eindia 2008 - event report

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eINDIA2008

eINDIA2008, the Indias largest information communicationtechnologies event, was held from July 29-July 31, 2008, atPragati Maidan, New Delhi. The conference-cum-exhibition,attended by more than 6000 participants, provided a

collaborative forum to share knowledge and ideas enablingthe participants to develop multinational and cross-industrycontacts and partnerships as well as to enhance their knowledge,expertise and abilities. The eINDIA2008 conference had sixseminal tracks - e-Governance, Digital Learning, TelecentreForum, eHealth, MobileServe and e-Agriculture. The eventwas organised by the Centre for Science Development andMedia Studies (CSDMS), with active support from the Ministryof Communications and IT, Government of India, UN (GobalAlliance of ICT for Development) GAID, Department ofAgriculture and Cooperation and the Ministries of HumanResource Development, Urban Development and PanchayatiRaj. The different state partners for the event included

the governments of Jharkhand, Manipur, West Bengal,Directorate of Higher Education, Government of NationalCapital Territory and Kerala State Information TechnologyMission. There was also an active participation of the privatesector in the conference and exhibition.

INAUGURATION

The inaugural session was graced by D Purandeswari, UnionMinister of State for Higher Education, Ministry of HumanResource Development, Government of India, Jainder Singh,Secretary, Department of IT, Ministry of Communications

and Information Technology, Government of India, SubashPani, Secretary, Planning Commission, Government of India,R Chandrasekhar, Additional Secretary, Department of IT,Ministry of Communications and Information Technology,Government of India, Michael Rawding, Vice President,Unlimited Potential Group, Microsoft Corporation andPraveen Vishakantaiah, President, Intel India.

The luminaries inaugurated the event by the traditionallighting of the lamp. Dr MP Narayanan, President, CSDMS,gave the welcome address. In her inaugural address, DPurandeswari announced the proposed plan of the centralgovernment to launch a scheme called National Mission inEducation through ICT to provide connectivity to the learners

so that they can link themselves to the knowledge world incyberspace and to make these learners Netizens in order toenhance their self learning skills and develop their capabilitiesfor online problem solving. Emphasing the importance ofInformation and Communication Technologies in attainingthe goal of a knowledge-based society, she said that in orderto deliver the benefits of ICT-enabled learning, the NationalMission would focus attention on achieving technologicalbreakthrough by developing a very low-cost and low-powerconsuming access device, making available free bandwidthfor education purpose to every Indian.

The inaugural session concluded with the vote of thanks byRavi Gupta, Executive Director, CSDMS, who then invited the

eminent delegates to inaugurate the eINDIA2008 exhibition.

eGOV INDIA 2008

Objectivesegov INDIA2008 is the fourth in its series and one of theimportant tracks in this annual eINDIA event. The conferenceprovided a platform for all stakeholders, policy-makers,practitioners, industry leaders, academicians and architectsof e-Government projects, to discuss the achievements,challenges, and the progress made towards achieving thegoals of e-Governance.

E V E N T D I A R Y

eINDIA2008 :Towards Joined-UpGovernment egovINDIA2008 Report

D. Purandeswari, Union Minister of State for Higher EducationInaugurating eINDIA exhibition. L-R Dr. M. P. Narayanan, AshisSanyal, D. Purandeswari, Jainder Singh


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In India, we are witnessing that some states are far aheadin e-Governance, while some have just begun their journey.egov INDIA2008 aimed to fulfill the need to create a commonground for equitable governance provision, which in turnwill facilitate a process of overall development of the country.Along with the exhibition, the conference was a forum toshowcase best practices, innovative technologies and ICT

solutions. It also provided an opportunity to meet face to facewith hundreds of potential customers in the fastest growingeconomies of Asia.

PARTICIPATION

The conference was attended by the Heads of e-Government,Chief Information Officers and Chief Technical Officers,IT Directors and Managers, Heads of Information andCommunication, Public Administrators, IT Project Directors,Integration and Development Managers, Technical Architects,ICT Services Directors, Strategic Planners and InformationSystems Managers.

The egov track conference was sponsored by SifyTechnologies Limited, Sun Microsystems, Visa, HughesNetFusion, CrimsonLogic, eSangathan, Hitachi Data SystemsIndia Pvt. Ltd. and NIIT Technologies. The exhibitors foregov conference were Atom Technologies Ltd., CheckPoint, Dell, Digital Advantage, FINO, NexTenders, ProjectManagement Associates and SafeNet. The exhibition providedan opportunity for updating on new advancements, solutionsand services in the field of e-Governance.

The conference was supported by national and internationalgovernment and development agencies, such as EPF (EcolePolytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland), GTZ,

Manufacturers Association for IT (MAIT), National Instituteof Urban Affairs (NIUA), Regional Centre for Urban andEnvironmental Studies (RCUES) and World Bank.

PROCEEDINGS

The egov India conference comprised three days of key notesessions and panel discussion sessions.

