eGov March 2016

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ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-GOVERNANCE ` 75 / US $10 / ISSN 0973-161X

God’s Own Country on IT’s Course

Shri Oommen Chandy Hon’ble Chief Minister Kerala

Shri P K Kunhalikutty Hon’ble Minister for Industries & IT Kerala

Special Issue

eGov Magazine

MARCH 2016 | VOLUME 12 | ISSUE 03

Knowledge DIGITAL INDIA

Exchange

CONFERENCE • AWARDS • EXPO

19-20 February 2016 • Kovalam • Kerala

DIGITAL INDIA FOR EMPOWERED INDIA

MARCH 2016

VOLUME 12 n ISSUE 03

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COVER STORY

GYANESH PANDEY Chairman & Managing Director, HSCC (India) Limited

44 DR DINESH TYAGI CEO, Common Service Centers

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SHIKHAR AGARWAL Commissioner, Jaipur Development Authority

God’s Own Country on IT’s Course

53 NILESH JAIN Country Sales Director, India and SAARC, Trend Micro

KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE - KOVALAM SPECIAL

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SAI VENKATESH ATTALURI Founder and MD, Foudroyant Analytics

P K KUNHALIKUTTY

P H KURIAN

Hon’ble Minister of Industries and Information Technology, Kerala

Principal Secretary, Department of IT, Government of Kerala

K MOHAMMED Y SAFIRULLA Director, Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM)

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DR VISHWAS MEHTA Principal Secretary, Revenue and Disaster Management Department

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PI SHEIK PAREETH

JAMES VARGHESE

DR K ELLANGOVAN

DR W R REDDY

Director, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala

Principal Secretary, Local Self Government Department, Government of Kerala

Secretary - Health & Family Welfare Department, Government of Kerala

Principal Secretary, Taxes Department

SPECIAL FEATURE 36 SMART POLICING VIA CYBERDOME 47 NEXTGEN VIDEO SOLUTIONS FOR SMARTER GOVERNANCE 50 CLOUD REIGNS 54 SMART CITIES NEED SMARTER SECURITY

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40 EVENT REPORT

58 MANOJ ABRAHAM Inspector General of Police (Trivandrum Range), Kerala

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BHANDARI SWAGAT RANVEERCHAND Managing Director, Milma

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / March 2016

DR M BEENA

RAMESH TENKIL

Ayush Secretary

Chief General Manager, NABARD (Kerala region)

EDITORIAL

Playing IT Out Amid Nature

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erala is one of the few states that boast of both Mother Nature’s bounty and an impeccable track record in adoption and promotion of Information Technology for the welfare of its people. On one hand, there are calm and tranquil backwaters surrounded by banana mangroves and majestic coconut trees beckoning nature lovers, while on the other, there are IT parks and SEZs standing as testimony to the State’s unsatiated thirst to stand out as an IT hub.

Presenting the Budget for fiscal 2016-17, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy announced an outlay of over Rs.482 crore for the IT sector, which would go towards establishing a ‘high technology business incubation centre’ at Kalamassery in Kochi and a ‘knowledge city’ near the Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram. Besides, he also talked of spending lavishly on further promoting eGovernance in the State. The government’s vision entails giving impetus to its economy and creating many more employment opportunities for the youth.

Over the years, the State Government has successfully implemented initiatives like e-District, e-Procurement, e-Office, Digital Literacy, Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), Citizens’ call centre, Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala (SPARK) and e-Mail Management System (EMS) through its nearly 400-odd portals and over 2,600 Akshaya centres to make the life of its people easier and government processes simpler. In short, Kerala is fast transforming itself into a digitally-empowered society — a ‘Digital State’ in every possible sense of the term.

From being the frontrunner in literacy levels to one adopting and deploying the very first innovations in eGovernance, mGovernance and now the growing charm of sGovernance, Kerala is living up to its credence of being God’s Own Country, technologically.

In line with its consistent endeavour to acknowledge and highlight the best IT practices and eGovernance achievements, Elets Technomedia, in association with the Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of Kerala, is organising ‘Digital India Knowledge Exchange Summit’ in the beach town of Kovalam on 19-20 February 2016.

The knowledge carnival will see senior Kerala functionaries, and government officials and other key movers and shakers in IT and eGovernance domains converging on one platform to share their experiences, put forth their recommendations and churn out the next and best course of action in the intertwined spheres for the good of people at large.

In the run-up to this grand Summit, eGov magazine interacted with some of the finest brains behind the IT-led governance in the State, which brought to fore some of the finer aspects of planning and priorities of governance in Kerala. We present those ‘nuggets of wisdom’ in the form of interviews.

We look forward to your valuable suggestions and continued patronage.

RAVI GUPTA Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

Email at subscription@ elets.in to get previous issues

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ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON E-GOVERNANCE

MARCH 2016 VOLUME 12 n ISSUE 03

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COVER STORY

Shri Oommen Chandy Hon’ble Chief Minister, Kerala

P K Kunhalikutty Hon’ble Minister of Industries & IT, Kerala

God’s Own Country

on IT’s Course

Known for its serene backwaters, swinging coconut trees and all-round lush greenery, Kerala has been tourists’ delight since ages. However, in keeping with the technological advancements, the State has also painstakingly worked for digitisation of a number of services and undertaken various initiatives to ease the life of citizens, writes Vishwas Dass of Elets News Network (ENN) 8

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COVER STORY

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od’s Own Country — Kerala is fast emerging as a ‘Digital State’ and striving hard to transform itself into a giant information technology (IT) hub to give impetus to its economy and create more and more employment opportunities.

Famous for its picturesque landscapes, backwaters and heritage, the State has now also earned a name as one of the rapidly developing IT destinations in the country.

India’s highest literacy-rate state has now added another feather to its cap by getting recognition as country’s digital state, thanks to the political will of the government and an enviable record of people’s cooperation in Kerala towards digitisation.

viders to network the State through optical fibre network has enabled its citizens to get both broadband and mobile online services. The efforts of the government have resulted in highest mobile penetration, with close to 32 million connections, for a population of 33 million. The number of smart phone users is also going up sharply.

The recent growth of Internet as well as smart phones penetration, combined with the government’s initiatives, has helped the State make significant strides in turning Kerala a knowledge-powered economy.

A State official said that four major projects contributed gradual evolution of Kerala into a digital society, namely Akshaya project, IT@School, digital infrastructure availability and State Data Centre, and allied applications. Consider-

Sources said this concept has been emulated by other states and christened as Common Service Centres (CSC) as part of a central initiative — National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). Some of the key services delivered by Akshaya centres include Aadhaar enrolment, banking and insurance services, utility bill/fee payment service, online application for redressal of public grievance by the Chief Minister, data digitisation, Aadhaar seeding and Non-Resident Keralalites’ Welfare Board (KNRK) service, among many others.

The seriousness of the State Government can be gauged from the fact that the budget allocation for the IT Department has gone up substantially to strengthen the digital infrastructure. The government has proposed to establish ‘high technology

The Kerala Economic Review - 2014 showed that Kerala had recorded the growth rate of 6.49 per cent, which was above the national average of 4.04 per cent and second highest among the south Indian states. The State is well connected through the Kerala State Wide Area Network (KSWAN), National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) and the National Knowledge Network (NKN) to provide high-speed Internet connectivity to all Gram Panchayats and urban clusters. In 2015, Idukki became the first district in the entire country to have NOFN, which the government termed as an exceptional achievement.

According to the government's top brass, the proactive policy of the State towards permitting telecom service pro-

ing the existing digital infrastructure and a plethora of digital initiatives, the government is now aiming at bridging the digital divide by making available digital infrastructure accessible to citizens at affordable cost, promoting entrepreneurship and generating more employment opportunities for the youth.

One of the most ambitious projects of the State Government is Akshaya, which aims at bridging the digital divide and disseminating ICT services. Akshaya centres are set up within a two-kilometre distance from any household and are networked leveraging entrepreneurship. With over 2,600 centres in the urban and rural areas, these centres are taking e-governance to the citizens’ doorsteps.

business incubation centre’ at Kalamassery in Kochi and a ‘Knowledge City’ near Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram to promote IT and e-governance in Kerala in the current fiscal 2016-17. The Kerala Government is making efforts to facilitate incubation of new technologies with high intellectual property value and develop a research and development centre for highend analytics.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy while presenting the budget on February 12 apprised the State Assembly that `482.87 crore has been provisioned to give a boost to IT and e-governance initiatives. The government is laying emphasis on ITbased youth entrepreneurship and planning to set up ‘Raspberry Pi Programme’ March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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COVER STORY

(mini computers to teach abacus level computing).

Going through the highlights of the budget, the Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM) has been allocated `94.59 crore, National e-Governance Action `36.15 crore, Technopark `76 crore, Infopark `61.61 crore, Cyberpark `25.68 crore, Kerala State Information Technology Infrastructure Limited `57.8 crore and the Indian Institute of Information Technology-Kerala has been given `5 crore.

Notably, Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram is the single largest IT park in India, spread over a sprawling 748 acres and boasting 7.1 million square feet of built-up space. Around 38,000 people work in Technopark, which houses several companies such as TCS, UST Global, Infosys, M-Squared, Oracle and Aegis, among many others. The IT Department officials say low power tariffs, low cost of operation, affordable land cost and low cost of living in Thiruvananthapuram are a few factors that give an edge to Technopark over its counterparts in neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Kerala is also implementing the National Information Infrastructure on a pilot basis in the State capital to interconnect various other connectivity initiatives already existing here, like KSWAN, NOFN and NKN. Minister of Industries and Information Technology, Kerala, PK Kunhalikutty told eGov magazine that incentives like single-window clearance approvals, low electricity tariff, uninterrupted power availability, dedicated government and private IT parks within government land and various SEZs make Kerala most viable and investor-friendly destination in India.

He further said that at present the government is offering over 1,000 acres of land with over 11 million square feet of builtup space for investors to set up business.

During an assessment, it was found that be it Electricity Department, Local Self Government Department (LSGD), Tourism, Milk Cooperative Federation, Health and Family Welfare, Taxes or the Revenue

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and Disaster Management Department, every major functionary is exploiting IT to the fullest to take their services to citizens’ doorsteps in association with KSITM. Top brass of the said departments attributed concerted efforts and support of the Kerala IT Mission for their success.

It is not only the IT Department that is getting a huge chunk of funds, but the government is also strengthening the basic infrastructure in the State to woo domestic and global investors. The 201617 Budget has provisioned for 10 helipads across the State to connect hinterlands with cities for entrepreneurs and tourists.

If sources are to be believed, this is part of the strategy to promote domestic tourist arrivals in the State.

In the budget, the Kerala Government has also made it clear that it is not going to compromise on environment concerns.

The ruling government has put five per cent surcharge on plastic bottles and 20 per cent on all types of plastic bags. Officials say extensive use of polythene and plastic bags were proving to be a major threat to the environment. The Health and Family Welfare Department is one of the key departments extensively undertaking IT initiatives to make healthcare service affordable for public and help them avail government welfare schemes.

State’s eHealth project is first-of-its-kind project in India that aims to develop an elaborate and comprehensive e-platform to maintain a database of health records of common public in electronic form and use them for providing population- and hospital-based services. It is tipped to be

implemented within a year across the State.

The Health Department is joining hands with leading IT firms in delivering healthcare services to provide CT scan, ECG, MRI and all other facilities to the poor at nominal fees or in some cases, free of cost.

Similarly, the Revenue and Disaster Management Department is issuing around 22 types of certificates online through its village offices to the rural people. The department has created a virtual IT cadre, where young and dynamic tech-savvy officers are being imparted with specialised computer training. That apart, people are getting dummy maps of their own properties with the help of eRekha project.

According to reports, the State has witnessed highest level of urbanisation in its history between 2001 and 2011, with an increase of 83.82 per cent over the previous decade. However, not everything is going down well with the government. Although the State is posting a spurt in economic growth, it records the highest unemployment rate. According to experts, if digital opportunities are tapped, then fields like education, healthcare and law and order can be revolutionised. If the higher education institutions can be connected digitally, students can be guided by skilful teachers.

PH Kurian, Principal Secretary, Department of IT, said that initiatives like single-window clearance for business proposals and lower operational cost have given Kerala an edge to other states.

“Kerala is sitting on a landmine of opportunities in terms of investment and now promoting private initiatives in building IT industry infrastructure through specific Scheme namely “Private Integrated IT and High Tech Township,” he says.

Kurian believes that another two lakh jobs would be created in the IT sector in the next five years on account of development of more technology and cyber parks in the State. Considering the vision of the Kerala Government and the pro-active role being played by the state machinery, one can safely say that the best is yet to come in terms of growth of IT and the job opportunities it would throw up in the God’s Own Country.

SPECIAL INTERVIEW

P K KUNHALIKUTTY

‘Kerala Most e-Ready State in India’ Kerala is playing a phenomenal role in achieving the much ambitious dream of becoming India’s first Digital State. The Government, through its concerted efforts, is not only allocating whopping funds but also creating IT infrastructure in the State, highlights P K Kunhalikutty, Hon’ble Minister of Industries and Information Technology, Kerala, in a tete-a-tete with Vishwas Dass & Kartik Sharma of Elets News Network (ENN)

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P K KUNHALIKUTTY

SPECIAL INTERVIEW

W

hat are the various initiatives undertaken by the State Government to make Kerala an IT hub?

Kerala is an investor and environment friendly state. It tops the charts in many social indices and has got one of the most qualitative human resources pools in the country. Other infrastructure facilities like road, rail, air transport and power, among many others are also one among the best in the country.

Kerala’s cosmopolitan lifestyle makes it a preferred destination for people from other states to settle and work peacefully. Also, state’s industrial and IT policies are aimed at creating conducive atmosphere for the business units. Attractive offerings like single window clearance approvals, low power tariffs and continuous power availability, tailor-made office spaces, dedicated government IT parks, private IT parks within government land and SEZs, make Kerala the most viable and investor friendly destination in the country.

Currently, the government is offering over 1,000 acres of land with more than 11 million sq.ft of built-up space for investors to set up business.

Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram is one of the largest and greenest IT parks in India, sprawling over 760 acres of land with world class infrastructure facilities in its three campuses. In addition to the existing built up space in the campuses of Technopark, a nine lakh

township with international school, shopping mall, hospitals, recreational facilities, with the IT buildings. The first IT building in Cyberpark, Kozhikode will be commissioned by the end of this financial year. The first phase of the 6.5 lakhs sq ft IT building of the SmartCity, Kochi will be inaugurated on February 20. Foundation stone for the second phase development of over 40 lakh sq ft will also be laid on that day. These two developments will create about 50,000 direct jobs over the next three years.

