Ramakrishnan,
Program Director, SAP India. He began
the session by stating the need to have IT
with a strong foundation. According to him,
there was a need for a vision, which could
fulfill the purpose in the long run along with
meeting the technological changes besides
fulfilling the needs of the citizens. Also it was
important for the government to adapt itself
to the enterprise approach and look it as a
solution to offer good services to the citizens
in an efficient manner.Siddharth, Principal Secretary IT,
Government of West Bengal, opined that
enterprise approach is the desired approach
having a systematic infrastructure and certain
core policies. According to Siddharth, the
dream of having an enterprise approach
could only be achieved when the successful
applications or technologies of one state
was developed in the other states as well,
by the initiative of the concerned state
governments.
Sanjay Jaju, Commissioner, Department
of Food, Civil, Supplies and Consumer
Affairs, Government of Andhra Pradesh,discussed about the computerisation project
of the ration cards based on iris recognition
technology in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
He informed about biometrics, which is a
unique automated method to confirm an
individuals identity and it helped in thwarting
the duplication of records. As per Jaju, iris
recognition technology is superior over
other choices of biometrics because of high
degree of reliability, stability, accurateness
and less intrusiveness than other biometric
tools. According to him, the issuing of the
computerised cards, to the people of AndhraPradesh, resulted in a purified and a unique
database, which could be used as the mother
database by all the other departments to
efficient, transparent and access of services
to all. Amitabh Tripathi, Deputy Controller
General Accounts, Government of India,
informed about the Central Plans Monitoring
Scheme, which aimed to track expenditure
for more than 1000 central plan schemes of
the Government of India, having an outlay
of approximately INR 200,000 crores. He
underlined that there was a difference
between the point of disbursement and itsultimate spending at the implementing level.
As all the schemes differ in the scheme design,
likewise they differ in the implementation
hierarchy, too. The objective was to have
an appropriate management system and an
internal decision support system with efficient
transfer of the funds by ensuring transparency
and accountability.
The centralised repository, having 1500
registered users and 800 implementing
agencies, tracks the plan sanctions in all
civil ministries which receive the funds from
the Government of India. He also felt that it
was difficult to entirely change the existinginfrastructure, hence difficult to have the
transformational/enterprise approach. The
approach should be incremental, and feasible
to modify and spread the existing structure.
Mahabaleshwar Hegde, Vice President,
National Institute of Smart Governance,
(NISG), discussed on the difference between
the enterprise approach and enterprise
application. He said the enterprise approach
was required for the efficient delivery of
the services to the citizens, where as the
enterprise application was important because
(L-R) Rajendra Dhavale, Director Technical Sales, India & SAARC, CA; Mahabaleshwar Hegde, VicePresident, National Institute of Smart Government; Amitabh Tripathi, Deputy Controller General of Accounts,GoI; Sanjeev Kapoor, Head Government & Telecom Sectors, Infosys Technologies Limited; Sanjay Jaju,Commissioner, Dept. of Food, Civil, Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Govt. of AP; Siddharth, PrincipalSecretary IT, Govt. of West Bengal; Amod Kumar, Special Secretary Revenue, Govt. of UP; R Ramakrishnan,Programme Director, SAP
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
5/12
11egov OCTOBER 2009
it helped to build in the enterprise approach.
Speaking about the challenges, he said, The
biggest challenge faced is the challenge to
retain both the enterprise approach and
the enterprise application, as enterprise
approach is the challenge of imaginationand enterprise application is the challenge of
equipment.
Amod Kumar, Special Secretary Revenue,
Government of Uttar Pradesh, emphasised
that no politician today opposes the
transformation of the system. He discussed
how the manual maintenance of the land
records was completely banned in state of
Uttar Pradesh (UP) from 2005 and the entire
system had been computerised. Though UP
has made good progress in the land records
system and the e-Districts, it still has a long
way to go in the police department. Though
enterprise approach is very important,yet having the enterprise approach in
the government department was difficult
because of the negative attitude of the
government officials, Amod Kumar opined.
For the successful implementation and the
execution of the enterprise approach, the
younger generation should be given priority.
Rajendra Dhavale, Director-Technical
Sales, CA, talked about the use of enterprise
approach or the transformational approach
right from the planning stage to the building
up of the infrastructure till the execution
of the services. He explained the 4 Ps, to
which the enterprise approach is closelyconnected. These 4 Ps include Processes,
the best practices that have to be in place
to deliver the services on time; Products, the
utilisation of the appropriate technology for
the delivery of the services; People, skilled
human resource jointly from the public and
the private domain; and Partners.
According to him, the ultimate criteria was
that the enterprise approach not only had
to be implemented in the planning and the
building stage, but had to be there till the
execution stage so that the benefits were
seen for a long time.
Sanjeev Kapoor, Head, Governmentand Telecom Sector, Infosys Technologies
Limited, informed that in the enterprise e-
Governance, government was the enterprise,
sharing the common interests and goals of
the citizens. The enterprise approach needs
enterprise architecture, which involves
documenting the processes and creating
cross-level dependency that exists between
the departments and within the departments
for an efficient system.
The discussion, which followed focused
on the difficulties to avoid the duplication
of records through the use of Iris, and the
other challenges faced to gather the data of
the huge population and make the project
a success.