Session: The Future of e-Governance in India:Government 2.0 and BeyondThe conference started with the key note session titled

The Future of e-Governance in India: Government 2.0and Beyond. The session was chaired by J Satyanarayana,

CEO, national Institute of Smart Government. He definedthe joined-up government as the single face of governmentpresented to the citizens. Government could be joined upvertically (central, state and local governments), horizontally(multiple, related departments and agencies) and functionally

(domains like welfare, healthcare, education, farm sector,industry and business). According to him, the success of thejoined-up government depends upon: Achieving clarity on what, how, who and with what Ensuring that success can be measured Establishing metrics for quality of service Designing appropriate business models Building capacity Creating environment for speedy decisions

Oleg Petrov, Coordinator, e-Development ThematicGroup, Global ICT Department, World Bank, emphasisedthat no reform strategy can ignore the role of Informationand Communication Technology (ICT) today. According to

him, the public sector reform strategy, which does not takefully into account the digital dimension will be outdatedupon arrival. The old model of ICT implementation, Gov 1.0involved high cost but yielded limited results.

On the other hand, he defined Gov 2.0, as the new-generation model of ICT-enabled government transformationinto open, participatory, citizen-centric/driven and highlyintegrated government (both vertically and horizontally).This new model breaks down organisational silos, creatinghorizontal, whole-of-government structures, communities andpractice groups, has a comprehensive back-end integrationand sharing corp;orate services and systems, comprehensiveprocess re-engineering that leverages fully the power of ICT,

comprehensive change management, active participation ofthe citizens in policy and decision-making and service designand delivery and widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies,approaches and values.

Basheerhamed Shadrach, Senior Programme Officer,telecentre.org, International Development ResearchCentre, talked about the correlation between corruption,poor governance and human development and gave a fewrecommendations to make e-Governance efforts servethe agenda of anti-corruption and thus good governance.According to him, the latest tools and the ICT revolution inthemselves shall act as means to the change inflicted uponsocieties. Hence, taking advantage of web 2.0 tools and the

Session 1 : L-R, Jaijit Bhattacharya, Basheer Hamad Shadrach,J. Satyanarayana, Oleg Petrov, Niraj Prakash


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many new inventions in ICT field combined with citizen-centric, citizen-led knowledge centres as public spaces, thegovernments will need to design their ICT-led e-Governmenttools.

Jaijit Bhattacharya, Country Manager, Sun Microsystems,defined eGov 2.0 as an evolutionary step towards a moreefficient, inclusive and participative government through

adoption of a set of new trends in business models, operational,financial and technological models. He made a comparisonbetween Gov 1.0 with Gov 2.0. The Gov 1.0 communitiesare targeted, while that of Gov 2.0 is self-organising. Thebandwidth is limited for Gov 1.0 while it is widely availablefor Gov 2.0. The focus of Gov 1.0 is technical, while that forGov 2.0 is creation.

Niraj Prakash, General Manager, SAP India, recommendedfor closing the gap between strategy and execution of ITby empowering people, integrating processes, managinginformation, consolidating and governing IT and runningand optimising IT. Consolidating and governing of ITreduces complexity and the risk of IT, while empowering

and connecting people, through using web 2.0 tools amongothers, leads to increased user productivity and satisfactionfrom IT.

Session: Citizen-centric e-Governance in India:How Close/Far are we from the Goal?The second key note session on citizen-centric e-Governancein India was chaired by R. Chandrashekhar, AdditionalSecretary, Department of Information Technology, (DIT).He began the session by stating the vision of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) as making all government servicesaccessible to the common man in his locality, throughcommon service delivery outlets and ensuring efficiency,

transparency and reliability of such services at affordablecost to realise the basic needs of the common man. The hardinfrastructure in place to realise this vision is State Wide AreaNetwork (SWAN), Common Service Centres (CSC) and StateData Centres (SDC), while the soft infrastructure requiredis state portal, state e-Service delivery gateway, creating andenabling e-Forms for all services and notifying standardsprogressively. On the other hand, the human resourcesrequired include composing state e-Mission, composite andproject mission teams, and creating awareness.

According to him, the ultimate criterion for measuringprogress is measuring the percentage of services e-Enabled

and the percentage of people having access to e-Services.Partha Bhattacharya, Chairman, Coal India Limited (CIL),talked about the implementation of ICT in CIL. He firstshared the background of implementing e-Procurement inCIL. According to him, to provide a commodity like coal,which is so heavily discounted at international market, oneruns the risk of black marketing. It was to solve this issue that

they introduced e-Marketing. Previously, when any large-value tender was issued by CIL, it was found that a group ofsuppliers formed a cartel and quoted the same price. Thiscould be broken by resorting to e-Procurement and puttingthe condition that no two companies could quote the sameprice. As a result, CIL could do the entire procurementwithout getting into the hands of a cartel.

With Right to Information (RTI) coming into implementation,the effort at CIL is to put as much information, about CIL, onthe website, which has brought about transparency in CIL.

M. Raman, Director General, Directorate General forSupplies and Disposals (DGS&D), Ministry of Commerce,explained the initiation of e-Procurement system in DGS&D.

DGS&D is planning to make it mandatory to submit bidapplications online and submit the bills online, for someproducts. The Directorate is currently addressing issues likehardware, data centre, bandwidth, connectivity betweenvarious departments. However, Raman feels that till thereis a change in the mindset, political will and pro-activebureaucracy, the efforts towards e-Governance would bea waste.

Sudhir Krishna, Additional Secretary, Ministry ofPanchayati Raj, informed about the e-Governance effortsbeing taken in the Panchayati Raj institutions (PRIs), as partof the implementation of NeGP. The objective of the projectis to make the PRIs more efficient, effective and transparent.

