MANY CHALLENGES AHEAD FOR BIOMETRIC CARD
Ritwik Mukherjee, Kolkata
Financial Chronicle
Availability of technology notwithstanding, India will face more challenges than one in introducing one identity card for its citizen. At least that’s what Jolyon Barker, global managing partner (technology, media & telecommunications), Deloitte, feels.
A unique identification card (UID) will be issued to all Indian citizens under a national programme. The government has provided Rs 120 crore in the budget for the project. The project is based on computer application called SCOSTA.
Barker said, “Technology is just an enabler and technology related to biometric smart cards is available. However, there will be a number of challenges that India will have to face while executing it— of connectivity and scale and possibly political challenges — once various ethical issues and issues of individual privacy come up.”
The biometric smart card will have personal details related to retina, fingerprints, credit histories, name, sex, address, marital status, photo, identification mark and criminal background details (if any). These details will be linked to a central online database or repository.
While admitting that the issue of such ID cards is meant to be a move toward better governance, Barker said, “It will certainly be interesting to see how this is finally rolled out.”
In a different context, Barker said that when it comes to technology adoption, urban India is following global speed, but since it started late, it still had lot of catching up to do.
Barker said that smart mobile phones with low-cost model and attractive bundle offers, sharing of such mobile phones for common commercial purposes within a group, linking them with agro businesses, information kiosks (ITC’s e-Choupal or Srei Sahaj) would grow phenomenally.
“In all such cases, interesting contents will play a major role. There has to be a perfect balance between value-added services and utility services in all such cases,” Barker said, adding that this would also foster rural penetration of technology. “Despite the Satyam episode, India has ambassadors such as Wipro, Infosys, TCS in the world of technology. India should leverage that and come up a true global leader in technology,” he said.
ING LIFE TIES UP WITH E-SEVA
Visakhapatnam
The Hindu Business Line The Hindu
ING Life India here, on Wednesday, announced a tie-up with e-seva, the citizen services arm of the Andhra Pradesh Government, for premium collection.
B. Ashwin, the Chief Operating Officer, ING Life India, said on the occasion, “it will offer a fast, efficient and accessible way for our customers to pay their renewal premium. The network of e-seva centres in the State is a major strength for us.”
He said ING Life was currently present in 234 cities and towns and it had set up 259 branches. The company had appointed over 70,000 advisers to assist the customers and it was doing good business through alternative channels as well. It had tied-up with over 200 co-operative banks across the country.
He said, the renewal premium of the company amounted to Rs 750 crore during 2008-09 and the target for the current fiscal was Rs 1200 crore. The company’s market share was 1.6 percent. There is no proposal yet to make use of the e-seva centres to sell the products. “Today, the arrangement is being activated across the 21 e-seva centres in Visakhapatnam district.
INFOSYS WINS EBIZ PROJECT FROM MOC
Mumbai
The Hindu Business Line
Infosys Technologies has announced that it has been awarded the eBiz Project by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India. The eBiz Project is among the 27 Central, State and Integrated Mission Mode Projects (MMPS) under the National eGovernance Plan (NEGP) of the Government.
The scope of this work under this agreement includes designing and developing the eBiz platform, establishing the support IT infrastructure, implementing, maintaining and expanding the eBiz solution and services for the next 10 years.
As part of this project, the company will also undertake training, workshops, promotion and awareness campaigns.
LAND RECORDS TO GO ONLINE
Bhopal
The Pioneer
Madhya Pradesh Minister of State for Revenue and Labour Karan Singh Verma on Wednesday said copy of land-related documents would be provided in one day henceforth.
Replying to discussion over budgetary demands of his department, Verma said every tehsil would be provided computers and one inverter. Copies of land-related documents would be provided at night also. He said land records would be made available online soon to ensure transparency. Verma said patwaris would not be posted in native tahsils.
Vacant posts of tahsildars, naib tahsildars and patwaris would be filled up soon. Revenue books would be distributed for free from August 15. Printing would be done in Government Press to save Rs 18 crore. At the instance of Speaker Ishwardas Rohani, he announced that housemaids would be included in the category of unorganised labour.
MORE PEOPLE-UT DEPT INTERACTION A CLICK AWAY
Chandigarh
The Times of India
To make all government services accessible to people in their locality, UT administration is in the process of developing a state service delivery gateway (SSDG) that will act as front-end interface to various e-governance initiatives and services across all departments.
The scheme is aimed at ensuring efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable cost.
At a meeting convened by finance secretary Sanjay Kumar, consultants for the project gave a presentation on the feasibility and various aspects of the scheme. The general public would be able to download forms through the common service centre (CSC) outlets and submit their applications electronically.
The project is a Government of India initiative under national e-governance plan that involves optimized utilization of existing IT infrastructure and providing basic computing infrastructure to various departments as needed.
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