In addition, the government has proposed to extend IT development to the rural areas,

Kerala, the most e-ready state in India, is now a digitally-connected state. It is the first state in the country to connect all Gram Panchayats through high speed Internet broadband connectivity sq.ft IT building is being added at a cost of `268 crore to the phase-I campus. It will also have a three lakh sq.ft building in the Technocity campus. Taurus Investment Holdings LLC, USA will soon commence development of 25 lakh sq.ft of IT building and supports facilities in 9.73 acres of land in Technopark.

Apart from this, the phase-II of Infopark, Kochi is being developed as ‘walk-to-work’

by establishing rural IT/ITeS and electronic parks. These rural IT parks will be a great support to the local entrepreneurs and empower the rural youth. The Kerala State IT Infrastructure Limited will develop three Rural IT/ ITeS and electronics parks (RITEL Parks) at Pattambi (Palakkad), Thalassery (Kannur) and Areecode (Malappuram), in the first phase.

Brief us on the various eGovernance initiatives undertaken by your government.

To meet the demand and deliver services, we understand that seamless connectivity plays an important role. Hence, tapping the high rate of tele and mobile density in the state, a conscious call was taken to establish such public Wi-Fi hotspots at strategic locations which can be replicated to other parts of the state. The optical fibre cable (OFC) connectivity to the length and breadth of the State is also planned through BharatNet project. This infrastructure can be extended to every household in the state through interested ISPs. These would ensure accessibility and delivery of e-Governance services at the grass-root level. Also, Kerala is implementing the National Information Infrastructure (NII) on a pilot basis in Thiruvananthapuram which is aimed at interconnecting various other connectivity initiatives already existing in the State like Kerala State Wide Area Network (KSWAN), National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) and National Knowledge Network (NKN).

Kerala claims to be India’s most Digital State. What would be the major IT initiatives to further strengthen these services?

We are ranked among the leaders in terms of e-literacy, mobile penetration and tele-density.

IT department is tapping the vast mobile user base and seeing mobile governance as a big March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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SPECIAL INTERVIEW

P K KUNHALIKUTTY

leap towards citizen centric services. The benefits of this digital penetration can be effectively extended to the people only if they are digitally literate and empowered. Digital empowerment of citizens is one of the key focus areas of the government. The ordinary citizen needs to be empowered to use mobile Internet for all his/her needs including availing government services. Kerala State IT Mission has successfully run a pilot project in Thiruvananthapuram to digitally empower ordinary citizens, through student police cadets. In a short time, over 10,000 citizens were digitally empowered and certified. The Government now proposes a state-wide roll out of the project with an aim of digitally empowering 30 to 40 lakh citizens. The first phase, with the target of 10 lakh people, will be taken up during this year, and an amount of `15 crore has been allocated for the purpose.

Kiosk Banking, Digital Lockers, State Service Delivery Gateway, revamped Citizen Call Centre are a few IT initiatives which would further extend the delivery of services to citizen’s doorstep. You would agree that smooth and efficient delivery of services to people can’t be ensured unless backend operational machinery performs and rises to the occasion. Hence, digital workflow initiatives like online file flow systems are being implemented in phases across the departments, administrative headquarters and their line offices.

How much budget is being allocated by the Kerala government to improve IT services in the State?

During 2015-16 fiscal, ` 492.11 crore is the budget allocation for IT Department which is roughly around 36 per cent increase over

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Despite harsh geographical constraints being a big limitation for us, we have shown our capability to overcome those challenges. We have connected to the remotest village called Edamalakudy in Idukki district during NOFN launch done in January 2015 last year’s state budget. Over and above this allocation, to ensure adequate funding for the ongoing digital initiatives across all departments, Government of Kerala has set apart three per cent of every department’s budget for their IT initiatives.

Do you see Kerala emerging as a preferred IT investment destination in the country than its neighbouring states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the coming years?

Our government has put in place many measures to ensure and attract investments including creation of government and private IT parks. I’m sure that with the potential and resources available in Kerala, we are offering a very viable atmosphere when compared to other states which investors can’t ignore.

What is the roadmap of Government of Kerala to strengthen IT services and connect every village with internet connection?

Kerala, the most e-ready state in India, is now a fully digitally connected state. It is the first state in the country to connect all Gram Panchayats through high speed Internet broadband connectivity.

As we are already in the transactional phase in the e-Governance maturity model, almost all our services are online and few are in the process. Besides, various service delivery mechanisms, we are ensuring that the service doesn’t get affected due to connectivity. We’ve already implemented KSWAN till block level.

Now the same is being extended to the government offices to ensure utilisation. So far, we’ve around 3,300 offices connected over this dedicated network across the state consisting of both wired and wireless connectivity. Similarly, NOFN and now BharatNet will ensure that our 1664 villages are connected making us a complete interconnected state. Harsh geographical constraints being a big limitation for us, still we’ve shown our capability to overcome those challenges by connecting the remotest village called Edamalakudy in Idukki district during NOFN launch in January 2015.

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

P H KURIAN

Smart Governance via Technology Kerala’s forefront digital infrastructure and e-governance initiatives have transformed it to be the most digital state in the country, says P H Kurian, Principal Secretary, Department of IT, Government of Kerala. He elucidates the key initiatives undertaken by his department to transform Kerala into an IT-driven state, while speaking to Vishwas Dass and Arpit Gupta of Elets News Network (ENN) 16

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P H KURIAN

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Unlike many other states, Kerala’s terrain conditions are not as congenial for setting up IT infrastructure.

Due to this, last mile connectivity is a major constraint and sometimes increases the cost.

Irrespective of whatsoever challenges faced by us, we’ve made substantial achievements and take pride to be among the list of top performing states in the e-Governance domain

K

erala has been taking lot of e-Governance initiatives for the past few years. Please tell us about the successes that have been achieved by the State.

Kerala is one of the leading states to have a strong telecom and Internet user base. The State has around 95 per cent teledensity, which is tremendous. It is the only major state with Fibre Broadband connectivity in all the grama panchayats. It is the most inclusively connected state. The government is aiming at bringing-in IT initiatives, encouraging inclusive development.

The Department of IT has already started the next wave of IT initiatives in the State, which would enable us to become a ‘transformational government’ from a ‘transactional government’. One such initiative is BharatNet, which would provide a fibre backbone till the grassroot level and connectivity to government establishments. ISPs can tap into this infrastructure, taking the connectivity to individual households. Connectivity infrastructure would further be enhanced after commissioning Wi-Fi hotspots across the State.

The government is in the process of leveraging the State’s high mobile penetration and working towards a common

mobile platform, integrating various mobile applications both existing and forthcoming, to use it as a means of service delivery. The e-Office initiative is being implemented at lightning speed across all administrative departments and their line offices, which would definitely improve the efficiency level of government machinery.

We also understand that the real assets for the State would be the future generation. Thus, programmes, like Digital Empowerment Campaign and Electronics@school, are being implemented to empower the future generations. Besides, Department of IT is also part of various other important initiatives in the State, pioneered by other departments, where we play a consulting role.

How the State’s IT policy is wooing investors to set up March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

P H KURIAN

their units in Kerala to give an impetus to the State's economy?

Our focus is towards an inclusive growth. The IT policy of the State is aligned accordingly.

Kerala offers best network and well-connected infrastructure. With competitive advantage of ICT infrastructure spread across the state in hub and spoke model centre around major cities like Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam and Kozhikode, highest tele and mobile density, in-house skilled and talented resource pool, investors would get more than what they would bargain for. Already established technology parks like Technopark, Infopark and Cyberparks are offering over 1,000 acres of land with a built-up space of more than 12 million sq ft, providing investors and corporates ample choice of office space suiting their individual requirement and budget.

In terms of investment, the State is definitely sitting on a landmine of opportunities as it has investment friendly initiatives like single-window clearance system for business proposals and lower operational costs.

Kerala is now promoting private initiatives in building IT industry infrastructure, through specific scheme namely “Private Integrated IT and High Tech Township.”

What are your expectations from the State Government to improve IT sector in Kerala, particularly to create more jobs for youth?

As you may be aware, creation of technology parks like Technopark, Infopark and Cyberparks have provided employment to one lakh youths. With many more phases of the above parks within and outside the present campus being initiated, we expect to create another two lakh jobs in the IT sector in the next five years, which will be a feat in itself vis-à-vis habitable land available to the State.

What kind of challenges are you facing to further strengthen the IT Department?

The Department now functions as a Mission (Kerala State Information Technology Mission), which by itself is very good when compared to normal governmental set up. We need to increase the number of technical personnel in the mission and their remuneration so as to retain the talent.

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In terms of investment, Kerala definitely offers a landmine of opportunities, as it has investment friendly initiatives like single-window clearance system for business proposals and lower operational costs Can you elaborate on few major IT projects which are in the pipeline in Kerala?

Some of the key projects include cloud enabled

IT infrastructure, considering the limited space and resource availability, providing connectivity to all government offices up to panchayat level through OFC, video conference infrastructure at taluk level along with floatable licenses and civil station WANs, among many others.

To give impetus to m-Governance, we will create mobile app store and promote wider adoption of mobile governance across government services, considering state tele-density, various welfare services/pensions to be linked to Aadhaar, database sharing and interoperability across all departments, creation of public addressing system using next-gen video conferencing solutions like tele-presence, ensuring accessibility of electronic services to citizens either directly through the Internet or through CSC’s, creating and retaining skilled resource pool within the government via capacity building initiatives and efficient resource mobilisation.

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K Mohammed Y Safirulla, Director, Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM), Department of Information Technology, highlights how the KSITM is accelerating the state through an array of innovative IT projects like BharatNet and Wi-Fi hotspots to ensure seamless connectivity, while speaking to Vishwas Dass of Elets News Network (ENN)

K

erala has recently emerged as India’s most digital state with nearly 100 per cent mobile density, 75 per cent e-literacy, highest digital banking rate and broadband connection up to panchayat level. How will KSITM enhance it further?

Kerala started its e-Governance journey

way back in 2002 with the pilot launch of e-Literacy programme through Kerala State IT Mission’s (KSITM) flagship initiative of Akshaya. Today, Akshaya, with its 2,400 strong network, has evolved from a mere information dissemination centre into a one stop service delivery centre for citizens in Kerala. KSITM, being the nodal agency for implementing IT initiatives has been the torch bearer for majority of initiatives planned and implemented. It has implemented and is managing many of Kerala’s nationally recognised initiatives such as State Data Centres (SDCs), Kerala SWAN, e-District, e-Procurement, mobile governance, e-Office and Aadhaar among others. These projects were conceived, implemented and are being monitored by IT Mission. Usually, many of the e-Governance projects get scrapped due to lack of proper planning. However, I take pride in saying that almost all projects implemented in Kerala are still functional because of its necessity and additional scope or has been phased-out after achievement of their intended objectives. As an instance, we are making our SDC, with nearly 500 hosted services, cloud-enabled, KSWAN, and covered over 3000 offices, further extended to each and every office in the state. We have more in our pipeline like inclusion of more related functionalities in projects like e-District which has crossed more than 1.5

Unlike other states, Kerala’s rural and urban literacy divide is minimal and hence focus would be on initiatives to enable IT and removal of digital divide between rural and urban populace, transforming God’s Own Country into a digital state crores certificate issuance. Besides its own project implementation, IT Mission has also been instrumental in supporting individual departmental initiatives by providing both consultancy service in terms of requirement analysis, detailed project report (DPR) and request for proposal (RFP) preparations and implementation and monitoring services during project execution stage.

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Brief about the future projects of KSITM. How will these benefit citizens of Kerala?

We have many initiatives which are being planned for further strengthening our objective of taking government services to citizens’ doorsteps and to improve governance. As you are aware, Kerala has one of the highest tele and mobile density and we’re leveraging this penetration for the benefit of citizens. We are in the process of implementing a unified mobile governance platform which is intended to provide most of e-Governance services through mobile. Many initiatives have been implemented and few are in the pipeline where benefits are being transferred directly to the beneficiaries. One initiative is BharatNet which would provide a complete optical fibre cable network (OFC) backbone to all government offices till grass root level and also provide a provision to common man for getting Internet over OFC. Another initiative which is intended towards benefiting common man is Wi-Fi hotspots where they’ll have dedicated Wi-Fi zones across the state. This initiative will give a major boost to our tourism industry as it will benefit the foreign and domestic travellers.

Apart from this, our focus also lies on capacity building initiatives through programmes like Digital Literacy, Electronics@School. Digital literacy initiative is to extend IT education to masses through school students by equipping them with Tabs. Besides, IT education which was made a part of the curriculum for children previously, we are in the process of introducing firmware/ electronics programming.

What kind of challenges are you facing to further strengthen ICT services in the state?

Challenges or risks come in various forms in IT projects and particularly in the government domain. Generally, we can categorise challenges into administrative and technical risks. During

22

The IT @ School Project is an Information Technology project under the Department of General Education, Government of Kerala, which has remodelled conventional teaching methodologies in classrooms through the use of IT.

The next surge of IT initiatives would be BharatNet, Wi-Fi hotspots, Kiosk Banking, Digital Literacy, Capacity Building initiatives, revamped unified Citizen Call Centre, etc our initial days of e-Governance journey, resistance to change was one of the most feared and encountered risks. However, we have managed to minimise that risk through various capacity building programmes, support and handholding activities. Though these risks exist even now but people are aware of the associated benefits for effectively leveraging IT in governance. Another risk which we frequently encounter is change in leadership at operational or department level which destabilises the entire project’s execution. We’re addressing this with the creation of virtual IT cadre, which is a pool of IT skilled government officials in each department who are involved in project’s conceptualisation to completion stage. This ensures continuity in projects which is most

essential and crucial for IT projects. Other challenges we face during implementation of e-Governance projects are mostly operational or technical in nature such as limitations due to geographical constraints, challenges due to rapid changes in technology, scope definition/ change, improper requirement analysis, interoperability, data sharing and cyber-security among others.

What is your vision for the upcoming fiscal? How exactly you are looking forward to improve and enhance citizencentric services rendered by the KSITM? Current fiscal would see Kerala treading itself into a transformational society. As mentioned, we would be seeing the next surge of IT initiatives like BharatNet, Wi-Fi hotspots, Kiosk Banking, Digital Literacy, Capacity Building initiatives, revamped unified Citizen Call Centre etc. Another major focus on which government has already started working is interlinking most of the presently isolated services which would greatly enhance the governance. Taking a random example, a common man’s certificate details available in one department would be shared and made available to all other departments so that the same details need not be submitted again and again at every department the respective citizen approaches for a service.