A centrally sponsored scheme spanning three years, coversall the Panchayats at district, block and village levels (0.25million) and cost INR 683.2 million. Two-thirds of grampanchayats (GP) and block panchayats (BP) are beingprovided computing facility, each identified GP is being givenone computer, printer-cum-scanner, one UPS, webcam andpen drive. For capacity building, trained computer operatorto each GP and BP, training is being provided to staff in GP,BP and District panchayats and orientation is being given toelected representatives about e-Governance, in general, ande-PRI project in particular. Sudhir Krishna listed some ofthe issues that need to be addressed in implementing the e-PRI project. These include funding, last mile connectivity,

involvement of private sector, integration with the ongoingdevelopment and NeGP programmes, sustainability of theprogramme, vertical and horizontal integration.

Pramod Saxena, Chairman and Managing Director, Oxigen,India, told that there is a business model which can beoperationalised to ensure services for masses in a simple andfeasible way. In this regard, mobiles and wireless technologyprovides great access. He recommended for a simple anduser friendly, tiered security for different target segments andutility providers provision service fee for viability of ruralkiosks. He informed about his companys Oxicash platform,which can be used for repayments, micro-payments, micro-finance related payments, micro-insurance among other

Session 2 : L-R M.Raman, R. Chandrashekhar, Partha Bhattacharya,Sudhir Krishna, Pramod Saxena


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things. Through mobile phones, Oxigen is providing a banklike experience for monetary stransactions in a secured way.

Session: Government 2.0 and Beyond: The NextGeneration of Government TransformationThe session discussed how to transform governments andtake advantage of all the features offered under Web 2.0, the

next generation of e-Government. The session also includeddiscussions from India, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzaniaand US.

R Chandrashekhar started the session by talking aboutwhat he felt governments should do to incorporateemerging technologies into e-Government. He spoke aboutthe difficulty of managing the transitions as governmentsmoved more of their services online. He also emphasised thatcollaboration does not magically come about through the useof technology, agencies and departments should be willing toshare information. e-Government will have very little impact

until it can be accessed and use by everyone regardless oftheir location. What is most important is for governmentsto understand what methods, processes work best for themand what is not working. They need to strategise on what isworking for them and what is not.

Randeep Sudan, e-Government Practice Leader, GlobalICT Department (GICT), World Bank. He spoke about theneed to reassess government or public sector involvementin certain sectors where the private sector had an immenseadvantage. However delivery of a personalised service requiresthat all databases converge on a single point. Interoperabilityis the key and this needs to be worked on. Next Randeepfocused on how he thought that developing countries could

benefit greatly by using cloud computing as a platform forproviding the citizens with the benefits and services theyrequired in a personalised manner. Examples of cloudcomputing are the applications provided by Google Apps,Word processing, spreadsheets.The benefits of using cloudcomputing for hosting and providing benefits and services isthat it allows to store the information that users provide andalso the important data points on each user and what theywould need.

Anthony Williams, Vice President, Government 2.0,nGenera Insight, talked about how traditional entities werebeing displaced by more collaborative services and how thesenew ecosystems necessitated working with new channels

and intermediaries. Governments should adopt manyof the collaborative tools used by social networking andother Internet applications, such as blogging, wikis, sharedbookmarks. According to him, governments need to engagein a conversation with the citizens on all issues and have acontinued dialogue.

In the Q&A that followed, several representatives from

Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and US provided an updateon where they are in terms of integrating e-Governmentservices and applications.

Session: Web Quality- A Pre-requisite forSuccessful e-GovernanceThe session, chaired by Dr. S L Sarnot, Director General,Standardisation, Testing and Quality Certification (STQC),had discussion on issues such as website quality assessmentby STQC, website quality and international scenario by GTZ(Germany), need for standardisation, technology offeringsolutions for embedded website quality by industry, contentstandardisation and addressing citizens perspective and

legal issues.Neeta Verma, Senior Technical Director, NationalInformatics Centre, Delhi, presented the delegates with theguidelines for Indian government websites. According toher, it is important to set up a mechanism to ensure certainminimum standard for all government websites. Theseguidelines aims to:

Improve the overall usability quotient and technicalcompetence of the Indian Government websites vis-a-visInternational Standards.

Facilitate Indian Government websites in achievingcitizen-centricity while providing anytime-anywhere

delivery of government information and services. Formulate policies for sustenance and effective

maintenance of the Indian Government websites Achieve, in the long run, a certain degree of commonality

and standardisation across the Indian Governmentwebsites.

Enhance the Government-Citizen RelationshipThe guidelines would address the complete life-cycle of the

website or a portal- planning, content, design, development,hosting, promotion and management.

U K Nandwani, Director, STQC, IT Services, talked aboutthe Website Quality Certification (WQC) for government(public) websites and portals and for the private websites

Session 3 : Global Dialogue on the Future of e-Government

Session 4 : L-R Ashis Mehta, Ricarda Wildemann, Vakul Sharma, NeetaVerma, S.L. Sarnot, U.K. Nandwani



and portals. WQC gives websites a recognition that websiteis usable, safe and meets national requirements, that theorganisations have adequate procedures and processes inplace to provide reliable information and services throughtheir website. The WQC also provide assured quality ofservice website, secure transactional website and assuredfunctional website.

