E-Governance: 25/1/10

FOR UNIQUE ID, PHOTO NO ALTERNATIVE TO FINGERPRINT
Subrahmanyan Viswanath, Bangalore, January 25, 2010
Deccan Herald

If you are expecting to see your photograph on the Unique Identity card, whenever it is issued to you, forget it. For, the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) committee on biometrics believes fingerprints would better serve as biometrics data than facial recognition systems.

The UIDAI’s perception stems from its belief that while photographs may visually testify who you are, they will not reveal your true identity because, in this day and time of digital morphing, you may not be who you say you are.

The ten-member committee, chaired by Registrar General of India (RGI) C Chandramauli, has observed in its report, accessed by Deccan Herald, that a fingerprints-based biometric system shall be the core of UIDAI’s de-duplication efforts.

Arguing that while face is the most commonly captured biometric and frequently used in manual checking, the committee has noted that stand-alone automatic facial recognition does not provide high levels of accuracy.

Therefore, fingerprinting will be at the core of vetting duplications as UIDAI goes about its task of providing unique IDs to India’s billion-strong population. The panel noted face recognition can only be used to supplement a primary biometric modality. Over 250,000 fingerprint images were sourced from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa, for this exercise. It was undertaken by a four-member fingerprint sub-committee.

According to the committee’s submission, despite the agencies involved in the exercise were different and disparate, quality of fingerprint obtained were as good as seen in developed countries providing for 99 percent accuracy in de-duplication. Nearly all images were from rural regions and were collected by different agencies using different capture devices and through different operational processes.

Besides fingerprints, the panel notes that demographic data is also used for improving de-duplication processes.

The committee, which has recommended that ISO 19794 series of biometrics standards for fingerprints, face and iris set by International Standards Organisation as being most suitable, has said that besides photograph, ten fingerprints of the person being enumerated must be obtained for enrolment.

 

MEET ON E-GOVERNANCE
Jaipur, January 25, 2010
The Hindu

The Rajasthan Government’s Information Technology Department will organise the 13th national e-governance conference in collaboration with the Union Government’s Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances Department here on February 18 and 19.

State Additional Chief Secretary S. Ahmed, addressing a preparatory meeting for the conference here over the week-end, said the two-day event would promote good governance while ensuring a qualitative improvement in the delivery of services to the people at large.

IT Secretary Tanmay Kumar said the conference would provide a useful platform for exchange of views among the policy-makers, academicians, entrepreneurs and industrialists.

According to an official release here, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, his Cabinet colleagues and senior officers from the Centre as well as different States would be among the 800 participants expected to turn up in the conference.

 

SOON, AN E-COURT IN KARKARDOOMA
Abhinav Garg, New Delhi, January 24, 2010
The Times of India (Delhi edition)

After the Delhi High Court, Karkardoom court complex in the capital is all set to become the first lower court in the country to get an e-court.

Sources said that Karkardooma courts will be e-court enabled very soon — perhaps as early as next week — with Additional Sessions Judge Sanjay Garg likely to become the first judge to preside over a paperless court

The high court has two functioning e-courts, presided by Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice Muralidhar respectively. While the high court’s experience with the facility has been one of trial and error, both for judges as well as for lawyers, it will be interesting to see how succesful the concept of e-court turns out to be in a sessions court, where the foundation of a trial is laid.

According to highly placed sources in the high court, trials are already on to launch the phase-II of the ambitious e-court project, led by the high court. ‘‘Training is already being given to the staff of lower courts, including those of Karkardooma, so that they become adept at handling a paperless environment,’’ said a high court official who is closely associated with the project.

In order to overcome a technical glitch which leads to the e-court server taking a long time to load legal files, the high court administration also has plans to lay down a separate Local Area Network (LAN) line for the lower courts to make processing of files in the computer a lot swifter and smoother.

 

E-Governance: 20/1/10

EASTERN RLY E-PROCUREMENT
Kolkata
The Hindu Business Line
The electronic procurement system in the Stores Department of Eastern Railway (ER) was launched at ER's headquarters at Fairlie Place here on Tuesday. With this, the uploading of stores bulletin tender to EPS will help reduce the lead time for making the items available and save the expenditure. Inaugurating the system, V.N. Tripathi, General Manager of ER, stressed the need for achieving early the targeted procurement and sale of scraps through the new system, according to an ER release.

NSPOT, PEC TO SELL IMPORTED PULSES THROUGH E-AUCTION
Chandigarh
The Financial Express
To galvanise sale of pulses imported by state-run PSUs, NSPOT, promoted by leading commodities exchange National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) and state-run trading company PEC will now expand their operations by selling pulses and other imported agri-commodities through e-auctions.

NSPOT and PEC had earlier successfully traded urad and tur on an electronic platform on a pilot basis.

This new effort aims at helping traders and processors from satellite locations apart from the main trading hubs to actively participate in the e-tendering system and get accessibility to PEC.

NSPOT is the only spot exchange to have traded pulses successfully on spot exchange platform.

By this association, NSPOT and PEC hope to bring in price transparency, convenience and efficiency to traders and bring the PEC, pulses traders and Dal millers/processors on to a common trading platform where varied market participants can buy directly from PEC.

This particular welcome move has enticed and brought in lot of enthusiasm among the pulses trading community.

AVAILABLE FROM JUNE: ONLINE ACCESS TO CENTRE-FUNDED STATE SCHEMES
Tarannum Manjul, Lucknow
The Indian Express
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) Uttar Pradesh is working on a website linking project that will enable one to access the progress of Centrally-funded state schemes on the click of a mouse.

The linking will enable any state to not only see Uttar Pradesh's progress chart on the scheme, but will also make accessible the good practices being followed by the state. Uttar Pradesh is the second state being linked with the Government of India (GOI) websites after Karnataka.

This forms part of the National E-Governance Programme (NEGP) that has been undertaken by the state. The GOI schemes that will be under focus in the linking project include: National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Janani Suraksha Yojna under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY), the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) and the Rural Drinking Water Mission.

GOVT'S E-GOVERNANCE POLICY BIASED, SAY OSS LOBBYISTS
Harsimran Singh, New Delhi
The Economic Times
India's open source software (OSS) lobbyists allege that popular software solutions from large companies, such as Microsoft, are being favoured in the proposed draft recommendations for the country's e-governance policy. The policy aims to adopt open technology standards and software for automating different government departments and functions.

It intends to guide the billion-dollar e-governance purchases and tenders, across government departments, for software and hardware over the next few years. The government has already allocated about $6 billion for various projects under the national e-governance plan.

According to people familiar with the draft recommendations, a meeting of the apex body on standards for e-governance was held last week, and the policy is close to being approved. ET was shown a copy of the proposed recommendations by one of the persons who requested anonymity.

"The recommendations given by an expert committee would make the policy very weak and would not favour open standards," said G Nagarajan, chairman, Free Software Foundation of India, which advocates that software should be free and open for all. The draft is also not clear on whether it will also impact existing e-governance projects or only new tenders. The draft policy, in its preamble, recommends that standards that are 'mature and have a large proliferation' will be considered. This is being contended by the OSS community that says that it will favour proprietary standards that have large proliferation amongst masses.