eINDIA 2009 - Capturing Stakeholder's Perspective : October 2009 Issue

the Monthly publication on ict and education

digitalLEARNING INDIA

Volume 5 issue 10

issn 0973-4139

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October 2009 www.digitalLEARNING.in

Capturing Stakeholders’ Perspective

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Contents 6

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eINDIA 2009 Report

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Capturing the Stakeholders’ Perspective

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The Education Track: Giving Voice to the Stakeholders in ICT and Education

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eINDIA 2009 Awards

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The Exhibition: Bringing a Whole World of Virtual Learning Under One Roof

44

Valedictory Session: Impressions of Participants Who Made It Happen

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Volume 5 issue 10 issn 0973-4139 rni no. upeng/2008/25311

Advisory Board digitalLEARNING is honoured to have on board eminent personalities from diverse backgrounds including the academia, the government and international developmental organisations, as a part of its Advisory Board. We are proud to present to you a brief overview of their wide spectrum of experience in the education domain. We extend our gratitude to all our distinguished board members for guiding and extending their support in our endeavour and growth.

Prof. Asha Kanwar, Vice President, Commonwealth of Learning Before joining COL, Professor Kanwar was a consultant in open and distance learning at UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education in Africa (BREDA) in Dakar, Senegal, where she was instrumental in placing Open and Distance Learning at the centre of ministerial deliberations in Africa. Dr. Kanwar’s engagement with distance education began when she joined Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) as a Reader in 1988.She has over 30 years of experience in teaching, research and administration. A recipient of several awards and fellowships, Professor Kanwar brings with her the experience of having studied and worked in different contexts, both developing and developed countries.

Dr. Jyrki Pulkkinen, CEO, Global eSchools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI), Dublin, Ireland.

Prior to GeSCI, Dr. Pulkkinen has worked as a senior adviser at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland where he was responsible for development policies related to Information Society & ICT, Science and Technology and Innovations. Jyrki is the founder of the Research Unit for Educational Technology at the University of Oulu and has served as an Assistant Professor on Educational Technology.

He has tremendous research experience in the ICT and Education domain and has several research papers to his credit.

Shri Subhash C Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Department School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India Shri Khuntia has been passionately involved in the policy process of integrating ICTs in education. It has been his endeavour, being in the position of authority that he occupies, to encourage the effective implementation of ICT aided learning in schools, and theby promoting the developmental agenda of the country. The Draft ICT in School Education Policy of India has progressed to a great extent under his able guidance.

Prof V N R Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) Prof. Pillai is also the Chairman of the Distance Education Council( DEC), which looks after the co-ordination of standards, quality, recognition and developmental assistance to all the 13 State Open Universities, over 150 Distance Education Institutes in the Conventional Universities and in other private Open and Distance Learning institutions in the country. Prof. Pillai has been at the helm of affairs of many higher education institutions during his career spanning over 37 years and his experience and contributions to the field of science and educational administration are rich and varied.

editorial

eINDIA2009: Capturing the Stakeholders’ Perspective …And the curtains were drawn to the eINDIA2009 Conference with great aplomb and to the utmost satisfaction of one and all. Months of effort and hard work have paid rich dividends in terms of ushering in new ideas and innovations. The conference has helped us in furthering our knowledge base, deepen our understanding and make inroads into a path which few have chosen to tread.

Advisory Board Prof. Asha Kanwar, Vice President, Commonwealth of Learning Dr. Jyrki Pulkkinen, CEO, Global eSchools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI) Shri Subhash C Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Department School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India Prof. V N Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira GandhiI National Open University (IGNOU)

President Dr. M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief Dr. Ravi Gupta Associate Editor Manjushree Reddy Research Analyst Dr. Rajeshree Dutta Kumar Research Associate Sheena Joseph Research Assistant Yukti Pahwa Dy. General Manager - Marketing Siddharth Verma +91-9811561645 siddharth@digitallearning.in Sr. Executive - Business Development Rudra Ghosh +91-9810603696 rudra@digitallearning.in Sales Executive Ankur Agarwal +91-9313998750 ankur@digitallearning.in Subscription & Circulation Lipika Dutta +91-9871481708

eINDIA2009 was special! It was our first effort to take the platform outside Delhi, to the unchartered territory of Hyderabad. The experiment bore good fruits and the venue proved to be a common meeting ground for all stakeholders from India and abroad. It has added another feather to our cap and has given the event a more national feel.

Our mandate and vision of promoting an integrated use of ICTs comes close to heels when several government efforts have been directed towards carrying the mission forward.

Engaging multiple stakeholders has been one of the objectives that the conference has achieved. The gracious presence of Smt D. Purandeswari, Minister of State for Higher Education, Government of India, added splendor to the conference. eINDIA2009 brought forth several issues of contemporary relevance. The School Education Forum highlighted pressing problems in the K12 segment. The transition of teachers from being Digital Immigrants to being digitally empowered needs to be addressed through the provision of adequate training solutions. The key priorities have to be the successful implementation of the National ICT policy, effective teachers training and creation of ICT resources affordable to all. The Higher education segment mulled over the aspects of bridging the skill gap and providing accessible vocational and need based training. The want for technology based and open source learning was emphasised as also, making private education providers more accountable to quality standards. Quality education and skills training were the two buzzwords that were underscored.

The ideas and recommendations churned out during the sessions have added momentum to the ball which was set rolling at the first eINDIA event, 5 years ago. Since then, it has been our mission to provide a platform to the voices in ‘Education and Technology’, to underscore the importance and relevance of the theme, and to throw light on the niche area.

The deepening of the relationship between digitalLEARNING and multiple stakeholders has helped us achieve great strides. We propose to carry our endeavour forward - in length, scale and depth - through regional conferences to be held on similar lines.

Dr. Ravi Gupta Editor-in-Chief Ravi.Gupta@digitalLEARNING.in

Manoj Kumar +91-9891752931 Sr Graphic Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh

Editorial & Marketing Correspondence

Graphic Designer Om Prakash Thakur

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digital LEARNING

OCTOBER 2009

eINDIA 2009 Report

Capturing the Stakeholders’ Perspective

www.digitalLEARNING.in

eINDIA 2009, India’s largest Information Communication and Technology (ICT) event, was held from 25th - 27th August at the Hyderabad International Convention Center, Hyderabad.

It

provided a unique platform for knowledge sharing in different domains of ICT for development and facilitated multi-stakeholder partnerships and networking among governments, industry, academia and civil society organisations of different countries. The objective was to bring together ICT experts, practitioners, business leaders and stakeholders of the region onto one platform, through keynote addresses, paper presentations, thematic workshops and exhibitions. digital LEARNING

OCTOBER 2009

the inauguration: beginning of the three day saga eINDIA 2009 began on 25th August, with a gala inauguration ceremony with Smt D Purandeswari, Minister of State for Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Government of India, as the chief guest. Other guests of honour included Shri Subhash C Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Ministry of HRD, Government of India; Shri S R Rao, Additional Secretary, Department of IT, Ministry of Communication and IT, Government of India; Reshan Dewapura, COO, Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), Sri Lanka; Charles Clarke, Member of Parliament and Former Education Minister and Home Secretary; Prof V N Rajasekhar Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India The welcome address was given by the President, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), Dr M P Narayanan. In his speech, he welcomed the honourable minister and other eminent dignitaries to the fifth edition of the annual ICT conference and exhibition. Dr Narayanan’s speech was followed by the lighting of the lamp.

Smt D Purandeswari congratulated CSDMS and its associates on a job well done in organising the International ICT Summit which was a sign of India’s growing role in the world ICT and development networks. In her speech, Smt Purandeswari announced the launching of a National Information Highway Authority (NIHA) with the main aim of increasing various e-activities of the government. As the apex body for such initiatives, NIHA would clear and monitor all future projects and budgets and would become an ideal vehicle to promote such initiatives effectively in a time-bound manner.

S R Rao, in his speech, elaborated on the potential of India’s growing economy and the valuable role that IT will play in further fueling the process. According

Release of eASiA 2009 brochure

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Smt. D Purandeswari lighting the lamp at the eINDIA 2009 inauguration

to him, India has the highest level of political commitment and will to harness IT in different sectors for empowering the citizens. India, he stated, is a land of immense opportunities and schisms.

Technology can be used to neutralise all the schisms through different mechanisms including Public Private Partnerships.

Reshan Dewapura elaborated about ICTA and eASIA2009. ICTA of Sri Lanka is the single apex body involved in ICT policy and direction for the nation. About eASIA2009, he informed, “ICTA and Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), India, have joined hands to organise the 4th annual eASIA 2009 Conference and Exhibition in Colombo, Sri Lanka to celebrate the year 2009 as the year of ICT and English as declared by HE Mahinda Rajapaksa, President, Sri Lanka and to promote growth of ICT4D, through consultative dialogue, strategic planning, knowledge networking and business partnering.”

Charles Clarke talked about effective strategies for bridging the digital divide.

He said, “We need to join hands to bring technology to all...laptops can be made affordable and we need to ensure that we can bring one laptop each to every child. Several challenges remain to be addressed even as we acknowledge that it is through ICTs that distance mode of education can be effectively implemented and the Gross Enrollment Ration can be improved to 15% as has been penned by the Planning Commission.” He expressed hope that the three day eINDIA conference and deliberation will help churn out ideas on the ways and means of bringing ICTs closer to the education sector.

In his speech, Subhash C Khuntia provided details of the government’s efforts in bringing IT closer to the masses.

“The government intends to spread the reach of IT to remote villages. Each village with a population of 1000 or more will have a banking facility enabled though IT. Good public private initiatives will be promoted by the government.”

However all these efforts need the combined efforts of the private sector, state government, academics, experts, business community, civil societies and the citizens. IT is one field where public private partnerships have a great role to play.

Prof V N Rajasekhar Pillai, underscored the importance of IT in several sectors including skills training and improving the quality of education. In the context of mass poverty in most developing countries, the critical role of training in furnishing badly needed skills to improve productivity, incomes and equitable access to employment opportunities seems particularly obvious and straightforward. Integration of ICTs can help address the issue. He announced that it is on the agenda of IGNOU to set up 5 Institutes for the Advancement and Training of teachers in 5 different regions.

Dr Ravi Gupta, Executive Director, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) and Convener of eINDIA2009 thanked the Honourable Minister and the eminent dignitaries for their gracious participation and expressed hope that the three day conference would prove to be enriching and enlightening experience for all participants. \\

digitalLEARNING keynote session I The time is now for new ways of educational technology to impart education. We have a plethora of tools, technology, standards and a richness of enablers. We have people spurred by necessity, common purpose, enthusiasm and collaboration. The need is now for a grand vision to manage all these changes; change in the e-education progress level, change in the technology developments, and change in the surrounding environment where technology needs to be integrated.

Digital Competencies in the National Education Programmes & Policies Chair: Shri S C Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Government of India (GoI).

Panelists: Ashish Garg, Regional Coordinator - Asia, Global e Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI); L Balasubramanian, President, NIIT; Meena Ganesh, CEO, Edurite Technologies; Col K J Kang, Director, Designmate.

Objective of the session was to deliberate on key questions including: // What is a National Vision on ICTs in Education? What do the nations want the policy to prescribe for efficient and effective implementation of ICTs in education? // How are patterns of teaching and learning changing in the face of technological advances? // How is a consensus with all stakeholders ensured, in terms of e-Competencies in the educational programmes and policies?

Discussions and Recommendations The Chair, Shri S C Khuntia emphasised that there is a strong need to address the issues of digital competencies in the light of policy initiatives. Shri Khuntia urged everyone to ponder over the possibilities of further enhancing the quality of education, with the use of digital competencies, which will result in paradigm shift in the teaching and learning process.

Distinguished Panelists of the Keynote Session 1

Ashish Garg highlighted the changing role of technology in education and that there is a great acceptance for change.

However, she opined that while the learning processes have changed, the teaching process has not. There is a gap between what children can learn and how the children can learn. Today’s students are digital natives while their educators are digital immigrants who have migrated from one teaching methodology to another. The teachers continue to have within themselves a pertinent accentdigital immigrant accent - which may not make any relevance to the digital natives. There is a gap and disconnect here, solution for which cannot be sought immediately.

word for an effective ICT integration in education.

Meena Ganesh shared that the major challenge of Indian education is the reach and quality of basic education. With the advent of ICTs in education, complexity of concepts are better addressed and comprehended. ICT in classroom enhances cognitive learning process significantly improving engagement in the classroom and retention of knowledge.

Col. K J Kang spoke on the changing patterns of teaching and learning due to technological advances. With information having increasingly short shelf life, there is a need to enable learners to learn for themselves and continue to do so incessantly. A very important feature missing in our education system is to identify deserving students in the rural sector and move them to better facilities.

Session Summary

Shri Khuntia being felicitated with a token of appreciation by Prof.

Rajasekharan Pillai, VC, IGNOU

According to L Balasubramanian, digital competency can be achieved only when as a country we address the challenges of the quantity and quality in our education system, issues of poor infrastructure, absence of good and trained teachers, and absence of relevance/ context. He mentioned that collaboration is the key

The Keynote session was concluded with an engaging interaction between the panelists and delegates. The session kick started the Digital Learning India 2009 Conference with a lot of energy.