SESSION: PUBLIC SAFETY AND
DISASTER MANAGEMENT
The second day of the event began
with the session on Public Safety and
Disaster Management, moderated by Dr. N
Vijayaditya, Controller of Certifying Authorities,
Department of Communications and IT,Government of India, who necessitated
the need to accept that cyber space is not
static, it is dynamic where changes keep on
happening. Thus, the technology needs to be
upgraded, time to time, to protect the cyber
space and resolve the issues of cyber crime.
However, he pointed out that cyber space
can be very dangerous as the editions and
modifications can be made, as a result the
systems need to be strengthened to ensure
that originality is maintained.
Rajendra Mishra, Inspector General of
Police (State Cyber Cell) Madhya Pradesh,
Government of Madhya Pradesh, talkedabout the upcoming use and involvement
of the cyber world in all trades. Cyber
Investigation with the help of digital evidence
is emphasised and given importance.
However, he pointed that very few police
offices are aware of the crimes happening in
the cyber cell, thus making it difficult to solve
the cyber crimes. Talking about the disaster
management, he asserted that disasters take
place not only in the cyber space but also
everywhere in the form of natural and man-
made disasters.
Harald Jung, Head of Business Segments,
Civil and National Security, Siemens, briefed
that cyber space is like a sea of data and
information which is difficult for the police
department in India to analyse and react to
the situation, because of lack of awareness
of cyber space. It is important to prevent and
protect the environment and the physical
locations from the emergency situations for
which the training of the staff is required along
with the inclusion of the complete IT solutions
and the IT experts in the team.
He emphasised on the need for eachcountry to have its own complete set of IT
systems and cyber space security and adapt
to certain global solutions to maintain security,
depending upon the local requirements.
He pointed the need to modify, redesign
and optimise the resources in view of the
environment. Talking about his company
Siemens, he informed that it aims to help the
organisations to provide solutions as to equip
them for the situations of disaster.
Jeby Cherian, Director, Strategy, IBM,
explained the importance of moving from a
paradigm of need to know to a paradigm of
need to shift and on the integration of thesystems. Along with the ability to react and
respond to a situation in a dynamic manner,
it is important to predict and pre-empt the
planning of the operations. Integration of
the processes and technology is required,
besides the collaboration and strong
communication with the defence forces to
equip for emergency preparedness.
Anil George, Senior Associate, Value
Engineering, SAP India, recommended the
use of IT to bring down the situations of
disaster in the country. It is important for
(L-R) Jeby Cherian, Director, Strategy, IBM; Herald Jung, Head Business Segments, Civil and NationalSecurity, Siemens; N Vijayaditya, DIT, GoI; Rajendra Mishra, Madhya Pradesh Police
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
6/12
12 www.egovonline.net
the country to endow itself to prevent the
disasters and be prepared to immediately
respond and react to the situations along with
having a proper investigation management
system to be carried out after the disasters.
He informed about his company, SAP, whichprovides solutions to the public sector with
the aim to fully equip and empower them for
the situations of disaster.
The discussion that followed after the panel
presentations focused on the importance of
digital evidence for the crime investigations,
how the various departments are equipping
itself to use it and the problems and challenges
faced by the police department across to get
accustomed to the use of digital evidence.
SESSION: DATA UNIFICATION AND
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
The session was moderated by
Chandraprakash, Principal Secretary,
Department of IT, Government of Uttar
Pradesh. He shared his views on the
importance of data unification in any kind
of planning and unless there is basic
demographic data regarding income, literacy,
unemployment and so forth, it becomes quite
difficult for government to do the right kind of
planning. Acknowledging that Unique Identity
(UID) is not an end-in-it-self, but a tool that
can be used by and for different departments
for various purposes, Chandraprakash said,
There are numerous problems facing thecountry, like poverty, illiteracy, unemployment
and lack of basic health services. The UID
project will help in right kind of planning. It is
a database, which is first step towards policy
transformation and successful implementation
of any project.
Ashis Sanyal, Senior Director, Department
of IT, Ministry of Communication and IT,
Government of India, told the gathering
that the setting up of Unique ID Authority
signifies that the government is committed to
unification of data, of more than one billion
Indians. Quoting Nandan Nilekanis address
at Department of IT, New Delhi, Sanyalinformed that five to six things are unique to
an individual - date of birth, fathers name,
mothers name, place of birth, nationality at
the time of birth, PAN number and the driving
license number.
He Though the earlier project, MNIC did not
get through, UID project is slated to succeed.
It has a timeframe for implementation. UID
project was started so that Below Poverty
Line (BPL) population could access and
benefit from the government schemes
started on their names. A number of new
schemes for BPL population are on the way.
The Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) will go
towards these schemes implementation.
Supporting governments decision to give
unique number rather than unique ID card
to all citizens, he expressed confidence
that government will give a unique number
to all citizens, instead of ID card, within the
stipulated 18 months. If this was not so,
and if ID cards were to be given to 1200
million people, then the process of printing
and delivering of the cards would have
overshadowed the entire programme.Harish Grama, Vice President, IBM India,
agreed with Ashis Sanyal on the governments
decision to give a unique number rather than
a card as a right move. Speaking about his
experience of Social Security Number in the
US, Grama informed although the number
was printed on a thick paper and people
were provided with cards, they often use
the number rather the card itself. Treating
information as a valuable asset is important
for any organisation, institution or even a
county, and best example for this case would
be the implementation of the UID, he said.
