BABUS LUKEWARM ON TAKING UP UID POSTINGS
Prabhjot Singh,
The Tribune
That the country’s senior bureaucrats do not appear to have been infatuated by the formation of the Unique Identification Database (UID) Authority of India is evident by the fact that not many of them are willing to take up UID assignments even after several missives sent to chief secretaries of various states and UTs.
Despite the appointment of IT czar Nandan Nilekani as the body’s chairman in the rank of cabinet minister and Jharkhand IAS officer Ram Sewak Sharma as its member secretary, besides a budgetary provision of Rs 120 crore for the project, the personnel ministry has virtually drawn a blank from the states and union territories.
IT'S NEW LIFE FOR ME, SAYS
The Indian Express
IT icon Nandan Nilekani, handpicked by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to create a national database of identity details of citizens, feels he is beginning a "new life" and the world around him would be different from what it used to be in Infosys.
Nilekani, whose appointment marks induction of a competent corporate professional into a Cabinet rank post, said the assignment will be full of challenges as it will require him to interface with a large number of people in the government circle.
"It is a new life for me," he said when asked whether he would miss Infosys, a company he had co-founded 28 years ago along with N R Narayana Murthy, now chief mentor of the IT giant.
Asked how he will cope up with the multi-layered decision making process in the government circle, Nilekani, who resigned from Infosys to lead the newly created Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI) said he knew it would be a different world.
"I certainly think it is a different world," the 54-year-old IT expert said expressing confidence that his friend Ram Sevak Sharma who takes over as Secretary and CEO of UIAI will help him navigate the Government system.
PRINTING SOLUTION COS KEEN TO TAP E-GOV BIZ
Swetha Kannan,
The Hindu Business Line
As e-governance initiatives across the country gather steam, printing solutions companies are witnessing an increase in business from the Government.
Whether it is to print birth certificate in a city or digitise land records in a village, Government agencies are increasingly using digital technology from basic hardware to multi-function machines, which integrate the copier, printer and scanner into one unit.
“There is a shift in Government mindset towards offering citizens the best of information services. The Government wants to modernise itself, adopt best practices and be more efficient. It is investing even in tier 2 and 3 towns on machines. The priority growth areas for us are power, education and health services,” says Alok Bharadwaj, Senior Vice-President, Canon
Canon, which works both with the Central and State Governments, supplies printing equipment ranging from Rs 45,000 to Rs 6 lakh. It has appointed ‘special government managers’ in
Government contracts contribute 25 percent of Canon’s revenues from all its businesses. In the printing and copier category (which accounts for 50 percent of Canon’s business), half of the revenues come from the Government.
Canon’s business from the Government sector has been growing consistently over the years. In the last three calendar years, revenue contribution has grown from 25 percent to 33 percent to 50 percent in 2008 (at Rs 200 crore).
Xerox has also seen good traction from the Government. “About 50 percent of Xerox
As national e-governance initiatives (which are part of the Government’s Mission Mode Project) progress, increased use of printing technology is needed, says Puneet Chadha, Director, Graphics Solutions Business, HP. HP works with both State and Central Governments for printing office and election ID cards, ration cards and toll slips, and digitising old records and maps.
VOTER ID CARDS A CLICK AWAY
Mumbai, July 27, 2009
DNA
It's the same story every election. The voter turn-out in south Mumbai is rarely more than 48-50 per cent. A concerned district collector's office has now started a pilot project to bring out more SOBO voters during the forthcoming Assembly elections.
Photo ID cards, the Form 16 required as verification for the ID, and all other election-related verification material is just a click away for south Mumbai voters. "They have to log onto www.mumbaicityelection.org for details. We plan to start the pilot project from next week," Sanjay Bhagwat, deputy district Election Officer and deputy collector said.
"A voter can check details of his or her constituency, serial number, photo I-card and other material, and also apply for an I-card or a photo online. He just needs to use a webcam to upload his pictures, according to instructions issued," he added.
Once the district office receives details of the voter, it will process it and inform the voter. The voter can also verify the status of the I-card on the Internet.
In mid-July, an SMS service was started by the city collector's office. "Till now, they have received 500 messages from voters, requesting details. The office receives more and more queries from suburban voters and organisations every day," an officer from the collector's office said.
INFOSYS BAGS TEN-YEAR GOVT E-BIZ PROJECT
July 27, 2009
The Financial Express
Doing business in India is set to become easier, more convenient and investor-friendly, with the ministry of commerce & industry on Tuesday awarding the country’s second-largest software firm, Infosys Technologies a project to enable budding entrepreneurs to obtain central, state and even municipal clearances, licences and permits online.
The ten-year ‘e-biz project’ calls for the development and maintenance of a one-stop portal and is the third of 27 government mission-mode projects under an ambitious Rs 23,000-crore national e-governance plan. Infosys topped a pack of five bidders for the prestigious assignment under the department of industrial policy & promotion, the nodal central agency responsible for industry-related issues.