Ricarda Wildemann, Technical Advisor, EconomicDevelopment through e-Government, GTZ, presented theinternational scenario relating to website quality and e-Governance. e-Governance in India has to address the issueof disparity, given the fact that 46 million Internet users (4%of the population) are largely limited to English-speakingurban population. e-Governance can bridge the dividethrough e-Inclusion, which is an integral part of quality ofe-Governance. She recommended both technical as well asnon-technical solutions to address this issue.

Vakul Sharma, Advocate, Supreme Court of India,highlighted the legal issues in websites. He reinforced that awebsite owner has to enter two different sets of Agreements:

Agreements with the users/consumers and Agreements withother service providers. The bottomline of the privacy policyis the presumption that an organisation should never collectinformation unless it has a legitimate and clearly definedpurpose, discloses that purpose to the person, gets theirpermission to use it for that purpose and keeps the data onlyso long as its needed for the stated purpose. He informedthat the legal obligations under services can arise from theConsumer Protection Act, 1986 (CPA). Therefore, any personavailing any information will be a consumer, and public orprivate authorities which provide any such services would beunder legal obligations, as provided in CPA.

The presentation of Ashish Mehta, Senior Consultant,

Oracle, was on the technology offering solutions forembedded website quality - Web Content Managementwith Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) andWebCentre. For users combined solution provides singleuser interface to access content, process, systems and people.For web content management platform the solution providesconsistent contribution experience across multiple sites andapplications. The combined solution brings about processefficiencies by eliminating redundant steps such as uploadingcontent to multiple applications, among others.

Session: Government Data Centres: TheStorehouse for Information

The session was chaired by Patrick Kishore, Chief InformationSecurity Officer, State Bank of India, who from his experienceof running one of the largest data centres in the country, gavecertain suggestions for establishing government data centres.Some of the main recommendations that he gave are givenbelow:1. Since data centres are power guzzlers, consume a lot

of power.Therfore, by keeping the storage low powerconsumption could be moderated.

2. Locate the data centres close to the power generationcentres, where there is assured power supply or notransmission losses.

3. Government needs to take a decision regarding whether

one-single data centre for the whole state or the countryis needed or not. Such a data centre is going to be hugeand will consume lot of power. Alternatively, governmentcould think of having multiple data centres involvingseveral departments, within the state.

4. As air-conditioning is a major requirement of the datacentres, data centres could be located in cooler places.

5. Government data centres should be compliant with thebest in the world. For assured security of governmentdata, it would be a good idea to locate data centres inlocations that are already secure and have strong physicalcontrol.

6. Data centres should be planned for expansion. Theyshould be planned to accommodate twice the number ofapplications that are already there.

Krishnan B. Nair, Business Development Manager, KeralaState Information Tecnology (KSIT) Mission, Governmentof Kerala, informed about the capacity building plan inKSIT Mission.

Dr. Magdy El Henawy, Family Card Project Manager,Ministry for State of Administrative Development, Egypt,described the family card project in Egypt. The cardguarantees various supports and services to the deservingpeople, namely: subsidy (commodities), solidarity pension,medical, transportation, education, and so forth. The cardhas been integrated with the other national databases. Twelvemillion families out of 17 millions have been converted intoan electronic form, revised, covering all Egypt governorates.According to him, accuracy, security, and integrity are veryimportant issues for family data. In family card project,social issues are more important than the technical issues.He informed that the biggest challenge to such a project

is ensuring security and integrity of the database, which iswhere the government data centres comes into play.

Prashant Periera, Manager Products, Sify Technologies,informed some of the challenges in different stages-design, implementation, sustenance and management, inimplementing the data centres. In this regard, the privateplayers can offer design as per TIA 942 (a standard developedby the Telecommunications Industry Association to defineguidelines for planning and building data centres), providebest practices in all stages of data centre, high availability andsecurity and make data centre greener, among other things.He told about Sify data centres which has a capacity of2,00,000 sq ft, 15 MVA power, which are running successfully

Session 5 : L-R Srikant Chakrapani, Patrick Kishore, Rajendra Dhavale,Prashant Pereira, Magdy El Henawy, Krishnan B Nair


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for more than 8 years with 90% of load and highest levelsof uptime.

Rajendra Dhavale, Director, Technical-Sales, ComputerAssociates, explained some of the operational and managementissues in data centres implementation. These are complexand constantly changing IT environment, heterogeneousoperating systems, database and application environment,

optimisation of data centre operations, lack of sustainable IToperations staff, server consolidation and space optimisation,common policy for standardisation/compliance and commonsecurity controls. He suggested freeware/shareware, elementmanager and enterprise IT management, as some of thepossible approaches for managing and securing state datacentres.

Srikant Chakrapani, Director, Enterprise Solutions, HitachiData Solutions India Pvt. Ltd., told that the major issues toaddress while designing and operationalising data centresare operational efficiency, compliance with regulations,protection of assets and operational resiliency. He informedabout the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V, where one

can create a large number of thinly provisioned volumesof all sizes - each drawing from the same pool of capacity.According to him, the service oriented storage, is responsiveand agile to business needs by deploying or extending storageservices, are cost efficient through consolidation and theability to leverage or reuse storage assets for strategic valueand provide consistent and reliable quality of service withproven enterprise availability and reliability.