Though conceding to the fact that gettingsingle view of the citizen is a tough task,
he expressed hope that once this task is
accomplished than all the other tasks including
income tax, BPL schemes, driving licences,
property tax, and so forth, will become easy,
because the government will know to whom
it is administering the services, and thus
will ensure that right people are getting the
benefits at the right time.
He also apprised the audience that IBM
is implementing a lot of UID projects in
different parts of the world and the key to
its implementation is the trusted information
base. The way to do this is to identify all the
different sources of information, and merge
all this to create a unique list of all the citizens,
across India.
Bharat Rele, Director, Solution Engineering,
SAP, India, shared his experience on Unique
Identification (ID) and how Information
Technology Act can help understand the data
unification and information management.
UID is required to streamline, unify and
harmonise our country. This will ensure good
governance and compliance, Bharat said.Enumerating the benefits of people
getting unique ID number, he pronounced
that this unique number could be printed in
the passport, ATM card, ration card, driving
licence, or anything, which is very unique for
the citizens. It could also be the household
number, which will help in mapping the locality
and movement of a citizen. UID is also the
technical solution to address the security and
terrorism threat.
It will prevent leakage in terms of fiscal
deficit because it is going to get integrated
with taxation, banking system, and with
insurance companies. UID will help thegovernment in identifying the people who
are below poverty line, in order to give them
subsidy. Moreover, UID will help in making
India a developed nation.
Dr Akshay Kumar, Reader, School of
Computer and Information Sciences, Indira
Gandhi National Open University, told about
the case from IGNOU history of 20 years.
This university started with 500 student s
strength and has reached a strength of about
2 million students. The kind of infrastructure
that is supported by IGNOU to take care
(L-R) Harish Grama, Vice President, IBM India, Dr. Akshay Kumar, Reader, School of Computer andInformation Sciences, IGNOU; Rathan Kelkar, Director IT, Kerala IT Mission; Ashish Sanyal, Sr. Director,DIT, GOI; Chandraprakash, Principal Secretary IT, Govt. of UP; UK Ananthapadmanabhan, President, KovaiMedical Centre and Hospital; Bharat rele, director, solution engineering, SAP
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
7/12
13egov OCTOBER 2009
of needs of the students, the challenges
faced and how the data unification process
is helping IGNOU, is something he informed
in detail. The information flow in IGNOU is:
Headquarter, Regional Centre and the Study
Centre. There are multiple levels of datageneration: at study/ admission centres
(students information), regional centres
(teachers information) and the headquarter
(curriculum design). All this information is
utilized at the headquarter, for information
and analysis of this information. Thus, there is
federated system of database management,
to be utilised to produce unified information.
Rathan Kelkar, Director IT, Kerala IT
Mission, Government of Kerala, expressed
some doubts on implementation of UID. Do
we have all the commitment in implementing
UID? Do we have commitment by the people
to abide by the UID? Are we saying that oncethe unique number is given to each one of
us, all the beneficiaries will be getting all the
benefits of all the schemes, which he/she
is entitled to? He noted that more than 70%
of the population in India donot have access
to any kind of information, forget about UID.
U K Ananthapadmanabhan, President,
Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital mentioned
that the privacy issues must be taken care of
while sharing data across departments for
UID project.
SESSION: ICT INFRASTRUCTURE AND
DATA CENTRES IN GOVERNMENT
S P Singh, Senior Director, Department
of IT, Government of India, moderated
this session. According to SP Singh, data
centres are the digital nerve centres for the
government. He pointed out the several
issues in implementation of data centres like
participation of different stakeholders involved
in implementation, planning, optimum
utilization of the capacity stated in data
centre, data security, business continuity,
disaster recovery mechanism.
Neeta Verma, Head of Department,
Data Centre & Web Services Division, NICinformed that for effective delivery of citizen
services, a well planned and a well-thought
data centre can take the applications to
higher level. Based on her experience of
implementing data centre, Verma suggested
that one should be a visionary in planning for
data centre in terms of storage capacity, heat
density, cooling technology, and one has
to plan really big, implementation can be
phase wise.
Physical infrastructure in data centre, if
planned well with redundancy, generally works
well. Coming to ICT infrastructure part, the
core of which includes storage, networking
switches, or back-up systems, should have
state-of-art infrastructure, highly reliable
systems and these should be planned with as
much redundancy as possible because even
if data centre stops working for 10 minutes,
it will affect all services, and this is something
governments cannot afford.
Verma opined that the third layer
comprised of servers, the investment should
be done carefully and implementation could
be done phase-wise, as per budget. Asfar as applications are concerned, she said
that it was necessary to do functional and
performance testing of the applications.
The fourth layer is services- help-desk
services, back-up services, ICT operations
and applications-supported services. While
implementing a data centre, one must
calculate the yearly cost of running the
data centre and try and minimize the cost,
Verma said.