The highlight of the session was that ICT can offer innovative solutions to India’s massive education needs, where implementation is the key challenge.

Key learning skills for the future are interpersonal skills, information skills, technology skills, basic skills and thinking skills. Our current learning environment needs to evolve to build a workforce that is more enquiring and challenging.

India has great potential to design new solutions for the worlds’ new educational problems. \\ digital LEARNING

OCTOBER 2009

digitalLEARNING keynote session II ICT Application in Managing Change Chair: Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Panelists: Dr. Duk- Hoo Kwak, President, Korea Education & Research Information Service (KERIS), Korea; Terry Wason, Country Manager for India, SMART Technologies; B Gopalakrishnan, Deputy General Manager, HCL Infosystems.

Objective of the session was to deliberate on key questions including: // How is change management and capacity building for academic staff being conceptualised, implemented and maintained? What kinds of service organisations have been developed? // How shall ICT resources and applications be used with appropriate methods and strategies? // Why and how is the need of convergence of pedagogical and technological points of view to support effective connections with suitable technology to design learning environments?

Discussions and Recommendations The chair, Prof. V N Rajasekharan Pillai, stressed that ICT use in education has brought about rapid social changes, pedagogical paradigm shift, and advancements in Information and

Prof. Pillai addressing the distiguished delegates

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cultural barriers for development and advancement. 21st-century students need to learn differently and they need to be lifelong learners. Active and experiential learning is central, as it contextualises knowledge. Technology enables a new mindset and a new skill set. However, it is about learning, and not technology: “A computer is just an object. It cannot replace a person.� We need to accommodate diverse learning environments - whole class, small Dr Duk-Hoon Kwak during his group, individual and distance learning presentation at the session environments.

B Gopalakrishnan started his presentation by delineating on the desired change for Indian education system, which includes parity in education system, improving quality and quantity of education, need to expand the capacity thereby increasing accessibility, transform from an industrial society to a knowledge based society. He also mentioned Delegates putting their view point across at the session that the change agents are policy, processes, ICT tools, Communication Technology. However, knowledge enablers and there needs to be generational change and learners. He envisioned a lifelong learning not incremental change in this context. environment by equipping training He also urged everyone to use the institutes and training the knowledge platform of eINDIA 2009 for bringing out enablers, to review progress and sustain concrete solutions and recommendations and upgrade ICT tools. to the challenges of ICT and Indian education system by dialoguing, Session Summary deliberations and brain storming discourse.

The Keynote session proved to Dr. Kwak spoke about the development be highly interactive. It provided a lot of e-Learning in Korea with an emphasis of networking opportunities with an on KERIS endeavour as an e-Learning interesting Q & A (question and answer) specialised organisation in Korea. ICT round. The session highlighted on use is changing the face of education. bringing a true transformation, which is These changes can be divided into not merely adjusting and modifying past three main areas: a) diverse learning and present models, but designing and tools - various kinds of learning tools building the future of education, training including mobile devices and advanced and learning by true systemic, holistic solutions are available to students; and revolutionary change. The session b) changes in demand - students are highlighted that there is a strong need to actively participating in the learning engage all the stakeholders of education process; and c) changes in contents - - students and teachers, government and educational content is also changing as education system, parents, community, learning becomes more individualised business. Technology should always and collaborative. be kept in perspective. The six key Terry Wason empasised on the factors for successful e-learning, are changing demands of the digital world. accessibility, quality assurance, human He stated that knowledge-based resources development and recruitment, economies need knowledge workers. international collaboration, e-Learning Technology can be used to break down standardisation and amendment of the economic, geographic, social or e-learning related laws and regulations.\\

digitalLEARNING India 2009

The Education Track...

Giving Voice to the Stakeholders in ICT and Education

Digital Learning India 2009, the 5th annual conference and exhibition, provided an opportunity to the participants to take a look at the current situation and outline desirable future developments in the field of ICT enabled education. Convened alongside the eINDIA2009 Conference, from 25th to 27th August, the Digital Learning Conference track marked a shift from just an eLearning programme to a more integrated approach of ICT supported education conference. The track was demarcated between school and higher education with the view of addressing the persisting challenges of both these areas with due importance and urgency.

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digitalLEARNING School Education Forum

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Panel at the ‘Education for All, Opportunity with ICT’s: Policy vs Practice’ session

The School Education Forum brought together the perspective and visionary leadership in school education, with the purpose of responding to the challenges of new age teaching and learning.

Representatives of various school education boards and government departments facilitated the conclave, in which around fifty school principals participated in the dialogue process. The education industry, which has a major stakeholder role, also took active part in the conclave discussions.

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Education for All, Opportunity with ICTs: Policy vs Practice Objective of the session was to highlight avenues and ways in which ICTs could play a crucial role in bringing education closer and making it more valuable for the masses.

Chair: Ashish Garg, Regional Coordinator-Asia, Global eSchools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI) Panelists: Anwar Sadat, IT@School, Government of Kerala; Saptarishi Basu, SMART Technologies; Amit Gupta, CEO, HMSC; Rajeev Katyal, Director- Education, Microsoft; Rajat Verma, Head-Business Development, Top Chalks; Muralidhar K S, CEO, LearnSmart; L Balasubramaniam, President, NIIT. Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

The panel reinstated that finding ways to overcome the digital divide can be possible by providing low

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cost ICT teaching-learning aids.

The Draft ICT Policy in School Education has aimed at preparing the youth to participate creatively in the establishment, and in contributing to the sustenance and growth of a knowledge society leading to all round socio economic development of the nation and global competitiveness.

Anwar Sadat, Executive Director, IT@School Project, Kerala, emphasised that the focus in Kerala has gradually shifted from IT education to ICT enabled education and on indigenous content development. The IT@School project has been concentrating on upgrading infrastructure in schools, capacity building of teachers and students, providing Broadband to all schools, e-governance and EDUSAT initiatives.

Key issues in implementation of the ICT Policy included: Provision of infrastructure and affordable technologies, provision of technologies in rural areas where connectivity is a problem; and problems related to narrow thinking which hampers global competitiveness of students. The policy agenda must take into consideration the diverse needs of various sections of the student community including those relating to special needs in education.

According to Muralidhar K S, the economic growth of a country is directly related to the standards of education of that country. The economy grows when the youth becomes competitive enough to

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become a successful entrepreneur and when enough confidence is built among them through the dissemination of multi-dimensional knowledge.

The government, therefore, needs to usher in policies which push for greater integration of technology in education, thereby promoting globally competitive youth.

Education technology service providers have to play a facilitating role in promoting ICTs in education by analysing the needs and requirements of the student-teacher community and focusing on technologies suited towards promoting an effective learning and teaching environment. The implementation of ICT enabled learning have been fraught with challenges. These may include lack of training for teachers, aversion towards technology and change, uncertain power supply, etc. All these can be addressed through innovative teaching practices and integration of training needs of teachers.

The government initiatives have been successful to a certain extent in promoting ICTs in education through various legislations, however though, greater efforts need to be made to promote the use of the same.

L Balasubramaniam, President, NIIT, being felicitated by Ashish Garg

The session proved to be a brainstorming exercise on important issues of contemporary relevance. The participants and the speakers elaborated on the policy needs and challenges and ways to address the same.

The issues highlighted were specific to the needs of classroom teaching and learning. It brought out the expectations of the teaching community from a National Policy on ICT in School Education. The role of policy makers, education technology solution providers and service providers in bringing innovation to technology was made prominent through the discussions and deliberations. digital LEARNING

OCTOBER 2009

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School Principals at the ‘Conclave of School Leaders’

Conclave of School Leaders: Challenges & Opportunities of ICTs in Education Objective of the session was to initiate a dialogue amongst the delegates on issues like; “The Principal’s role in shaping the ethos of a school”, “Attributes of an innovative school and a leader” and “The role of emergent technologies addressing the several pedagogical concerns that schools should address”, and the expectations from the technology service providers.

Chair: Ashish Garg, Regional Coordinator-Asia, GeSCI Speakers: V Nageswara Rao, Deputy Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti; Simmi Kher, Director, The Indian Heights; Rittika Chanda Parruck, British Council; Sricharan, Director, Chaitanya Group of Schools, Hyderabad; P Mohna Kumar, Nazmul Hasan Munshi- NIIT; interacting with more than 80 school principals.

Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

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The panel discussion brought to the fore issues such as the need to train teachers for technology integrated classrooms and providing more discussion forums for bringing out the requirements of the teaching community.

V Nageswara Rao, in his address, highlighted the vision of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas in breaking the digital divide between the rural and urban India. He underscored the role of these residential schools in providing modern quality education to rural students in the country.

A number of intensive training www.digitalLEARNING.in

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programmes have been devised to address the needs of the teachers in using ICTs. Procurement of VSAT connectivity and connecting all the JNVs through Broadband has been the major initiatives. All JNVs have been provided with laptops and projectors and are equipped with Smart Class technologies. Some of the challenges of teacher training have been successfully addressed through systematic training plans.

Problem of non availability of software components have been addressed through collaborations with major corporate players.

It was highlighted during the discussion that the present day teachers are not necessarily antithetical to learning in a technology enabled environment.

Rather, they have to be given the opportunity to train and be trained so that newer and better technologies can be integrated into the classroom curriculum.

School leaders and functionaries have a key role in promoting the use

of new technologies by highlighting the need and practicality of the same.

• The school leaders emphasised that the new age technology should not be viewed as a hindrance in teaching. Rather, it has to be seen as playing a supplementary and a complementary role to teaching learning methods. Added visual effects through the use of IT has helped enhance students’ retention of the theme while practical demonstration, which cannot be done through rote learning, has helped enhance student understanding of the subject.

The session saw some important facts being revealed with regard to the use of technology in teaching. Teachers and principals who participated in the conclave vociferously stated that they were not averse to technology being introduced in the school curriculum. Rather, their open readiness to assimilate change became even more pronounced through the discussions. The only worrying factor, which has been duly addressed through relevant training, was the lack of comprehensive IT skills.

However, supplementary training has now made them master trainers and they are now in a position to even train other novice teachers.

The high point of the session was when all teachers unequivocally stated that technology definitely has a place in the education system and that technology enabled learning is the way ahead.

Schools such as Gitanjali Group of Schools and Hyderabad Public School have put forth their agenda of upgrading and improvising on the existing school technologies in order to keep pace with times.

Professional Development with ICT

Krishan Khanna, Chairman, i2K Solutions, speaks at the ‘Professional Development with ICT’ session

Objective of the session was to devise methods of skilling and re-skilling educators, so that they can adapt to changing faces of technology.

Chair: Prof A K Bakshi, Director, Institute of Life Long Learning, University of Delhi.

Speakers: Dr Sharad Sinha, RIE, NCERT, Ajmer; Prof Sandeep Kayastha, Dean-Content, Everonn Systems; Krishan Khanna, Chairman, i2K Solutions; Ajay Kapoor, Director, Oracle Education Initiatives, India.

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Dr Johnn Collick captivates the audience at the ‘Networks and Collaboration On and Beyond Capuses’ session

Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS The presentations made at the session underscored the fact that educators can be trained towards the productive use of technologies.

However, there is a need to demystify educational technology solutions, so that it becomes simpler for educators to understand and grasp.

• Several education solution providers have come up with high end technologies that can play a revolutionary role in teaching practices. Awareness for the same can be generated through greater interaction between teachers and technology providers.

• Several technologies have taken into account the teacher requirements in classrooms and training in these would prove to be useful for the educators in the long term.

The participation at the session saw a mix of technology solution providers along with school leaders and academicians. The blend made the discussion interactive and fruitful. The role of technology in education was underscored and majority of the audience members agreed to the fact that teaching practices has to gradually evolve with the help of technology.

Speakers: Vikram Desai, Group Head, DECU, ISRO; Rittika Chanda Parruck, Project Manager, UKIERI, British Council-India; Will Glennon, President, Global Classroom Connections, US; Simmi Kher, Director, The Indian Heights, India; Dr John Collick, Senior International Education Manager, Promethean.

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Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

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Network and Collaboration On and Beyond Campuses Objective of the session was to deliberate on a unique structure that connects secondary or high schools in India, Asia, and beyond to bring forth some cases, insights and opportunities for collaborative learning and inter cultural exchanges by the schools and within classrooms.

Chair: Ashish Garg, Regional Coordinator-Asia, Global eSchools and Communities Initiative.

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The session deliberated on classrooms shared by students and teachers to build stronger bi and multi-regional networks and partnerships in the course of implementing common online projects and participating in face-toface exchanges.

Vikram Desai, Group Head, DECU at ISRO elaborated on the Education Satellite System which is aimed at providing effective teacher training and supplementing curriculum based teaching. It has sought to provide access to quality resource persons at higher and professional education level; strengthen the distance education efforts initiated by various agencies; take education to every nook and corner of the country; and provide access to new technologies. The system has enabled networking of educational resource providers and the student community.