Unlike other states, Kerala’s rural and urban literacy divide is minimal and hence we would also be focused on initiatives enabling removal of digital divide between rural and urban populace thus transforming us into a digital state.

4

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

DR VISHWAS MEHTA

Leveraging Technology to Improve Citizen’s Lives

Kerala’s Revenue and Disaster Management Department has undertaken numerous IT initiatives to enable people to avail online services, informs Dr Vishwas Mehta, Principal Secretary, Revenue and Disaster Management Department, during an interaction with Vishwas Dass and Arpit Gupta of Elets News Network (ENN) 24

egov / egov.eletsonline.com / March 2016

DR VISHWAS MEHTA

T

hrow some light on IT initiatives undertaken by the Revenue Department to improve citizen-centric services.

Kerala is one of the states which has good infrastructure, interms of roads and communication. People are, by and large, aware about information technology (IT) innovations. So, it’s easy for us to bring in services which can reach people directly.

Currently, we have around 22 types of certificates gor general purposes which are issued online through village offices.

Most of the village offices have best-in-class infrastructure and are well-equipped with Internet connections and round the clock electricity. We took the help of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and developed a common platform to make these certificates online. Kerala has very old revenue records., which are 50-100 years old and these are in archives. There is a need of conserving them. We set up the whole thing in a mission mode and actually using technology to simultaneously preserve and digitise the records and then put them on a virtual platform.

Apart from it, transaction of land among people in Kerala is very huge. It’s a landstarved country. People were not able to get the land mutations because of lengthy and tiring process. It requires coordination of the three departments—revenue, director of survey and registration wing. For the past many years, there has been efoort in integrat-

ing all the three departments. After several rounds of meetings, we brought these three agencies under one platform with the help of NIC. We have trained close to 300 village offices by the staff in association with the IT department and now we are close to reach around 300 village offices by January-end.

The number of transactions in Kerala is very different from other states. Now, people can get all land related documents swiftly, particularly mutation.

We have created a virtual IT cadre, where young and dynamic techsavvy officers are being imparted specialised computer training. Also, we are trying to link the Revenue Department with the tax wing. People are getting dummy maps of their own properties with the help of eRekha project. Revenue Department has also projects for land banks to identify the availability of government’s land

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

We have also created a virtual IT cadre, where young and dynamic tech-savvy officers are being imparted with specialised computer training. Also, we are trying to link revenue department with the tax wing.

People are getting dummy maps of their own properties with the help of eRekha project. Revenue Department has also projects on land bank to identify the availability of government’s land. My endeavour is to put every service online for the convenience of citizens. Today, we have cutting-edge technology that was not there 25-30 years back. We should be able to use it to improve citizens’ lives. Technology has given us so much advantage and we should be able to leverage it.

How challenging has the journey been for you to implement IT initiatives and improve citizen-centric services in Kerala?

It’s very challenging to digitise government documents as they are in huge numbers.

Particularly in revenue department, the biggest challenge is to protect the government land from encroachers. Now, technology enables us to be quick and help to track them and resolve these issues.

What are the paradigm shifts that the Revenue Department has undergone?

There is certainly a paradigm shift in the Revenue Department because of an extensive usage of technology. Earlier, when I was the Collector, we didn’t have the technology to digitise the documents. However, today there are latest technologies that can be optimised.

Nevertheless, digitising all the data is not possible because survey and re-survey continuously go on. Thousands of certificates are being issued every day. Besides, it is quite difficult to update all records online. So, we are making concerted efforts to ensure 100 per cent updation of records. Importantly, the IT Mission has availed additional laptops at every village office to meet any exigency which is commendable and that sets us apart from other states. We are trying to make all the village offices, land revenue records, survey records, and everything concerning people digitised and made available to public.

March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

P I SHEIK PAREETH

God’s Own Country, known for its backwaters, coconut lagoons, Ayurveda and sea food, remains attracting million of domestic and foreign tourists every year. Boosting it further, the Kerala Tourism Department is exploring IT solutions to the fullest. The State’s tourism web portal is one of the most visited websites in India. In a tête-à-tête with Vishwas Dass of Elets News Network (ENN), Tourism Director, PI Sheik Pareeth unfolds numerous initiatives undertaken by his Department to give an unforgettable experience to tourists

IT Fuels

Kerala Tourism’s

Growth 26 egov / egov.eletsonline.com / March 2016

P I SHEIK PAREETH

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

We are also contemplating to unveil mobile app of Kerala Tourism through which people can book their destinations along with the flights. A lot of work is being done to develop a mobile app which offers a variety of solutions to tourists coming from within and outside the country

W

hat kind of element sets Kerala Tourism apart from other states?

How have you exploited IT in the Tourism Department?

Kerala is known to be one of the most sought-after tourism destinations not only in India but across the world. According to latest statistics, around 12 million domestic and one million foreign tourists visit Kerala every year which is increasing at the rate of around 10 per cent annually, which is a massive rate of growth.

Kerala is a unique destination and has everything, be it lush green fields, beaches, backwaters, forest and waterfalls, among others. The State has got a perfect blend of natural beauty and infrastructure that attract tourists globally be the beach retreat of Kovalam, the backwaters of Kumarakom, the hills of Kumily or the forests of Wayanad. We have exploited IT in such a way that it has made Kerala tourism’s website one of the most visited websites in the country which is commendable. It is because of our sincere efforts, we won accolade from the Government of India last year. Our department has a very good platform for showcasing our tourism destinations on the web portal. The extensive use of IT tools to March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

27

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

P I SHEIK PAREETH

promote Kerala Tourism has helped to woo the international travellers in a big way. As an instance, we have put up boards at hundreds of tourism sites displaying QR codes which can be scanned by tourists’ smart phones to get the information about nearest police stations, hospitals, hotels, ATMs, medical stores and restaurants among others. This kind of initiative has definitely given us an edge over other states. We also organise dozens of contests throughout the year and encourage bloggers to write about Kerala tourism. There is a lot of content available on the Internet about Kerala tourism which attracts tourists. The most renowned travel bloggers are being given free stay of a few days in Kerala to write blogs for our website.

Apart from this, department is also making small video documentaries for our website to attract more visitors. Recently, a signature film on Kerala Tour-

ism has got 1.5 million hits in three days which shows tremendous tourism potential of the state.

The tourism industry is getting around `26,000 crore per year, which is around eight to nine per cent of the State’s gross domestic product (GDP) which is a whopping sum of money. Kerala is famous for its house boats and backwaters which are linked with the tourism website so that tourists can book them without being harassed by touts. Importantly, some of the airlines like Jet Airways, Etihad Airways and Air Arabia have joined hands with the Kerala Tourism department to offer low fares and affordable tourism packages to passengers visiting Kerala.

Despite having three international airports, Kerala is yet to have better air connectivity with the northern parts of the country. The State government is making efforts to connect Kerala with Delhi, Agra, Jaipur as a golden triangle. We also want to connect Kerala with Singapore, Mali and Colombo to give a boost to tourist influx.

28 egov / egov.eletsonline.com / March 2016

The Government is making efforts to connect Kerala with Delhi, Agra, Jaipur as a golden triangle. We also want to connect Kerala with Singapore, Mali and Colombo to give a boost to tourist influx

Kerala is the land of authentic ayurveda, where it practiced and followed on huge scale. We want to tap this sector to woo tourists. A lot of people from Germany and Europe come to Kerala to experience Ayurveda. This is an era of IT-enabled solutions to every problem. So, everybody is relying on IT initiatives to get the things done in a simple and easier way.

The department is thinking of starting a new sea cruise between Sri Lanka and Mali and Kerala to improve connectivity. Kerala is known for its cuisines, culture, exotic locations and tremendous weather conditions. Kerala was literally an unknown entity in the tourism map before two-and-a-half decades. Serene backwaters and ayurveda helped to bring

Are you offering any incentives to film makers to attract them to Kerala for shooting films?

out Kerala as a stand-alone destination among others in India.

The government is making concerted efforts to form a single window system in the tourism department to grant permissions for film makers and to encourage them and reduce hassles in seeking clearances from multi agencies. Once it is done, film makers not only from India but also from abroad would not have to face trouble to shoot their films at the exotic locations in Kerala.

It will ultimately help the tourism industry to grow with unprecedented speed. There is no denying that the current film makers have to face trouble in getting requisite clearances from many departments but it would be a thing of past when the single window system kicks off.

What are the key efforts made by the government to promote Kerala Tourism globally?

What is your biggest priority at present to further strengthen the tourism industry?

We are conducting more than 20 road shows in different parts of the world every year and over 30 in the country aggressively. One of the challenges is inter-state connectivity.

Kerala needs to be well connected with north eastern states, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and other states. Kerala tourism, as a creative approach, sets us apart from other states. We are also contemplating to unveil mobile app of Kerala Tourism through which people can book their destinations along with the flights. A lot of work is being done to develop a mobile app which offers a variety of solutions to tourists coming within and outside the country.

JAMES VARGHESE

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Building Up Smart

Governance The role and potential of eGovernance is increasing at a rapid pace in Kerala, particularly in the Local Self Government Department (LSGD), which has set up an autonomous body called Information Kerala Mission (IKM) to strengthen local governments through ICT, tells Principal Secretary of LSGD, James Varghese to Vishwas Dass and Arpit Gupta of Elets News Network (ENN)

W

hat are the various eGovernance initiatives undertaken by the LSGD? The panchayat and municipal administration departments are undertaking a lot of e-governance initiatives. LSGD has a specialised agency called Information Kerala Mission (IKM) which has developed 16 crucial software, that are directly connected with people and administration. Important certificates like death, birth, marriage, pension and other documents are being issued online which even do not require e-signature of officials concerned and are valid across Kerala. Anyone can get these documents online and produce these to other departments like education, police or any other. Our database can be accessed by other government departments so that they can verify and cross check the documents.

As far as registration of birth certificates is concerned, hospitals provide information to the panchayats which automatically gets registered with the municipal administration. Similarly, marriage certificates can also be received online. Importantly, building plan approval has also been made online. People can upload their buildings plan on the urban development website and get those approved within stipulated timeframe. Thereafter, payment of taxes can also be made from centres called Akshay. Even for internal administrative matters, we are using IT. For instance, every year panchayats and municipalities are executing around 2.5

lakh small and major projects. These projects’ permissions, administrative and technical sanctions and other key permissions have been computerised so that officials from any of the offices can monitor their progress and status.

Kochi is listed in first 20 Smart Cities list. What are your views on the much-touted project?

Smart Cities mission as an idea is very good, but converting a traditional city into a smart city is not an easy task and requires a lot of efforts. It is also not going to happen overnight. The scheme itself is concentrating on pan-city initiative benefiting every citizen. If one city is implementing this plan, it can be emulated by other small cities.

Kochi has been chosen to be developed as smart city which is being taken very seriously by the Kerala government. Kerala has 48 per cent of urban population but unfortunately we got only one city to be transformed as smart city. A lot of cities of some states, like Gujarat and UP have made it to the list of smart city project, conceived

by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Centre has added a number of statutory towns that have no importance at all. One state might have a policy by which they may declare a small area as a city, but that doesn’t mean that it is literally a city. The Centre should have shortlisted a census population and urban population criteria for choosing smart cities but unfortunately it was neglected. However, we have represented to them saying that there is a bit of lopsidedness in whole thing and we hope that the Centre would consider the above said things by next year. Even by the criteria followed now, where 50 per cent weight is given to statutory towns and remaining 50 per cent

to urban population, Kerala should have got two cities in coveted smart city project.

Has the Kerala Government undertaken initiatives to develop other cities on the lines of smart city project?

The state government had envisaged an ambitious project of providing potable water to every citizen in Kochi. Now you can find that potable water clause is one of the key components of the smart city project. Kerala is one state which is allocating maximum budget to the local bodies. Across the table, we are allocating 25 per cent of the state plan to the urban local bodies which is immensely huge. So, our municipalities are getting fair share of evolution. The smart city project is conspicuously an ambitious project but focus should be maintained to achieve this dream.

How strong is the community participation?

Community participation is extremely good in the rural pockets as people are well aware and keen to extend their suggestions to the government. But when it comes to the urban clusters, people become more individualistic thus diminishing possibilities of public participation on a greater extent compared to the rural parts. However, compared to other states the public participation is much better in Kerala.

We are also executing a number of projects on public private partnership (PPP) mode to address the housing, infrastructure development, tourism, and other facilities of the local bodies. The thrust is on utilising the unused land in civic bodies for such purposes.

March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

DR K ELLANGOVAN

Roadmap for Healthier Kerala Kerala, which has emerged as India’s first complete Digital State, not only provides free healthcare services to its citizens, but is also poised to become country’s first state to launch an ambitious e-Health project within a year. The programme would enable the government to go paperless and have digital health record of every individual, says Dr K Ellangovan, Secretary - Health & Family Welfare Department, Government of Kerala, in an interview with Vishwas Dass of Elets News Network (ENN)

T

ell us about the healthcare landscape in Kerala and key policy measures undertaken by the Health & Family Welfare Department.

Kerala is one of the better performing states in the healthcare sector. Although our policies are like those of any other state in the country, what sets us apart is allocation of larger funds for social sectors—health sector, in particular—despite resource constraints. It has ensured high average density of primary healthcare centres (PHCs) and community health centres (CHCs) per square km. Similarly, the number of healthcare professionals, both public and private, is very high in Kerala. As a policy measure, we have tried to standardise various institutions.

One of the major policy initiatives is to operationalise universal health coverage in Kerala. It implies repositioning of vast network of PHCs and CHCs into centres of comprehensive care, as the assets are not utilised fully…we have a lot of institutions but the number of services are too small. PHCs should be able to handle non-communicable diseases effectively. Repositioning also means that the PHC units should be capable of dealing with diabetes, hypertension, psychiatric problems. We launched a pilot project in three PHCs and the results are very encouraging.

30 egov / egov.eletsonline.com / March 2016

DR K ELLANGOVAN

The second major policy decision is to reduce out-of-the-pocket expenditure. Over the years, the State Government has taken a conscious decision to supply generic medicines free of cost to every PHC in the State. Out of all the three-four states supplying free generic medicines, Kerala supplies the highest number of free drugs. Our aim is to ensure that the cost of medicines incurred by people for chronic diseases comes down.

The other reason for high medical costs is diagnostic centres. We are also trying to put up diagnostics centres in association with private players where poor people can avail CT scan, ECG, MRIs and other facilities at nominal fees. We have developed a project to reduce infant mortality rate (IMR). We are aiming for single-digit IMR. Similarly, for maternal deaths, the policy is to involve the private sector, so that we all are on the same page. IMR is surely going to come down once we implement the 13 guidelines prepared in association with the private sector. We have now released an antibiotic guidelines — a programme by various professional bodies, which will disseminate information among people.