Dr Neeta Shah discussed the issues
related to implementation of data centres
in the state of Gujarat, including effective
capacity planning, project monitoring andmanagement, technology and solutions
selection, clearly defined Service Level
Agreements for both physical infrastructure
maintenance and the ICT infrastructure.
She also elaborated on application hosting,
application management, application security
audit and service orientation.
Amod S Ranade, Program Manager, IBM
India/South Asia. talked about the energy
efficiency issue in data centre. He pointed
that while operating data centre, it was
important to have benchmarks and efficiency
monitoring practices.
Apprising the audience that IBM worldwide
was operating, building and managing
more than 300 sq feet of data centres, he
said that there were technologies in power,
cooling and so forth, available, whereby
one could reduce power consumption
and increase data centre efficiency. He
noted, A programmed approach to energy
efficiency is very important. We need to do
the assessment, set a benchmark, compare
this benchmark with the industry standards,
and then workout the programmed approachto periodic revisiting and revamping the data
centre to improve efficiency.
K Balachandran, began by saying Cabling
to a Network and more so to the Data centre
is like what Roads are to a transport system.
Good roads ensure a smooth and safe
transport. Good cabling guarantees an error
free transmission of data.
Referring to government priorities, he
asserted that more and more governments
were focusing on improving services to
citizens, non-citizens, businesses and civil
servants by leveraging the countrys ICT
capabilities and making it more efficient andreliable.
As this happened, he said, It needed
to complement more and more inter-
governmental services efficiently, because
governments want to extend a single
consolidated face to the user across multiple
services. So the networks will need to be
more transactional, multilingual and diverse
as opposed to enterprise grade networks
and Data Centers. This proactive governance
model is driven by high user expectations,
ever reducing costs and a necessity to
(L-R) Neeta Verma (HOD), Data Centre & Web Services Division, NIC; SP Singh, Sr. Director, DIT, GoI; K.Bala Chandran, CMD, ADC KRONE India & Neighboring Markets; PJ Nath, Executive President , EnterpriseSolutions, Sify Technologies Limited; Orcun Tezel, Technical Director, Asia Pacific, 3Com Corporation; Amod
S Ranade, Program Manager, IBM India/South Asia.
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
8/12
14 www.egovonline.net
maintain a very high service level.
In this scenario, Chandran said, the
peripheral infrastructure which was once
considered a distraction was turning critical
with a high reliance on specialist partners and
vendors and hence demanding more seriousattention and understanding by the IT decision
maker. And when it comes to mission critical
Data Centers it even extends into the realms of
facility management. According to Chandran,
one could classify the key infrastructure in a
DC into 5 categories: physical security and
fire prevention installation; power and cooling
equipments; other structural infrastructure;
active equipments; and cabling and racks.
He highlighted that in a high density Data
Centre there is a lot that cabling/rack designs
play towards power and cooling efficiency
and therefore the total electricity costs.
SESSION: IT SECRETARY CONCLAVE
(VISION FOR STATE)
From suggesting an eGovernance project,
identifying champions in each department,
being a technology consultant, till providing
its assistance in project evaluation, IT
department and the Secretary have been
the backbone of ICT implementation in
government. The vision of eliminating the
need of physical interaction between a citizen
and public official, and rather popularising
virtual interactions was one such point, inter
alia, commonly shared and agreed upon by ITsecretaries in the IT Secretary Conclave on the
second day of eINDIA 2009 Conference. Dr.
Sameer Sharma, Secretary to Government,
Department of IT and Communications,
Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP)
moderated the session.
Articulating the vision of Tamil Nadu in
eGovernance, PWC Davidar, Secretary,
Department of IT, Government of Tamil Nadu
said, Our vision is a connected Tamil Nadu,
with integration of government, private sector
and other players in the ecology, providing
citizen centric services, leveraging the public
private partnership model. In Tamil Nadu,we are trying to manage three things for
better implementation of e-Government-
technology, people and processes, he
added.
Speaking on the integrated and inclusive
approach of the state government and the
usual challenges confronted, Davidar stated
that the main focus of the department is on
maintaining a balance of priority between
the Central and state government projects.
He added: Besides, we are trying to
accommodate several state departments
under the roof of eGovernance. We are
trying to be inclusive, but it is easier said
than done, because every bureaucrat has
an independent way of looking at things
and moreover, officials dont like external
interference.
So when you go to some state departments,
and suggest them an appropriate technology
and software application, their instantaneous
reaction would be so what! So we are using
clever terms like facilitator for ourselves,
while approaching other departments. Its
already bearing fruit. Cautiously, we opt avery casual approach while we go to these
departments for showcasing the potential
of any e-Government project, he further
opined.
Speaking on the challenges confronting e-
Government implementation, Davidar said,
Re-engineering, a word though often used,
is the biggest challenge right now. We cant
just carry our existing methods when we
are switching to ICT mode. Re-engineering
is the major work that is yet to be done in
government. He acknowledgedrightly that
putting departments on ICT mode is quite
a difficult task and is yet another majorchallenge for IT Secretaries. He added that
identifying champions in each department and
motivating these change agents as owners
of e-Governance projects, demands a good
home work on every individual department.