Simmi Kher, Director, The India Heights, while sharing her experiences with Tony Blair Faith Foundation of UK, reiterated the need to support a new generation of global citizens through crosscultural encounter, exploration and exchange of new ideas and creation of a global community of young people committed to increasing the understanding and respect among different faiths and cultures.

Dr John Collick was of the opinion that education networking is the way ahead for the future. Increasing use of Internet and broadband technologies has brought the world closer together and that student networks will promote knowledge exchange and technology transfers.

• Will Glennon, while discussing about the revolutionary GCC programmes, mentioned that he is in the process of establishing partnership with the government and teachers, there by establishing a network of classrooms around the world where students are in regular, robust, direct and interactive communication with their peers in other countries.

The session stressed on the importance of connecting the student and teacher community to bring about an alliance for knowledge sharing and networking.

ICT Best Practices to Next Practices Objective of the session was to highlight case studies and best practices of ICT integration in schools and to deliberate on the ICT-based collaborations and ways to strengthen relationships between schools, development partners, and industry leaders.

Chair: Stephen Jury, Vice Chairman, Education Strategy, Promethean.

Speakers: Sricharan, Director, Chaitanya School, Hyderabad; Suresh Jha, Vice President, OLPCIndia; Manish Sharma, Vice President, APAC, NComputing; Gautham More, Technology Head, NIIT. Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

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Numerous contemporary endeavours in ICTs for education were highlighted during the course of the session. The innovative use of technology has helped equip rural schools with computers powered through shared computing.

Manish Sharma, Vice President, APAC, NComputing, in his presentation detailed on how low cost equipments can help provide affordable technology. “The requirement of bringing low cost, low energy computing to schools in remote areas could be brought about through shared computing, which has enabled 1.8 million students in rural Andhra Pradesh to

Gautham More, Technology Head - NIIT, speaks at the ‘ICT Best Practices to Next Practices’ session

have computer access for the first time.”

• Experience sharing with teachers and educators have helped several solution providers to come up with education solutions that are practical and relevant to the daily classroom requirements.

• Suresh Jha emphasised that the vision of bringing technology to the grassroots has fueled the idea of furnishing all schools in India with laptops and possibly, one laptop for every child through cost effective methods. Curriculum formation and methods have been standardised to a great extent and the content generated have greatly added value to the school syllabi.

The industry leaders put forth their vision of an ideal school and how technology can be better used so that it can easily be absorbed by the existing teacher community.

Smart Classrooms: Technology Challenges & Insights Objective of the session was to identify several areas, where ICT technology can be used in classroom teaching methods. Some of the pressing problems that the session sought to address included: ways and means to convert a classroom to a Smart Classroom, with ICTs as the facilitating element; creation of a knowledge-based development approach and formulation of an ICT vision of a school; and dealing with technological challenges in the infrastructure, capacity building, software and hardware fields.

Chair: Dr Madhav Pulipati, CEO, e-GIGA, Institute for eGovernance,

IT &C Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh.

Speakers: Terry Wason, Country Manager, SMART Technologies India; Srikanth B Iyer, COO, Edurite Technologies; Paramjeet Kaur, Director, Desingmate; Abraham Tharakan, General Manager, Design and Development, School Learning Solution, NIIT; Chris Stevens, DirectorEducation, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

Terry Wason emphasised on the need for a shift towards latest educational technologies. “We need new models of teaching for new kinds of learners which would involve all parties interested in education including students and teachers, the government, the education system, parents and the business community. Smart Technologies accommodate the needs of diverse learning environments including those of small groups, distance

learning and individual learning needs.”

• For Paramjeet Kaur, “Smart Schools will help in preparing the student for the modern working environment of the future. It has increased the participation of teachers, parents and the private sector in the education process.”

• Chris Stevens, Director-Education, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, highlighted the outcomes of the 10 year study done by Apples Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT).

It demonstrated that students who were provided with technology-rich learning environments “continued to perform well on standardised tests but were also developing a variety of competencies not usually measured.

Students explored and represented information dynamically and in many forms, became socially aware and more confident; communicated effectively about complex processes; became independent learners and self-starters; and knew their areas of expertise and shared that expertise spontaneously.”

• Abraham Tharakan, summarised the efforts being made by technology solution providers in integrating the specific needs of teachers into smart classroom technologies in the words of Rubenstein, “Ignoring human response to change is often the single greatest pitfall to successful implementation of technological change.”

The session provided the participants with an insight into the modern world of technology in education. The educators and teachers showed their enthusiasm and keenness in knowing more about new technologies and how it can supplement their teaching-learning requirements.

Dr. C S R Prabhu chairing the ‘Industry Leaders’ Conclave’

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The Industry Leaders’ Conclave Objective of the session was to create industry-wide discussion, identify core issues, set priorities and establish a series of leadership actions to help direct the future of the ICT and education industry.

Chair: Dr C S R Prabhu, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre.

Panelists: Sanjiv Gupta, CoFounder, LearnSmart; Paramjeet Johar, Director, Designmate; Jasvinder Singh, CEO, Wordsworth; Vivek Agarwal, CEO, Liqvid; Amit Gupta, CEO, HMSC; Sonjib Mukharjee, CEO, InVidya; Ranjit Singh, CEO, Genee Solutions; Devraj Shetty, Senior Vice President and HeadeLearning Business, Sify Technologies Ltd.

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The industry has been a major player in revolutionising the role of ICTs in educational settings. Modern technologies have not only helped the needs of high end schools, but also enabled government run and other aided schools to make use of the digital progress through educational technologies.

Corporates have played their social roles responsibly and have pitched in to reduce the digital divide.

Major collaborations with the government have helped provide computer technology to numerous government run educational institutions. Special needs of students and teachers have been duly considered and products so manufactured have only added value to the educational processes.

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Paramjeet Kaur, Director, Designmate, explained that the company has been taking steps towards integrating the disabled into the system by hiring persons with special needs, training them and providing them livelihood opportunities. The Corporate Social Responsibility wing of the company has been active in several fields.

The Industry Leaders’ Conclave provided an appropriate platform for the corporate representatives to put their best foot forward not just in terms of the benefits accrued to the education sector through ICTs, but also through highlighting their socially responsible endeavours in an attempt to reach out to the underprivileged masses. It brought out the often less highlighted accomplishments in promoting social justice in education and giving impetus to greater digital equality.\\

your say “The sessions at the School Education Forum generated a lot of discussion points. I received many queries and feedbacks from the participants. Sizable representation from the government sector added value to the conference.”

Rittika Chanda Parruck, Regional Manager, Connecting Classrooms, India and Sri Lanka, British Council “The Conclave of School Leaders was the most satisfying for all participants since everyone had a chance to share their ideas and experiences. The school principals contributed immensely in making the sessions meaningful. The deliberations at the Keynote Session 1 was interactive and engaging, as the presentations were limited and discussions were encouraged. Overall the eINDIA2009 experience was great!”

Ashish Garg, Asia Regional Coordinator, Global e Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI) “It has been my privilege to be associated with the eINDIA2009 and eAgriculture sessions for three years in a row. The discussions have brought together diverse perspectives which have been explored and ruminated on. One impressive observation was that this year, there were lesser number of power point presentations, with the focus more on speakeraudience engagement. The outcome of the sessions in this format proved to be much more valuable and interactive. Dr Ravi Gupta and his team have done a splendid job at the event.”

Dr Gopi Ghosh, Assistant FAO Representative, New Delhi “Participating at the School Leaders’ Conclave and the School Education Forum was a pleasure. I have been a part of eINDIA since the last 4 years and the notable and positive difference this year was the wider representation of school teachers and principals. The presence of the practitioners at the conference has helped highlight the real problems and challenges encountered during teaching-learning process and ways and means of addressing the same.”

Simmi Kher, Director, The Indian Heights, India “The display of various ICT infrastructure and content development solutions have been commendable. At the same time, the government needs to set up standards for the software and hardware products in education and other fields. There has to be a customised measure for the proper and effective utilisation of such solutions. The conference has highlighted the need for bringing together various stakeholders in ICTs and making efforts to bridge the digital divide across domain.”

Kiran Rao, eINDIA2009 Delegate “The power point presentations made during the session have been hugely informative. Conferences such as these help in bringing together ideas from across domains. The discussions have proved to be useful and relevant in today’s context where ICTs have become a buzzword for future growth.”

K. Shashikant, eINDIA2009 Delegate “The perspectives highlighted in the Higher Education Forum were very contemporary and relevant. The need for skills and vocational training are pressing issues which need to be addressed. The forum brought out several practical recommendations which will be of tremendous help.”

Reshmi Rawat, eINDIA2009 Delegate

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digitalLEARNING higher Education Forum The new economy is fueled by knowledge workers and hence it has serious implication on the present education system. Our traditional education system is undergoing a drastic transformation due to technological change where ICT acts as a catalyst. The higher education system aims at building an inclusive and effective information. By leveraging on ICT, it is possible to teach better to a wider audience breaking geographical barriers. The Higher Education Forum sought to discuss and bring out solutions to some very pressing challenges in ICT and Higher Education.

Changing Face of Higher Education: Technology Practices & Priorities Objective of the session was to delineate the preparedness of universities and higher educational institutions towards ICT and Education.

Chair: Shakila Shamsu, Joint Advisor (Education), Planning Commission, Government of India.

Speakers: Dr. B K Murthy, Director, Department of Information Technology, Government of India; Dr. Duk-Hoon Kwak, President, Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS); Dr. Iyyanki V Murali Krishna, Adjunct Professor, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok; Adrian Hall, Consultant, Okapi Consultancy, UK; Dr. K P Hewagamage, Head, eLearning, UCSC, Colombo; Dr. Tapan Panda, President, Marketing and Corporate Afairs, Everonn.

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Shakila Shamsu opened the session by discussing issues in Higher Education Highlighted in the XIth Plan – Expansion, Equity and Excellence.

She shared government’s plan to increase access and reduce disparities in education by making Higher education inclusive.

Dr. B K Murthy highlighted in his presentation the new technologies that are capable of reaching the masses by overcoming distance and accessibility; providing everybody with opportunity of Life Long learning. While speaking

The panelists: Shakila Shamsu, Dr. B K Murthy, Dr. Duk-Hoon Kwak

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about the two major schemes of the Ministry of Human Resource Development - National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), National Mission on Education through ICT (NME- ICT), he elaborated on the National Knowledge Network.

Dr. Duk-Hoon Kwak presented his paper on e-Learning in Korea, with special focus on Korea Education & Research Information Service (KERIS). Dr. Kwak emphasised that for successful e-Learning, issues like - accessibility, quality, etc. – need to be addressed at the policy level.

Adrian Hall made his presentation on ‘New Technological Applications to Enhance Teaching & Learning’. In the context of England, he shared that Connectivity, Kit, and Content are the key pillars for effective use of ICT in Education.

Dr. K P Hewagamage shared his Sri Lankan experience with his paper on ‘Breaking Barriers in Higher Education through e-Learning’.

In his presentation, there was a mention about the various layers of understanding the Higher education and the significant role that it plays in building educated communities and in contributing to the national development.

Dr. Tapan Panda represented the private sector which has been involved in technology for education.

He was of the view that technology is not only a great enabler but breaks the barriers of addressing quantity and quality in the education.

Various ramifications of higher education were discussed in the session.

All the delegates unanimously agreed that ICT application in higher education has extended autonomy in students and teachers for creating their own learning materials.

Bridging the skill gap with technical vocational education Objective of this session was to capture the major challenges in outlining the role and key areas of ICT in Human Resource Development in the education sector.

Chair: R K Chugh, Deputy Director General – Training, Directorate General Employment & Training (DGE&T), Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India.

Speakers: Manish Bharadwaj, Director, Technical Education, Government of Gujarat; S J Amlan, Regional Director, Applied Training, Ministry of Labour & Employment; Vikas Singh, CEO, Crux Management, Hyderabad; Vikas Garg, CEO & Director, Micronet; and Prof N B Sudarshan Acharya, Founder & National Coordinator, Lead India 2020 Foundation.

Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

R K Chugh’s presentation was focused on the role of Directorate General of Employment & Training (DGE&T), which includes policy

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formulation on vocational training, laying down standards, revising course curricula, granting affiliation, trade testing and certification. He shared on the Government of India’s effort to launch the National Skill Development Mission, while giving a detailed account of the constitution of the mission.

• Manish Bhardwaj shared a Case study of a successful experiment in Online Testing, which is Gujarat Common Entrance Test 2009. This experiment was a first time in India that any State Government level Entrance Exam was conducted online for granting admissions to affiliated institutions throughout Gujarat for courses on MBA and MCA. • Amlan made his presentation on “Bridging the skill gap through skill training”. With an emphasis on social employment, he highlighted the need for each and every person to be employed.

• Vikas Singh presented his paper on creating ‘Business Ready’ professionals. He mentioned that skilled workers are available only at the grass root level, which is currently in the unorganised and un-benchmarked sectors like, construction, agriculture and related trades.

• Vikas Garg pointed out that there is a lack of adequate Government schemes linking education with real life requirements. He urged the Government to set up specific and contextual Technical and Vocational colleges and also knowledge/counselling centres, create linkages for promoting Public Private Partnerships (PPP), and to create certified courses, self paced assessments and opportunities within the state.

