E-Governance Updates: 13/7/09

SPEED POST POSTMEN TO FLAUNT DIGITAL HANDSETS SOON
D Govardan, Chennai, July 13, 2009
Financial Chronicle

The next time your friendly neighbourhood postman from the Speed Post knocks at the door, do not be surprised if he flaunts a PDA (personal digital assistant) handheld device to record the delivery. As per the Indian Postal department’s plans, he may soon be multi-tasking, rather than merely delivering you the ubiquitous letter.

The process of providing the postmen in-charge of handling Speed Post documents with PDA handsets has started in right earnest. The Maharashtra circle kick-started the process by calling in tenders in March this year and the commercial bids were opened on May 22, 2009.

A Chennai-based company, eLogistics has emerged the L1 in the bid to deploy 3,000 PDA handsets. While 12 bidders were said to have participated, six of them were short-listed for the technical bid and four qualified for the commercial bid level.

The postal department is keen to increase the role of the postman, till now the pointsman for delivery of posts and money-orders. Besides plans for selling postal stamps and other services of the department, he may soon be using the PDA handset to register the receiver’s signature of registered posts.

In minutes, this will be uploaded to the central server, which will enable a sender as far away in the US to check the deliver status online.

The Maharashtra circle of the postal department will be the first one to implement this and it will cover both Maharashtra and Goa.

Following the initiative by the Maharashtra circle, the Delhi and Chennai circles have followed suit and have initiated the tender process to implement this PDA initiative.

“The plan is to cover around 45,000 postmen all over the country handling the Speed Post documents initially. The tasks to be undertaken by the postmen will increase going forward to bring in complete transparency in terms of delivery,” an official with the department of posts in Chennai said.

 

GOVT TO CONNECT MAJOR EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGES
New Delhi, July 13, 2009
The Pioneer

The Centre has decided to list all information on job opportunities in Government departments and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) on Internet by inter-linking major employment exchanges across the country.

"The computerisation process of major employment exchanges of the country is on and will be completed in the next three months.

"Once this is done, all information about job opportunities and those listed in the exchange will be available on a website," Union Minister of Labour and Employment, Mallikarjun Kharge said.

This could be a boon for job seekers as the proposed 'national portal' will make all employment-related services available on a single window.

"The web portal would be a storehouse of information on availability and requirement of skilled persons and would also network with industrial training institutes and other centres," a senior official of the Ministry said.

Modernisation of employment exchanges across the country will help students register online and reach out to any exchange in the country.

The National e-Governance Plan had identified employment exchanges as one of the Mission Mode Projects.

The modernisation move will also enable real-time usage of online data submitted by employers for providing opportunities to job seekers, the official said.

 

NEW PG DIPLOMA IN E-GOV LAUNCHED
Chennai/Kochi, July 13, 2009
Business Standard

The Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala, and the Institute of Management in Government (IMG) have jointly launched a postgraduate (PG) diploma course in e-governance, a first-of-its-kind initiative by any state government in the country to promote a career in this space.

The two institutes have developed the course for capacity building at the individual level to create a good number of trained professional to manage e-governance projects of the government. The focus of the course is on e-governance through developing foundations in IT, management, government process, re-engineering and change management and has been designed in line with the recommendations of the Administrative Reforms Commission for promoting e-governance.

In order to help the participants align with the outcome of the course with their areas of interest, the classroom sessions have been divided into core courses and elective courses.

 

DELHI AIRPORT INTRODUCES INTERACTIVE MAP SERVICES ONLINE
New Delhi, July 13, 2009
The Hindu Business Line

Flying down to Delhi and worried about reaching your destination from the airport? Don't fret as help is just a click away.

The website of the Indira Gandhi International Airport has now added an interactive and highly detailed 'Google Maps' service that provides precise road directions guiding a visitor to his destination along with the distance and time taken to and from the airport.

"The interactive map, provided by the internet major Google, not only provides visitors the information about road directions to and from the airport to their destinations but also the distance," a senior official of airport operator, Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), said.

As one visits the website 'www.newdelhiairport.in' and clicks the 'IGI Airport Interactive Map' tab in the 'Passenger Info section', the page leads to a window which shows the location of the airport in relevance to the city.

If a visitor wants to go to 'NOIDA sector 29' and types the same in the dialog box, he would get the directions leading from the Airport to Dhaula Kuan, Ring Road and then across the Toll bridge into Noida.

The system also provides turn-by-turn directions along with the distances and the approximate time to reach the destination. The mapping system not only works within the National Capital Region (NCR) but also from any other city of the country to the airport here.

"This is highly useful for those from other cities who may not be familiar with the way to the airport while driving in from their places," the official said.

