E-Governance News: 31/12/09

STATE TO START ONLINE PAYMENT FOR ELECTRICITY BILLS
Kolkata/Bhubaneswar
Business Standard

The Orissa government will introduce online payment system for the payment of electricity bills in the state from 1 January 2010. It will be the first state in the country to introduce such a system across the state, sources said.

Though states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have introduced such a system for electricity consumers in the urban areas, the neighbouring West Bengal has introduced this system for the rural consumers in a restricted way.

The power distribution companies in Orissa namely Wesco, Nesco, Southco and CESU are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Orissa Computer Application Centre (OCAC) in this regard soon.

Sources said, the citizen centric gateway ‘Orissa online’ developed by OCAC would be utilised for rendering this service. It would act as the technical platform for online payment of electricity bills.

Under the plan, both the power distribution companies and the Common Service Centres (CSCs) will be connected with ‘OCAC’ gateway after signing of the MoU.

It will be launched in more than 4000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) which have been made operational in various locations of the state.

While the power distribution companies were not able to collect electricity bills from every nook and corner of the state earlier, the proposed system will facilitate payment of electricity bills at the nearest CSCs. “Though the system will facilitate online payment of electricity bills, this will have far reaching impact on the total energy management”, an official associated with the process said.

CENTRE USHERS IN NEW ELECTRONIC SERVICE DELIVERY
Subrahmanyan Viswanath, Bangalore
Deccan Herald

Taking a further step towards e-governance and a paperless mode of service delivery, the Centre, has called upon states to usher in Electronics Service Delivery (ESD) system in the country and set in motion the process through necessary gazette notification.

Official sources said that the Centre has issued necessary guidelines for ESD regime after amending the Information Technology Act 2008, under Section 6A of the said IT Act. The draft rules called Information Technology (Electronic Service Delivery) Rules 2009, the Centre, notes shall extend to the entire country and State governments adopt them or notify the same immediately in their Official Gazette.

The ESD will cover delivery of public services of receipt of forms and applications, issue or grant of any license, permit, certificate, sanction or approval. It also entails receipt or payment of money by electronics means or any such public service. The states can appoint an authorised agent or service provider with an electronically enabled kiosk or front office, to deliver public services to the users. They can use cell phone, personal digital assistant or a combination of both to communicate, send or transmit text, video, audio or image and authenticated through electronic signature/electronic signature certificate.

The state governments, says the Centre, may prescribe the form and the manner in which license, permit, certificate, approval or receipt of payment or any other such public service can be delivered under the ESD system. The license, permit, certificate, sanction, payment receipt or approval, will have a unique identification number given by the appropriate authority which can be used to verify its authenticity and content. These will also have a bar code for the same purpose, sources said.

 

APPLICATIONS SOUGHT FOR KERALA E-GOVERNANCE AWARDS
Thiruvananthapuram
The Hindu Business Line

The Kerala Government has invited applications for the second batch of e-Governance Awards 2009, after honouring the previous year's winners at a function held here recently.

Nominations have been invited for two sections: e-governance models in departments/government organisations and e-governance leaders.

Various sub-categories under best models in departments/government are best Web site; maximum utilisation of Akshaya e-centres; m-governance; best Web-enabled payment service; best citizen's services; and e-learning and local lingual content development.

The jury for 2009 nominations comprises V. Ramachandran, Member, Second Administrative Reform Commission and former vice-chairman, State Planning Board; Anand Parthasarathy, IT Consultant and Managing Director, Online India Tech; Dr Debashis Chatterjee, Director, IIM-Kozhikode; T. P. Srinivasan, former diplomat and Director-General, Kerala International Centre, Thiruvananthapuram; and Dr Ajay Kumar, Principal Secretary (IT), Kerala, and Director, Institute of Management in Governent .

NILEKANI, BANKERS MEET TO DISCUSS FINANCIAL INCLUSION
Mumbai
The Financial Express 

Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) has organised a meeting between banks and telecom companies to discuss issues to leverage the unique identity (UID) project for the banks’ financial inclusion programme. Nandan Nilekani, chairman, Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), would also participate in the meeting.

In a bid to expedite the financial inclusion programme in the country, banks are relying on business correspondent (BC) model. First, they want to arrive at broad standards for micro ATM enabled BC model network and achieve the standardisation of the ATM specification. Banks want to leverage the mobile phone technology to fit into the BC model as mobile phones are fast becoming the ubiquitous phenomenon in the country.

The government has already formed an empowered group of ministers, headed by Prime Minister to move the project on a fast track. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the IBA are closely involved in achieving financial inclusion through UIDAI. Towards this IBA is working on combining the UID project with that of the financial inclusion project of the banks and through this process, both banks and UID will be mutually benefited.

For the UID project, the unique identification numbers can be allotted to the individuals with the help of the banks and in the process banks can open as many accounts as possible for the persons allotted the number. This process will eventually help banks achieve financial inclusion.

 

E-GOVERNANCE TO MERGE RTO, TRAFFIC
Bangalore
The Times of India

Technology has solutions for everything. As a testimony to this, the Institute of Engineers has come up with a vast array of technical support, which will add to effective governance. Extending its services to the state government, the institute has come forward with a number of initiatives and projects, which will incorporate technology for the betterment of the system.

Making a presentation on the e-governance project on Tuesday, M N Vidyashankar IAS, principal secretary, department of e-governance, brought to light a number of effective technical steps that can be employed for the betterment of the existing system.

About the introduction of BlackBerries into traffic policing and its advantages, Vidyashankar said: “The revenue generation has gone up to Rs 30 crore, all thanks to technology. Efforts are being made to integrate the databases of RTO and traffic police for better and convenient access.” He said the project will be completed in the next 8-10 months.