Greeting participants on behalf of Andhra
Pradesh government, Dr C S Rao, IT Advisor
to CM, Government of Andhra Pradesh stated
that the vision of state is bringing transparency
and accountability in administration and
establishing a citizen centric delivery system
In order to achieve this, GoAP in 1995-96,
planned for promoting IT industry in the state,
Rao said. He informed that for attracting
more IT and Communications giant to AP, the
governments focus has been on developing
infrastructure and establishing technology
parks.
Mentioning the phrase, very much popular
in bureaucratic circle before you retire- in
the context of rooting e-Governance in the
country, Amod Kumar, Special Secretary,
Revenue Department, Government of
Uttar Pradesh (GoUP), also ex -Secretary
to Government, Department of IT, GoUP,asseverated, Individually, as IT Secretary,
we have a motivation that before retirement,
he or she may create a situation where the
physical interaction between a citizen and
public official is occasional and most of the
interactions may happen virtually.
Speaking to the eminent panelists and
audience about some of key ICT projects
taken up in Uttar Pradesh, he said, In 2005,
we computerised all of the land records
across the state. It was all done in a short
span of six months. No manual copy of land
records were accepted in courts and only the
electronically generated copies were givenlegal acknowledgement. We are among the
India states, which did the computerization
of treasuries way back in 1999-2000. We
currently have 71 districts, and all of the
transactions in these districts are being
monitored online, he added.
He further informed about another major
project - online scholarships and widow
pensions- through which the financial
assistance is being delivered directly in
the hands of beneficiaries. Earlier, in the
scholarship list, there used to be the list of
(L-R) Amod Kumar, Special Secretary, Revenue Govt. of UP; C S Rao, IT Advisor to Chief Minister, Govt. of
AP; Sameer Sharma, Secretary, IT& Communications, Govt. o f AP
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
9/12
15egov OCTOBER 2009
lakhs of non-existent students, on whose
name some people used to siphon away
substantial amount of scholarships. Now
the process has been streamlined and the
possibility of monetary pilferage has been
curbed to great extent, and the beneficiarydata has been made available on website.
SESSION: ROLE OF IT IN
POWER SECTOR
Restructured Accelerated Power
Development and Reforms Programme (R-
APDRP) was introduced for central and state
power utilities in India, because of the limited
success of the APDRP, which was envisaged
in the 10th plan, primarily meant for reforming
and revamping the distribution system across
states utilities. Under R-APDRP, sustained
loss reduction in the power sector throughcomprehensive reforms, which includes
establishment of reliable and automated
systems for sustained collection of accurate
base line data, and the adoption of Information
Technology in the areas of energy accounting,
are the prime goals.
The challenges and possible solutions
with Restructured - APDRP were the key
discussion points in the session on Role of
IT in Power. M K Goel, Director, Institutional
Development and Administration, Power
Finance Corporation Ltd., Government of
India moderated the session.
According to Goel, distribution is theweakest link in the power sector. Till date,
aggregate technical and commercial losses
are 30 %, which means one-third of the
energy, which is being produced, is wasted,
without any return on investment, making the
system non-viable and sustainable in the long
term. To reform and revamp the distribution
system- the Government of India launched
APDRP in 10th Plan with an investment of
Rs.12, 500 Crore. However, the programme
had limited success. Some utilities showed
improvement- but majority of them did not
come up with positive results, he added.
Speaking on the challenges surroundingthe APDRP programme, Goel said, The first
and foremost important thing is to have a
baseline data, which may show the position
from where things have to start. This data
was not established in APDRP. No uniform
method of calculating AT&C losses was
in place. Each utility has been measuring
losses in its own manner. No fool proof IT
system was in place to calculate losses.
Nevertheless, the 11th plan was designed
accordingly and therole of IT was envisaged
to greater extent.
Acknowledging the need for process re-
engineering for opting IT, Jayant Sinha, DGM
(IT), Uttarakhand Power Corporation Ltd.
said, We are still working on legacy systems
which may not be useful in an integrated
framework whereby we are integrating all
applications over service oriented architecture,
instead of having piece meal solutions.
Time has come when we opt for an end
to end solution (a meter to cash solution),
which integrates our consumer indexing,
asset management, consumer services,
workforce management, and internalbusiness processes like HR, accounts, He
recommended.
Service delivery is another major focus
where IT intervention is needed. Through use
of ICT, customers can have access to their bills
and can make their payments, online. Also,
there is an application, where customers can
log complains. Most importantly, it will help in
generating MIS reports, Sinha opined.
Rajat Sud, Head, Energy Vertical, Siemens
Information Systems Limited conceded that
there is a definite need for more energy and
for that efficient grids are needed, which can
transmit the power, profitably. Elaborating onIT Solutions offered by Siemens Information
Systems Ltd, Sud said, We have a suite of
products for power generation companies,
which basically works in reducing carbon
emissions and increasing the efficiency of
the generation plants. We are amongst the
foremost players in smart metering, as well.
Grid Asset Management Solutions is one
such solution. It actually integrates SCADA
information, ERP information, which typically
covers work orders and maintains schedules
and it integrates GIS. The second solution
Rajat talked about was advanced metering
and infrastructure solution (AMIS) and
EnergyIP. Lastly, he explained the solution
around loss reduction framework.