E-Governance Update: 9/7/09

BATTLE FOR MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR E-GOVERNANCE PROJECTS HOTS UP
Leslie D'Monte, New Delhi
Business Standard

The battle over standards for the multi-billion dollar e-governance projects is once again hotting up. IT majors like IBM, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat have shot letters to industry bodies — Nasscom (for software) and MAIT (for hardware) — and the Department of Information Technology (DIT), protesting over the inclusion of clauses which allow for ‘multiple standards’ and ‘royalty on software’ versus a ‘single’ standard and ‘free’ software.

At the second meeting of the apex body on standards for e-governance held on June 17 this year, all the members approved Unicode 5.1.0 as a standard for e-governance applications for all 22 Indian languages (except Kashmiri). They also approved the Open Type Font as a mandatory standard for e-governance applications. With regard to metadata (name, age, sex, etc. for land records and the like) and data standards, too, there was a consensus.

However, it was on the draft policy on ‘Open Standards’ that the differences emerged. While Nasscom presented that ‘multiple’ standards should be allowed, Secretary DIT, R Chandrasekhar, himself pointed out that “complete interoperability could possibly be achieved through single standard.” However, he added that the “…possibility of ensuring the same through multiple standards can also be considered in consultation with Industry.”

Nasscom and MAIT were to get back with industry feedback on this subject by July 7-8 which they did. But players like IBM and Sun are not happy. Insisting that they do not subscribe to Nasscom’s views on the subject, they have put on record that they were not consulted by the software body before it presented its view to the government.

“Sun Microsystems believes the Draft Policy on e-Governance Standards, ver 2.0 is an extremely well drafted policy evolved by the government and the policy will help save valuable tax payer’s money from being wasted and in creating sustainable e-governance assets...Specifically, we believe that adopting multiple standards in any way will greatly damage the critical e-governance infrastructure of the country and would also increase its vulnerability. We also believe that adopting standards that are not Royalty free will compromise the technological sovereignty of the nation....Sun Microsystems was not consulted by Nasscom before presenting its view on the Draft Policy on e-Governance standards,” stated Jaijit Bhattacharya, country director, Government Strategy (Asia South and India), Sun Microsystems India, in a letter addressed to Nasscom President Som Mittal.

Ashish Gautam, country leader (open standards), IBM India, confirmed the same and said: “We have written to the DIT, expressing our concern on these suggestions.”

Venkatesh Hariharan, corporate affairs director, Red Hat, too, asserted that his company was not consulted, adding: “...We do not support the recommendations of Nasscom...since standards should belong to humanity and not be controlled or owned by anyone. In the physical world, we do not pay for using standards like weights and measures...In order to protect India’s digital sovereignty, we must ensure that national data is stored in formats that are open and free of all encumbrances like royalties, patent claims etc. The government is the custodian of data that belongs to the citizens of India. It must therefore ensure that this data is not stored in formats that are owned and controlled by anyone.”

Vinnie Mehta, executive director, MAIT, when contacted, said: “We are in the process of consulting our members, and will soon come up with a well thought-out stance.” The e-governance apex committee is expected to meet shortly.

Incidentally, there has never been a more intense global industry debate over ‘open standards’. On the one hand is Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) file format backed by Apple, Novell, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, and Nasscom. On the other is the Open Document Format (ODF), supported by the likes of IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Google, the Department of Information Technology (DIT), National Informatics Centre (NIC), CDAC, IIT-Mumbai and IIM-Ahmedabad.

PLAN PANEL APPROVES RS 2,000 CR CYBER NETWORK PROJECT
New Delhi
The Times of India

As many as 14,000 police stations and more than 6,200 important government offices across the country will soon be connected through a cyber network. The aim of the Rs 2,000 crore three-year project is to improve connectivity and increase the crime fighting abilities of the police and other official agencies.

The project, called the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems, was approved by the Planning Commission on Wednesday.

The ambitious scheme also proposes to link passport offices and immigration counters which would ensure that criminals trying to flee the country are not able to do so.

Under the scheme, all courts will also linked so that police offices at all levels get details of cases and take appropriate action. The home ministry is hopeful that once all the courts are connected, the number of pending cases will come down.

The ambitious scheme also proposes to link National Crime Records Bureau with state bureaus to facilitate better planning to handle rising crime.

For 2009-10, the government has set a target of covering 10% police stations and other major offices. The remaining 90% would be covered by 2010-11.

The project aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of policing at the police station level through adoption of e-governance, and creation of a nationwide networked infrastructure for an IT-enabled state-of-the-art tracking system for investigation of crime and detection of criminals in real time.