Session: State Wide Area Network: CoreInfrastructure for Government ServicesThe panel discussion on State Wide Area Network (SWAN)focussed on issues such as network performance and service

level monitoring issues the role of third party agencies,seamless integration of SWAN with other e-Governanceinfrastructure like SDC, Common Service Centres (CSC) andlast mile connectivity, readiness / application content issuesrelated to SWAN, bandwidth related issues, private sectorplayers and technology stakeholders of the SWAN, successstories and pitfalls.

Ashish Sanyal, Senior Technical Director, Departmentof Information Technology, GoI, the moderator for thediscussion said that guidelines for SWAN implementationwere conceptualised and put forth in October 2004.

Alok Chaturvedi, IT Secretary Bihar, speaking Bihar SWANsaid that three years ago Bihar was at the rock bottom of the

pyramid in e-Governance preparedness. Now Bihar is amongthe top performers in the country. Under Bihar SWAN allits districts are connected and man power is being provided.Meticulous planning is in progress to expand connectivitythrough VSAT and fibre optics and possibilities for alternateback up connectivity are being explored. Request forproposals (RFP) for horizontal SWAN are being issued. Onthe other hand availability of power at blocks, poor qualityof media (copper) being used for connectivity, man power,service operator issues remain the nagging concerns.

Madhav Redddy, Senior Technical Director, NationalInformatics Centre (NIC) said NIC in association with NationalInternet Exchange of India (NIXI) is implementing SWAN

in nine states: Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim, Tripura, Chandigarh,Delhi, Pondicherry, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur andUttarakhand. He observed that smaller states were moreaggressive in implementation and therefore implementationof SWAN went according to the plan in Sikkim, Tripura, Delhiand other smaller states. In states like Uttar Pradesh delay indecision making is the reason for delayed progress. However,

UP made encouraging progress after the decisions have beentaken. He further said that site preparation issues are crucialfor implementing SWAN and providing connectivity.

H.S. Bedi, CMD Tulip Telecom, speaking on the occasionsaid that Tulip implemented the SWAN for Government ofHaryana and currently implementing SWAN for West Bengaland Assam. He emphasised that the biggest challenge in takingSWAN forward is its application and data connectivity willbecome the key for its success. He called for competition andredundancy in service providers and suggested that completedata connectivity should be MPLS based as it will be easierto scale up and meet bandwidth demand as the applicationskeep coming. He also expressed concern over the delay in

payments to the service providers and system integrators.Ashish Sanyal observed that whatever the government hasconceptualised in 2005 regarding telecom services may notbe valid today as the needs in this competitive environment

are dynamic.Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice President TCS said that TCS

is involved in delivering SWAN to Bihar and Tamil Nadu.The implementation of the troika SWAN, SDC, CSC, asconceptualised under NeGP should be synchronised. Heexpressed that the bandwidth created for SWAN should beutilised simultaneously before the technological advancementsrender it obsolete. He called for a true spirit of partnershipbetween the public and the private. He also expressed concern

over the delays in payments for the service providers. Hefurther said that there is need for rationalisation for achievingdesired objectives and was critical over the governmentsapproach which is creating delays in establishing NeGPinfrastructure. Ashis Sanyal, responding to Tanmoys remarkssaid that all aspects of SWAN are greenfield areas for all thestakeholders involved. As far as technology is concerned fiveyears is a learning time and our progress is encouraging.

Sanjeev Seth, deputy Director General, (Commercial)Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), in response to theissues raised by fellow panelists said that the BSNLs networkwas supposed to be a retail network to increase tele-densityand voice connectivity and was never meant for this kind of

Session 6 : L-R Madhav Reddy, Y.S. Mallik, Tanmoy Chakrabarty, AlokChaturvedi, S.K.Seth, Ashis Sanyal, H.S. Bedi



unparalleled project (NeGP). Bandwidth is one of the elementsof infrastructure and is dependent on the availability otherelements such as power, physical connectivity of exchangesetc. With due consideration of existing infrastructure. BSNLis planning to provide at least 2mbps to each and everyCSC and for this we need a robust wire line network, whichwould also become essential to sustain NeGP infrastructure

in future when bandwidth requirement will be of terrabyte magnitude. He further said that the policies should beflexible to address the issues that will crop up in the courseof SWANs evolution.

YS Mallik, Commissioner and Secretary IT, Government ofHaryana said that in Haryana SWAN is operational and weare on the road to establish the three pilaars as envisagedin NeGP. However, simultaneous concerns on its purposeand utility are cropping up. He called for a reduction of gapbetween all the stakeholders involved in this project and allthe stakeholders should go for a introspection and realise thatNeGP is not about adopting ICTs for development but forGood Governance. Both the public and the private should

work with a true spirit of partnership. Reconciliation shouldbe there from both the sides to break the ice and to balancethe interests.

Session: Capacity Building and ChangeManagement for e-GovernanceS.R. Das, Senior Director, DIT, Ministry of Communicationsand IT, who chaired the session, talked about the capacitybuilding plan in NeGP.