What information technologybased measures have been undertaken to improve access to healthcare?

Access to healthcare essentially involves dissemination of information. We have to take information to people. People in Kerala are already quite aware about technology while the Government is also sensitising them. There are financial barriers too. A person goes to a hospital and comes out after spending a substantial amount of money, because services, like lab services, MRI and digital X-Ray, among others, are not available there. As I said, generic medicine supply and promotion of diagnostics or infrastructure in the hospitals is an attempt to remove those barriers, so that the person goes to hospital and avails services without incurring any major cost.

What kinds of healthcare schemes have been rolled out by the Government of Kerala for the poor?

There are a plethora of schemes available for sick people. We have got “Arogya Kiranam”, which is a modified version of

Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) that are given provides for treatment for 30 medical conditions, but the Kerala Government has extended it to all conditions. In other words, RBSK has been improvised to bring more diseases under its ambit, so that more people could benefit. We also run cancer care programmes. Kerala is one of the states where several departments chip in their money for social good; for example, the Finance Department and the Department of Lotteries run a programme called “Karunya Benevolent Fund” that gives a grant up to `2 lakh to people to avail medical services at empanelled hospitals. Similarly, the Department of Social Justice has rolled out a scheme called “Thalomam” for surgery of congenital diseases in children.

We are also in the process of launching e-Health project in association with the Government of India, under which we are trying to develop an elaborate and comprehensive e-platform where the health records of individual persons would be captured in electronic platform and used for providing population- and hospital-based services.

We have got 21 modules starting from PHCs to medical colleges and planning to launch primary healthcare model by February-end, and by January 2017, medical colleges will also be covered. It will be a paperless system to do a research-related work. We are confident that our e-Health project, first-of-its-

The State Government has taken a conscious decision to supply generic medicines free of cost to every PHC in the State. Out of all the three-four states supplying free generic medicines, Kerala supplies the highest number of free drugs.

Our aim is to lower medical costs

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

kind project in India, will be implemented within a year.

Can you please elaborate on achievements of Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme (CHISS) and how it has benefited people?

It’s the largest insurance scheme implemented by any state government. We have three layers — RBSY, CHISS and CHISS Plus.

The Centre-approved RBSY is for the people below poverty line, while CHISS is meant for people meeting the criteria of the State Government. Earlier, a lot of people were deprived of availing free medical services, as they could not fulfil the criteria of the Union Government. So, the Kerala Government brought those people under its ambit to help them get affordable healthcare services.

Currently, 30 lakh families are enjoying the benefits of CHISS scheme in Kerala.

Undoubtedly, the State Government has done a lot of work to bring the poor under the ambit of its healthcare-related schemes. CHISS Plus is a trust model for all above the poverty line (APL) category people. This health insurance scheme was launched by the government primarily to help families cope with the huge expenses that suddenly burden them when a major ailment, like a heart attack or cancer treatment, is required.

March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

DR W R REDDY

ICT Revolutionises Taxes Department The Taxes Department is one of the ace departments of the Kerala Government, which has exploited IT to the fullest to make almost every citizen service online, informs Dr W R Reddy, Principal Secretary, Taxes Department, to Vishwas Dass of Elets News Network (ENN) highlighting a few IT initiatives that have transformed citizens’ lives significantly

G

ive us an overview of the Taxes Department. How is it contributing to boost the state’s economy?

For any government, resources mobilisation is a very crucial thing. In order to meet budgeted programmes and priorities of the government, the taxes department plays extremely crucial role as it contributes almost 90 per cent of the state’s budget resources that are spent for various programmes. Taxes Department has commercial tax wing which collects commercial tax, covering value added tax (VAT), sales tax, luxury tax, agriculture income tax and lottery tax among others. Commercial tax is one of the major revenue contributors out of total tax mobilisation. The second major important unit is the registration department which through stamp duty and registration fee collects sizable amount of revenue. Then the third is the Excise Department which regulates and formulates the Abkari policy and generates revenue. Another interesting area is the lotteries department though lottery is banned by the Central Government, Kerala government exempted from running the department. The state government discourages practice of betting but in Kerala the uniqueness of lottery is the proceeds generated out of sale of lotteries and employment generation to around 50,000 people. It is a major employment generator. The proceeds from the lottery are being utilised for the social purpose like providing healthcare services through various schemes such as Karunya Benevolent

32 egov / egov.eletsonline.com / March 2016

Scheme (KBS) which is directly benefiting over one lakh poor people. Recently, the state government has announced that another lottery scheme called ‘Stri Sakthi’ will be rolled out with an aim to empower women. The government will spend around `200-300 crore under this scheme this year. So, the lottery has both the factors namely—employment generation and social welfare. Hence, the above mentioned four departments, excise, registration, commercial and lottery contribute almost 90 per cent of the total revenue to the state. In that way Taxes Department is one of the important pillars of the government.

What are the ICT tools introduced to enable the Commercial Tax Department?

Can you please elaborate?

When the Commercial Taxes Department migrated to the VAT, we started exploiting ICT for various purposes like making dealers’ easy interaction with the department and easy assessment, scrutiny, analysis and mobilisation of tax. So, we have rolled out a platform called Kerala VAT (KVAT). Now, a majority of the services are online like a dealer can get his registration number online, file returns online, pay taxes and get the refunds. Now, when the issue of tax compliance comes, one way of enforcing tax laws is conducting raids and crack the whip on the defaulters. However, the more sensible way is to analyse the data which is being captured regularly and then find out where exactly the tax leakages are happening.

We are in the process of moving into smart tax compliance. A number of activities have been made online like getting and renewing

DR W R REDDY

registration. The two-way interaction with dealers is something which is yet to be done.

If the dealers have some grievance they can file it online and then appropriate authority can redress it. The department is also complying with the Right to Service Act of the government to deliver services in stipulated timeframe.

Brief us about a few key online services of the Taxes Department.

The online registration process has picked up speed. About 40 sub registrar offices (SROs) out of total 314 in Trivandrum districts alone have been made online. In the last one year, the department has made efforts to expedite the pace of making registration process online and weeding out several constraints involved. As on date, we have made 260 SROs online across the state (including 40 offices of Trivandrum district). Along with that a lot of services can be made online like getting the encumbrance certificate. Similarly, if a person requires certified copies of old documents they can apply online and get it accordingly at the click of a mouse.

The Taxes Department is using the IT services to the hilt. It also exploits ICT for various purposes such as making dealers’ interaction easy with the department and easy assessment, scrutiny, analysis and mobilisation of various taxes Apart from this, the government is also contemplating to launch the e-stamping project whose bill is already been passed.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

The e-stamping would enable public to apply online from bonafide vendors and get the desired e-challan online and file the document of registration. Once an appointment of an SRO official is availed, one can go to the SRO and get his/her registration document. So, people would be largely benefitted by the e-stamping as they have to visit the SRO only once to sign their documents and get them. The whole process of getting the documents related to registration has been simplified for people’s convenience. Besides, we have also enabled SMS service for status of application and queries. IT department is helping us phenomenally. In fact, we are using IT department’s services to the hilt.

Share about a few IT projects of the department which are in the pipeline.

The major initiative the department has taken is the online audit because existing audit system is so ‘cumbersome’ in the sense that audit happens today and its review takes place only after three to four years by the public accounts committee (PAC). There is always a time lag. Basically, audit is intended to improve the system but unfortunately in the present existing manual system it is not happening because it takes so many years to reach the final stage. There is also substantive delay because of huge paper work involved in replying to the CAG. Our department has embarked upon major IT platform called— ‘Ready Auditor’. For the last 12 months, we are working on that involving the CAG office, the department and National Informatics Centre’s (NIC) Delhi team has been working on this.

Orders have been sent for migrating to audit online. It is going on a pilot project basis in one of the offices of commercial tax.

Ready Auditor will be a major revolutionary change in the governance. The apex committee headed by the Chief Secretary with the Additional Chief Secretary (finance) has reviewed the new system and approved it. Recently, an order has also been implemented to this effect.

Another major feature of this project is, it highlights few of the common mistakes made and helps the government to rectify any error. If audit happens correctively, the mistake should not reoccur.

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EXCLUSIVE SPECIAL INTERVIEW INTERVIEWMANOJ MANOJ ABRAHAM ABRAHAM

ICT INITIATIVES l CyberDome l iAps HIGHLIGHTS l Passport Verification (15-20 days) l 300 Speed Check Cameras/Radars on Highway l Quick Verification Process

Tryst with

Technology 34 egov / egov.eletsonline.com / March 2016

Reputed as a no-nonsense police officer, Manoj Abraham, Inspector General of Police (Trivandrum Range), Kerala, in a conversation with Vishwas Dass and Arpit Gupta of Elets News Network (ENN), shares how well the Kerala Police is equipped with technology to prevent traditional as well as cyber crimes

MANOJ ABRAHAM

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hat kind of IT initiatives have been undertaken

by Kerala Police to enable people avail policerelated online services?

Kerala police is at the forefront of bringing ICT to the doorsteps of the people.

It’s one of the most IT-developed states in the country so we also thought that we need to implement ICT to deliver our services to citizens in an efficient manner. Basically, in every field of police activity, we have been implementing key ICT initiatives. Almost all our official work is computerised. For example, the entire police machinery system works on a system called iAps which is digitalised.

All our communications between police stations and officers, go through the digital media so there is no file as such. If somebody gives an application, let’s say of arms licence or verification, it travels very fast without wasting the applicant’s time.

So, the verification process has become much faster. Large chunks of the Malyalis are settled in the Gulf countries who often encounter problems associated with land here in Kerala. Often, they get worried over such petty issues while working abroad. Hence, in order to resolve these type of situations, we have set up a special cell to tackle grievances of the NRIs.

How is Kerala Police exploiting IT to issue NOCs to people to get their passports swiftly?

Passport verification process has been one of the major issues in the recent past.

We need to rapidly issue clearances to people effectively, to enable them getting their passports quickly. Our online police verification process for passports is very fast for the convenience of applicants. Perhaps, it is best in India. The moment we get the applications, the digital form goes to the sub inspector and it gets verified by him and sent to the regional passport offices (RPOs) without wasting any time.

Earlier, the passport verification used to take 45-60 days which has been reduced to 15-20 days now, which is a commendable job. As for the NOC clearance process people with bonafide documents are

not facing any difficulty in getting their passports.

Apart from this, we have undertaken a lot of initiatives in the traffic. Throughout the state, we have the Dial 100 traffic control rooms which are ICT enabled, where all the police vehicles are GPS manned. We know where the calls are coming from and can dispatch the police personnel to handle any situation. There are 300 speed check cameras and speed radars installed on all the highways.

The automatic cameras are being managed by Kerala State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (Keltron) on Built Operate and Transfer (BOT) mode and they issue challans and share revenue with us. Similarly, we have red line jumping system, yellow line cutting system which automatically does the traffic enforcement. The traffic signalling system is also totally digitalised. We are also

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

centre— where a body of police officers, IT professionals and ethical hackers are helping us We involved all of them through online office. Along with the private sector, we have tied up with IT professionals who impart training to police personnel to keep them aware about latest innovations in the IT field. They also help us to investigate cyber crimes.

Cyber crime is a thing which changes in every three months. Technology which is available now may become obsolete in the next six months. So, for that situation police personnel have to consistently update their knowledge about IT to understand the new innovations and technologies. We have to, at least remain at par with the criminals and that is what we are trying to achieve. Importantly, IT professionals associated with CyberDome

IT professionals associated with CyberDome are rendering their services free of cost, as they believe they owe a lot to the society. We have around 500 IT experts registered with us and around 30-40 companies working directly with Kerala Police putting up a lot of software to manage traffic from control rooms. In order to help public to interact with the traffic police directly, lot of mobile apps are implemented where photos of accidents, complaints or any other misdeed can be uploaded for a prompt police action.

What kind of challenges Kerala Police is facing currently?

What are your strategies to reduce crime in the State and enhance the level of technology?

With increasing penetration of Internet, the nature of crime is shifting from traditional crime to cyber crime. As an instance, earlier a person used to get inside a house to steal something, but it’s changing now as a person can commit a crime by sitting at a place through Internet. We are trained in tackling traditional crme but now cyber crime has changed everything. The new initiative called ‘CyberDome’ a public private partnership

are rendering their services free of cost as they believe they owe a lot to the society.

We have around 500 IT experts registered with us and around 30-40 companies working directly with Kerala police. If we need some new software, these professionals help us to develop one with us and are allowed to sell it to other people.

Do you have sufficient manpower to tackle cyber crimes? Kindly share your future plans with us.

As of now, we have got around 15-20 persons in CyberDome. It’s actually more public-intensive and we have roughly around 500 persons who resolve our cyber crime related cases. We are consistently imparting training on our police personnel to keep them abreast about technological advancements. We require support of the people as well to prevent crime in the society.

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SPECIAL ARTICLE

CYBERDOME

In the era of rapid digitisation, cyber crimes are posing a serious threat to a tech-forward Kerala. To cope with this, the Kerala Police Department has launched CyberDome, a high tech centre for cyber security and innovations

Smart Policing via CyberDome

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od’s Own Country is ranked fourth in the list of cyber crime for the period 2011 to 2013 and the state is consistently in the top when it comes to Internet penetration. With 2.5 crore mobile phones, 30 lakh landline connections and 12 lakh Internet connections, the state is facing major challenges in the cyber crime investigation.

In order to tackle the cyber threat, online fraudsters and security of citizens, Kerala police is using ICT, which helps them connect to the common citizens directly and deliver a better citizen-centric services to the last mile.

“The nature of crime is going to be digital

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in the future. Kerala police also needs to be digitally capable to tackle that level of crime. We have 500 industry experts and 30-40 companies directly working with the police department free of cost. The need of the hour is more of patrolling the digital world rather than the physical world,” Manoj Abraham, Inspector General of Police (Trivandrum Range), Kerala told Elets News Network (ENN).

He also informed that usually police are trained to deal with traditional crime but increasing penetration of mobile and Internet has emerged as a big challenge for the police officials. In a cyber crime, the mastermind sitting in abroad can do the whole thing. So the gamut of investigation needs to be changed today.

Unlike other states, Kerala police has implemented ICT in every field of police activity to prevent the crime and criminal network.

“Police department is considered to be a security organisation, which maintains the confidentiality and do the investigation within the department. Over the years, we have realised that we can’t overhaul the system. For cyber crime investigation, we need to have partnership. Therefore in view of emerging challenges in the cyber world we have come up with this a new initiative called CyberDome,” he added.

