E-Governance News: 24/7/09

INDIA'S ID PROJECT CATCHES FANCY OF US LAWMAKERS
Washington
Mint

With work poised to begin on providing unique identification cards to all Indians, the ambitious project has already caught the attention in the US, with lawmakers asking the government why it could not implement a similar project here.

"So they (India) are taking on a humongous scale something that we have been struggling with for 20 years," John Cornyn, the Republican Senator from Texas, said this week during a Congressional hearing on the country's employment verification system.

Ex-Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani has taken over as head of an authority that will work on the project of giving unique identification numbers and cards to all citizens.

"The predicted cost is £3 billion for 1.2 billion citizens and will replace what right now is 20 different proofs of identity that are available and require in the words of the gentleman who's been appointed to head up this project a ubiquitous online database, and that will have to be impregnable to protect against loss of information," Cornyn said.

NILEKANI REPORTS 45 MINUTES EARLY: DAY 1
New Delhi
DNA

Security staffs at Yojana Bhavan, the Planning Commission office, were in for a surprise on Thursday` morning. Precisely at 10.15am, a full 45 minutes before he was due, walked in Nandan Nilekani, the newly-appointed chief of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI). Even at Infosys, he used to start work as early as 7.30am.

While rumours abound that he will get a plush set of rooms for his office, either at the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) building at Connaught Place or at Vigyan Bhavan, for the time being he assumed office at borrowed digs, an office recently vacated by former Planning Commission member BL Mungekar, four doors away from deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

"These are early days, I am assembling my team," he said. His team is expected to have at least 40 private sector IT professionals and will be sourced, according to Nilekani, "globally, both from government and the private sector. I have met many government officials who have innovative ideas, all are welcome."

CAG FINDS DISCREPANCIES IN DATA IN JOB EXCHANGES
Chennai
The Times of India (Chennai edition)

In a strong indictment of the manner in which data is stored in the state's employment exchanges, nearly a million candidates were wrongly given higher seniority, while there were duplicate entries involving 1.23 lakh candidates, an audit report has revealed.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG)'s report for the year ending March 31, 2008, reveals that outdated software and lack of controls and security features resulted in a host of mistakes, including premature lapsing of 22,733 registrations due to errors in data entry.

"The computerisation of the exchange continued to function on outdated software lacking in controls and security features. It has been in operation with several deficiencies for the past 20 years," said Shankar Narayan, principal accountant general during the customary annual press briefing. Lack of input controls and validation checks resulted in awarding of higher seniority to 9.31 lakh candidates, duplication in respect of 1.28 lakh candidates and incomplete data regarding the qualifications of 2.07 lakh candidates, the report said.

The system was also wanting in manual and system input controls resulting in a database with erroneous data. For instance, the DOS-based Fox BASE DBMS used for storage and management of data in employment exchanges were not Y2K compliant. As a result, 3,245 dates falling between years 2000-2008 were stored in the system as dates between 1900 and 1908. This resulted in 348 candidates being considered senior-most by the system, and laborious manual intervention was needed to undo the damage, the PAG said.

Lack of documentation, training, backlog of data entry and lapsing of registration of candidates made the system database unreliable and inefficient. The decentralised, unlinked district-level database was unable to handle interdistrict transfer of registrations efficiently, failing to render state-level data when required, he said emphasising that manual interventions gave scope for manipulation.

The state employment department has agreed to use new software to rectify the anomalies, Narayan said, explaining that the government had agreed to take corrective measures based on CAG reports.

SMARTER STREETLIGHTS PLANNED FOR GAMES
New Delhi
Hindustan Times (Delhi edition)

Buoyed by the success of its pilot project on Simon Bolivar Marg in central Delhi, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will now replace the existing streetlights on 67 roads with new, energy-efficient lights. The Rs 34.4 crore project is part of the civic agency's larger plan of improving street-lighting in the NDMC area in view of the upcoming Commonwealth Games.

The project will also be linked to GSM technology, something that the NDMC calls SCADA – System Control And Data Acquisition – that will enable them to control the switching on and off of any streetlight through a centralized command. This will also help them repair the faulty poles in a much efficient manner. The existing lights, officials say, could be relocated to smaller colonies and parks.