Srinivas Rao, Executive Director, HR
and Commercial, APCPDCL said the entire
power sector scenario is changing, with
the implementation of IT. APCPDCL started
automation in many directions. We have
started using GIS and applications like -
Transformer Information Management System
and Monitoring and Tracking System. Also,
APCPDCL was the first utility to start the spotbilling system in the state, which reduces the
chances of the customer either getting wrong
bills or receiving somebody elses bills since
the meter reading is taken right in front of the
customers eyes and the bill is generated and
issued on the spot, Mr. Rao said.
Rupendra Bhatnagar, Director, Energy &
Utilities, Microsoft Corporation India threw
light on the challenges faced by the IT
companies in deploying solutions for utilities.
He talked about three challenges in
the power sector firstly, the financial
sustainability issue. Need for continued
investment is another challenge. Like, forexample, for generation 1000 Megawatt,
it requires a billion dollar and thats a huge
investment. Aging work force is yet another
challenge.
Further, Bhatnagar talked about the
application of Geographical Information
System and Automated Meter Reading
in utilities. He said that though these novel
technologies could do wonders in the power
sector, in terms of increasing the productivity
and profitability of utilities, there are challenges
across way, demanding substantial focus
(L-R) Srinivas Rao, Executive Director, HR and Commercial, APCPDCL; Jayant Sinha, DGM (IT), UttarakhandPower Corporation Ltd.; M K Goel, Director, Institutional, Development & Administration, Power FinanceCorporation Ltd., GoI; Rajat Sud, Head, Energy Vertical, Siemens Information Systems Limited; RupendraBhatnagar, Director, Energy & Utilities, Microsoft Corporation India
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
10/12
16 www.egovonline.net
and priority from the utilities. Importantly,
he also emphasised on the need of IT in
asset replacement, asset cost optimisation,
operations optimisation and better budget
planning.
SESSION: URBAN GOVERNANCE AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
Mostly the argument related with urban
governance and infrastructure is confined to
the citizen service delivery and that too limited
to issuing of birth and death certificates and
downloading of taxation forms. Nonetheless,
issues related with sustainable and good
governance are far more complex and
huge. Besides, there are more than 4000
municipalities in the country, with their
own unique characteristics. What is more
needed is a uniform set of ICT applications orcustomized solutions, which do not tamper
the uniqueness of the particular local city
government. The panelists contemplated
on these issues, and drew some useful
conclusions. Dr. Rajeev Sharma, Director
General, Centre for Good Governance
moderated the session.
Initiating the discussion, Dr. Sharma
touched upon issues concerning the urban
governance and opined that the major
constraint across its way is the limited role
of the municipalities in over all development
and administration of respective urban areas.
To name a few, the transport, power supply,infrastructure, trade and economy are handled
by different agencies of the government and
these are the areas where municipalities have
hardly any role to play and so an integrated
approach towards development becomes
smiley, he pointed out.
Unfortunately, these services do not come
under one umbrella as far as administration
is concerned and hence as far as urban
governance is concerned the issue of
convergence remains a major issue in the e-
Governance solutions that we tend to provide.
Because these services are dealt with various
wings of the government, which some timeshave a silo like approach, Dr Sharma said.
Voicing his concern over the ignorant
attitude of administration by large, in nurturing
social capital encompassing masses with
education and developing quality human
resource Dr. Sharma stated, Since our
cities are growing and urbanisation is on
a rapid growth spree, we require looking
into how we are going to develop the
social capital in cities. It has to do a lot with
providing a system of education; basic inputs
for upgrading human resource. This is the
area where ICT can play role of an enabler.
Ironically, this is some thing, from which the
agencies of urban governance have been
largely staying away and so it is the need
of the hour to improve the social capital, Dr
Sharma further added.
Niraj Prakash, General Manger, SAP India,
primarily focused on issues related withurban planning and sustainability, and need
of integrated applications and shared system
for municipalities. Also, he emphasised
on the recommendations related to urban
governance originating from JNURM, which
has identified eight areas of e-Governance
reforms in municipalities including citizen
services, back end accounting, and human
resource system.
He also elaborated on setting up an IT
system, which can integrate the existing IT
systems in the Urban Local Bodies. Stressing
on the need for having a shared system, Niraj
said: Having common set of applications,running centrally in the bigger municipality,
and allowing other smaller municipality to
ride on the same infrastructure and run the
applications on the same network, can be
an opportunity for smaller municipalities to
streamline their processes.
Further, giving recommendation to the
municipalities on the integrated approach,
Niraj said whenever the detailed project
reports (DPR) are sent to the JNNURM cell,
the need for integrated and sustainable
approach should be taken note of.
Anirudh Srivastava, Director- Solutions,
Microsoft Corporation India talked about the
relevance of IT intervention in government.
According to Srivastava, some areas where
IT can provide solution are - File tracking,
case management solution, document
management solution, interactive forms,
which could be available for citizens whichcan be downloaded, filed and submitted
back or filled online.
Notifying on use of Intranet portal in
government, Srivastava said, It is an
integrated system- that could be leveraged
by the government departments, and
which would provide a platform where the
departments can exchange information
seamlessly. Its a tool through which more
communication and collaboration can be
done between departments.