The CyberDome has been launched as a primary monitoring unit for the Internet and the nodal centre for policing the social networking sites and anti-terror activities in cyber space. It comprises senior police officers, IT professionals, ethical hackers and all other agencies working in this area altogether for crime monitoring, policing the web, assistance in the investigation of cyber crimes, development of new software for police and a host of other areas.

Another big challenge what police face is the method of cyber crime changes every three months. Because technology gets obsolete within no time so constant updating is needed for combating the cyber crimes. The police needs to be trained continuously to understand the modus operandi of tech-savvy criminals.

BHANDARI SWAGAT RANVEERCHAND

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

IT to Pace Up Milma

The Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation or Milma, which has been contributing substantially to Kerala’s economy, is enhancing its services through adoption of IT, informs Bhandari Swagat Ranveerchand, Managing Director, Milma, to Vishwas Dass of Elets News Network (ENN)

B

sectors. We are returning maximum profits directly to the farmers in the form of cattle feed subsidy, insurance schemes and other benefits.

Dairy sector is one of the most stable sectors currently in Kerala.

rief us about Milma’s initiatives in increasing its efficiency and milk

production.

Milma is procuring almost 11 lakh litres of milk everyday and selling around 12 lakh litres per day. Procurement of milk has increased over the last two years though it has not reached the demand so that the rest is taken up from cooperative dairies of neighbouring Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Milma, a National Dairy Development Board’s (NDDB) initiative, is ensuring quality of milk consistently.

Everything related to the federation is online to maintain transparency. We have made all the modules of Milma online ranging from procurement of milk, selling of milk, finance, cattle field, purchase and human resources department, among others. We are extensively exploiting technology like we are monitoring our Alleppey-based cattle field dairy on a real time basis. Our cattle field plants are in losses because it’s a draught year and raw material are being brought from other states except coconut seed extraction. Therefore, prices of raw material is spiralling and we are trying to undertake IT initiatives to improve efficiency of cattle field plants to recover the losses.

What support is extended to people for setting up dairies?

The government is helping people to start their business in this sector. Milma offers subsidies to the needy people for purchasing

What challenges do you face from other states in making Milma one of the profitable institutions?

a cow, cattle shed and for those who want to open a society would be given subsidised land.

We are trying to attract as many as people into the dairy sector to strengthen the Milma and expand range of products. We are returning 83 per cent of the profit to the farmers, which are one-of-the-best initiatives in the dairy sector. Milma’s quality is the best among other brands. Even if you go to the collection centres, the milk is tested there. The fat and the SNF (solids not fat) which are two important parameters of milk quality that are being tested and based on that quality the money is given to the farmers. The growth rate of milk procurement showed steady progress. In 2014-15, the three regional unions collected an average quantity of 9.96 lakh litres of milk per day with 5.81 per cent increase compared to the last fiscal.

When it comes to dairy sector, Kerala is facing stiff competition from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu as they sell milk at cheaper prices compared to Kerala where labour charges are skyrocketing. We have to maintain high quality to prevent products coming from neighbouring states. But consumers have a confidence in Milma and we do not face any threat from the private dairies operating in Kerala. Cattle feed is the biggest challenge at present because we are incurring losses of `12 crore in this fiscal due to skyrocketing price of raw material. I think maintaining price of milk is a challenge. Right from including Kerala in the second phase of Operation Flood in early 90’s by NDDB and establishing Milma for its implementation, the government has achieved spectacular progress in milk procurement.

Milma has become a household name in Kerala that guarantees welfare and financial security of dairy farmers by ensuring remunerative price for the milk and by implementing several welfare measures.

Can you tell us about your future projects?

We are planning to commission two dairies— Sreekandapuram and Malaiyur in near future.

Plans are there to increase the capacity of Pattanakkad plant from 300 metric tonnes to 350 metric tonnes per day by June. We are trying to attract more dairy farmers as it gives stability and reliability compared to other March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

DR M BEENA

Kerala to be Global

Destination for AYUSH Providing holistic healthcare services to the denizens of Kerala, the Ayush Department is striving to become country’s global capital for traditional medicines with the help of ICT, says Dr M Beena, Ayush Secretary, in an interaction with Vishwas Dass and Arpit Gupta of Elets News Network (ENN)

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hat kind of efforts are being undertaken by your department to benefit people?

The state government AYUSH Department is seven months old as it was constituted on August 2015 in line with the Centre’s AYUSH department. The department to lay emphasis on traditional medicines and for creating awareness about the different systems of treatment like Ayurveda, yoga and naturopathy, unani, siddha and homoeopathy and provide quality medicines and promote cultivation of medicinal plants.

AYUSH systems play major role not only in preventing the diseases, but in curative aspect too. This system medicine is well accepted by community—particularly in rural areas in Kerala because these are cost effective, socially acceptable, comparatively safe and efficacious.

In order to give an impetus to the growth of AYUSH in the state, government has appointed a

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dedicated secretary level official for the same.

Kerala is the third state in the country to have a separate AYUSH department in the government and directors for Indian Systems of Medicine (ISM), Homeopathy and Ayurveda Medical Education.We have a separate Drugs Controller for Ayurveda, Principal and Controlling Officer for Homoeopathy and Chief Executive Officer for Medicinal Plants. We have OUSHADHI – the prestigious public

limited Ayurveda Medicine manufacturing unit with a turnover of around `100 crores, and HOMCO – a cooperative drug manufacturing unit for homeopathic medicines.

The department has formulated KASH – (Kerala Accreditation Standards for Hospitals). And, the guidelines for AYUSH department aim at improving the quality of healthcare delivery system and to upgrade the AYUSH healthcare institutions to KASH AYUSH level in a phased manner.

It is the state’s endeavour to ensure that

DR M BEENA

every Panchayat has its own ayurveda and homoeopathic institution and thereby declaring Kerala as a 100 per cent ayurveda and homoeopathic state.

What are the different schemes and programmes rolled out by the department?

For implementing the programmes of National AYUSH Mission in the state, the government has constituted State AYUSH Health Society. AYUSH Dpartment has submitted the State Annual Action Plan for 2014-15 and 2015-16 fiscal of `9.50 crore and `11.06 crore respectively. We have specific programme implemented under Ayush, one for anemia in adolescent girls and children in Attappady Tribal settlement, a homoeopathic mobile medical unit for the Tribals in Idukki. Few others are school health programme, research study on NCD and cultivation of medicinal plants. The AYUSH department has also submitted four proposals for an amount of `6crore (`1.5 cr for each proposal) under the Central Sectoral Scheme – Public Health Initiatives.

The ISM and Homoeopathic departments are conducting various specialty programmes such as Seethalayam, Ayushmaanbhava, Sadgamaya, Chetana Cancer Care centre, Amrutham, Infertility – Geriatric – Adolescent- Thyroid specialty clinics through the various AYUSH Hospitals in the state.

How is the department of AYUSH strengthening its services by leveraging IT? The government has decided to Health Management Information System (HMIS) in

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Kerala is working to become the most preferred AYUSH destination on the global map. The state wants to be branded as global capital of AYUSH systems for health care delivery, academic excellence and research by 2025 AYUSH Department for the collection of data of OP and IP in hospitals/dispensaries. Department is also planning to digitise (eHealth) all AYUSH Institutions in the state. We are planning to give health awareness messages to people through mobiles by way of SMS, along with using the social media as a tool to propagate health awareness programmes.

What kind of challenges are you facing to improve department of AYUSH and its services for the convenience of people?

Infrastructure facilities of AYUSH hospitals have to be improved. All AYUSH hospitals are not having clinical Investigation facilities which are highly needed. State has formulated KASH – (Kerala Accreditation Standards for Hospitals) Guidelines for AYUSH department for improving the quality of AYUSH healthcare delivery system. These hospitals have to be brought up to KASH AYUSH standards.

Few challenges faced by the department are lack of research studies, proper documentation and publication in national/international journals. Many are not aware about avail-

ability of quality drugs and non- availability of sufficient medicinal plants, among others.

Shortage of funds is one of the prominent challenges faced by the department.

Your future plans for the department.

We are endeavouring to brand our state as global capital of AYUSH systems for health care delivery, academic excellence, research and quality drug industry by 2025. Kerala is working to become the most preferred AYUSH destination on the global map. Other plans include establishing AYUSH systems of medicine as the first choice of treatment in primary healthcare, to become 100 per cent ayurveda and Homoeopathic state. We also want to have an exclusive state research centre and establish Kerala as the model for best quality AYUSH education in India. Setting up of warehousing, value addition, marketing and development of infrastructure for entrepreneurs, create more public health initiatives for AYUSH and also begin national institutes for yoga and naturopathy, panchakarma, medicinal plants and homoeopathy.

March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

RAMESH TENKIL

Striving to Improve

Lives of Rural Poor Country’s apex agriculture and rural development body, NABARD, is endeavouring hard to promote integrated rural development and secure prosperity in the villages of Kerala, Chief General Manager, NABARD (Kerala region), Ramesh Tenkil tells to Vishwas Dass of Elets News Network (ENN) and also shares the plethora of initiatives undertaken by NABARD to ensure rural folk’s livelihood

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ABARD has transformed into a leading development financial institution. How do you see this transition?

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is a development bank which provides and regulate credit and other facilities for the promotion and development of agriculture, small-scale industries, cottage and village industries, handicrafts, other activirural crafts and allied economic activi ties in rural areas with a view to promote integrated rural development and securing prosperity of rural areas. In discharging its role as a facilitator for rural prosperity, conNABARD is entrusted with matters con cerning policy, planning and operations in the field of credit for agriculture and other economic activities in rural parts, promoting institutional development and evaluating, monitoring and inspecting the client banks. The development bank also acts as a coordinator in the operations of rural credit institutions, extends assistance to the government, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and other organisations in matters relating to rural development, .

It offers training and research facilities for rural development banks and cooperatives and helps the state governments

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in reaching their targets of providing assistance to eligible institutions in agriculture and rural development.

Banking in India has grown rapidly in the last two decades. In terms of technology, Indian banks have adopted latest technology for their operations and enhanced their standards of customer service. Besides such developments, a sizeable population especially in rural areas remain excluded from basic banking services.

Also, the cooperative sector and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) which are at the forefront for providing banking services to the rural population was lagging behind on the IT platform. It was thus imperative for NABARD to step in to facilitate on-boarding of Cooperative Banks onto Core Banking Solution (CBS) platform so that they can provide banking services to the needy people at their door step.

In order to address the issues of financial inclusion, two funds—Financial Inclusion Fund (FIF) for meeting developmental and promotional interventions and Financial Inclusion Technology Fund (FITF) to meet the cost of technology, were constituted by us. We act as an enabler on both demand side and supply side. On demand side, numerous financial literacy programmes, street plays, mass awareness through radio, banner on buses, trains and jingles in railway stations are conducted to create awareness about formal banking services, types of services, modes of access, documentation requirement, need for banking and financial services.

On supply side, NABARD has helped strengthening RRBs and District Cooperative banks by providing capacity building to the staff to make them aware of the requirements of rural people, facilitating Cooperative banks to onboard Core Banking Solution (CBS) platform, implement post CBS technologies such as RTGS/ NEFT, CTS, Internet/mobile banking, support for issuing RuPay Debit and Kisan Credit cards, establishing ATMs and micro ATMs as well as for setting up of Financial Literacy Centres (FLCs) for creating awareness among rural citizens.

RAMESH TENKIL

What are the key financial inclusion and IT-related initiatives undertaken by NABARD in the recent years?

NABARD, Kerala Regional Office has initiated scores of financial inclusion initiatives like establishing FLCs for providing free financial counselling especially to marginalised people. The workshops are aimed at spreading awareness among people on importance of banking, process and documentation involved, benefits of insurance and pension schemes especially government’s social security schemes, responsible credit, timely repayment, family budgeting, other income generation activity, support available from other government departments. Recently, Kottayam DCB has been awarded Best Performing Bank under the Cooperatives Bank Category for enrolling maximum accounts under Atal Pension Yojana (APY).

To be specific, the financial literacy mass awareness programmes through community radio—“Thangum Thanalum” has bagged national award for sustainability 2013 and the Manthan Award South Asia and Asia Pacific 2012 jury’s special mention in community broadcasting category signifying the potential of such initiatives and their outcomes. Further, NABARD sponsored radio programmes through All India Radio (AIR) named “Shobhanam Gramajeevitham” and “Gramvikasanam NABARDiloode” have been garnering huge support and appreciation from all stakeholders.

The programmes are in local language keeping in mind the connection with the people at grassroot level.

How NABARD’s awareness campaign on financial literacy is beneficial to the villagers?

We have been conducting street plays to create awareness on financial inclusion.

Two such plays “Bango Bango” by “Thodupuzha Farmers Clubs” and “Anamika Pennorukkam” by High Range Development Society discuss about the various problems faced by men and women of the family due to financial exclusion and show ways to overcome them.

In addition, we have created jingles about financial inclusion which is broadcasted in various railway stations. Many banks informed that they had received queries on various topics

after hearing these jingles in stations. The banks approached NABARD for utilising these jingles in their FLCs and in all meetings with SHGs/ JLGs /Farmers Clubs.

We have also introduced the concept of financial inclusion, banking, and rural development among school and college students by conducting quizzes and drawing competitions. Banks were also requested to customise a banking product for students to imbibe the habit and to encourage them to access banking and financial services. Importantly, Kozhikode and Wayanad DCBs have developed customised banking products which have become an instant success with the student community.

For the purpose of technology adoption, mobile vans have been sanctioned to the Cooperative Banks and Kerala Gramin Bank for demonstrating various banking technologies such as the usage of RuPay Cards, micro ATMs and ATMs among the people where this kind of technology is very new or yet to reach them.

Kozhikode DCB and Wayanad DCB have

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

customers. All the banks have become members of NPCI. Most of the banks have issued RuPay Debit cards to their customers, some are in the process of issuing cards shortly. Besides this, NABARD has also provided grant support to Kerala Gramin Bank and Cooperative Banks for issuance of RuPay debit cards, Kisan Credit Cards and installation of micro ATMs. A total of `2.65 crore and `1.39 crore has been sanctioned to Cooperative Banks and Kerala Gramin Bank for the purposes, respectively. We are also mulling to bring Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) onto CBS as well as onto the payment platform which in turn will help the customers of the PACS to use all the advanced IT services of a bank.

NABARD has been instrumental in grounding rural, social innovations and social enterprises in the rural hinterlands. This endeavour is perhaps unparalleled in the country. It has in the process, partnered with about 4000 organisations in grounding many of the interven-

NABARD CGM Ramesh Tenkil flags off a technology demonstration mobile unit of the Wayanad District Cooperative Bank at Kalpetta

launched their mobile vans which has become a huge hit among people.