• Prof. Sudarshan Acharya highlighted that the youth of today should be seen as a force for village development leading to National Development. He shared the that his organisation launched a drive called Digital Empowerment for rural youth, by organising livelihood Training Camps in various districts of Andhra Pradesh with support from Government of Andhra Pradesh in partnership with Hyderabad Central University, and Centre for Educational Research on Human Values.

What came out as a conclusion of the session was that India has a global 20

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S J Amlan presenting his paper

opportunity in skill development, as the world requires 470 million skilled personnel in the age group of 16 to 40 years in the next 25 years.

ICTs in Alternate Education: Exploring the other side of mainstream Learning Objective of the session was to highlight the challenges, dynamics, opportunities and way ahead of Open & Distance Learning, how ICT can strengthen Inclusive Education in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system. IGNOU, one of the pioneer open universities of the country had taken the lead in organising this special session.

Chair: Prof K R Srivatsan, Pro ViceChancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU).

Speakers: Sukant Kole, Consultant, ACIIL, IGNOU; Dr. Akshay Kumar, Reader, School of Computer and Information Sciences, IGNOU; Dr. V Balaji, Head, Knowledge Management and Sharing, ICRISAT; and Satish Kaushal, Country Manager, Government and Education, India / South Asia.

Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

Prof. Srivatsan shared that IGNOU has the world’s largest enrolment

of learners with 2.2 million students.

The University has over 300 academic programmes and 2800 courses.

• Sukant Kole presented his paper on ‘Architecting ICT Infrastrcuture to Support Multimodal Delivery for Alternate Education’. The highlight of his presentation was that the National Education Grid and its Networks with Datacentres are linked over the National Knowledge Network with premier institutions to support an inclusive education system to meet the massive needs of India’s education needs.

• Dr. Akshay Kumar made a presentation on ‘The Development of Alternate Method of Education in Computer Science’. He focused on various pillars of teaching through ICT, which are motivation and guidance; right curriculum; conceptualisation, problem domain and solutions; and creation of research groups.

• Dr Balaji’s highlighted the need for digital information in agriculture. He emphasised on the need of new service oriented architectures for rapid content aggregation.

• Satish Kaushal specified the four technology mega-trends that will create significant disruptions across the higher education landscapea) Learning anywhere, anytime; b) Social communities; c) Real time collaboration; and d) Cloud computing. It is an emerging approach to shared infrastructure in which large pools of systems are linked together to provide IT services.

The special session by Indira Gandhi National Open University was very well received by the audience. It was felt that a great deal of authorship in content generation is required.

Prof. K R Srivatsan, Dr. V Balaji, Dr. Akshay Kumar, Satish Kaushal & Sukant Kole

Indian community colleges at a turning point: technology leading the path ways Objective of the workshop session was to bring out the challenges and opportunities of Community Colleges and the role of ICT in strengthening the concept.

Moderators: Prof. Latha Pllai, Pro Vice- Chancellor, IGNOU; and Vikas Singh, CEO, Crux Management.

Participants: Representatives of 16 Community colleges across India Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

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Prof. Latha Pillai introduced the session to the Community College representatives stating that the Indian Community Colleges are standing at a turning point with technology leading the pathways.

The group had a brain storming session and deliberated on various aspects of communication and shared that communication is important in every aspect of ICT and education framework – administration, registration, contacting office, course content, teaching, evaluation, certification, placement, etc.

The tools that can be used are mobiles, videoconferencing, e-mail, IPTV, TV Sets, community radio, loudspeakers, and other traditional media.

However, collaborative mechanisms between these tools are needed.

During the discussion on the importance of collaboration, the group came up with eight crucial

Prof. Latha Pillai, Pro Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University, during the workshop on Community Colleges

Prof. Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Director, Dr. B R Ambedkar Open University, gives her presentation at the University Leaders’ Conclave

components: a) Finance b) Media c) Educational institutions d) Matching the syllabi of other institutions e) Transfer out for other institutions for a degree – remedial courses are important especially to bring people at par with the standards, f) Community, g) Employers h) Commonality of standards/courses.

Prof Latha Pillai summarised the session by sharing with the participants that there are 62 Community College which are functional. Their profiles are already on the Wiki. She urged all of them begin using the Wiki and share their course material in time to come.

Conclave of University Leaders on ‘Best Practices to Next Practices’ Objective of the session was to provide an opportunity for putting across the challenges that the present day higher education system is undergoing and discuss effective strategies to deal with the same.

Moderator: Shakila Shamsu, Joint Advisor (Education), Planning Commission, Government of India Speakers: Prof. K Kannan, Vice Chancellor, University of Nagaland; Prof. V Kannan, Pro Vice Chancellor, University of Hyderabad; Prof. A K Bakshi, Director, Institute of Life Long Learning; Dr. Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Director, G Ram Reddy Research Academy of Distance Education, Dr. B R Ambedkar Open University; Prof. Bala Veeramachenani, CEO, ConnedTec; Dr. Kamal Bijlani, Director, eLearning Initiatives, Amrita University; V. Seshal Sai, Solutions Specialist, Microsoft Corporations (India) Pvt. Ltd.

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Prof. K Kannan initiated his discussion by signifying the need of good quality teacher. He insisted that only a good quality teacher can extend and contribute to quality education.

He highlighted and elaborated on the initiatives of the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India on technology aided learning, Consortium for Educational Communication, Digital Library project of India, Indira Gandhi Memorial Library, University of Hyderabad, and EDUSAT. Dr. Vijay Lakshmi Pandit began by informing that Prof. B R Ambedkar Open University is the State Open University, which was set up in 1982 in Andhra Pradesh. She explained that the University provides learning material through ICT tools like video, radio and television, etc.

Prof. A K Bakshi highlighted that ICT has definitely helped enhance the quality of higher education. It has also helped improve the research and development avenues in higher education.

Prof Kamal Bijlani gave an overview of the Amrita University and highlighted the ICT integrated learning and applications that are being incorporated in the campus.

Prof. Bala Veeramachenani reiterated that for a student to compete in the 21st century, technology literacy is as important as general literacy. He stressed that the most effective uses of technology in the higher education must centre on the engagement or collaboration across distance and continuous (life-time) learning.

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on bridging the gap between industry and academia. Pankaj Rai shared that CyberLearning is the exclusive exam administrator for various certifications in Indian subcontinent.

The speakers of the session presented case studies of on various initiatives of research and innovation in ICT and education. e-Learning models & Mechanisms Objectives of the session were to create an enabling environment for the faculty to become engaged in course production and delivery of courseware and to apply instructional design, electronic publishing and delivery of courseware.

Chair: Dr. N Sarat Chandra Babu, Director, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Hyderabad.

Speakers: Deepak Ramteke, Assist. Professor, Symbiosis Institute of Technology; and M R Ganesh Kumar, Vice President, Technology Solutions, LearningMate.

Panelists at the ‘Research and Innovations in ICT and Education’ session

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V. Seshal Sai spoke about an online service known as Microsoft Live@ edu which provide a complete value for the education community.

The session was enriched by the presentations and deliberations of the esteemed speakers. Technology is a kind of amplifier that lets one learn the content faster and lets one master the skills more deeply.

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• Research & Innovations in ICT and Education Objective of the session was to deliberate on the status and the actors of ICT supported R&D and knowledge building; new strategies; cooperation among researchers and ICT-related research programmes.

Speakers: Prof. Mircea – Florin Vaida, Head, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunkicastions and IT, Technical University of Cluj – Napoca, Romania; Dr. Subashinin Suresh, University of Wolverhampton, UK; Dr. Joy Mukhopadhyay, Prof of Management, Institute of Business Management and Research, Bangalore; Dr. Nirmal Roy, Associate Dean, National Institute of technology, Durgapur; Shanthi S, Research Scholar, CEG, Anna University, Chennai; Ranjit Singh, CEO, Genee Solutions; Pankaj Rai, CEO- India, Cyber Learning.

Discussions AND RECOMMENDATIONS •

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Prof. Vaida presented his paper on Adaptable learning using eye tracking solutions under which a scene is represented on a computer display, capturing the eye movements of the subject and using evaluating parameters like eye fixations, refixations, the attention level, etc. www.digitalLEARNING.in

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Essential feedback is captured regarding subject’s interest and understanding of study materials.

Dr. Subashini Suresh presented a case study in UK on Learning through Mobile Technology. She highlighted that mobile learning devices allow learners to learn wherever they are located and in their personal context so that the learning is meaningful.

Dr. Joy Mukhopadhyay presented his paper on ICT Application in BSchools in Bangalore, which was jointly authored by him and Ajit Kumar Dash. He empahsised that implementation of ICT in B - schools is of particular importance since it can connect the students to real life situation and the curriculum needs to be continuously updated in business studies.

Shanthi S presented her paper on Knowledge Cafes: A Powerful Medium of Knowledge Sharing in Academia. The findings of a study suggested that Knowledge Café acts as an enabler for people to network, collaborate and share insights, experiences and knowledge resources through informal conversations.

Dr. Nirmal Roy presented his paper on ICT enabled High Voltage Laboratory: e learning tool for Engineering Education. He felt that High Voltage Virtual and ICT enabled Laboratory are the effective tool for e learning and distance education in High Voltage Engineering course.

Ranjit Singh presented his paper on Ambitions and Challenges of e-Learning Group. Representing Genee Solutions, an e-learning company, he said that the aim is to provide unique cutting edge ICT for education customers in the 21st Century.

Pankaj Rai’s presentation focused

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Dr. Chandra Babu shared the perspective of C – DAC on eLearning. With the e-Learning initiative, the centre has advanced from being instructor – centric to learners – centric.

• Deepak Ramteke made his presentation on automated submission system which is used for evaluations. He shared that an automated submission system will save a lot of time of the evaluators (faculty), with submission histories of each student being maintained and progress of the students which can be mapped.

• M R Ganesh Kumar presented his paper on ‘Classroom, Community, and Connect’. He said that the modern day education is witnessing a paradigm shift with the emergence of social media, Web 2.0 technology and new technologies.

The highlight of the session was the need to identify the relevant market place which covers content consumers, learners, authors & instructors, content providers, educational institutions, service providers working around design and development, etc. \\

J Satyanarayana, Principal Secretary, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Chief Guest of eINDIA 2009 Awards Ceremony along with Dr MP Narayanan of CSDMS

eINDIA2009 Awards ceremony was held on 26th August 2009 at Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad, India, to felicitate the winners of jury and public choice awards. The awards were conferred to distinguished professionals and institutions working in the domains of: e-Agriculture, eGovernance, Digital Learning, e-Health, Municipal IT and Telecentre.

The eINDIA Awards programme was held alongside the eINDIA 2009 conference proceedings. The objective was to encourage institutions and individual leaders to use and apply ICT tools in various developmental and sector-specific projects and to identify and popularise emerging leaders and innovative projects from different sectors of the development community, including the grassroots organisations.

The Award selection process went through a dual process of Jury as well as public voting system. There was a huge response in each Award category in terms of sending nominations and online voting of nominations. We thank our esteemed Jury Panel who had a tough time in selecting the best entries from the huge number of nominations we had received.

We also thank the nominees as well as the public for their enormous response to the eINDIA 2009 Awards.

The awards have helped identify and felicitate projects that exemplify the kind of implementation that can be easily replicated and at the same time prove efficient and sustainable, especially projects implemented in India and the South Asian region. It has also helped promote the most innovative initiatives in the domain of ICTs for Development and has spread awareness about the role of ICTs in addressing social concerns.

In this issue of the magazine, we are covering the details of the award winners from different categories.

The information is also available online www.eindia. net.in/2009/awards/eindia2009-awards-winners.asp

Ashis Sanyal and Prakash Kumar at jury meet

Dr Gopi Ghosh during the award selection process

Dr. Ashok Kumar working on the jury award process

Jury Process The Jury members for each award category were chosen based on their expertise/specialization in the domain.

Jury members who extended their support to us and evaluated the nominations received were: Ashis Sanyal, Senior Director, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India; Prakash Kumar, Director, Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), Cisco Systems India; Dr Rajashekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University; Ashish Garg, Asia Regional Coordinator, GeSCI; Madhuri Parti, Head, Learn India; Rajen Varada, Resource Person & Moderator ICTD

community, UN Solution Exchange; Dr. Ashok Kumar, DDG & Director, Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, Government of India; Sajan Venniyoor, Country Representative (India), Deutsche Welle; S N Goswami, MD and CEO, Media Lab Asia; Dr. V Balaji, Global Leader, Knowledge Management & Sharing, ICRISAT, Patancheru, Hyderabad; and Dr. Gopi Ghosh, Assistant FAO Representative, India.

A Jury Meet was organised on 21st August 2009, in Delhi, with the agenda to: shortlist nominations; finalisation of Results and Signing of Jury Decision Form. The Jury members met on the stipulated date, discussed and gave their verdict.

Online Voting Process The online voting process started from 1st August 2009 and closed on 20th August 2009. After registering to vote through online filling of some basic personal information such as name, organization, sector, to validate that the voter is genuine, anyone could vote online. We received a whopping 16,788 votes for eINDIA2009 Award Nominations! The response thus, was overwhelming.