Rajesh Khullar, Commissioner, Gurgaon
Municipal Corporation commented that ICT
should not take away the basic democraticstructure of the city government, through
needless uniformity. However, he strongly
supported that ICT intervention can be used
in fixing responsibility and accountability
in government. In the words of Khullar:
Posting complete information on web,
which includes complete contact details and
responsibilities of the government officials,
along with information of the people in the
upper hierarchy, having command over the
executing officials, can be a solution for smart
governance. Later, he advocated marriage of
(L-R) Niraj Prakash, GM, SAP India; Rajesh Khullar, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation, Gurgaon,Haryana; Dr. Rajeev Sharma, Director General, Centre for Good Governance, Andhra Pradesh; Sunil Jain,DGM, Public Sector, Asia, Siemens Information System; Anirudh Srivastava, Director- Solutions, MicrosoftCorporation India.
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
11/12
17egov OCTOBER 2009
(L-R) Sanjeev Gupta, Project Director, MAUD, Govt. of AP; Dr. R S Praveen Kumar, DIG & Joint Director, APPolice Academy; Ahamed Babu, CEO, Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, Govt. of AP; N S Sathya Sai Baba, Project
Coordinator, NIC; Shanti Kumari, Commissioner, Rural Development, Govt. of AP; Sam Kishore, AdditionalIG, Revenue Department, Govt. of AP; Munindra, Executive Director, AP State Housing Corporation, Govt.of AP; Sameer Sharma, Secretary, Department of IT & Communications, Govt. of AP
RTI with e-Governance and re-engineering
of internal processes and empowerment
of ULBs.
Articulating his views on issues in urban
governance, Sunil Jain, DGM, Public Sector,
Asia, Siemens Information System, saidthat there is a need for greater collaboration
across government departments, mainly
functioning in tight compartments. Also, he
commented on the need of cities, being more
pro-active and responsive to ever changing
environment. Further, he informed the
participants about the solutions being offered
by the Siemens IT across the world under
two categories: administration and new
public management.
In administration, the modules included
citizen relationship management, case
management, public administration and
accounts and revenue, expense andsocial services. Budget management,
cost performance accounting, consulting
method e-Government framework and
commissioners cockpit, are the modules that
are being offered by the Siemens IT under
new public management.
SESSION: ANDHRA PRADESH
GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES
Andhra Pradesh took a decades time before
it reached the current level in e-Governance,
where ICT is being used by most of its
departments in project monitoring, increasingaccountability, curbing corruption, pro-active
information disclosure through websites, and
social auditing of some flag ship projects. In
AP Government Initiatives session under the
eGov India 2009 track, speakers from nine
state departments shared their long and rich
experience of implementing e-Government in
their respective domain.
Delivering the keynote speech of the
session, C D Arha, Chief Information
Commissioner, AP Information Commission,
Government of Andhra Pradesh elaborated
on RTI relevance in a democratic set-up,
and said, This instrumentality was passedin the parliament with no other objective but
one we must make our democracy strong;
the roots of democracy must go deep. The
power must comprehensively shift from the
fore walls of establishment to the sunshine
of public. RTI, essentially, means, he added,
the right of citizens to have access to
information from diskettes, floppies or in any
electronic form or through printouts.
Speaking on the close and complimentary
relation that exists between RTI and e-
Governance, Arha averred, In its very nature,
the more we go towards suo moto information
disclosure, uploading of government records
and other relevant information on websites,
the need for RTI would be invoked and the
need for following laborious procedure to
approach council for arguments being heard,
judgments being announced, I think that will
be receded.
Ahamed Babu, Chief Executive Officer,
Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, Department of
Health and Family Welfare, Government ofAndhra Pradesh articulated on the monitoring
of Aarogyasri - the state flagship programme
on health insurance for families living below
poverty line, under which a BPL family can
avail medical treatment of upto Rs2 Lakh in
any of the 450 networked hospital across the
state - through a web based solution based on
a central architecture, having data repository
of seven crore people (beneficiaries).
Elaborating on the IT solution being used
in the health insurance programme, Babu
averred, The beauty of any IT system is
to simplify the processes at the user end.
To treat a patient, the case has to flow to18 people in the system. It means a case
acceptance starts from a Primary Health
Centre (PHC) Aarogya Mithra, and then it
ends at the accountant, who clicks in his
computer system and makes the payment.
It includes doctors and nurses. Each of them
have been given a small part in the IT system.
If a fraud has to be done, these 18 people
have to sit together and do it with consensus,
which is practically impossible.
Shanti Kumari, Commissioner, Department
of Rural Development, Government of Andhra
Pradesh briefed delegates on the project
monitoring of National Rural Employment
Guarantee (NREG) scheme and the recently
initiated Rural Financial Inclusion system in
the state.
Rashtra Gramina Abhivridhi Samacharam
(RAGAS) is the software that runs on these.
PCs, developed in collaboration with TCS
which delivers all key functions of NREG
programme. We have a NREG website,where data is transferred on a day-to-day
basis. All the details related with the work
are kept in the public domain through its
posting on website, she said. She added:
This entire process is uploaded on website
and any one can drill down to the last job
cardholder. Currently, the department has
data of 1.2 crore wage seekers and 40 lakh
muster rolls in our system.
