egov INDIA2009 REPORT

Towards Integrated and Inclusive Governance

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 by Centre 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 multilateral 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 of State 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 MP Narayanan, 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,

D Purandeswari lighting the lamp at the eINDIA 2009 inauguration

consulting rms, 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 such initiatives, 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 ofcial 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 integrating technology 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.
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KEYNOTE SEssION: ACHIEVING HIGH IMPaCT E-GOVERNMENT: KEY SUCCEss FaCTORs The egov INDIA 2009 track began with the keynote session on Achieving High Impact e-Government. Dr. Debesh Das, Honorable Minister, Department of Information Technology, Government of West Bengal, began the session by dening e-Governance as the transformation of the government to provide efcient, 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 population in 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, Department of 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 Pacic and Japan explained the audience about the enterprise approach and said it was essentially seen from two perspectives- rstly, 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 rene the value of what can be delivered to the citizens from operational, nancial and
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(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), Government of West Bengal; SR Rao, Additional Secretary, DIT, GOI; Sameer Sharma, Secretary IT, Govt. of AP; Satish Kaushal, Country Manager, Government & Education, IBM India/South Asia; Oleg Petrov, Coordinator, e-Development Thematic Group, World Bank Group

social perspective and Business Intelligence is part of nding 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 ofcials and the citizens, possible through a web based solution or by introducing citizen facilitation 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 protable. 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 the citizens, 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

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 eLeaders / Chief Information Ofcers as key enablers and change agents.

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SEssION: ENTERPRIsE APPROaCH fOR E-GOVERNMENT: PROVIDING a PaRaDIGM SHIfT The second session focused on various perspectives on how the enterprise approach 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 fulll the purpose in the long run along with meeting the technological changes besides fullling 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 efcient 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

(L-R) Rajendra Dhavale, Director Technical Sales, India & SAARC, CA; Mahabaleshwar Hegde, Vice President, 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, Principal Secretary IT, Govt. of West Bengal; Amod Kumar, Special Secretary Revenue, Govt. of UP; R Ramakrishnan, Programme Director, SAP

unique automated method to conrm 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 Andhra Pradesh, resulted in a puried and a unique database, which could be used as the mother database by all the other departments to efcient, 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 its ultimate 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 efcient 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 difcult to entirely change the existing infrastructure, hence difcult 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 efcient delivery of the services to the citizens, where as the enterprise application was important because

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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 imagination and 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 difcult because of the negative attitude of the government ofcials, 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 closely connected. 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 benets were seen for a long time. Sanjeev Kapoor, Head, Government and Telecom Sector, Infosys Technologies Limited, informed that in the enterprise eGovernance, 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 efcient system. The discussion, which followed focused on the difculties to avoid the duplication

(L-R) Jeby Cherian, Director, Strategy, IBM; Herald Jung, Head Business Segments, Civil and National Security, Siemens; N Vijayaditya, DIT, GoI; Rajendra Mishra, Madhya Pradesh Police

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 modications 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, talked about 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 ofces are aware of the crimes happening in the cyber cell, thus making it difcult 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 manmade 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 difcult 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 each country 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 the systems. 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
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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, which provides 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 unication in any kind of planning and unless there is basic demographic data regarding income, literacy, unemployment and so forth, it becomes quite difcult 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 the country, 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 rst 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 signies that the government is committed to unication of data, of more than one billion Indians. Quoting Nandan Nilekanis address at Department of IT, New Delhi, Sanyal informed that ve 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 benet from the government schemes started on their names. A number of new
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(L-R) Harish Grama, Vice President, IBM India, Dr. Akshay Kumar, Reader, School of Computer and Information 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, Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital; Bharat rele, director, solution engineering, SAP

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 condence 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 getting single 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 benets 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 Identication (ID) and how Information Technology Act can help understand the data unication and information management. UID is required to streamline, unify and harmonise our country. This will ensure good governance and compliance, Bharat said. Enumerating the benets 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 scal decit because it is going to get integrated with taxation, banking system, and with insurance companies. UID will help the government 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

of needs of the students, the challenges faced and how the data unication process is helping IGNOU, is something he informed in detail. The information ow in IGNOU is: Headquarter, Regional Centre and the Study Centre. There are multiple levels of data generation: 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 unied 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 once the unique number is given to each one of us, all the beneciaries will be getting all the benets 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, NIC informed 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

(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 , Enterprise Solutions, Sify Technologies Limited; Orcun Tezel, Technical Director, Asia Pacific, 3Com Corporation; Amod S Ranade, Program Manager, IBM India/South Asia.