Total votes cast category wise, include: // ICT Enabled Agriculture Initiative of the Year- 1612 // G2C Initiative of the Year- 981 // G2B Initiative of the Year- 891 // G2C Initiative of the Year- 673 // mGov Initiative of the Year- 436 // Civil Society eGov Initiative of the Year- 1339

// ICT Enabled School of the Year2446 // ICT Enabled University of the Year812 // Government/Policy Initiative of the Year in Digital Learning- 601 // Civil Society Digital Learning Initiative of the Year- 713 // ICT Enabled Hospital of the Year419 // Government/Policy eHealth Initiative of the Year- 1087 // Civil Society eHealth Initiative of the Year- 268 // Innovative Grassroots Telecentre of the Year- 298 // Civil Society Telecentre Initiative of the Year- 230 // ICT Enabled Municipal Initiative of the Year- 1503

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winners - g2c Jury Award e-Tansik e-Tansik is related to the admission to public universities and institutions in Egypt that operates through a centralized office, University Enrollment Co- ordination Office (UEC). This office enrolls over 450,000 students yearly. The purpose of the e-Tansik initiative was to replace the old paper process through a comprehensive web-based application, hosted on the Egyptian Government Portal, that accepts student’s university enrollment application, backed by a 24/7 call center for students’ support. The Portal’s operation team was responsible for service operation, security and technical support. e-Tansik proved to be highly beneficial for both citizens and government. It resulted in huge cost savings, higher efficiency and much better services for the citizens at no cost. In addition, it helped building trust in e-Government services.

The e-Tansik application was developed by the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. The team developed the online form and tested the application according to the business rules set by the Ministry of Higher Education for acceptance, taking into account geographical distribution.

Achievements • The initiative taken was replacing the paper process by Implementor: Public Universities Enrollment Project, Cairo, Egypt Website: www.egypt.gov.eg

Dr Ahmed Mouhmed Tobal, General Manager, Education Project, Ministry of State for Administrative Development, Egypt

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a comprehensive web-based application, hosted on the Egyptian Government Portal and supported by a 24/7 call center for student support.

Students are able to access the application with their student IDs and a special PIN code received along with their secondary school certificates.

The online application was offered entirely free of charge.

The automated process allowed extra features over the old paper forms.

It helped build trust in the e-Government services.

A flexible and scalable system design was implemented to allow future consolidation and aggregation.

public Choice Award National Portal of India of information and services that take place through the Portal.

Also facilitated through the portal is the key component of citizen participation in the processes and policy formulation by the government as in the case of RTI Complaint and Appeal, Central Pay Commission and NGO Partnership. The Portal has exclusive section dedicated to the citizens, business, overseas, government and know India, sectors.

Neeta Verma, HOD, Data Centre & Web Services Division and Alka Misra, Technical Director, from National Informatics Centre, Delhi

National Portal of India is the official portal for the Government of India. It provides a single window source for alleviating entrée to all information and services that is provided by the various constituents of the Indian Government to its citizens and other stakeholders. The India portal www.india.gov.in, an aggregator of more than 5000 distinct Indian Government websites (of various different domains and owners), has a cohesive interface.

The Portal provides a flawless access to a wide variety of services for all Indian citizens, thus acting as a gateway to a superfluity of information and services provided electronically by the different departments of Indian government. The primary objective of e-Government is fulfilled as interaction takes place between the citizen through electronic delivery and exchange 24

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Achievements • india.gov.in provides a single window gateway to over 5000 Indian government websites, a feat that is unique in its own right.

• The Portal has also proven to be an effective medium for the participation of common citizens in the process of governance.

• Publication of information and documents over the Net, online delivery of citizen services as well as the facility to know the status of applications submitted for various government services has not only led to benefiting the end-users or common citizens but also fulfills one of the basic objectives of good governance namely enhancing transparency and accountability in the government functioning.

Implementor: National Informatics Centre, New Delhi Website: www.india.gov.in

winners - g2G Jury Award Central Plan Scheme Monitoring System The Project envisages tracking of expenditure for more than 1000 central plan schemes of the Government of India having an outlay of approximately Rs 200,000 Crores. The sanction identification process that has been established enables tracking of fund flow under these schemes for various implementing agencies. Accordingly around 70,000 sanctions were captured during the financial year 2008-09. Expenditure under different components of schemes was captured through expenditure filing on a pilot basis from the lowest level of implementation i.e. village for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan and National Child Labour Project in the states of Karnataka (Bangalore-Rural) and Punjab (Ludhiana).

Information on all sanctions issued under the plan schemes for release of funds to various organisations/implementing agencies is available on the system.

Achievements • At present the central plan scheme monitoring system is under implementation in all the departments of the Government of India, which are implementing the central plan schemes with some exceptions.

Amitabh Tripathi, Deputy Controller General of Accounts

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• Implementor: Controller General of Accounts, Delhi Website: cga.nic.in

The system has stabilised and demonstrates the capabilities to track the funds on the parameters which cannot be captured through existing accounting system. Thus the same model can be replicated in the state governments for tracking of similar plan scheme releases to various organisations.

Tracking of financial sanctions issued by various programme divisions in the ministries and its payment status. Thus it also works as the bill tracking system.

It has provided MIS to top level management for expenditure management.

public Choice Award e-Lekha - A Stride towards a Core Accounting Solution the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) to update and monitor daily reporting of expenditure and revenue of the GoI, in sync with the budget allotted to a ministry and its sub units and schemes.

This software is positioned at the lowest level of accounting and helps in optimum utilisation of financial resources.

Dipankar Sengupta, Technical Director and Punit Srivastava, Senior Systems Analyst from Accounts Informatics Division, Office of Controller General of Accounts, National Informatics Centre

e-Lekha, a prudent financial management application provides an electronic payment and accounting information system for the Civil Accounts Organization of the Government of India (GoI) with the objective of improving efficiency and accuracy of the accounting process. Built in and around the COMPACT application running at pay and accounts offices and other offline interfaces, it provides a system of core accounting with integration of daily, monthly and annual accounting processes for near real time value added reporting and financial monitoring and control. e-Lekha is being used by all Civil Ministries of the Government of India covering over 400 Pay and accounts offices and 47 ministries /departments. It is developed by the Accounts Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre for

Achievements • eLekha is currently operational in all 52 ministries covering 462 pay and accounts offices of different ministries and Union Territories of the Government of India.

• Centralised management and online availability of chart of accounts of GOI (over 1 Lakh heads of accounts, grants, object head, categories and their interrelationships, over 70 controller codes, over 500 PAO codes and over 6000 DDO codes ).

• Full integration of payment and accounting functions.

• Accuracy of Accounts – online validation, no audit qualifications.

• Data integrity – through a single database at the Controller and CGA Level and having interfaces with COMPACT at PAO level.

Implementor: Accounts Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre, delhi Website: www.acid.nic.in

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winners - g2b Jury Award e-Bidding The Ministry of Finance, Malaysia recently introduced Government electronic procurement mode named eBidding. eBidding was introduced in selected Government agencies on a pilot basis in November 2006 as part of the ePerolehan, solution under the eGovernment initiative. ePerolehan provides a virtual marketplace to cater for Government buyers (2,500 offices with approximately 12,000 users) and suppliers of products and services totalled 140,000 suppliers. There are 5 procurement modes in ePerolehan which are direct purchase, central contract, quotation, tender and eBidding. All of these procurement modes are web-based and can be accessed by users online. eBidding is a procurement mode that is based on a reverse auction concept where sellers offer their items and compete for the price which the buyer will accept. In this scenario, the Government agency, as the buyer will set up an auction event to receive bids from suppliers.

Achievements • During the pilot implementation, more than 100 transactions have been carried out involving 8 Ministries.

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• Implementor: ePerolehan, Malaysia Website: www.home.eperolehan.gov.my

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eBidding drastically reduces end-to-end procurement process in comparison with other modes of procurement.

In average, the procurement cycle is only within 3 weeks compared to tender which takes an average of 20 weeks in order to issue the letter of award to the respective supplier.

The bidding result is straightforward and is based on the lowest bid price offered. This results in faster and less complex decision making. Commonly, suppliers enjoy faster bidding results.

Government agencies avoid tedious process of examining different suppliers with different specifications.

It fosters broader business participation as all qualified suppliers will, be competing with each other on a level playing field.

public Choice Award e-Procurement in Orissa 85% of Orissa Government’s procurement budget.

S K Panda, SIO & Senior Technical Director and Nihar Ranjan Biswal, Scientist, from National Informatics Centre, Orissa

With the objective of bringing reforms related to public procurement under the administrative reforms, Government of Orissa with World Bank, formulated an agenda out of which eProcurement was a priority area. Accordingly, NIC was entrusted

by Govt. of Orissa to undertake the automation of procurement practice. With the principle that what is good for citizen is good for the government, Government of Orissa and NIC committed to adopt e-Procurement as a major e-Governance initiative during late 2006 to bring transparency and accountability in public procurement process. With introduction of GePNIC (Government e-Procurement Application of National Informatics Centre) by NIC during 2007, achieving the goal became a reality.

GePNIC, being a Mission Mode e-Governance Project, caters to works related to tendering activities, which covers almost 26

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Achievements • Department officers have been enabled to create and publish the tender online along with corrigendum.

• Department bid openers, open technical and financial bids online in stages. The bids can only be opened after the designated time and only by the pre-selected bid openers.

• The financial evaluation is done automatically and comparison chart is generated indicating the L1 and other bidders. The award of the project is automatically intimated to the bidder by mail and through the portal and public can see the results of the tendering.

• The application facilitates free online portal registration by any bidder from any place and is a self-registration process.

• The bidder also has to register his Digital Signature Certificates to get access the bidding process.

• The bidder could search, prepare and upload his bid documents that are stored in encrypted format thus not revealing the bidders price and identity.

Implementor: National Informatics Centre, Orissa State Unit Website: www.orissagov.nic.in

winners: mGOVERNANCE Jury Award AND pUBLIC CHOICE AWARD Railway SMS SMS 139 Service, offered by Spice Digital Ltd in collaboration with Indian Railways (IRCTC) and Bharat BPO, is used to provide railway information. SMS Service is used to provide railway information like PNR enquiry, train arrival / departure, time table, fare enquiry etc. on a single short code 139 which is accessible Pan India from All major telecom operators. Users can send their 10 Digit PNR number to 139 in the form of an SMS to get the required information online.

Achievements • Railway Service on 139 is now available on SMS and voice (IVR and Agent) from anywhere in India.

• More than 1 million indian citizens use this service across India

Laxminarayan, Group General Manager, SCZ, IRCTC, Anil Chopra, Deputy General Manager, Rail Sampark and Pankaj Gupta, Business Head (Enterprise), Spice Digital Ltd

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Created a pool out of the defined resources and handled the activities on a priority basis.

Only authorized officials can perform the critical tasks because of features like role based access, encryption and locking / unlocking at every stage of randomization.

Implementor: Indian Railways Website: www.indianrailway.gov.in

winners: Grassroots Telecentre Jury Award AND pUBLIC CHOICE AWARD Vision Centre Vision Centres are aimed at providing comprehensive primary eye care services to the rural and remote population and thus create access to quality eye care. Each Vision Centre covers a population of 50,000 to 60,000. These centres are equipped with ophthalmic equipment such as slit lamp, streak retinoscope, direct ophthalmoscope, trial sets, schiotz tonometer, basic sterilizers, BP apparatus, 90D lens, digital camera, and a computer with a webcam and high bandwidth (4 mbps) point to point wireless (802.11b - license free spectrum) or BSNL broadband connectivity. These centres are run by well trained ophthalmic assistants who perform slit lamp examination, refraction, treating minor ailments and a counselor to counsel the patients and manage the vision centre operations. All investigation results are directly entered into computer using electronic medical record software and medical images taken are attached to the medical records that are accessed by the ophthalmologist at the base hospital while providing consultation.

B.S.Ganesh Babu, Senior Manager-IT & Systems, Aravind Eye Care System

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Achievements • Vision centres are providing eye care at the door steps of the rural areas.

• It has reached and served nearly 80% of those in need of eye care within a period of two years which highlight the changes in the health seeking behavior.

• The conventional camps could screen the cataract cases and could not help other eye diseases like diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and others, but these centres are

permanent and could provide comprehensive eye care to the community.

Availability and supply of medicines and spectacles at the centre ensure the compliance rate of treatments advised.

Only 7 to 10% of the people gets referred to base hospital for further treatment otherwise nearly 90% of the people could gets treatment at these tele-centres.

Implementor: The Aravind Eye Care System Website: www.aravind.org

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winners: civil society Jury Award ICT Solution for Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) has formulated and implemented successfully new schemes in the areas of insurance and pensions, dairy, health and nutrition, gender, disability, Non-Pesticide Management (NPM), jobs and education for empowerment of rural women in particular and rural poor in general. Besides, it is also responsible for implementing co- contributory insurance and pension scheme called “Abhaya Hastham” announced by the government of Andhra Pradesh.