Dr. R. S. Praveen Kumar, DIG & Joint
Director, AP Police Academy informed about
the ICT initiatives taken by the Hyderabad
City Police in traffic management, containing
cyber crime, creating in-house resource pooland disseminating awareness about several
crimes. As one of the prime initiatives, the
City Police launched an e-Challan system,
through which department is now getting
revenue of Rs. 74 lakh in a month. However,
the figure for earlier months was as low as
Rs. 5 Lakh a month.
In a move towards providing traffic
information to citizens, Praveen Kumar said,
We launched www.htp.gov.in, the website
for Hyderabad Traffic Police, which gives
citizens real time information through live
-
8/14/2019 eINDIA 2009 - Event Report
12/12
18 li t
traffic updates on the state of traffic in the
city, at any given time and this is all done with
help of 150 cameras positioned at several
locations of the city.
Apprising the delegates on the online
presence of the city police and the web basedsolutions being used by the department in
curbing crime, Praveen said, We launched
Hyderabad City Police website www.
hyderabadpolice.gov.in with the help of NIC,
a couple of years back. On this website, one
can check the status of passport and lost
vehicles. There is a particular section on this
site known as crime buster link, where one
can upload information related with any fraud
or crime, with complete anonymity. With the
help of this application, we have been able
to bust many flesh trade related cases, and
economic frauds.
Munindra, Executive Director, AP StateHousing Corporation informed delegates that
the department has responsibility to provide
housing to below poverty line families,
in villages and urban areas. Munindra
elaborated: Initially a list of beneficiaries is
prepared and then the department releases a
unit cost of housing to each of the beneficiary.
However, there were serious issues like the
names of beneficiaries were often changed
and the amount went in to the wrong hands.
Department lacked a system to keep track
of the beneficiary payments. In 2006, State
government launched a comprehensive
housing programme, called Indiramma,under which every eligible beneficiary has to
be given a house.
We consulted Centre for Good Governance
for developing a full proof Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) solution
for the implementation and monitoring of this
huge programme. Now with the deployment
of the web based solution, we have curbed
the monetary pilferage to great extent,
Munindra said.
Sanjeev Gupta, Project Director
(eSuwidha), Municipal Administration and
Urban Development, Government of Andhra
Pradesh told audiences about eSuwidhaproject, which was started way back in
2002, for providing friendly Government to
Citizen and Citizen to Government services,
for the purpose of supervision, monitoring
and guidance of Urban Local Bodies,
online Government to Government data
transfer, single window municipal services to
citizens. In eSuwidha application software,
we have 16 modules for the purpose of
G2C services and internal administration.
Besides, it has also got Management
Information System, which generates reports
and aids the management in decision-
making, Gupta said.
These modules are related with issuing
of certificates like birth and death, trade
licenses, filing taxes, and grievance redressal.
These data centres are linked to the state
DC for centralised monitoring. All the data
is maintained with 21 District Data Centres
hosted at district head quarters, which have
a link-up with eSeva centres and concerned
municipalities. According to Gupta, by
the end of year, the department will belaunching web-enabled services on a central
architecture to provide the online services
to citizens including registration of birth and
death certificates and submission of taxes.
Sam Kishore, Revenue Department,
Government of Andhra Pradesh notified
the audiences on the CARD project that
was initiated by the department in 1998-
99. The novelty of the project is that all the
legacy system of transactions has been
computerised. All the property transactions
from 1980 to till date have been made
available on website.
As you know the process of registrationis too cumbersome. However, after
computerisation, the whole process has
been made simple and even a layman can
go through the whole process quickly,
Kishore said.
Speaking about the GIS application
is utilities, N S Sathya Sai Baba, Project
Coordinator (GIS in Utilities), NIC, said:
The objective was to have a base map,
obtained with the help of Geographical
Information System (GIS) technique, hosted
on central server, and then share it across
the departments, especially the utilities. In
property tax collection, the plinth area is often
under valued, many times, deliberately, and
because of which the municipalities have to
undergo huge revenue losses.
But with the base map, officials can easily
measure the exact area. In a pilot, it has been
noted that adopting this GIS technique, the
revenue can be increased by more than 30
per cent.
Jacob Victor, Joint Director, eGovernance,
Department of IT and Communications,Government of Andhra Pradesh talked about
online Issuing of Government Orders (GO) and
Scholarships for school students in the state
of Andhra Pradesh. Under this initiative, all
the GOs are posted on the website, www.
ap.gov.in/apgo, from where one can easily
select the particular department and can see
the all the GO issued from year 2008 to till
date. One can even search the GO with some
key words related with subject and officers
name. To make the process more simple
this searching of GO has been backed by
a call centre with number 1100, where one
can inquire the customer executive about GOrelated to a particular subject. In response,
the executive search and reads the GO for
the caller.
In the online scholarship project, we have
made available all information on the website,
www.ap.gov.in/sbms. Earlier, there were
many fake names and the substantial part of
the scholarship was siphoned away by the
miscreants. However, all of the information
has been put online, and the transaction
has been made more transparent,
Victor added.
Participants listening attentively to the speakers