Along with creation of demand amongst the people, banks should also be ready to meet such huge demand. This can only happen when banks are technologically enabled and thus supply side also needs to be strengthened.

Kindly give us details of key IT initiatives undertaken by NABARD. Some of the IT initiatives taken by NABARD are facilitation of on-boarding nine Co-operative Banks onto CBS platform in the state. The banks have progressed further by providing RTGS/NEFT, CTS, DBT, ATM and other services to their

tions, be it, SHG-Bank Linkage programme, tree-based tribal communities’ livelihoods initiative, watershed approach in soil and water conservation, increasing crop productivity initiatives through lead crop initiative or dissemination of information flow to agrarian communities through farmer clubs.

Despite this, it pays huge taxes too, to the exchequer – figuring in the top 50 tax payers consistently. NABARD virtually ploughs back all the profits for development spending, in their unending search for solutions and answers. We have developed a huge amount of trust capital in three decades of work with rural communities and will continue to do so in the years to come.

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

GYANESH PANDEY

Agencies in Kerala are quick, focused, proactive and known for finishing their projects on time, says Gyanesh Pandey, Chairman & Managing Director, HSCC (India) Limited, in conversation with Souvik Goswami of Elets News Network (ENN)

With Kerala in Focus,

HSCC Marches on 42 egov / egov.eletsonline.com / March 2016

GYANESH PANDEY

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

ive us an overview of HSCC.

HSCC (India) Limited is a PSU under Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India.

It provides consultancy services to healthcare projects, including hospitals and their infrastructural requirements. We are also doing feasibility report of complete state or country for the requirement of healthcare services. Apart from these, HSCC is also engaged with providing consultancy for high-class laboratories. It is perhaps the only organisation which is having all these disciplines of a hospital consultancy under one roof. HSCC is one of the world’s largest consultancy organisation. It has completed more then 100 hospitals in India and abroad and almost same numbers of hospitals are under execution.

hospitals only for the affluent class of the society. I find that working under rules and regulations is always better.

What are the main activities of the organisation?

What are the focus areas for HSCC?

Main activities of the company are to address all levels of the health system pyramid and encompass conceptual studies, healthcare facilities design, project management, procurement and supply, logistics and installation, commissioning and skill enhancement through training and retraining. Since hospitals represent a substantial portion of any health system, a significant part of HSCC’s activities is devoted to design and implementation of new hospitals and medical colleges, teaching institutions and/or rehabilitation/up gradation of existing institutions.

HSCC is an ISO: 9001: 2000 accredited company; we adopt an integrated approach to projects, drawing on its pool of expertise to provide the best combination for evolving client-specific, cost-effective innovation solutions. A wide range of services are provided relating to components of health systems from conceptualisation through procurement of equipment/drugs, to complex projects involving design and implementation.

Most of HSCC’s works are in Delhi. Besides, we are also working with almost all states.

Though those projects are small in terms of cost and budget, I must admit that working in Kerala is quite satisfactory. As we all know, Kerala is ahead in terms of providing education and healthcare services compared to other states. Though we are doing small quantum of work there, the progress of work is faster and the agencies are also focused, proactive and they want to finish projects on time.

How is it different for HSCC to work for government projects compared to working with private sector?

We are working with government and planning hospitals for public at large. So, there is difference between hospitals for public at large and

A Kochi-based hospital developed with support from HSCC.

Compared to other states, Kerala is ahead in terms of providing education and healthcare delivery.

The progress of work is faster there and agencies are focused, proactive and they want to finish projects on time

Shed some light on HSCC’s international operations.

We have completed our hospitals work in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bhutan. We feel that the hospitals being made in Sri Lanka and Nepal are the best hospitals provided by India to them through HSCC. We are yet to enter European and the US markets. We would definitely try to plan and design Indian healthcare systems which are not available there, like yoga centers, Ayush and homeopathy centers.

How technology can be leveraged to provide effective healthcare services in a country like India in the era of Digital India?

For the past four years, we have focused more on using technology in terms of planning, designing and executing big hospital projects. We also have to keep in mind the fact of amount of large people who are everyday visiting government hospitals. Here, digitisation of documents plays an important role. I have created a special cell in HSCC for digitisation of documents of bigger hospital records. We will also ensure that each and every patient has digitised records and will be available with hospitals.

Share your vision for HSCC. HSCC should be one of the largest consultants in the world in terms of providing quality delivery. We are working to achieve it. My vision is that each and every hospital in India should be maintained well and kept clean. I want to see HSCC as the world’s largest healthcare consultant.

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

DR DINESH TYAGI

CSC Creating Silent

Revolution in ICT Common Service Centers (CSCs), a Digital India initiative, are creating a silent revolution in ICT, particularly in rural entrepreneurship, says CEO, CSC, Dr Dinesh Tyagi, in an exclusive chat with Gautam Debroy of Elets News Network (ENN)

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he Common Service Centers (CSCs) are doing a big job in government service delivery. What is its success rate since its inception?

Common Service Centers (CSCs) are now an integral part of the Government of India’s “Digital India” initiative. With the objective of enabling access points for delivery of services to the citizen close to place of their residence, government minihas now decided for setting up of mini mum one CSC in every Panchayat. Thus, there are likely to be around 2.5 to 3 lakhs CSCs by the end of March 2016. This is going to be one of the largest networks of ICT-enabled access point in the world engaged in delivery of a large number of the G2C and B2C services to the citizen. Most of the government and private sector agencies are now utilising CSCs across the country to extend their reach and deliver services.

With geographical equity, CSCs will be of great importance to organisation engaged or envisaging service delivery frameframe work across the country and extending coverage to citizen in every nook and corner. CSC scheme is built on concept of symbiotic relationship amongst various stakeholders and is unique in creating a silent revolution in ICT based rural entrepreneurship.

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DR DINESH TYAGI

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

A CSC-like centre in Kerala holds a women’s workshop

How do you find the involvement of people living in rural areas across the country?

One of the challenges for the Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE) is to involve and excite community in delivery of the various services through CSCs. Building confidence of rural people in any venture or service delivery platform takes longer and need different incentive for confidence building.

The essence of CSC scheme is that it is managed, operated and run by a local person so that his acceptability is higher within the community he serves. The uniqueness and behavior variation are dealt by the VLE while designing or adopting methods to involve community and enhance the footfalls which is essential for a sustainable venture. VLE association with government schemes/programmes also enable the community to build confidence on him/ her. Schemes as Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISA) where the VLE supports one person in the family to become digitally literate at no cost help in enhancing the level of digital literacy also encourages the community to visit CSC for other services. Similarly, JAN DHAN YOJNA of the government which envisages opening of a bank account for every individual has enabled enhancement in VLE interface with the community.

About one crore (10 million) transactions taking place every month through CSCs across the country shows that community actively participate in CSC framework of service delivery.

Nearly 2.5 to 3 lakh CSCs will be there by the end of March 2016. This is going to be one of the largest networks of ICT-enabled access point in the world, engaged in delivery of a large number of G2C and B2C services to the citizens While implementing your initiatives do you have any challenges? What action plan do you adopt to overcome those challenges?

The major challenge in CSC rollout is the availability of reliable broadband connectivity. With the rollout of NOFN it is expected that this issue will get addressed.

As per our agreement with Bharat Broadband there will be a CSC at every location where the NOFN terminate and the first user of the network is likely to be the CSC. CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd (CeGSIL) is leveraging an innovative solution

by INTEGRATING with NOFN end-points at

Gram Panchayats (GP) and EXTENDING it over a Wi-Fi Network covering all the inhabited areas of the village so as to create a very powerful service delivery platform.

The main components of the solution are: l Create a Wi-Fi coverage zone in the village so as to cover all inhabited areas of the village using low-cost Wi-Fi equipment. The target end-user devices would be Smartphones and Tablets l Address the most challenging issue for any rural technology – reliable power.

Considered alternate modes of Powering (Solar) for the Wi-Fi and associated equipment given to the real-life situation of erratic to nil power situations in the Indian Villages l Test other value-added services using Wi-Fi as the medium for Communication With CSC intervention, the NOFN termination in a village could not only be extended for the general villagers but also extended over WiFi to connect last mile government agencies as customers, who really need connectivity as: l Post Office l Police Station l Primary Health Centre l Panchayat Office and l Primary (Secondary) School l Anganwadi l Ration shop We are now transiting from CSC concept as mere service delivery point to a “Digital Village” where the focus will be to empower March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

DR DINESH TYAGI

the community including delivery of a reliable connectivity coupled with service delivery framework.

Availability of Power is another challenge for functioning of the CSCs. Some of the CSCs use solar power and invertors for addressing the same. For NE States and Hilly States, Government of India is providing the desired financial support to the State Government for providing solar power to CSCs.

How is the achievement in financial and social service delivery in rural areas?

CSCs have actively participated in the JanDhan Yojna and opened about 50 lakhs new accounts. About 30,000 CSCs across the country are working as business correspondents and delivering various banking services to citizen in rural India. Last year transaction worth `2000 crore has been undertaken through CSCs relating to banking. Beside this CSCs also collect insurance premium of all insurance companies across the country. So far about `180 crore has been collected as insurance premium and CSCs have also delivered insurance products and services to citizen including life and non life. Pension products of PFRDA are also delivered to citizen through CSCs. We have recently launched Aadhar Enabled Payment Service (AEPS) with National Payment Corporation of India Limited (NPCI) which shall enable all the CSCs across the country to become interoperable banking service delivery outlet – any bank account holder can perform deposit, withdrawal and other related services through CSCs. This would result in 2.5 lakhs outlet providing financial services and probably the largest financial access point network in the world. In Indian context, it would indeed be revolutionary as after independence till date we could only set up about 40,000 rural bank branches catering to 600000 villages .

At present, railway, air and bus ticketing are being delivered through CSCs. Citizen can also apply for passport though CSCs. Legal literacy, financial literacy and investor education programmes are also being implemented through CSCs to the citizen in rural India .

CSCs have actively participated in the Jan-Dhan Yojna and opened about 50 lakhs new accounts.

About 30,000 CSCs across the country are working as business correspondents and delivering various banking services to citizen in rural India provider to deliver services to citizen. Private insurance companies, banks, education services provider are utilising the CSC network to deliver various services. Apollo Hospital is using the CSC for teleconsultation and diagnostic services. Recently, the e-commerce service provider as snapdea, infibeam etc and logistics provider as Connect India have started utilising CSCs to extend their reach to rural areas. We are also launching music courses of Shankar Mahadevan Academy through CSCs to citizens in Rural India.

Are you getting involvement from private players?

Tell us something about the Online Monitoring Tool (OMT) of CSC.

CSCs platform by definition is a neutral platform and can be utilised by any service

OMT is used while registering CSCs. This facilitate in tracking the performance of

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CSCs and also its availability to the citizen as a delivery point. It has a limited purpose for identification of CSC and monitoring its performance on continuous basis. The OMT also helped state government agencies in reviewing the performance of the private agencies in the rollout of the CSCs and thus calculate the due revenue support and penalties. CSC 2.0 does not envisage any revenue support and empower the district E Governance societies to rollout, monitor and support the CSCs which therefore limit the role and function of the OMT.

What response are you getting in northeastern states of India?

Northeastern states are actively participating in the CSC scheme. The village council in place of panchayat in many of the NE states does effect the viability of CSCs due to very low population in these hamlets.

However with the increase in the bouquet of services, CSCs can be an effective access point to make the services available in those difficult areas.

Launch of Digital India has energised and adequately enthused the VLE who now is charged up to build a ICT-enabled sustainable rural enterprise - unique to this country. Most of them have created tremendous opportunities for employment in rural India – engaging five or more persons per CSC. With the support of government, CSCs can be major player in the “Digital India” initiative and contribute significantly and effectively in bridging the digital divide and creating an enlightened and empowered society actively participating in nation building.

PEOPLELINK

SPOTLIGHT

NextGen Video Solutions for Smarter Governance Providing modular customised next generation video products, PeopleLink HD Video Conferencing Software and Solutions are transforming the traditional conference rooms, making it more interactive for the government, healthcare, education and SME sectors, writes Amit Chowdry, CEO, PeopleLink Unified Communications Pvt Ltd

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inking people from across the globe virtually, PeopleLink is enabling the Digital India and smart governance visions of the government by implementing video collaborations and integrate video networks.

“We are closely following the government pol policies and adding more features to our solutions, in line with the government focus of reaching out to the masses and getting them the benefits.

Once we start getting feedback from various government departments, we would know what extra features are needed for their specific needs,” Amit Chowdry, CEO, PeopleLink Unified Communications Pvt Ltd informed.

Connecting Rajasthan Virtually PeopleLink is currently deploying video connectivity for the Government of Rajasthan with 18,000 port video collaboration platforms. The solution shall spread over 32 districts of Rajasthan covering the entire state to be virtually connected.

The five-year project aims at the criticality of adopting visual collaboracollabora tion by the government for an efficient people reach out strategy and effective govergover nance. These projects would help empower the people and get them closer to the government for efficacious grievance management, while the government uses the platform for making its departments more agile and connected for an inclusive growth of the state.

Managed Service Portfolio Stronger Visual Strategy PeopleLink has also initiated its Managed

Service Portfolio, which addresses the need of ad-hoc video requirements of the users. Managed Service for visual collaboration has a potential of almost 52 per cent CAGR growth.

Hence, it sets the company and its products and services on a fast pace growth platform. The managed service also opens up the possibility of having a multi-tenant deployment model, wherein the service providers can also offer the collaboration on their cloud under SaaS and PaaS services.

“Managed video services are seeing an upward trajectory, which is indeed an acknowledgement of video being accepted as a preferred medium for effective governance and mass collaboration. It presents a unique way to get a stronger visual strategy for the ATL/BTL marketing. The services are effectively being explored by many to enhance their marketing activities, like product launches, announcement of services and policies, conducting multi-city promotions etc,” says Abhishek Pratap Singh, Head, Product Marketing & PeopleLink Managed Video Services.

March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

47

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

SHIKHAR AGARWAL

Pink City Rides the Digital Wave Jaipur, one of the historic and culturally rich cities in the country, is embracing digitisation to transform itself into a smart and connected city, enabling ICT in public transport, safety and security services, tells Shikhar Agarwal, Commissioner, Jaipur Development Authority (JDA), to Kartik Sharma of Elets News Network (ENN)

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hat are the various initiatives undertaken by the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) for making Jaipur a smart city?