Counting on the effective work being done in the state towards technical advancements, Vidyashankar cited the example of over 5.8 lakh employees of the state government who are using the system currently. He also elaborated on other projects like UID, rural BPOs, e-services on wheels as well as BPOs for physically challenged and widows.

RAIL E-TICKET FOR ARMED FORCES
New Delhi
The Hindu

Armed forces personnel in the country will now have the convenience of booking and printing e-tickets through the IRCTC website, with the launch of a pilot project at 20 unit locations across the country.

Vice-Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. P.C. Bhardwaj launched the pilot project. Being implemented by the Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA), the project will enable automatic generation of all accounting, payment and financial reports.

General Bhardwaj said that the new system would cut tedious paperwork and introduce seamless processing in one stroke. He hoped that the ‘PCDA [Principal Controller of Defence Accounts] Travel System’ will slowly make the Passenger Reservation System (PRS) irrelevant and become a precursor to automation and better management.

 

E-Governance: 30/12/09

GOVT WEBSITES TO CONFORM WITH GLOBAL NET STANDARDS
Margao
The Times of India

In a bid to boost e-governance and enhance uniformity, usability and functionality of government websites in the state, the department of information technology has made 56 government websites to conform to the standards incorporated in the guidelines for Indian government websites as mandated by the World Wide Web Consortium (WWWC).

The guidelines incorporated in the central secretariat manual of office procedure (CSMOP) were ratified by the government few months ago.

Confirming the same, director of information technology Pravin Chandelkar told TOI on Tuesday that efforts are on to get all government websites in the state to strictly adhere to the guidelines prescribing procedures for the management of government websites.

"The exercise is taking long as the IT department has been handling the task of approaching various departments and helping them technically with loading of contents. The task becomes a bit difficult as many departments do not have citizens' charters while a lot many have not made their presence felt on cyberspace," he said.

E-Governance Updates: 29/12/09

PANEL PROPOSES FDI HIKE IN DEFENCE SECTOR TO 49%
Josy Joseph, New Delhi
DNA

A high-level committee looking into defence expenditure has recommended a host of sweeping reforms, including a hike in the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in the defence sector to 49% and divestment of defence public sector units (PSUs).

The committee has also recommended extensive use of information and communication technologies in the defence procurement process. "All contemporary armed forces and controlling ministries have adopted IT for network-centric operations and e-governance.

However, the Indian MoD and armed forces continue with their laborious, manual and paper-based transaction," the report says.

 

FIRST SMART CARDS BATCH TO BENEFIT 50,000 PEOPLE
Chandigarh
Hindustan Times (Chandigarh edition)

Smart Cards for the Public Distribution System (PDS) in city will now be a reality. HCL Infosystems has been assigned work of smart cards in city, which will benefit 50,000 families in the first batch by March 31.

Under a pilot scheme announced many months back, ration cards in Chandigarh will be replaced by modern smart cards to allow only genuine people to buy subsidised food grains.

 

UIDAI ENSURES UNIQUE ID ISN’T CRACKED BY ENTERPRISING FRAUDS
Subrahmanyan Viswanath, Bangalore
Deccan Herald

Those at the helm of the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) are preparing ways and means to beat your cheating, lying ways.

In the works is a slew of measures that would plug systemic loopholes which cheats, criminals and sundry others had hitherto been taking to grease their way into possessing dual identities, be it multiple passports, ration cards, credit cards and PAC cards. In other words, the UIDAI is attempting what no other authority in Indian governance has tried before: the road to obtaining an ID cannot be paved by cheating or bribing.

Once the Unique Identity (UID) number regime is firmly in place, it will become very difficult to duck the system and sneak in by employing ‘other’ means.

The consequences of attempting to defraud the system could prove disastrous for the adventurous and may even put the person in peril.

The UIDAI objective will be met by the underlying principle –“you are who you say you are.”

In fact, it will be the litmus test of the system’s reliability, for the UIDAI will not be issuing a card, which can be easily tampered with. The UIDAI will only issue an UID, according to a confidential paper accessed by Deccan Herald, and will not contain intelligence as, it observes, loading intelligence into identity numbers makes them suspectible to fraud and theft.

A typical UID will be a random number.

The Central ID Data Repository (CIDR) will perform a search on key demographic fields and biometrics for each new enrolment to ensure no duplicates exist.

The UID system is automatically aligned as a self-cleaning mechanism. The CIDR will only hold minimum information required to identify the resident and ensure no duplicates.

These will include a UID number which will be numeric and unique for all 1.2 billion Indians. It will only contain identity fields like name, date of birth, place of birth, gender, parents’ names and respective UIDs, address (permanent and present), expiry date, photograph and finger prints.

The biometric sub-system will have in-built response mechanisms in place to detect when an individual deliberately impersonates someone else, either real or fictitious. Since CIDR will store biometrics of residents, identity frauds will be easier to control.

Playing out different potential fraud scenarios, the authority says, it will not share resident data as it envisions a balance between “privacy and purpose” when it comes to information on residents.

As a result no one will have access to information in the UID database. The authority will simply answer requests to authenticate a person’s identity only through a Yes/No response.

Stating that it will offer robust and resilient form of online authentication in which agencies can compare demographic and biometric information of residents with the record stored in the central database, the document notes that technology will undergird the UIDAI system to ensure security and safety of information.

Incidentally, the authority, which plans to purchase fingerprint scanners, dual iris and face capture devices, live scan fingerprint equipments with their associated software, as a precursor to this, has invited manufacturers and authorised agents to submit bids for supply of biometric and fingerprint devices.