SERP assigned the responsibility of developing and implementing IT solution to TCS for implementating an ICT solution to automate all the functionalities of SERP and capture all transactions of SHGs and their federations. The major objectives for implementing this project is to capture all Self Help Group (SHG) transactions at their origin, solution to make program monitoring easy for the government, performance monitoring of different SHGs and fast and ready flow of correct and right data to all the stakeholders

Representatives from SERP

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Achievements • ICT solution to SERP covered all the functional areas related to SHG and bank linkage program.

Implementor: Tata Consultancy Services Website: www.rd.ap.gov.in

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The functional areas covered in the ICT solution are for monitoring the whole SHG movement and successful implementation of microcredit scheme in Andhra Pradesh.

SHG and VO wise loans – target, achievement and repayment.

Government can compare performance SHGs, Village Organisation & Women Group and MSs by setting parameters.

Banks and financial institutions can check the performance of SHG online and disburse the loans.

All the transactions like savings, loans received, loans repaid, and so on are made transparent and visible to outside world.

public Choice Award Common Services Center Project

Mukesh Hajela, CEO & Vice Chairman, NICT-INDORE

The Common Services Center is a project initiated by Government of India for providing better citizen services in rural areas under NeGP initiatives. It is basically a uniform and unified large scale project of various such e-Governance Project like Gyandoot, Rajasthan School IT Project, Lok Mitra and many more. The key at this time in implementation is not the number of CSC but the focus of NICT is to provide such a business model which will become continual and sustainable process rather then a piloting model Its business model includes various B2C and G2C services. Its emphasis is to bench mark those services immediately, which are of daily need to immediately start cash flow at these kiosks in order to make them sustainable. It has started business facilitator services, apart from this electricity online bill collection service is one of thier best USP 28

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Achievements • Sustainable functioning of CSC kiosk because in past also there were efforts to open such kiosk but due to lack of G2C and other B2C services they could not succeed.

• Utilizing the digital opportunity through CSC project launched by Government of India for rural development and poverty eradication.

• Implemented automated Gram Panchayat Software individually at each Gram Panchayat and started providing Birth Certificate, Death Certificate, basic MIS of Gram Panchayat, documentation of Gram Panchayat and providing MIS in soft copy to Tehsil and Collectorate.

• They have roped in Electricity Bill Payment and Insurance, Banking services in CSC’s.

Implementor: NICT (Network for Information and Computer Technology),Indore Website: www.nict.co.in

winners: municipal it Jury Award Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation To eliminate corrupt practices, the e-governance system was built to to provide better services to citizens. Success of e-Governance depended on use of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) in mobilization of Government resources and utilization of these resources. e-Governance enabled the City Government to re-engineer the processes in delivering speedy and better civic services. It eliminated discretionary powers vested with employees and removed human interface in decision making process to ensure transparency. It also eliminated lengthy and cumbersome procedures involved in storage and retrieval of information. The integration of all the departments have made free flow of information across and has in built audit trial. It has brought corporate culture to city government employees.

Implementor: Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Website: http://www.egovamc.com/

Capt Dilip Mahajan, Deputy Commissioner and Dr Kamlesh Patel, Leader, from Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, along with Dr. Neeta Shah, Director, Gujarat Informatics Ltd.

Achievements • Revenue collection jumped from 38% to 85% in 5 years time.

• All departments were integrated.

• As Municipal Corporation were more responsive and transparent, chances for corruption were eliminated.

• Quicker services were provided to the citizens.

• 24-hour remote access to AMC transactions and services.

• Payment gateways and electronic transactions eliminated manual intervention.

public Choice Award Monofeya Portal

Dr Ahmed Mouhmed Tobal, General Manager, Education Project, Ministry of State for Administrative Development, Egypt, receiving the award on behalf of Monofeya Portal

Monofeya has become the first governorate in Egypt to have applied the electronic system in performing services for citizens and present an online service considered as a direct contact between the citizens and the governorate leaders to enable the citizens send their complaints, opinions and suggestions through the portal. From the aspects of development and utilizing the telecommunication and information technology, unemployment is eliminated and various job opportunities are created for the youth. The portal also enabled the youth to obtain a registered flat from the government through Mubarak National Project of youth housing through the advertisements on the portal established by the governorate.

Achievements • The departments of the governorate interacted via the internal communication network to save time and speed performance.

• Reporting through the portal databases to provided access to all people, what has a positive effect on decision making in the right time.

• Availed interactive service for people through the internet.

• Electronic services were presented by municipalities, directorates for the native citizen without getting to the service place.

• Use of information and communication technology to disseminate the results of the local certificates, saved transportation time and money.

Implementor: Monofeya Governate Website: www.monofeya.gov.eg

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winners: e-agricuture Jury Award Kissan Kerala project KISSAN Kerala – is an integrated, multi-modal delivery of agricultural information system, which provides several dynamic and useful information and advisory services for the farming community across Kerala. It is one of the citizen centric e-governance projects of the Department of Agriculture, Government of Kerala. The project was conceived, developed and managed by the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management- Kerala for the Department of Agriculture, Government of Kerala. Objective of this project is to provide “right information to the right person(s) at the right time in the right place(s) and in the right context” dynamically using a combination of advanced technology portal, television based mass media programs, telephone based call centre, mobile SMS based advisory and broadcast service.

Achievements • The core deliverables and achievements of the project is an integrated multi-component, multi-modal delivery of Agriculture Information Services system that is accessible anywhere anytime by all concerned.

• A weekly agriculture television program - in local language that provides selective information dissemination of best

R Ajith Kumar, Chief Coordinator and K R Srivathsan, Former Director, Kissan Kerala (IITM-K) along with Rathan Kelkar, Director IT, Kerala IT Mission, Government of Kerala

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practices, success stories, departmental news, news on various schemes, market analysis, cultivation methods, analysis of current issues, etc. Care has been taken to ensure that KISSAN Krishideepam is authentic and totally produced in-house by agricultural and media experts.

The project has launched the country’s first online video channel in Agriculture. More than 100 selected videos (telecast quality) were made available through the channel.

Implementor: Department of Agriculture, Govt. of Kerala Website: www.kissankerala.net

public Choice Award e-Velanmai objective was to test and evolve an ICT enabled agricultural technology transfer model named as ‘e-Velanmai’ for addressing the problems faced by the farmers in selected command areas of Tamil Nadu.

P. Balaji, Assistant Professor (Agricultural Management) & Co-Principal Investigator of e-Velanmai Scheme, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Chennai

Less than 20 per cent of the technologies generated by Agricultural Universities were transferred to the farmers field in India due to the lack of an appropriate technology transfer model. Hence an action research was experimented to test verify and validate the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based agricultural extension model called ‘e-Velanmai’ (electronic Agriculture) for addressing the agricultural problems of farmers through ICT tool based dissemination of agricultural technologies from the Scientists of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) directly to the needed farmers. This action research was started during July 2007 with the support of the TN-IAMWARM project of the Government of Tamil Nadu. Its 30

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Achievements • The farmers (members) or their children are trained to frame the photograph of symptoms in a digital camera and to upload them for advice from the scientists of TNAU and receive the technical advice through internet or mobile.

• So far, 405 farmers joined the scheme by paying membership fee. At least one individual from each farmer’s family was trained to handle ICT tools successfully.

• 1120 expert advices were offered to the farmers in all the three sub basins to solve both problems and decision based queries. Twelve visits were made by the scientists to the farmers’ field to solve complex problems.

• The volunteer inspects the farmer’s field and frames digital images using a camera and transfers the photo through www.fileflyer.com using the lap top and internet surfing device.

Implementor: Centre for Agricultural and Rural Developments Studies, Agricultural University Tamilnadu Website: www.e-velanmai.com

winners: civil society/development agency of the year Jury Award Telecentre Partnership for development Gedaref Digital City Organization (GDCO) is an NGO based at Gedaref in Sudan. GDCO is the founder of the first national telecentre academy in Africa, called the Sudan National Telecentre Academy or SuNTA, which is the 13th such academy in the world.

This project gives the farmers the opportunity to be medically treated using information technology (telemedicine) to reduce the cost and provide the patients with high quality of treatments against serious diseases .

Achievements • The project ensures environmental sustainability by preventing over exploitations of the resources.

• This e-Farmer project is a great partnership where partners (farmers, NGOs, PPP) from different parts of the world share experiences, best practices and knowledge to make the life more comfortable for farmers communities.

• More than 13.000 farmer's information are installed in the system of Gedaref mechanized agriculture corporation (GMAC).

Zaki Aldeen, Master’s Student, Sudan receiving the award on behalf of Ahmed Eisa, Chairman, GDCO

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Farmers renewed their farm license annually and it was done manually in two to three days, but now they can renew in few minutes.

Farmers and traders can easily sell and buy crops.

Reduction in the cost of. agricultural planning and Geographic coordinates (demarcation) because it is conducted by the trained engineers in GMAC.

Implementor: Gedaref Digital City Organization Website: http://gedaref.com

public Choice Award Project E3

Niranjan Meegammana, Managing Director, e-Fusion, Sri Lanka

Project E3, a Public-Private-Community Partnership, innovated an adaptable, scalable and replicable solution for sustaining Telecenter Networks (TCN). E3 stands for e learning, e business and e leadership, designed to serve emerging digital knowledge needs of rural societies, develop micro economic networks and to address MDGs through telecenter leadership. Aimed at scaling up to 587 Telecenters in Sri Lanka, In the first year, Project E3 helped in improving sustainability of 60 Telecenter network in Uva province of Sri Lanka by improving e services, visibility and usability. The impact of E3 shows that Uva TCN sustainability growth by 96% in an year reducing closing risks from 68.3% to 18.33%.

Achievements • The average number of users has grown from 28 to 101 (364%) and average income grew from Rs. 7650.00 to Rs. 17597.00 (230%) with in a year. This is viewed as significant increase of performance in the network.

• E3 developed skilled telecenter operators to sustain telecenters implemented e learning to improve 150 rural youth communities.

• Developed telecenter leadership forming telecenter community helped securing more than $ 80000 funding for projects for the network created a knowledge network among 150 telecenters Initiated global collaboration for Telecenter Research in Sri Lanka Uniting Telecenter operators for professional development.

• Established a common portal for sharing knowledge and discussion led to empowerment of grassroot telecenter workers.

Implementor: Niranjan Meegammana Website: www.telecenter.lk

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winners - ICT Enabled School of the Year Jury Award ‘FOR GREEN SCENE, STAY GREEN’ PROJECT ENABLED THROUGH ICT The school has taken up a project titled ‘For green scene, stay green’ and the following activities were identified for the same: (i) Waste Management (ii) Energy Conservation (iii) Recycling (iv) Eliminating Plastic & (v) Increasing green cover. The school project has extensively used ICTs for promoting environment friendly practices and promoting awareness among students.

Through the use of e-mails, chat, video-conferencing, media, websites and telephones, the school has become an active learning partner with other schools. Students of the school have taken up the role of ‘Little Ambassadors’ to bring about a change in the school, neighborhood, and the community at large, through integration of technology for generating awareness.

The school is the proud owner of two state of the art computer laboratories. Both are equipped with LCD projectors and fully functional systems with net facility. The school also has a bank of over 130 lesson modules in various subjects prepared by the teachers of the school.

Achievements • The project has helped inculcate environment friendly Implementor: BVB Public School, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh Website: www.bvbpsjh.com

Chamala RamaDevi, (Senior Principal), A.G.Lakshmi Sujatha, (Science Teacher,) Arunasree Ganti, Mathematics teacher, Anuradha Chaganti (Mathematics teacher), Suvarni Rao (Academic Co-Ordinator)

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practices among students.

Students of the school are now more aware of the pressing problems effecting the climate and taking appropriate measures to spread knowledge through ICTs. Technology awareness has also increased among students and IT has been successfully used by the school in socially relevant projects.

The school has partnership with Charles Edward Brooke Girls’ School, London. The partnership aims to provide an international dimension to the participating schools.

Global school partnership gives students fantastic opportunity to share their lives and learn from one another by working on joint projects with global themes including environmental concerns.

public Choice Award INNOVATIVE ICT MODEL IN EDUCATION

R K Kapoor, Dean of ICT, Scindia School

The Scindia School has used a unique and innovative model to derive best results using ICT tools. Teachers use well researched web links/digital content structures as per syllabus plan. The Math Lab is used to provide an understanding of difficult concepts in mathematics. Online testing tools are used to evaluate understanding of a student. Game based learning is used for fun Teaming and Collaborative activities. Unique mix of multimedia and threshold technologies ensures creation of 24x7 learning environment. Cost effective labs have been created using Ncomputing Solutions which helps accommodate students with varying learning styles and differences.

The school computer-centre has a large network of Dell servers & 300 Pentium-based machines that have helped in addressing the technology training needs of students.

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Achievements • The Scindia School ranked on top in Computer Literacy Excellence Award for Schools -2003 at State Level in a survey done at National Level.

• The School has the credit having a “School On Campus Agreement” with Microsoft.

• Top-notch IT facilities allow students to surf the internet; research information or check e-mail at their own scindia. edu e-mail address.