The meaning of making a city smarter is providing better set of services for citizens. These services are not only technology based but also the basics services like drinking water, sewage, electricity, etc that needs to be looked into. To provide better services, the underlining requirement is money. Hence, our first step was to see if we can step up in terms of revenue generation. We successfully did so by doubling the revenue generation and pulling the financial muscle last year. We are doing the same this year as well. This increase in fiscal has helped us to clear liabilities and take up bigger projects like cleaning and rejuvenation of the 42 km long Dravavati river stretch which flows through Jaipur city, provide proper sewage systems to every household, reducing the road blocks caused due to encroachment, eliminating the land possession issues in the ring road project, cabling of the overhead wires, etc.

SHIKHAR AGARWAL

We are procuring more buses and creating two BRT corridors and building elevated roads for better local transportation. We also have ambitious projects like building ring roads. So overall, we are not only concentrating on the technological services but the services on the ground and a strong financial muscle leverages us to do so.

As you mentioned, strengthening financial muscle was the first step, how did JDA achieve this?

Technology played a major role in increasing the financial muscle. We developed a GIS based land bank for the first time in the state, which helped us understand where our resources were. With this, we were able to identify the usable land in Jaipur.

It helped us majorly during the recently organised Resurgent Rajasthan summit as when foreign investors asked us for options we had easily showed them probable and suitable land on a computer immediately.

Digitising the land bank was a major step towards quick monetisation, transparency and clarity for expediting actions. Proper land management system in place led us in city planning and benefited us to generate more revenue. Going a step further in our land management system, we are now working on a digital platform where all the details like lease of land, previous owner etc will be displayed on a click of a mouse.

This is a new successful pilot project that we have just completed which encourages a lot of transparency in the process of selling and buying.

Please throw some light on the City Infrastructure Management Centre and its significance.

JDA has set up a City Infrastructure Management Centre as well as a Response Control Room to manage the city with greater efficiency and effectiveness. In City Infrastructure Management Centre, nearly all the solutions are integrated into a digital platform. The digital platform built by JDA can aggregate data from various sensors and solutions, conduct data analytics and support a number of urban services.

In this phase, JDA has implemented the solutions in Jantar Mantar, Amer, Albert Hall, Jal Mahal, Ram Niwas Bagh, Hawa Mahal, Central Park and Jawahar Circle. The

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

JDA at Work

JDA intends to speed up the development and progressive growth of Jaipur and wants to combat and manoeuvre the growing requirements of the city. The nodal government agency responsible for the planned and sustainable development of Jaipur wants to have a city planned and look compatible . l l l l l l l l l l l

Few Important Citizen Services Applications: WiFi Hot Spot Service Video Surveillance for Citizen Safety and Security Smart Parking Management and Guidance Smart and Integrated City Lighting Citizen Kiosks for Information and Govt Services Waste Management Smart and Integrated Transport System Integrated Traffic Management System Smart Usage Management for Electricity and Water Environmental Data Monitoring Comprehensive City Infrastructure Management through Centralised Command and Control Centre

We are determined to ensure good governance and a better quality of life for citizens by leveraging technology.

As part of the digital blueprint of the State of Rajasthan, JDA is focused on developing smart city infrastructure in Jaipur to transform it into a digital city of the future next phase of implementation would be in another 25 sites. The initiative to transform Jaipur into a smart city has gathered tremendous momentum, since its launch in May 2014. Today, citizens of Jaipur are digitally empowered and this is just the beginning.

What are the other services that you plan to provide in a smarter Jaipur?

We are trying to provide better services in

every sector by enabling it with technology, so that citizens get better services as well as the transactions will happen faster and revenue will be generated for the government to work better. For example, the Wi-Fi services that are launched in various places in the city are helping the citizens and we are expanding it. Initially, such services were free but later these are charged, as it helps in generating revenue for the government. Another example is that of the parking systems, which will help the citizens to know the parking slot in public and private parking areas. These initiatives will also help the tourists who visit the city.

What is the State Government’s vision for a digital future of Rajasthan by leveraging ICT? We are determined to enable good governance and a better quality of life for citizens by leveraging technology. As part of the digital blueprint of Rajasthan, the JDA is focused on developing smart city infrastructure in Jaipur to transform itself into a digital city of the future. In its first phase, the pink city has created digital infrastructure to offer citizens amenities including intelligent kiosks, wireless broadband, safety and security services, traffic management and environmental updates.

March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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SPECIAL FEATURE

Cloud computing is about data storage, analytics, ease of access, flexibility, data security and much more. It’s been on account of these very features that cloud technology has seen a large-scale adoption over a short period of time across the globe. With rising use of Internet and the Government of India launching various data- and analytics-intensive programmes, cloud service providers can look forward to brighter times ahead, writes Akanki Sharma of Elets News Network (ENN)

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n the past, people would run applications and programmes from software downloaded on a physical device or computer or server in a building. Storing of data also required a physical device or a server room; more the data, more the space required. For big organisations, managing and storing data was a tedious job as they had to deal with volumes of data.

However, with the advent of cloud computing, things have undergone a drastic change. It has brought in not just the ease of storage, but also universal accessibility to the data stored: anyone can access any data from any part of the world, thus making various business processes much easier. Besides, it also facilitates IT services to cloud users with greater flexibility, reliability as well as scalability.

Apart from the government ecosystem, cloud computing has seen wide acceptance and adoption by the businesses across the globe, thus thrown open floodgates of opportunities for the IT companies offering cloud solutions and the peripherals.

SPECIAL FEATURE

LOOKING UP AT CLOUD l

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Globally, cloud apps will account for 90 per cent of total mobile data traffic by 2019.

57 per cent of IT architects and tech professionals are running apps on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform today.

Goldman Sachs is forecasting the cloud infrastructure and platform market will grow at a 19.62 per cent CAGR from 2015 to 2018, reaching USD 43 billion by 2018.

The more experienced an enterprise is with cloud computing, the more likely they are to rely on cloud-based apps and platforms to boost customer demand strategies (50 per cent).

Forrester’s Business Technographics data showed increased reported adoption of hosted private cloud for the US (five per cent), Canada (two per cent), and Germany (three per cent).

46 per cent of surveyed firms in the

European Union (EU) are using advanced cloud services relating to financial and accounting software applications, customer relationship management or to the use of computing power to run business applications. l 64 per cent of Small & Medium Businesses (SMBs) are already using cloud-based apps, with average adoption being three apps. l The Cloud Analytics Market is expected to grow from USD 7.5 billion in 2015 to USD 23.1 billion in 2020, attaining a CAGR of 25.1 per cent during the forecast period. l Worldwide spending on enterprise application software will grow 7.5 per cent to reach USD 149.9 billion in 2015, increasing to more than USD 201billion in 2019 with accelerating cloud adoption driving new software sales.

Source: Internet

VIRENDER JEET

Senior Vice President, Technology Newgen Software

In this context, the Internet has played a role of a catalyst. With Internet of things (IoT) being seen as the way forward, cloud technology is set to reach full bloom sooner than later. Moreover, given the wave of creating more and more smart cities, we are set to generate much more data than ever before. This will also require further storage space as well as the facility for analysing the same, and that will make cloud still more relevant.

India on Cloud Although the cloud computing technology has been in use in India for quite some time now, mostly by the business houses, the Government of India came up with its own cloud — Meghraj in early 2014. And, within a year’s time, as many

“Newgen has always been the leader when it comes to adopting new technologies that empower businesses.

Anticipating the potential of cloud in creating lean, agile and smart enterprises, we have extended our core products as well as BPM-based point solutions to the cloud platform. The solutions are available both on public and private cloud to create dynamically scalable and highly reliable enterprise applications. A multi-tenant architecture ensures that the same infrastructure can be optimally utilised by multiple customers in a very flexible pay per use model”

as 241 government departments and projects went running through this cloud, including initiatives like Digital Locker, scholarships, MyGov and eHospital, among others.

It has a huge potential for usage in the eGovernance domain and rural development in

developing countries like India, where physical infrastructure in far-flung areas is still amiss.

This technology becomes all the more significant following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s various programmes like Digital India, Make in India, Startup India and the Smart Cities March 2016 / egov.eletsonline.com / egov

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SPECIAL FEATURE

Mission, as all of these require data storage and analytics as well as universal accessibility for the citizens.

Virender Jeet, Senior Vice President, Technology at Newgen Software explains that cloud is a widely accessible network of the Internet that could prove to be a smart choice as an enterprise-wide operational platform for businesses. “A customer has the flexibility of starting with the bare minimum resources and auto scaling to a higher load as and when required.”

The Cloud Market As per a survey by the USA-based Public Technology Institute, 45 per cent of local governments in the US use some form of cloud computing. The primary reason for taking this step is to save the resources like time, maintenance and support costs. Moreover, using a cloud computing model, the cost for US federal data centre infrastructure can drop up to 30 per cent leading to savings to the tune of USD7.2 billion. Similarly, the Government of India is also saving a huge amount through its use in projects like Aadhaar.

A recent report by Gartner suggests that the cloud computing will comprise a bulk of IT spending in 2016. It is anticipated that the cloud market in India itself would reach about USD 2 billion by 2018. A survey has also revealed that 53 per cent of the organisations in India indicate that they have already been using cloud services, while 43 per cent are planning to begin its use in the next few months.

Looking at the demographic profile of India, around 60-70 per cent population is less than 30 years. So, with the growing use of Internet, the demand for cloud service providers is definitely going to surge manifolds. Notably, some of the major cloud service providers covering the globe, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba, IBM and HP, are investing in the country with open hands, especially in their data centres. India, after all, is perceived as one of the fastest growing markets in terms of IT and ITeS.

Public Vs Private Cloud A perennial query remains whether one should go for private cloud or public cloud. The basic technological difference between a private and a public cloud is that private cloud uses a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to render a highly customised data storage and management architecture that allows organisations to score high

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TOP 10 CLOUD COMPUTING COMPANIES IN INDIA Tata Consultancy Services

Offers solutions like cloud advisory, cloud development and migration, cloud development and assurance.

Infosys

The company started cloud operation in year 2008 and focused to provide stack of three clouds one for development and other two for production and clients.

Wipro Limited

Virtual Cloud Lab Solution, Gateway, Custom Cloud Platform Engineering and Differentiated Application Engineering.

Insta Compute

Offering cost-effective cloud computing solution, it is one of the top cloud companies providing flexible payment, security, round-theclock technical support, etc.

Zenith InfoTech Limited

A leading security, cloud computing and IT solution provider founded in 1996. Offers BDR G14 for cloud service, storage, disaster recovery and backup.

Cypher Cloud

One of the most trusted brand in cloud computing and virtual appliances, Cypher cloud is a leading cloud service provider in India.

Cirrologix Private Limited

A software development organization, it offers cloud-based services, software integration, maintenance and designs.

Ctrls Datacenters Limited

Established in 2007, the firm offers best data security service, including complete infrastructure, storage, data management and network.

Clogeny Technologies Private Limited

A leading cloud computing company and complete computing solution provider including SaaS, PaaS and LaaS, the company offers cloud platform development, application, engineering & integration, cloud strategy and advising services.

App Point

Rated amongst the best cloud computing companies in Bangalore and India, App India is engaged with global IT companies like IBM and Microsoft for software development and design.

Source: top10companiesinindia.co.in

on information security, confidentiality as well as regulatory compliance. However, it carries the same staffing, management, maintenance and capital expenses issues that are common to the traditional, on premise data centres.

On the other hand, public cloud shares a computing infrastructure with various users, business units or businesses, providing the much needed scalability, flexibility and agility for businesses at half the cost and without the requirement for a complex infrastructure.

However, given its shared environment, public cloud is not suitable for businesses involving mission-critical workloads, security concerns, uptime requirements or management demands.

“While private cloud gives you proprietary and highly customised data architecture, public cloud delivers the ability to change computing resources on-demand and provision of multiple machines for complex computing jobs,” adds the Newgen official.

Jeet further says that in case of private cloud, the data in transit is also secured using a VPN tunnel. “With private cloud, your enterprise stands to score high marks on information

security, confidentiality as well as regulatory adherence and compliance, thus suggesting that private cloud is best for businesses with dynamic or unpredictable computing needs that require direct control over their environments.”

However, public cloud is preferable for the more voluminous, mundane and working levels of data and information management, for which security is lower on priority than the potential business advantage that could be extracted out of it through the timely access, essential to such data and content. Some other benefits of a public cloud also include self-service, scalability and multi-tenancy,” observes Jeet.

Looking Ahead In the backdrop of the given facts, one can safely say that cloud computing is not just here to stay, but in the coming years, its usage is set to grow at a pace faster than one could ever think of. The services would be availed by all the sectors — be it healthcare, education, banking or the government itself. In other words, the cloud is set to reign in the days ahead.

NILESH JAIN

Embracing Cloud

for Cyber Security Cloud technology, the new computing paradigm, which provides variety of services is here to stay and play a vital role in providing security solutions to both government and private organisations, informs Nilesh Jain, Country Sales Director, India and SAARC, Trend Micro, while speaking to Elets News Network (ENN)

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loud technology is the buzzword these days. How can it be put to use to improve citizencentric services?

With the Government’s ‘Digital India’ campaign, the prime example of Cloud-driven citizen-centric services is right in front of us.

A Cloud-based approach can lead to a massive improvement in any service, dissemination and usability quotient through better asset utilisation, lower project roll out times and adaptive organisational infrastructure.

It creates a tangible and positive impact upon user engagement, service delivery speed and user experience level.

Implementing a Cloud-based solutions network can also help governments and organisations in cutting down on massive overheads created due to unnecessary paper trail, administrative costs, and software/hardware maintenance. The adoption of this technology offers a plethora of benefits through which governments can deliver tailored service solutions to its citizens.

What are the Cloud-related products/services that you offer?

Trend Micro, a global leader in IT security, offers Cloud and data center security solutions for organisations. These solutions are aimed to offer comprehensive protection of data, application and prevention of business disruptions without compromising on regulatory compliance. Delivered through Trend Micro’s deep security platform, these solutions provide advanced server security to an organisation’s virtual, Cloud, as well as physical

TECH TALK

effort to deliver optimum value becomes a bit untenable if the government decides to develop its own Cloud infrastructure.

This leaves the field wide open for a publicprivate partnership. Enterprises which offer Cloud-based services and security solutions can leverage their existing Cloud capability in order to deliver the required services while ensuring costeffectiveness for the government, lowering the drain on its expenses. Moreover, the saved capital expense, which would have needlessly gone into creating a separate Cloud technology, could instead be utilised to augment and improve upon the existing infrastructure. This benefits both the government and the enterprise offering cloud solutions, and it improves the delivery metrics of the service and the system as a whole.