CYBER LAB TO E-TRAIN COPS
Kolkata
The Times of India

The crimes, they are a-changing. In this age of information technology, crooks have new tools in their kitty: the computer and the internet. Whether it was the 26/11 attacks, a bank robbery in Kolkata or terror mails threatening to attack parts of Salt Lake, cyber crime has become a major menace. Sadly, the expertise of most of the state and city police is nothing to write home about. But that could soon change, with plans to set up a cyber lab in the city.

The cyber lab, for which Kolkata Police is tying up with Nasscom and Data Security Council of India (DSCI), is being set up with the objective to improving skills of law-enforcing agency personnel, though not necessarily only those related to cyber crime.

Kolkata Police authorities are already in talks with Nasscom. On Friday, Nasscom officials took a look at spaces available at Lalbazar to examine if the lab could be set up there. The lab, expected to come up over 1,000 sq ft, is going to be the fifth one in the country after Pune, Thane, Mumbai and Bangalore. The Kolkata cyber lab will also be the headquarters for the eastern region of the country, and is the first lab in the region.

Pratap Reddy, advisor and director, cyber security, Nasscom, said that there will be faculty at the lab who could help police identify and understand crimes through technological support. Reddy was in the city a month back and spoke to the DG and the police commissioner on the project. He said the industry body could help facilitate the technology to the police faster by bringing in the expertise that it already has.

The idea is to train law-enforcement personnel and the prosecution for understanding the technological aspects and their use in crimes. At a later stage, a request would also be made to the judiciary to avail the training, said an official.

The training will include both preliminary and advanced courses including computer data fundamentals, introduction to cyber crime, investigation of e-mails, the internet, cellphone investigation, disc encryption, case documentation and how to present cases well before the court, forensic investigation, advanced cyber forensic course, and hands-on training for cyber investigators.

It will also offer support to the existing cyber cell of the city police, which actually handles cases. "That forms a very essential part of the training," said Suparno Moitro of Nasscom.

COMPUTER-SAVVY STAFF ENSURE SMOOTH E-GOVERNANCE
Udupi
The Times of India

The paperless office system, incorporated at the DC's office here as part of the advanced e-governance, is going strong with the support of the staff who have ensured they are now computer-savvy. This system is claimed to be the first of its kind in the entire state.

The paperless office, the brainchild of the then V Ponnuraj, was initiated at the DC office in April 2007. Ponnuraj, the present DC of Dakshina Kannada (DK) district has replicated the same system, a much improved version recently in the neighbouring district. However, the system has not become complete in both Udupi and DK yet, as public cannot submit their papers online, and can only see the position of their file through the existing system.

A Manjunath, head of the Udupi centre of National Informatics Centre, who is the technical chief and advisor, is responsible (technical) for the complete implementation of the Paperless Office (e-governance) at the DC office in Udupi. Manjunath told TOI: "Since April 2007, after the introduction of this system, till date 63,856 inward files have been processed through this system and later converted (reduced) into over 30,000 files for processing." Manjunath however, was not sure how many files have been exactly cleared, as it is processed at various sections in the same office, sometime at the higher level and others go outside the DC office for clearance by higher authorities. Roughly over 30% of the total files might have been cleared through the system, he said.

E-HEALTH ENHANCES QUALITY OF HEALTHCARE
Allahabad
The Times of India

e-health enhances in several ways the quality of healthcare provided by the health professionals therefore patients should be made aware of its potential benefits.

These views were expressed by MD Tiwari, director, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-A) while inaugurating the five-day summer school on ‘e health care' here on Wednesday.

Tiwari said that the ministry of communications and information technology (MCIT) has set up the north zone resource centre at IIIT-A for generating contents, mentors, teachers and knowledge workers by conducting short term HRD courses for IT/IT enabled services sectors. "The institute, thus has identified has 20 areas to develop the e content. E health is one of them where the institute has started working to prepare e content", added the director.



BS Bedi, former senior director, medical electronics and telemedicine division, DIT, MCIT, New Delhi considered a pioneer of telemedicine division, said that a large number of hospitals were helped by him to zero on the best medical electronics equipments available at the global level. He provided an overall perspective of the current and future medical electronics and telemedicine services in India. E-health makes the health system more patient-oriented. Telemedicine is particularly relevant for those who suffer from chronic diseases and those who live in areas where the facilities of healthcare are limited.

Prof R C Tripathi, Convener of the Summer School said that penetration of internet in the masses was growing at a faster rate. E-Healthcare services were competing through desktops and through mobiles. "Globally, people are gaining progressively enhanced awareness about best treatment centres experts, service providers etc in the world and how their services could be utilised remotely through telemedicine. This is soon to become a tough competition for each of them. The summer school would prepare participants to understand and gain from this new development occurring globally" , he added. Dr Anurika Vaish, Head MBA/ MSCLIS Division proposing vote of thanks at the inaugural session said that E-health was useful to make diagnostics since it could connect different health professionals, regardless of their place of residence.