eINDIA 2009 - Event Report

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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.


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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 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


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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


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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 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


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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, 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


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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.


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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 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


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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


10/12


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.


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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


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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

Documents

eINDIA 2009 - Event Report