According to him, states need to implement capacitybuilding initiatives to build self-sufficiency, to overcomethe inadequate expertise within the government and tosupplement internal manpower. He also informed some of

the challenges in implementing the capacity building plan,such as high demand for qualified manpower in the market,disparity between market salaries and government pay scales,retention of skilled manpower high attrition rates, differentskill requirement over time and from project to project, rigidcareer paths, lack of relevant course material, inadequateresources and diverse training needs

R S Sharma, Principal Secretary, IT, Government ofJharkhand, shared his experience on capacity buildingimplementation in Jharkhand. According to him, their e-Governance projects were affected due to lack of capacityand lack of ownership by the line departments. They startedhaving project coordinators on contract on market driven

salaries on fixed term and tying up their remunerationswith the project outcomes/benchmarks. According to him,they should have first done the capacity building of thegovernment functionaries since the less developed statesneed capacity building much more urgently. According to NS Kalsi, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, the biggestbarrier for e-Governance is the lack of adequate knowledge ofthe government, service providers and citizens in IT. This iswhere the role of capacity building is most important.

Oleg Petrov told that ICT is about transformation nottechnology and therefore, empowering human potential tothe fullest needs to be the goal. He recommended shifting thebalance of power to the common man, rural poor, women

and other disadvantaged groups and enabling one stop accessto information, services and opportunities.

Pranav Roach, President, Hughes Networks Systems IndiaLtd., informed that Hughes is participating in the NeGP andexpects to enable e-Governance services over its network.In the next 6 12 months it expects to connect over 10,000centres across the country. Hughes is also working with

several industry players to bring digital services and thebenefits of ICT to rural markets and citizens.Ahmed Samir, Assistant to Minister for Country Resource

Planning, Government of Egypt, talked about the HumanDevelopment Programme for the government employeesinEgypt. The programme aims to increase productivity,the ways of developing services and optimising the use ofthe available resources. Some of the topics on which theemployees are being trained are: change management,

communication skills, negotiation skills, problem solvingand decision making, guidance and awareness, leadership,building the work team, time and pressure management,

crisis management and marketing.Tan Sian Lip, Vice President, Solutions and Technology,

CrimsonLogic Pvt. Ltd, told that capacity building leads togreater efficiency, transparency and integrity. He informedabout the various CrimsonLogic change managementprogrammes whereby it provided technology solutions forSaudiEDI project, UAE Ministry of Justice project, e-Postsand Indian Ports Association projects in India.

Session: e-India Leaders ForumThe session aimed to discuss the defining initiatives taken inuse of ICT in governance and education, the major drivers forthis, devising mechanism for disseminating information about

status of the projects at the states, streamlining informationflow, challenges in implementing ICT projects. Chaired byR. Chandrashekhar and Co-chaired by Subhas C Khuntia,Joint Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development,the panelists of the session included Prakash Kumar, JointSecretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, R. S. Sharma, PrincipalSecretary, IT, Government of Jharkhand, Michel Van der Bel,Vice President Public Sector, Microsoft International, AlokChaturvedi, Secretary, IT, Government of Bihar and ShantanuPrakash, Chief Executive Officer, Educomp.

Session: e-Procurement for GovernmentS N Srivastava Director, Directorate General for Supplies &

Session 7 : L-R Tan Sian Lip. Ahmed Samir, Pranav Roach, Oleg Petrov,R.S. Sharma, S.R. Das, N.S. Kalsi


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Disposals (DG S&D), Ministry of Commerce, chaired thesession. He also provided a brief overview of e-Procurementsystem being implemented by DG S&D. The e-Procurementwas initiated in DG S&D in the year 2000-02, when bothmanual and computerised system were being used, but fromthe year 2004-05, DG S&D switched over completely to theelectronic mode for the end-to-end e-Procurement process.

Regarding business process re-engineering (BPR), S NSrivastava informed that BPR started in 2001-02. Although,there are many challenges in implementating e-Procurement,Srivastava was optimistic that they will be overcomewith the second phase of e-Procurement, that is beinginitiated now.

William Lock, Chairman, Elcom Inc., Scotland, talkedabout three elements that drive success in e-Procurement.These are: transformation, collaboration and sustainabilityapproach. According to William Lock, the implementation ofan e-Procurement service should be the part of a larger-scalechange programme, with the e-Procurement technology as theenabler. He informed that Visa e-Marketplace (delivered in

India with the backing of Visa and ICICI Bank) is the catalystfor wider business change. Visa offers fully-functional systemthat is ready to go, speeds supplier adoption, easy for buyersto use, accelerates acceptance, saves processing cost, fully taxcompliant, among other benefits.

Amit Kumar Jain, Deputy Chief Operating Manager/Planning, Northern Railway, informed about the e-Procurement process in the railways. The e-Procurementsoftware allows online participation through a securedwebsite- www.nreps.com, permits vendors to search, viewand download tenders Vendors can participate and submittenders online in a fair, secured and transparent manner. It

is planned that in future tenders shall cover all types suchas supply tender for procurement of goods, tenders forconstruction works and services and fabrication.

Raja Raman Venkatramani from NIIT Technologies,listed some of the benefits of e-Procurement, which are:transparency, location independence, efficiency andconsistency, standardisation, optimisation of businessprocesses, cycle-time reduction for procurement, wide reachof suppliers and security. He also informed about NIITsProcure Easy e-Procurement solution, which has been usedsuccessfully by the Singapore government.

