E-Governance: 9/9/09

UID TO EMPOWER THE POOR: NILEKANI
Subir Roy, Bangalore
Business Standard

The head of the Unique Identification Authority says it’s a number, not a card, and the number walks with you. Nearly two months into his new job as the head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Nandan Nilekani says the real beneficiary of the project will be the poor who have no identity at present.

“The UID project is really for the huge number of people who are outside the system. For the poor, this is a huge benefit because they have no identity, no birth certificates, degree certificates, driver’s license, passport no, address. There are 75 million homeless people in this country, 75 million tribals. So if we are able to help them get the number then we can actually empower them,” Nilekani says.

He is in a hurry because “the next 12-18 months are very critical in getting this project off the ground,” by when the first set of identity numbers will be issued. If all goes well, five years from now the UID database will cover a few hundred million people. Several countries have card or number systems for their citizens but not on the scale contemplated in India — a billion people in one database with biometric information.

The former head of Infosys, which has a head count of over 100,000 right now, leads a team of three — four if you add a PA — from out of its temporary home at the Planning Commission. The project, which aims to give every Indian resident a unique identification number, could have a headcount of a few hundred at its peak.

He describes his journey from India’s seat of IT power to the seat of political power as “Bangalore meets Delhi” with a laugh and then adds with all seriousness, “I am hoping to blend in the (UID) project the best of both worlds.”

One way he is doing this is through his time management. It has both changed and not changed.

Nilekani and his team have till now been engaged in is going out and meeting everyone. They have met a large number of government departments across the board – finance, home, labour, rural development ministries. They have also announced a big collaboration with NREGA to roll out UIDs.

As and when the staff comes on board, they will reflect this amalgam of Bangalore and Delhi. “We want to have both young and experienced people. We want a nice blend of top talent, some from the government because this project needs a lot of government experience. We are actually talking about changing government processes in many areas like NREGA and PDS. And we will have top talent from outside – technology, legal, marketing.”

There are only a few staffers currently, hence a lot of others are pitching in with ideas and support. So, “whatever we can do we have been doing, sort of brainstormed and coming out with the first approach to how we will do this project.” This approach was shared with the prime minister’s council for the UID authority and “in principle they have approved it.”

The UID authority will issue a number, not a card. It will run a central database, which will have one entry or record for every person resident in India. Every entry will contain information on demographics like name, address, date of birth, plus some information, that acts as the person’s biometric identifier.

“Think of it as a depository of names, as opposed to a depository of stocks,” says Nilekani. The authority will work with multiple partners like NREGA, income tax, passport, banks, insurance companies, LPG dealers – all those who deal with Indian residents, providing goods and services.

The partners will both act as enrollers for the data base and use it for verification in the course of their day-to-day work. When somebody comes to a partner for a particular service and does not have a UID, the partner will enroll that person through its channel. Then once the database starts filling up, you can do authentication anywhere in the country online, real time. The response time will be a few seconds.

“It’s a number (not a card) and the number walks with you,” explains Nilekani. For biometric identification it will include a person’s fingers and face and other details. What is yet to be decided is if six or eight or 10 fingers will be used for identification.

The big challenge is enrollment, getting all the people on board. Once they are in, the number of changes is relatively much less. Then it becomes more of an authentication database. There are no transactions or profiling attributes in this database. It doesn’t identify rich, poor, religion or caste. It is also not an open database, as there are a lot of privacy issues involved. It will only be used for verification.

There are a few things that the UID chief will just not talk about. One of them is what kind of opportunity the project represents for the Indian IT industry. The Rs 120 crore initial budget for the project has to be seen in context. The expenditure on it will be distributed among the authority and its partners. They will invest in the enrolling process, as they will benefit from doing so. If a social programme can improve it’s targeting through this database, if businesses can do things more efficiently or cheaply, then the expenditure will make sense. “There will be a spend across the system, not necessarily all by us.”

ORISSA PLANS E-FILING OF RETURNS FOR TRADERS
Kolkata/ Bhubaneswar
Business Standard

The Orissa government plans to introduce e-filing of returns and e-payment of tax for the dealers in the state. The commercial tax department will hold discussion with the state Information Technology (IT) department for implementing the plan.

The new system is proposed to be implemented over next 6 months and will enable dealers to file returns and pay taxes from their offices, state finance minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadai said.

CHALLENGES BEFORE UIDAI
Mint

Mapping the identities of a billion-plus persons in a single nation is a big task by any definition. On that count alone, the challenges the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) faces are unique. If and when UIDAI manages to fulfill its mandate, it will be a marvel to technology and ingenuity.

First and foremost are the technological challenges. The sheer scale of the project is huge. Consider some basic facts. Storing 10 fingerprints requires around 5 megabytes (Mb) of space. Storing that information for a billion-plus persons will require 5 billion Mb of memory space. While that may no longer be an unimaginable number, given our IT prowess, maintaining and running such a database has its own challenges. Then, there is the question of using the system. It has been estimated that at its peak, the UIDAI system will require comparing one million identity verification requests against a database of, say, 600 million identities. That will require a brute and gargantuan computing capability.