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. As far 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 and management, technology and solutions selection, clearly dened 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 efciency issue in data centre. He pointed that while operating data centre, it was important to have benchmarks and efciency

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 efciency. He noted, A programmed approach to energy efciency is very important. We need to do the assessment, set a benchmark, compare this benchmark with the industry standards, and then workout the programmed approach to periodic revisiting and revamping the data centre to improve efciency. 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 efcient and reliable. As this happened, he said, It needed to complement more and more intergovernmental services efciently, 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
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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 serious attention 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 re 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 efciency 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 ofcial, and rather popularising virtual interactions was one such point, inter alia, commonly shared and agreed upon by IT secretaries 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-Governmenttechnology, 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
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(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. of AP

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, ofcials 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 a very 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 eGovernment 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 difcult task and is yet another major challenge 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 ofcial 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 given legal 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 nancial assistance is being delivered directly in the hands of beneciaries. Earlier, in the scholarship list, there used to be the list of

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 beneciary data has been made available on website. sEssION: ROLE Of IT IN POWER SECTOR Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (RAPDRP) 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 through comprehensive 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 the weakest 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 surrounding the APDRP programme, Goel said, The rst 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.

(L-R) Srinivas Rao, Executive Director, HR and Commercial, APCPDCL; Jayant Sinha, DGM (IT), Uttarakhand Power Corporation Ltd.; M K Goel, Director, Institutional, Development & Administration, Power Finance Corporation Ltd., GoI; Rajat Sud, Head, Energy Vertical, Siemens Information Systems Limited; Rupendra Bhatnagar, Director, Energy & Utilities, Microsoft Corporation India

Acknowledging the need for process reengineering 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 internal business 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 denite need for more energy and for that efcient grids are needed, which can transmit the power, protably. Elaborating on IT 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 efciency 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 rst utility to start the spot billing 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 rstly, the nancial sustainability issue. Need for continued investment is another challenge. Like, for example, 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 protability of utilities, there are challenges across way, demanding substantial focus
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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 conned to the citizen service delivery and that too limited to issuing of birth and death certicates 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 or customized 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 eGovernance solutions that we tend to provide. Because these services are dealt with various wings of the government, which some times have 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
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(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, Microsoft Corporation India.

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 with urban 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 identied 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 which can be downloaded, led and submitted back or lled 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 democratic structure of the city government, through needless uniformity. However, he strongly supported that ICT intervention can be used in xing 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 ofcials, along with information of the people in the upper hierarchy, having command over the executing ofcials, can be a solution for smart governance. Later, he advocated marriage of

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, said that 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 and social 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, increasing accountability, curbing corruption, pro-active information disclosure through websites, and social auditing of some ag 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 passed in 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, oppies or in any electronic form or through printouts. Speaking on the close and complimentary relation that exists between RTI and eGovernance, Arha averred, In its very nature,

(L-R) Sanjeev Gupta, Project Director, MAUD, Govt. of AP; Dr. R S Praveen Kumar, DIG & Joint Director, AP Police 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, Additional IG, 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

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 Ofcer, Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh articulated on the monitoring of Aarogyasri - the state agship 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 (beneciaries). 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 ow to 18 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 trafc management, containing cyber crime, creating in-house resource pool and 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 gure for earlier months was as low as Rs. 5 Lakh a month. In a move towards providing trafc information to citizens, Praveen Kumar said, We launched www.htp.gov.in, the website for Hyderabad Trafc Police, which gives citizens real time information through live
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trafc updates on the state of trafc 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 based solutions 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 esh trade related cases, and economic frauds. Munindra, Executive Director, AP State Housing 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 beneciaries is prepared and then the department releases a unit cost of housing to each of the beneciary. However, there were serious issues like the names of beneciaries were often changed and the amount went in to the wrong hands. Department lacked a system to keep track of the beneciary payments. In 2006, State government launched a comprehensive housing programme, called Indiramma, under which every eligible beneciary 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 eSuwidha project, 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
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Participants listening attentively to the speakers

and aids the management in decisionmaking, Gupta said. These modules are related with issuing of certicates like birth and death, trade licenses, ling 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 be launching web-enabled services on a central architecture to provide the online services to citizens including registration of birth and death certicates and submission of taxes. Sam Kishore, Revenue Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh notied the audiences on the CARD project that was initiated by the department in 199899. 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 registration is 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, ofcials 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 ofcers 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 GO related 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.