Sumeet Bhatt, Director, NexTenders, suggested that theconventional wisdom on system security for e-Government

procurement is not adequate since the mere viewing of biddata is a fundamental compromise of security. He informedthat the NexTenders e-Procurement system incorporatesa unique document security feature, which enables theviewing, editing, management, and control of documents toonly authorised personnel.

Sanjeev K Itagi, Senior Consultant (Procurement and

Transformation), Capgemini Consulting, informed aboutglobal scenario of e-Procurement. UK, US, Canada,Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Korea, among many others areimplementing e-Procurement for government procurement.Within India, the early movers are DG S&D, Indian Railwaysand Andhra Pradesh state government. He also talked aboutthe several challenges in implementing e-Procurement, whichinclude security, silo-approach with respect to. departmentsand processes, integrated approach, vision and strategy, lastmile connectivity, resistance to change within departmentsand vendors and capacity building.

Session: IT Innovations in Municipalities

Vivek Bharadwaj, Special Secretary, Department of UrbanDevelopment, Government of West Bengal, chaired thissession. He pointed out that it was now mandatory forcorporate entities in India to file their tax returns throughelectronic-filing system, a mechanism developed as part ofgovernments efforts to foster friendlier relations betweentax authorities and assessees. In the US, the option of manualfiling was still available, he remarked, adding that this said alot about India.

Sanjay Jaju, Vice Chairman and Managing Director,Infrastructure Corporation of Andhra Pradesh, expressed theopinion that one should view ICT not as a technology but asa system, an information system, which can form the base for

all well-managed municipalities.Chetan Vaidya, Director, National Institute of Urban

Affairs felt that in the conduct of governance and runningof government, huge amounts of information needs to beprocessed every day and since the numbers are huge inmunicipalities, e-Governance is the way to go.

On the other hand, Joe Dignan, Business, DevelopmentManager, Microsoft, Research India, felt that ICT can be usefulto curtail the huge amount of expenditure the municipalitiesincur for the purpose of manual data management. However,he emphasised, it can only be a facilitator and cannot replacethe role of the government. In this context, he talked aboutthe Citizen Service Platform (CSP) platform of Microsoft,

aimed to support governments as they develop sustainable,flexible and extendable IT infrastructures and Internet-basedservices with citizen services in mind. The platform includes asuite of online services that will be available for customisationand integration into existing government solutions for thecitizens. Srikant Nadhamuni, Managing Trustee, eGovernanceFoundation, Bangalore, informed that eGovernmentsFoundation aims to improve governance in India throughthe effective use of technologies and government processre-engineering and to this effect has developed a family ofsoftware products and solutions that will enable the efficientworking of cities and towns and hence the smoother deliveryof services to its citizens.

Session 8 : L-R Rajaraman Venkataramani, Sumeet Bhatt,S.N.Srivastava, Sanjeev Itagi,William Lock, Amit Kumar Jain



Session: e-Governance Good PracticesThe last session of egov India conference sought to discussfactors that facilitate the success of the e-Governance projects,change management and other challenges, benefits accruedand lessons learned. It was chaired by Prakash Kumar, JointSecretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences.

Sanjay Aggarwal, General Manager (Operations), IndianRailways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC),Ministry of Railways, talked about the online railwaysticketing project of the IRCTC. It has currently the largeste-Commerce website in Asia-Pacific, selling daily more than1,00,000 tickets. The online railways ticketing system hasresulted in saving of time, money and is a convenient way tobuy tickets. This, apart from the adoption of cafe approach,close monitoring of the project and adoptation to challenges,are the several success factors for this project.

Barun Kumar Sahu, Director (Personnel), Ministry of HomeAffairs, shared the learnings of e-Governance initiatives inthe Ministry of Home Affairs. He informed about the SELO

initiative of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), which is thefirst IT-enabled para-military force, which could be deployedfor counter-insurgency operations all over the country, at ashort notice (hours) and at far away places from battalionhead quarters. Similarly, he mentioned about the Prahariinitiative of Border Security Force (BSF), has robust securityfeatures and can be made fully web-enabled. Among othersuch initiatives taken by the Home Ministry, he talked aboutthe cyber forensic initiatives, making use of ICT tools forspeaker identification: phone tapping, video authentication:morphing etc,. digital firearms signature: to identify gunlicense holder from used cartridge, email tracing, search ofdeleted files, laptops etc. and password cracking.

Ankit Mittal from Programme Management Unit,Department of IT, told about the National e-GovernanceService Delivery Gateway (NSDG), one of the mission modeprojects (MMPs), being implemented under the NeGP, forseamless exchange of data with any number of departmentsand front ends. The project is one of its kind, which can besuccessfully integrated with other MMPs and other projects.He, thus, described NSDG as a strong middleware that canpotentially be integrated into other projects nationwide.

Dr. Ajay Kumar, Secretary, IT, Government of Kerala,informed that Kerala state has the highest Internet, telephone,mobile, computers penetration per capita, broadbandcoverage which reaches 80% villages and mobile coverage

which reaches 95% villages. Kerala is going ahead withthe plan of making the state 100% broadband enabled. Dr.Kumar mentioned about the successful Akshaya project,which was aimed to make the state 100% e-Literate. It wasfelt that as long as the computer literacy is in English, peoplesinvolvement with IT will be low. To address this issue, Keralagovernment has initiated the programme, My Language

for My Computer, which enables technology in Malayalamlanguage. In this regard, local content is also being generated.Also, the government has migrated 200 government portalsfrom HTML to content management framework, based onopen source. Regarding assessing value of the e-Governmentprojects, Dr. Kumar stressed on developing an objectivecriteria for assessing any e-Governance project.