Those, however, are the easier problems, as they do not involve interfacing with institutional users. The first problem is that UIDAI is a demand-driven project. If some government agency, say, a state government implementing the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), does not want to use the system (for political reasons to give an example), there is little UIDAI can do. Given the scale of the Centre’s programmes and schemes (NREGS is only one example), it makes sense to use an identity verification system. This can go a long way in ensuring that benefits do not go to those for whom they are not meant. Leakages based on identity are a common feature of all such schemes.

That is where the resistance to the project is bound to occur. At the level of Union government and its agencies, cooperation has been assured to UIDAI. It is possible that this will not be forthcoming at the state and local levels. That is because at the lower levels of government, politics is geared on leaking benefits to those for whom they are not meant. The routine leakage of rations meant for below poverty line families is well known. UIDAI is sure to run foul of this politics.

There is, however, a silver lining. If the project takes off quickly and the Union government provides it steady financial, administrative and political support, it may overcome such resistance as opposition to it is scattered and not politically organized. It is a situation not different from what economic reforms encountered before they ran into the Left.

ROAD MAP CHARTS OUT WAYS FOR RAILWAYS TO CHUG ON
Sajan C Kumar, Chennai
The Financial Express

In order to be more competitive and attain greater commercialisation, the railways needs to create a fixed base operator for parcel business, develop an IT strategy, improve on efficiency in production units, sheds and workshops. These forms part of an exclusive technical assistance report, prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, together with the Asian Development Bank.

The report also recommends a small-grant programme to support initiatives by individual employees within the railways and promoting and developing academic and research institutions.

Parcel business in the railways currently falls under coaching services. The railways has taken initiatives in divesting functional responsibilities like marketing, booking and dealing with retail customers on issues regarding parcel business, with the leasing out of parcel vans to contractors. These contractors pay a bulk amount to the railways, which in turn, book parcels from retail customers. However, it has been seen that the focus of the railways has not been adequate. “There is a need to provide specialised marketing efforts, customer-friendly policies, tie-ups with large courier/ parcel companies and state-of-the-art booking and tracking services. Indian Railways can also analyse the feasibility of having separate parcel trains if there is adequate business. Parcel business, currently a part of coaching services, loses the focus of the railways”, said the report.

The approach paper on the 11th Plan has also identified parcel business as a good business opportunity and has proposed an investment of about Rs 100 crore per annum in infrastructure to develop parcel terminals and vans. The projections indicate doubling of the volumes and a five-fold increase in revenues (from Rs 650 crore to Rs 3,000 crore) during the 11th Plan. A study to recommend the upgrade of parcel business as a separate FBO is already underway in the railways. “The consultants should study the entire sector and railways’ opportunities in detail and come out with clear recommendations”, the report added.

In order to consolidate efforts, the report has recommended the development of an IT strategy, which would chart out the vision of computerisation in the next 10-15 years and identify important operations, which will be IT-enabled. This would help all departments to focus their energies in one direction, rather than doing things on their own. The IT strategy document could also assist in monitoring the progress of computerisation over the years. “The time is ripe for the railways to focus on computerisation of internal processes such as accounting, costing and fixed asset management”.

NOW, SCHOOL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT GOES ONLINE
Bhopal
The Pioneer

In order to achieve the objective and ensure smooth automation of various processes and to facilitate the teachers an online portal has been introduced by the School Education Department. Now, all the details of teachers Service Book will be available online. Designed in technical collaboration with NIC, the department is defining the new parameters of e-governance.

The educational portal will facilitate online automation of Service Books of about 3.50 lakh teachers and employees of Tribal Department. Facilitation of online service books of teachers will ensure transparency, analysis and immediate redressal of their problems. Moreover, the department will develop a Human Resource Management, Information System (HRMIS) to follow up and for implementation of administrative and academic activities.

Online services will avail submission and redressal of grievances of the staff, timely and online follow up of various shortcomings related to teachers, promotion, transfers, legal matters etc. During teachers training session online entries will be fed in the education portal with the help of technical associates.

The teachers to feed their personal information and data have to log on to the url http://demo.mp.nic.in/educationportal. Now, under teachers corner the heading “Personal Information” click “Service Book” and enter their personal details.

CENTRE PLANS RS 28K-CR IT PROJECT
Mukesh Ranjan, New Delhi
The Asian Age

Catalysing Information Technology (IT) knowledge to reach to the grass-root level in the country, the Centre is working out a massive programme worth Rs 28,000 crore in the name of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who is considered to be pioneer in introducing IT in the country.

Sources in the government confirmed that the UPA-II has decided to establish computer knowledge centres -- Rajiv Gandhi Bharat Nirman Seva Kendras -with fully IT-enabled e-governance system in each panchayat in the country. The programme, which will be rolled out in three years, is being worked out under the stewardship of rural development and panchayti raj minister C.P. Joshi.

To have such centres in the country soon, Joshi, while speaking at an NREGA function on July 20 to mark Late Rajiv Gandhi's birthday, had dwelt on the need for IT-enabled services at panchayat level for effective and corruption free implementation of rural development schemes.