• The concept of “Smart Campus Cards” and biometric based finger print scanner has been introduced for the students and being used extensively for their day to day campus life.

• All commonly used software as well as many special softwares are installed to cater to students’ academic requirements.

• A large number of educational multimedia CDs are also available as part of the school’s effort to provide all-round academic support through IT.

Implementor: The Scindia School, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh Website: www.scindia.edu

winners - ICT Enabled University of the Year Jury Award GUJARAT COMMON ENTRANCE TEST, (GCET) 2009 GCET 2009 is the Entrance Test conducted by Gujarat Technological University (GTU) for admissions to Masters of Business Administration (MBA) and Masters of Computer Application (MCA) courses in all affiliated Institutions throughout Gujarat.

This project serves the needs of the University in automating the examination delivery process and ensuring quicker turn around time for creating content, publishing question papers, evaluating candidate responses, and announcing results. This project also provides a fully technology based solution for student counseling through online allocation of college seats.

This was the first time in India that any State-level (Government) Entrance Exam was conducted online. The exams were conducted from 1st July 2009 to 5th July 2009, at 37 Online Test Centers across 21 Institutions in 11 cities across Gujarat.

The entire project used cutting-edge technology and offered innovative solutions to address the requirements with regard to Online Application Processing, Online Exam Delivery and Online Counseling for all professional courses in the state.

Manish Bharadwaj, Director Census Operations, Gujarat( Project Champion), Prof Nilay Bhuptani, Registrar, Gujarat Technological University and Madan Padaki, CEO, MeritTrac Services, Bangalore

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Achievements GCET has benefited the students by providing them: • An application system where students can apply online; Implementor: Gujarat Technological University, Ahmedabad City, Gujarat Website: www.gtu.ac.in

Easily downloadable “Admit Cards” for examination purposes; On the spot submission of Score Cards containing test results; Online counseling for seat allocation which has proved to be very transparent & system driven.

Benefits for GTU: • A system where daily reports of Application form status has been made available; • A system which ensures complete security of the question papers; • A system where candidates impersonation checks can be carried out well.

public Choice Award EDUNXT INITIATIVE scale. The long term goal of EduNxt is to enable distance education programs to have the same degree of acceptance as conventional programs both in the minds of prospective employers and other educational organisations.

Atul Negi, Head, Distance Education, Manipal Eduation, Sikkim Manipal University

EduNxt initiative was launched by Sikkim Manipal University’s Directorate of Distance Education (SMU – DDE) in 2009 with the objective of providing the students with a plethora of resources. EduNxt functions on the principle of 3As + 4Cs. The 3 As of Affordability, Accessibility and Appropriateness are the guidelines for scaling up EduNxt across distributed learning.

Meanwhile, the 4Cs of Content, Collaboration, Communication and Computing are the basis of developing EduNxt into a means of disseminating education among the not-so-privileged or the infrastructure – challenged.

SMU has armed its DE students with industry knowledge and skills necessary to be industry-ready. EduNxt focuses on personalised learning and mentoring at a very large

Achievements • The EduNxt environment is being used today by over 55,000 students and will be made available to over 130,000 students from August 2009.

• The total cost of ownership of the EduNxt environment is very low, and therefore, it has been used to help less privileged students achieve scholastic parity with others.

• It has succeeded in bringing together students and faculty members by enabling more interaction in the learning process.

• The soft skills training along with the placement and internship assistance through EduNxt has helped in the overall upliftment of the DE students through better employment opportunities.

• The EduNxt platform is also being used to train, certify and orient 6500 counselors to technology based education and its benefits.

Implementor: Sikkim Manipal University- Directorate of Distance Education, Manipal, Karnataka Website: www.smude.edu.in

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winners - Government/Policy Initiative of the Year Jury Award SAMS (STUDENT ACADEMIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEM) Student Academic Management System (SAMS) was introduced as an innovative initiation for providing an IT tool for simplifying the admission related concerns of the students, their guardians, the colleges and the authorities of the department. SAMS has two components i.e., e-Admission and e-Administration. e-Admission aims to use Information Technology to process common applications for admission into junior colleges for all students passing the 10th Board exam. The purpose of this initiative is to reduce time & improve efficiency for the college functionaries who have been doing this manually. SAMS aims to reduce cost and anxiety apart from making the process hassle free. Overall, the entire admission process is made transparent and citizen friendly. e-Administration manages the student information by accepting, adding, modifying or removing information about students and generating reports. Students, parents and faculty can share this vital information with each other.

Achievements • e- Admission of the SAMS project has increased the process efficiency of the admission process.

S K Panda, SIO & Senior Technical Director, National Informatics Centre, Orissa, Nihar Ranjan Biswal, Scientist-C, National Informatics Centre, Orissa

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• Implementor: Government of Orissa, Department of Higher Education, Bhubaneswar, Orissa Website: www.orissagov.nic.in

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Application form & prospectus has been made available online, thereby reducing the travel cost of students.

The entire process has been able to reduce the time from about 75 days to 55 days and at the same time increased the transparency of the process.

Prefixed datelines & use of queries through website has increased information availability and has reduced the anxiety in part of applicants/guardians. e-Administration captures the student attendance, marks scored in tests, class timetable and previous education qualification.

It has also been used for purposes like Long Roll preparation, Matriculates Return, ID card & library card issue, etc.

public Choice Award IMPLEMENTATION OF SHARED COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY a quick and problem free deployment but also saving a great deal of money.

The Andhra Pradesh Government had envisaged an ambitious plan to bring computer access into 5000 government schools to benefit 1.8 million underprivileged children. The purpose of the project was to enable under privileged school children with computer skills in order to bridge the digital divide. To equip each of these schools with a computer lab of 10 seats, the Government of Andhra Pradesh, after serious evaluation chose to implement the NComputing solution to utilise the PC capacity by sharing the resources/PC power of 2 complete PCs with 8 additional computing stations, without compromising on the their performance.

The uniqueness in the project has been its very fast implementation in a record time of 4 months. Government of Andhra Pradesh conducted an extensive evaluation and testing before its actual application. This decision resulted in not only 34

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Achievements • 5000 Government schools in Andhra Pradesh today are equipped with an up-to-date computer lab with the latest computer hardware, Microsoft and e-learning softwares, trained instructors, and reliable electricity support.

• The overall cost of the project was over 300 crores for 5 years; with about 20% savings due to installation and deployment of the NComputing solution, allowing more schools to be equipped with PCs in the initial phase of the project.

• Over 1.8 million students now have access to computer labs and regular computer classes.

• The computing labs are being used to teach computer skills, office productivity (such as spreadsheets and word processing), as well as subjects like reading and math.

Implementor: Government of Andhra Pradesh Website: www.aponline.gov.in

winners - Civil Society/Development Agency of the Year Jury Award HOME ICT NETWORK PROJECT This project has aimed at preparing and helping the rural youth for Information Technology courses in the local language of Sri Lanka (Sinhala) and English with the help of social network, elearning, self learning, and distance learning. Under this project, in the year 2005 / 2006 , preliminary computer literacy was provided to 4000 students of the school. Special feature of this project is that the membership fee charged from each student has been used in purchasing computers to be used by them.

The project helped the marginalised and deprived students in procuring computer literacy. Through the network of 500 Telecenters, a minimum of 5 lakh school children and youth have been trained in ICT using Sinhala and Tamil languages. In addition, they have been able to study web designing to hone their vocational skills and improve their knowledge of the English language. There are three social networks that the members use to avail facilities of English learning, self learning and distance learning. The project provides the village youth with opportunities to learn web designing as a part of vocational training.

Implementor: ICT Mini Campus Virtual Society, Sri Lanka Website: Not Found

Niranjan Meegammana, Managing Director, e-Fusion, Sri Lanka, receiving the award on behalf of Home ICT Network Project

Achievements • The project has given an opportunity to the students of small scale computer training center to get an understanding of the IT sector from an international perspective.

• The project also promises to provide opportunity of training various capsule courses like MS Office, Graphic Designing, Web Designing, etc.

• This project is implemented to enhance the digital learning rate of rural students and youth. They get training in the Nenasala in their own village similar to the training received in a town or a foreign country.

• The project has helped create a network of IT and web designing knowledge for the students thereby creating employment opportunities for them.

public Choice Award HOLE IN THE WALL EDUCATION modern office workers. Along with the stimulating educational games, curriculum related content is provided to help children with their schoolwork.

Suhotra Banerjee, Relationship Manager, Hole-in the Wall Education

HiWEL, a joint venture between NIIT Ltd. (IT Training & Development Company) and the International Finance Corporation (a part of the World Bank Group), was initiated as an experiment in 1999 to facilitate learning for the marginalised children, through unconditional and public access to computers; to improve the quality of teaching; motivate children to complete school; and to ensure that skills of youth meet the needs of India’s emerging economy. The computers, typically located in a government school playground or in the community are unsupervised and are available to the children for at least eight hours a day. Working in self-organised groups and helping each other, the children typically navigate within minutes and begin to browse in about an hour. Within three months they achieve basic computer literacy, and by nine months they have achieved the proficiency level equivalent to the skills of most

Achievements • There has been an increase in learning interest and higher enrollments in the children, allowing them to concentrate on higher level tasks like mentoring students and leading class discussions.

• About 300,000 out-of-school and in-school children, in India, Africa and Cambodia, have been directly impacted

by HiWEL. • HiWEL Learning Stations have also been able to boost the confidence levels of certain children with special needs (CWSN) with the usage of interactive educational content in the juvenile homes.

• The project is the first attempt at applying the principle of self-organising systems to primary education, which is representative of a new area in theoretical physics.

Implementor: Hole-In-The-Wall- Education Limited (HiWEL), New Delhi, India Website: www.hole-in-the-wall.com

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winners - BEST ICT ENABLED HOSPITAL OF THE YEAR Jury Award Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi The hospital has installed an internationally acclaimed software, TrakCare, for implementation of HIS in its pharmacy. The system offers a tight integration between patient registrations, admissions, billing, discharges, ordering, prescription, pharmacy, laboratories, imaging, stock indenting, purchase, receiving, stores and finance modules. The pharmacy management system includes ordering of medication from the wards, with patient allergy alerts and drug to drug interaction warnings, intelligent drug substitution in the pharmacy from existing stock, inventory controls and MIS reports. Patient billing is automated so that the bill is always updated and available at all times with virtually no errors in billing. Tight integration between various activities relating to stock (purchase requests, receiving, consumption, etc.) have resulted in a tighter inventory control as well as smaller inventory holding at the hospital.

Dr. Karanvir Singh, Consultant Surgeon, and Dr. Rajesh Garg, Network Engineer, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi

Achievements • Better patient management and inventory and cost control.

• Instant availability of patient data to doctors via EMR module ensures continuity of medical care.

• Integration of laboratory machines with HIS. • Single continuous electronic patient medical record.

Implementor: Dr. Karanvir Singh, Head-Medical Informatics, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Website: http://www.sgrh.com/

public Choice Award Hospitals under Municipal Corporation of Delhi details of each patient visit has been made available at all of the 6 hospitals. This has enabled the doctors to have ready access to past episodes and information of the patient thus ensuring efficient patient care.

Dr. Venugopal, Medical Superintendent, SDN Hospital of Municipal Corporation of Delhi

Municipal Corporation of Delhi, has six major hospitals to provide tertiary patient care for the public. The HIS implemented at all hospitals helps in patient registration with demographic details, out patient visits, doctors appointment scheduling, admissions/ bed transfers/discharges, order entry, laboratory/radiology/ cardiology result reporting, operation theatre management, main stores, sub stores and pharmacy etc. Automation has also helped in generating timely census reports with accurate data.

Various other reports, which are required for the government, can be generated easily, as the data is available electronically.

Stock reports are now generated online and audits are done based on the system generated reports. Patient folder with 36

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Achievements • Successful implementation of hospital information system at 6 MCD hospitals.

• HIS caters to needs of out patient as well as inpatient functionality.

• Better patient care by retrieval of records, reporting system, control on inventory, availability of patient record online and generation of statistical reports online.

• HIS has also made medical records management much easier.

Implementor: Dr. RC Patnaik, Chief Medical Officer (Health Informatics), MCD Website: http://www.mcdonline.gov.in/healthdetail. php?id=1

winners - BEST GOVERNMENT/POLICY INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR Jury Award Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project The Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project (TNHSP) was set up to implement the World Bank aided project including the HMIS project under the TN Health Department. Thirty hospitals have currently started operating live with the online system, in a short period of 6 months. All respective end users are expected to use the system with NO data entry support. All registrations, stores, pharmacies, wards, laboratories and doctors’ outpatient (OP) processes are fully online and no manual records are maintained. The doctors are directly entering diagnosis, ordering lab tests and giving prescriptions online for all out patients. The HMIS reporting system covering clinical, program, administrative including finance, personnel, infrastructure modules provides for immediate online access to the health administrators at state level on various critical data sets. The HMIS project brought in the services of various agencies to provide a state-of-the-art solution.