The e-biz project will have a pilot phase running over three years, which will cover five states—Delhi, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu—and offer 50 services. When completed in 2019, the portal will include all states and central government departments covering more than 205 g-to-b services, including the issue of licences and permits needed across a company’s business lifecycle.
“This is a path breaking initiative…This is another step towards liberalising and reforming our investor environment,” said commerce & industry minister Anand Sharma. The total cost of implementing the project would be Rs 15 crore. According to Infosys Technologies senior vice-president and head of
Once the project goes live, the company will be paid a transaction fee on a revenue-share basis with the government. Some 100 people based out of Infosys’s
MP GOVERNMENT WEBSITES SANS WEBMASTERS
Sudhir K. Singh,
The Asian Age
Madhya Pradesh on paper figures among the 10 states where e-governance has taken firm roots. Going, however, by the abject condition of the state government’s websites, this may seem a preposterous claim. The overwhelming majority of departmental websites, including key ones like home, school education, finance, social welfare haven’t been updated for several months. Information on many dates back to January 2008. Departments like fisheries and animal husbandry may even have forgotten that they have websites of their own. Their last update: 2004. The most amusing of the bunch is the police department’s site. The only thing, it is said, that is updated here is the photograph of the DGP when a new one takes over.
State additional secretary (IT) Anurag Shrivastava, the one-man industry on whom rests the responsibility of pushing MP firmly into the computer age told this newspaper that the main reason why things were bad was because most government websites were running on virtual private networks. This required a fair degree of familiarity with network operations since individual sites had to be downloaded, updated, and then uploaded back. Some had outsourced their websites, but neglected to provide the latest info. And then their were some which did not even have the funds to annually outsource the job. Hence, the failure to update for years.
Another major shortcoming, he said, was the lack of a common theme or design. This made each site seem a standalone entity. Garish colours, dead links, and scattered info were all too common. Professionally managed websites stood on three pillars: Information, interaction, and transaction. MP government sites had yet to come grips with the first.
All this, however, was set to change with recent policy guidelines for Indian government websites readied by the National Informatics Centre, Shrivastava said. Compliance would ensure a high degree of consistency and unanimity in the content, coverage and presentation. The guidelines had three broad categories: mandatory, advisory, and voluntary. Each website would be checked against these guidelines when audits for compliance were undertaken.
It would be the responsibility of every department to address and bring into compliance any non-compliant issues found in any website under their ownership.
His department, said Shrivastava, would henceforth function like a holding company for all departmental websites, each linked to a national portal.
AIDING BANDWIDTH
July 27, 2009
The Times of
Infosys Technologies Limited has announced that it has been awarded the eBiz Project by the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), ministry of commerce and industry.
The eBiz Project is among the 27 central, state and integrated Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) under the National E-Governance Plan (NEGP) of the Indian government. The scope of work under this agreement includes designing and developing the eBiz platform, establishing the support IT infrastructure and implementing, maintaining and expanding eBiz solutions and services for the next 10 years. As part of the project, Infosys will also undertake training, workshops, promotion and awareness campaigns.
PETITIONING PREZ A CLICK AWAY
The Times of
Rashtrapati Bhavan is coming closer to the common man with a little help from technology. President Pratibha Patil launched a helpline portal that will not only allow citizens to register their grievances online but track them to various ministries as well. The portal will allow people to petition the President directly.
The portal — http://helpline.rb.nic.in — promises to process petitions and direct them to relevant departments within seven working days.
E- GOVERNANCE DRIVE GETS A BABU BEATING
Ashish Sinha, New Delhi, July 27, 2009
Mail Today
An ambitious government plan to revolutionise the trundling pen- pushing procedures of the Indian bureaucracy, by aligning it with an e- enabled computer friendly regime, is facing opposition from within.
The ‘ Central Secretariat Manual of e- Office Procedure’, the first draft of which was circulated recently by the department of administrative reforms and public grievances ( DARPG), is aimed at bringing higher efficiency, transparency and accountability among government officials.
However, computer- unfriendly Indian officials wary of e- enabled changes in the working environment are opposing the move citing concerns over privacy, legality and lack of computer training.
The existing manual on office procedure lays down in great detail how a central government office should function, right from the point at which a file is created till a decision is taken at the highest echelons of the government.
Now, in line with the government’s thrust on e- governance, the DARPG’s new ‘ electronic’ version of the draft manual incorporates changes in the system so that a “ modern office environment” can be created.
Steps have been taken to improve the core spirit of the previous manual by “ incorporating procedures to support electronic environment and introducing transformational opportunities after due deliberation,” reads the objective of the draft, prepared by National Institute of Smart Government (NISG),
The draft makes far- reaching proposals. It suggests that chatting on the Net between on an issue can be a time- saving way of arriving at a decision and should be recognised as a means of “ official communication”. It also says that an exchange of SMSes between officers after sending a file from one office to another over the electronic system should be recognised as a way of acknowledging that the communication has been duly dispatched and received.
No comments:
Post a Comment