Lekha Kumar, Director, (e-Governance), Department ofAdministrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG),Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions,told about the e-Office project, aimed at improving theoperational efficiency of the government, by transitioning to aless-paper-office within next five years. Change management

(convincing the officials of the benefits of the new system),is most crucial. Interoperability (seamless data exchange) isalso another important issue to be dealt with in implementinge-Office in government. The e-Manual will be tested as apilot by DARPG and then the final standard framework ofe-Office implementation procedure would be available forother ministries to take it up for implementation in theirrespective ministries.

Ajay Ahuja, IT Architect, Sun Microsystems Ltd. talked aboutthe field study conducted to find the status of Indian citizensreadiness and awareness towards various e-Governanceinitiatives and services, amongst a sample of citizens fromthe Delhi state. He gave certain recommendations to spread

awareness about use of IT. He suggested that media - TV,radio, newspapers- can play a significant role. IT could bepromoted by making computers/ terminals available at lowcost just like phones and making available the broadband, asin the case of telephone lines.

Valedictory and Awards CeremonyIn valedictory session, the eINDIA2008 Awards werepresented by Mani Shankar Aiyar, Minister for Panchayati Raj,Government of India, Suresh Prabhu, Member of Parliament,R Chandrasekhar and Subhas C Khuntia. Awards were givenfor excellence in the field of e-Governance, MunicipalIT,Digital Learning, Telecentres, e-Health, Mobile Services ande-Agriculture.

Session 9 : L-R Srikant Nadhamuni, Vivek Bharadwaj, Chetan Vaidya,Sanjay Jaju, Joe Dignan

Session 10 : L-R Barun Kumar Sahu, Lekha Kumar, Prakash Kumar,Ajay Kumar, Sanjay Aggarwal, Ankit Mittal


10/10

In the field of e-Governance, the Best ICT enabledDepartment of the Year Award was awarded to the Departmentof Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs (ICT Partner-National Information Centre) , Chhattisgarh. The departmenthas created and made available to the public the ration carddatabase of the city. Details of various schemes, stocks andprocurements are made available to the people through

the Internet.The Best Government Initiative Award was given tothe Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services,Bangalore. The e-Governance Department (Governmentof Karnataka) is delivering 38 different services throughtelecentre operators of the Nemmadi Telecentre project. Nowa citizen is not required to travel to the block/district office toget his certificates. For MunicipalIT, the Best GovernmentInitiative of the Year Award went to the Municipal Corporationof Delhi (MCD) for the project On-line System of PropertyTax. The system of billing was made really simple and suchthat it could easily be made on-line. In 2007 0.21 million taxpayers paid taxes on-line. In 2008, the number of tax payers

reached 0.24 million.The Best Open Source Initiative Award in the field ofMunicipalIT was given to the Geographical InformationSystem for Dynamic Animation (GISDA), Science andTechnology Park, University of Pune.

The conference and the exhibition concluded with thevote of thanks by Ravi Gupta, convener of eINDIA2008 andExecutive Director, CSDMS.

Prachi Shirur & Chaitanya Kishore Reddy

Conference Feedback from DelegatesIt was indeed a great pleasure to be associated with Indias largest ICT event

and interact with all the esteemed speakers and delegates. Congratulations to

all the organising committee members for stupendous success of this event. Iwould be very glad to be part of any future events that you plan to organise.

Sanjeev Itagi, Sr. Consultant, Global Supply Chain Consulting, Capgemini

Thank you for coordinating a good event which I enjoyed the most.

Dr. Basheerhmad Shadrach, Sr. Programme Officer, Telecentre.org, IDRC

I felt very happy to have attended the e-India 2008. It was very well

organised. I am sure it would act as a catalyst for launching many useful and

innovative activities in different walks of life. I congratulate the organisors for

having successfully organised this event.

Sudhir Krishna, Addl. Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, GoI

It was a Great event and one of the best platform for all the stakeholders

from e-Governance initiatives. Looking forward to many such interactions

in future.

Ajay Ahuja, IT Architect, Sun Microsystems Ltd.Thanks for inviting me to the event, it was a great pleasure to speak at this

event which was highly successful. Well done!

Oleg Petrov, Coordinator, e-Development Thematic Group, World Bank

Thank you for all your effort which made the session on Municipal IT go

like clockwork.

Vivek Bharadwaj, Spl. Secretary, Department of Urban Development, Govt. of

West Bengal

It was a pleasure attending your conference, which was truly an eye opener

for me in terms of all the different tracks on e-Governance. Cheers

George Paul, Manager Marketing and Strategy, Ericsson

Read other eINDIA2008 track reports online at www.eindia.net.in

egov Sponsors & Partners

Department of Inf ormation Technology,Ministry of Communications & IT

Government of India

Ministry of Human Resource Development

Government of India

Ministry of Urban Development

Government of India

Department of Agriculture

and Cooperation

Ministry of Agriculture

Government of India

Ministry of Panchayati Raj

Government of India

eindia 2008 - event report

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