Implementor: Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Tamil Nadu Website: http://www.tnhsp.org/

Dr. S Vijayakumar, Spl Sectretary, Department of Health & Family Welfare, Government of Tamil Nadu and Project Director, Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project along with Dr. PK Amarnath Babu, State Co-ordinator, HMIS Project

Achievements • HMIS application is envisaged as a single state health IT system.

• Currently, in 30 hospitals; over 300 doctors currently enter around 6,000 patient records per day, while before implementation, the hospital records were completely manual.

• The online system records show over 10,000 patient registrations, around 2000 lab investigations, and 8000 prescriptions being entered daily.

public Choice Award Aarogyasri Health Trust engaged to construct and maintain software, hardware and all data and medical records pertaining to the scheme.

Babu Ahmed, CEO, Aarogyasri Healthcare Trust

Under the Aarograsri Health Trust, initiated by the Government of Andhra Pradesh all BPL ration card holders (white card) are eligible for benefit. A pre-identified list of diseases have been covered under the scheme for providing treatment. Cashless arrangement with network hospitals is one of the key elements of the scheme whereby beneficiary once registered in network hospital does not have to pay at all for the entire process of treatment. The scheme provides coverage for meeting expenses of hospitalization and surgical procedures of beneficiary members up to Rs.1.50 lakhs per family per year subject to limits, in any of the network hospitals. Choice of hospital for treatment from among empanelled hospitals is also given to patient. The scheme is implemented online through an IT portal for efficiency, transparency and accountability. An IT company is

Achievements • Since its inception 350 hospitals from the government and private sector have joined the network and organized 11,375 health camps in rural areas • 19,45,619 patients have been screened and 3,33,005 surgeries/treatments conducted at a cost of Rs.1063.46 crores • 4, 60,107 patients are given medical consultation as outpatients, free of cost.

Implementor: Babu A,CEO, Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, HM & FW Department Website: http://www.aarogyasri.org/ASRI/index.jsp

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winners - BEST CIVIL SOCIETY/DEVELOPMENT AGENCY OF THE YEAR

Jury Award Aarogyasri Health Trust Aarogyasri Health Trust is a successful initiative of the Government of Andhra Pradesh in achieving good governance using ICT. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has covered more than 70 million people below poverty line through its Rajiv Aarogyasri Community Health Insurance scheme. The scheme beneficiaries do not have to pay anything to get treatment; it also covers all charges right from initial transportation to medication charges post-treatment. The model is a holistic approach to healthcare, ensuring that people are given free health checkups by the network hospitals and 24-hour helpline, manned by 100 doctors and 1,600 paramedics that handle about 53,000 calls a day. Since the launch of the scheme on April 1st, 2007, 1,921,093 patients have been screened in 11,256 health camps organized at the village level in 23 districts.

Babu Ahmed, CEO, Aarogyasri Healthcare Trust

Achievements • Number of outpatients treated 541386 and inpatients treated 450848 • Number of patients screened till date are 2193249 • Number of surgeries performed till date 377795 • Number of medical camps organised 12738

Implementor: Babu A,CEO, Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, HM & FW Department Website: http://www.aarogyasri.org/ASRI/index.jsp

public Choice Award Health Management and Research Institute Effective capacity of the system is thus enhanced by 5 times.

In case of emergencies direct transfer to emergency response system (ambulance service) is also available.

Balaji Utla, CEO, HMRI

104 Advice, the flagship initiative of HMRI, is a state-of-the-art health helpline that provides the 80 million people of Andhra Pradesh with round-the-clock, qualified and standardized medical information, advice and counselling in three languages—Telugu, Hindi and English. With technology and committed domain experts, who are ready to push the envelope and challenge existing paradigms, 104 Advice is available to anyone in Andhra Pradesh with access to a telephone. The scheme offers medical advice using triage (classifying the caller’s condition into ‘critical’, ‘serious’ or ‘stable’ states). It also offers counselling services. A decision support system is used to automate the diagnosis of the caller’s medical condition.

Trained paramedics diagnose 80 percent of the calls using valid algorithms, while doctors diagnose only the complex cases.

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Achievements • 104 Advice is currently the world’s largest health contact centre, attending to an average 15,00,000 calls per month.

• 104 Advice has been able to identify certain epidemics in real time and escalate them to the concerned authorities • As of 13 May, 2009 – 104 Advice had registered 25,000 new callers in a single day.

• On 24 March, 2009 – 104 Advice received its 20 millionth call since inception.

Implementor: Balaji Utla, CEO, HMRI Website: http://www.hmri.in/

eINDIA 2009 EXHIBITION

The Exhibition‌

Bringing a Whole World of Virtual Learning Under One Roof

Smt D. Purandeswari cutting the red ribbon at the exhibition inauguration

Principals, teachers, educationists and academicians came together to garner information on the newest in educational technologies and equipments at the eINDIA2009 Exhibition hall at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC). The exhibition hosted a prolific range of exhibits featuring the best in cutting edge technologies across India and beyond.

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ver 70 companies set up their stalls at the eINDIA2009 Exhibition venue, trying to catch the eye of potential customers to expand their business reach. The exhibition brought together the hardware and software segments on a common platform and has provided an impetus to India’s growing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry.

Numerous companies from India and abroad joined the eINDIA2009 fanfare and swarmed the exhibition venue at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre(HICC) to display their products and technologies. The education technology solution providers, health technology and telecentre service providers came up with contemporary and customer friendly ways of displaying their products. New and innovative ideas, tools and ingenious technologies were showcased to the audience.

Visitors enquiring at the eLearning stall

The exhibition witnessed •

Cutting edge developments in the ICT sector from across the globe; • Inventive Marketing Solutions from within the Indian ICT industry and beyond; • Participation by the best in the Indian ICT industry; and • Workshops, demonstrations and display of the latest from the ICT industry.

The HICC exhibition area of approximately 5000 sqm. was fully furnished with company stalls and products.

Almost 70 exhibitors took active part in showcasing their avantgarde technologies. The conference participants and patrons thronged the exhibition venue to catch a glimpse of the break through technologies in education, health, governance and telecentre domain. Several of the clients registered for future partnerships and deals.

The exhibition provided an appropriate platform for the vendors to get in touch with their prospective buyers, be it academicians seeking e-learning solutions or medical practitioners on the look out for the latest in ECG scanning technologies. From Smart-boards to online assessment tools, all solutions were provided for under the HICC exhibition roof. Software developers and its users from across various sectors met at the exhibition to explore new options and conclude business for mutual benefit.

The exhibition has been broadly categorised into eHealth, eAgricultutre, eGovernance and eLearning domain.

School students experimenting with the Interactive Whiteboards at the exhibition

Some of the special focus areas under these sectors included a special section on IT Solutions, a special pavilion catering to the needs of the evolving e-marketplace, sections showcasing innovative solutions in the area of content development and a pavilion that exhibited products for network-based education and training.

The objective of the exposition was to bring together educators, public authorities, NGOs, academics and all other stakeholders to identify the potential of using ICTs to advance and improve education, resolve barriers to using ICTs in education and to share knowledge and best practices about successful use of ICTs in education.

Some of the goals of the exposition that were achieved included: • Increased knowledge of ICT

•

•

•

•

technology, among stakeholders, to improve quality of education services and effectiveness of ICT in learning; Through the effective display of ICT infrastructure and technology applications to the audience, there was an increased access to ICT resources and services; Strong knowledge dissemination of best practices in ICT resources, services, data usage and their successful use in education; Web publishing for ICTs in education and virtual exhibition of worldrenowned ICT products and services in education; Community clusters among organisations and individuals on development of resources to promote ICTs in education and on research and development for

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your say “The exhibition was an eye opener. I have always known that there are a range of education and learning solutions available in the market, but had wanted a practical demonstration of the same. The exhibition did that for me. I now know whom to approach for the practical needs of our teacher and the school requirements.”

S K Rao, Educationist, Visitor at eINDIA2009 Exhibition Smt Purandeswari seeking details at the MP Online exhibition stall

•

advanced forms of education and learning processes; and Display of global community of practice enabled communication and sharing of resources.

The profile of the participating institutes •

Companies specialised in ICTs and interested in supporting education towards more ICT access; • Educational institutions interested in providing open content; • Policy makers responsible for education development; • Funding agencies interested in program development and dissemination; • Academics doing research in ICTs for education One of the key stalls from the educational background was Indira Gandhi National Open University. The IGNOU stall displayed some of their newest educational endeavours in Open and Distance Learning Corporate players from different domains including school infrastructure display equipments, video conferencing, content creation solutions, animated educational software providers, integrated learning tool providers, e-commerce service providers, test & measurement instruments , technology training equipments and simulation / teaching software and interactive educational technology providers.

Visitors Profile Visitors included national and international dignitaries from the educational sector.

Policy makers visited the stalls and were oriented of the varied technologies available for need based educational requirements. Low cost technology and special needs equipments were a huge draw for the audience.\\

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“The curriculum content and teaching solutions displayed at the exhibition looked innovative and exciting. The graphics were detailed and provided for an invigorating learning environment.”

Santhi Reddy, Teacher, Visitor at eINDIA2009 Exhibition

“I on behalf of my entire Genee India team, extend my wishes & warm regards to digitalLEARNING for offering us this platform. Keep it up & all the best for all your future endeavors.”

Amarjit Singh, Director, Genee Solutions India Pvt Ltd, Exhibitor at eINDIA2009

“eINDIA 2009 was a great experience and the event coordination was commendable. Kudos to all the team members for the successful culmination of the event and for having attained another mile stone for up-coming events.”

S C Rathi, General Manager, Ceeco Technologies, Exhibitor at eINDIA2009

“I am pleased to say that the turnout at the event was much better than I had expected! The presence of Charles Clarke at the event helped to raise its international profile, with his speech during the opening ceremony being quite visionary and relevant. The Promethean stall at the exhibition was strategically well placed, and we were pleased at the number of visitors at our expo. It gave the whole event an international and sophisticated feel.”

Peter Ormerod, Vice President, Promethean, Exhibitor at eINDIA2009

“eINDIA2009 was a well executed and excellent event. I really appreciate the hardwork and efforts rendered by the digitalLEARNING team during the course of the event.”

Bala Gopalakrishnan, General Manager, HCL, Exhibitor at eINDIA2009

“Thanks for a nicely executed and coordinated event!”

Amod Kumar, Manager, Panasonic, Exhibitor at eINDIA2009

“All kinds of services provided at the event were world class. Security, handling, maintenance and ambiance were just impeccable. During this expo we discovered that our company is exclusively making world class interactive copyboards and rear projection displays in India. Visitors at our stall were amazed to see our VISION 60 Interactive display for high definition image quality and simple to use interactive function. We did receive good queries from the visitors and the expo made for good business sense.”

S K Garg, Chairman, Disprovisuals, Exhibitor at eINDIA2009

“Congrats to the eINDIA team for making the show a grand success. Their months of hard work have been instrumental in making it happen. I would also like to thank digitalLEARNING awards for felicitating and honouring the shared computing initiative in Andhra Pradesh.”

Monali Handa, Marketing Manager, N Computing, Exhibitor at eINDIA2009

Sponsors & Exhibitors ORGANISERS

CO-ORGANISERS

knowledge for change

Department of Information Technology Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

STATE GOVERNMENT PARTNERS

GOVERNMENT PARTNERS

HOST STATE PARTNER

Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances Ministry of Personnel, PG & Grievances Government of India

LEARNING PARTNER

PLATINUM SPONSOR

GOLD SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

empowering education... enabling careers

ASSOCIATE SPONSORS

SCHOOL EDUCATION PARTNERS

HIGHER EDUCATION PARTNERS

Hyderabad Public School

Exhibitors

empowering education... enabling careers

TRS TOTAL REFLECTIVE SOLUTIONS

eINDIA 2009 valedictory

Valedictory Session...

Impressions of Participants Who Made It Happen

Panel at the concluding session

T

he curtains went down on eINDIA2009 with panache at the conference finale, on 27th August, after 3 days of jam-packed itinerary and back to back business sessions. The concluding assembly was chaired by Dr Ravi Gupta, Convener of eINDIA2009, with the panel consisting of all dignitaries who have collaborated with Centre

Dr Gopi Ghosh expresses his views

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The grandeur of eINDIA2009 fanfare came to its logical conclusion with the Valedictory session which brought together the organisers, speakers, delegates, exhibitors and sponsors, from India and abroad, to retrospect and put forth their thoughts and ideate over the culmination of the event. for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) to make the event a grand success.

Major highlights of the event were summed up and the audience was taken through a brief journey, that of eINDIA2009 - from its inception to its epoch reaching stage. The efforts and the hard work; the enriching role of delegates and speakers; the enthusiasm of the exhibitors; and the poignant role of the participants were all ceremoniously acknowledged and applauded.

Activities of the three day conference were concluded in the befitting ceremony and the organising team got their share of appreciation from the audience as feedback came pouring in one by one. The inputs received

Shankar Agarwal, Jt. Secretary, Department of IT, GoI, provides his concluding remarks

at the session added to the glory and splendor of the conference. Heavy accolades were put forward for the eventful and deeply enriching deliberations that have added value and sophistication towards the creation of an ICT knowledge hub. \\

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