Compared to global standards, where does India stand in terms of Cloud technology adoption?

servers. An agent less, automated architecture with centralised management and vulnerability shielding optimises virtual servers and increases performance, resulting in saved time and resources and accelerated ROI.

Tell us about some of your Cloud technology-based deployments implemented in India?

Our services in India are on par with our global standards. We have deployed deep security platforms for major projects in India including several Government-backed initiatives to offer Cloud and data center security solutions which are tailored specifically to the Indian landscape.

What is the scope of PPP in the field?

Governments across the globe are facing a tremendous quandary – delivery and implementation of faster and better services through Cloud-based citizen-centric solutions, as it improves the two-way communication between the government and citizens.

Considering the fact that the major source of capital generation for the government is through taxes, fees and contribution, the

India is still at a pretty nascent stage as far as Cloud technology adoption goes.

With burgeoning usage of smartphones, portable digital devices and an improved Internet penetration, recent trends very much indicate that the Cloud adoption will soon become the preferred medium for all organisations working in the sphere of service delivery, be it government, private or startups. Cloud-based online education providers and interactive learning academies are already gaining prominence in the country, while several of the highly successful startups in India also leverage cloud technologies for streamlining processes and delivering services. The ‘Digital India’ push by the central government will only increase the adoption rates for cloud based technology solutions.

What are the grey areas, according to you, which you would like the government to focus on?

While increased dissemination and higher adoption rates have been marked as a priority, the government should also pay adequate attention towards ensuring optimum security of their cloud infrastructure. The IT security quotient in India is still well below par as compared to the global standards and might attract undue attention from hackers and other individuals with malicious intent who would look to compromise the cyber security of Indian citizens.

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SPECIAL ARTICLE

SMART CITIES

Smart Cities Need Smarter Security Smart Cities, which promise digitally-enabled conveniences, should concentrate on embedding cyber security. Robust cyber security solutions will make smart cities safer, writes Sanjay Sahay, Additional Director General, Karnataka Police, for Elets News Network (ENN)

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SMART CITIES

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ities have been accepted as the future of mankind. With migration and urbanisation in full swing and well reasoned formulations that 400 main cities will sustain the economic powerhouse of the world in the days to come; the solution ahead is the Smart Cities way. Efficiency, productivity, effectiveness, timeliness, openness, transparency and intense collaboration in real time at dynamic levels will be the force multipliers as businesses and utilities leverage technology to take governance and public utilities to next desired level. The urban living would henceforth become an experience never ever imagined in this country.

Infrastructure, utilities and seamless integration are the keys to its creation, sustained by the ICT backbone on which all modern systems exist and talk to each other. From SCADA to shared grid to IoT, Smart Cities would be a toast to what ICT can do for mankind and the levels to which connectivity can transform our lives.

The whole Smart City technologies and systems are complete with, when supervision and monitoring fall under the ambit of cyber security. Without a complete cyber security framework, it would be impos-

sible to operate critical systems and reap the benefits of the investment made in a hugely insecure digital world.

As the change will have to be clearly delineated in policy, risk assessment of the systems being put in place would be the ideal beginning. All the data is not equally critical. Open

data, as a concept and a facility need, to be evaluated and few cities are moving in that direction. San Francisco can be taken as role model. It is based on the understanding of the value and criticality of different datasets in possession of the government. Such data ,being harvested and used in public domain,

A mandated CEO needs to be appointed for the complete Smart City project, so CISO at the national level and for each of the 100 cities will help putting secure technologies in place, creating national standards. The uniform deployment will help evade the issues being faced with the first generation digital technologies

can lead to lots of applications which have the capability of taking the citizen experience and comfort to a totally different level. San Francisco has more than 100 applications developed and running on this data model.

Data is the building block for innovation in Smart Cities. San Francisco can be an ideal

SPECIAL ARTICLE

example of security and innovation going hand in hand.

No component of the digital world had security as a design element and it came as an afterthought. In recent studies, it’s indicated that in cloud adoption today security remains the biggest challenge. Right from IoT and all pervasive use of sensors, networking thereof and emergent data, no one can deny the fact that the attack surface available for the hacker has increased considerably and consequently the risk.

A mandated CEO is the need of hour for the complete Smart City project, CISO at the national level and for each of the 100 cities will help putting secure technologies in place, creating national standards and its uniform deployment will help evade the issues being faced with the first generation digital technologies. Interoperability has to be build in as the Smart Cities are being designed for commercial and general usage in this country. In silos, we come and in silos we go, is the adage.

This has to become the story of the past, and ownership and stakeholder engagement has to become the order of the day, for our sustenance in the modern day transformational digital age.

Horizontal and vertical scalability of the technological platform given the challenges of running a humungous system has to be sorted out. The movement from IPv 4 to IPv 6 has to be aligned as the world moves to IPv 6 and we cannot afford to be left behind. With sensors developing an independent capability to connect and http having its internal technical contradictions with this new all pervasive gadgetry, the way ahead can be only CoAP system as http does not support sensors. Convergence of technology based on our requirements is the name of the game in fast changing technological landscape of the world with Smart Cities being our brand ambassadors for the rest of the world and also a window to India’s technological prowess and ease of business and citizen engagement capabilities through these Smart City technologies.

With a huge dose of emerging technologies into play there has to be a paradigm shift in how we view and operate smart city security world.

To have the city smart, we need these technologies: cloud, drones, robotics, big data & analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, to keep them secure is our responsibility. Nonetheless, it would be an uphill task.

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Big Data Bolstering Smart Governance In an era of real time analytics, the country is in dire need of having the ability to gather, analyse and report on rapidly changing sets of data and our vision is to do the same at lightning speed with accurate results, says Sai Venkatesh Attaluri, Founder and MD, Foudroyant Analytics, in an interaction with Elets News Network (ENN)

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hat are the various solutions offered by Foudroyant Analytics that can enhance the current IT infrastructure?

Foudroyant Analytics want to build a robust recommendation engine, independent by its entity, that can provide solutions to every spectrum of the eco system like eGovernance, mGovernance, Healthcare, Telecom, Banking and Insurance, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, using Big Data Analytics. Foudroyant Recommendation Engine (FRE) helps to derive recommendations through business intelligence from past data as well as real time data to automatically take actions using machine learning algorithms to enhance the better governance, incremental revenues, control churn and value addition at periodical intervals in a simple and less complex manner, suitable for administrative and management teams to take better and quick decisions.

FRE helps in boosting clients revenue by conducting studies on a dynamic and continuously changing environment for targeting potential subscribers, preventing churn, opportunities for cross promotion, upselling and increasing penetration. As part of the roadmap, we are also focusing to extend our services on behavioral patterns based on geographic, demographic, area of interest, cultural barriers, frequency of consumption/usage and revenue contribution to derive and recommend highly relevant solutions that suit the needs of every spectrum of the ecosystem.

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What are the various services that you offer for businesses like banking & insurance, healthcare and communication and media services etc?

Big data will fundamentally change the way businesses compete and operate particularly in Banking and Insurance, Healthcare, Communications and Media. Companies that invest in and successfully derive value from their data will have a distinct advantage over their competitors. Currently, Big Data Analytics is matured enough in the area of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn etc. However, the real potential of Big Data Analytics is not yet explored in other areas like fraud detection and prevention, using spatial analytics, continuous data flow mediums like sensor, online transactions, network signals, GIS based services using satellite and also genomics. The main focus of our research is in building innovative solutions in these untapped areas, to take advantage of big data analytical processes to discover opportunities in the raw data, where existing traditional systems cannot be of any help in finding solutions. For us, what matters is only data while domain knowledge can be acquired from the respective domain experts itself.

What are the challenges you face today as digital data is exploding? What is the role of Big Data Analytics and its key advantages?

Big Data Analytics is a journey that involves a combination of potential skills, advanced technologies, applications, and processes used by firms to gain business insights and to do business planning. Knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant, if not the only, source of competitive advantage. The key challenges are finding the quality of candidates with good skill sets in the Big Data space particularly in the area of data science. It is not the quantum of candidates that come out of the institutions but what matters is the quality of the candidates with sound fundamental knowledge on the basics. Going forward anyone without statistical knowledge will not fit into the Big Data Analytics ecosystem.

What is the importance of data visualisation in this new era of data science?

The importance of data visualisation consists of highly interactive graphics; report build-

We are developing analytical solutions to existing vendors who are working on traditional systems without disturbing their infrastructure. We are also developing Intelligence Engines for existing traditional products ing, in-memory processing capabilities while having the ability to easily distribute reports and insights via mobile devices and web portals. When combined with analytics, data visualisation empowers with focus and the ability to reduce the time required by knowing where opportunities, issues, and risks reside in voluminous data and enabling business users to quickly and easily explore data.

What is Foudroyant Analytics’ ‘Go to Market’ strategy in India?

We have classified our strategies into three phases: short, mid and long term. Currently, we are developing analytical solutions to existing vendors who are working on traditional systems without disturbing their infrastructure.

We are also developing Intelligence Engines for existing traditional products as a plug and play using some of the Hadoop Framework components.

As part of our long term strategy, we have already associated with various universities such as University of Hyderabad, IMT, Hyderabad, Rayalaseema University and many more. On a regular basis, we are conducting workshops in these universities to strengthen the big data community for future human resource requirements. The universities, we are associated with, have already come forward to introduce short and long term courses on Data Science. Foudroyant Analytics is supporting in designing the courseware for them in consultation with Big Data Gurus across the world. Plans are already in progress to open our branches in Tier II cities.

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EVENT REPORT 2016

INAUGURAL SESSION

Ashish Khetan, Vice Chairman, Delhi Dialogue Commission, along with other dignitaries lights the traditional lamp to inaugurate éGov Symposium - Andhra Pradesh 2016’ in Tirupati on January 29, 2016.

J SATYANARAYANA Advisor, IT, Electronics & Communication, Govt of Andhra Pradesh

ASHISH KHETAN Vice Chairman, Delhi Dialogue Commission

eGovernance Transforming Connects interaction Government with citizens and Citizens

Delhi Govt moves towards eGovernance initiatives

eGovernance is about a fundamental transformation of how government deals and interacts with its citizens.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister’s e-Pragati initiative is ambitious. Similarly, the eSeva is quite popular now in its transformed name called ‘Mee Seva’. The development of IT as an industry can happen through practising it.

Andhra Pradesh government has been sincere in using IT in different manners. I am sure even the industry is aware that both opportunity to get some business and also to be a part of this development of a new state is available, which is called ‘Sunrise AP’. I had great pleasure in inaugurating this symposium.

The reason why I’m here is that I want to learn from all the pioneering initiatives that the Government of Andhra Pradesh over a period of time has taken in the field of eGovernance. I was completely surprised to know that there are more than 650 services in AP which are already online. After coming to power, the Delhi Government has started an initiative called eDistrict and we have made almost 10 or 12 services in the last 10 months online. For the Delhi Government, technology is not a matter of mere convenience, but it’s an instrument through which one would provide services to citizens. Only through technology we would be able to completely weed out corruption, manipulation and fraud from the system and provide citizens the services they deserve and they are entitled to.

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ePragati to pave way for Digital Andhra Pradesh The new digital initiative ePragati can be termed “Trust AP”. It is it like a golden key which is going to unleash tremendous things and create rush scalability and skills ability to educate people who are anywhere in the village.

Through this project Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will bring prosperity to the entire Andhra Pradesh. In TrustAP, “T” stands for technology driven, enabled and powered. “R” is for responsibility and reliability. “U” means Uniformity completely unleashed to the entire population, not to a select few.

And finally “S” stands for scalability with security of information. Big Data is going to grow exponentially, along side the ePragati initiative.

PROF BALA V BALACHANDARAN Founder and Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management

e-PRAGATI - WAY FORWARD FOR DIGITAL INDIA PROGRAMME

G S PHANI KISHORE Special Secretary, ITE&C Department, Government of AP

RATNAKAR JHAUHARI CEO, eGovernance Authority

eGovernance Connects Transparent, efficient Government eGovernanceand Citizens

Good analysed data crucial

It is needless to say that Andhra Pradesh has been the leader in eGovernance. The initiatives undertaken by the Government of Andhra Pradesh to deliver citizen-centric services up to the last mile through eGovernance is unparalleled. The saga of eGovernance in AP started long back with projects like Mee Seva followed by ePanchayat.

The symposium primarily envisages the contemplation of thought leaders, visionaries, implementers, industry leaders and partners at the ground level. However, nothing in eGovernance can be effective until a person in a village is serviced with transparency, quickness and efficiency.

This session had speakers highlighting various eGoverance initiatives and also talking about how ePragati will help benefit poorest of the poor in Andhra Pradesh. We are happy to know that this initiative will go to the remotest areas in Andhra Pradesh. The scheme will be providing 15 mbps connectivity at the rate of `150 per month. Everybody will have access to various services via ePragati.

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EVENT REPORT 2016

Big Data useless unless structured, analysed

VISHAKHA DONGRE Practice Manager, SAS India

Any kind of data, structured or unstructured, generated and stored is meaningful only if it is analyzed. The Big Data stored in Hadoop is just a lake of dead data until some analytics model is applied to it to figure out any behaviour or problem in the system and take action accordingly. This can be beneficial to government for taking various actions and doing pre-planning to tackle any future problem. For using limited resources for the maximum impact, analytics is taken into action. It can be applicable in almost all the fields like healthcare, crime, politics, etc. All of us have limited resources.

For example, there are 50 doctors for 20 villages. Analytics can help in deciding where a particular doctor can be sent so that maximum people could be benefitted.

RAKESH GARG Secretary, DoT

DR G KALPANA Principal Secretary, Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs

BharatNet to be backbone of eGovernance

Karnataka takes digital route to PDS

Andhra Pradesh has always been in the forefront when it comes to eGovernance initiatives. As a citizen needs government services from birth to death certificates, the traditional model of approaching government has a lot of problems. With eGovernance, things get simplified and the progress of the country can be much faster. If we talk about eGovernance, it will call for a lot of investment. So, the moment we think about computerising any activity of the government, we first start thinking how much money is required and from where the money will come. The Government of India has taken up a very huge project known as BharatNet now, in which it would be laying the optical fibre cable network in all the village panchayats in the country.

Under Annabhagya’’, we supply free food grains to almost 80 percent of the total Karnataka population which is about six crores. We keep a tab on such a wide public distribution system via IT. All the 212 offices of the department at various levels and 312 wholesale points have been computerised and interlinked to a central server system maintained by NIC and the information is available to public also on www.ahaara.kar. nic.in. All ration card is digitised with each and every detail of the beneficiary. The state portal contains the ration card details, BPL criteria, status of new applications that come, details of fair price shop and contact details. If public have any opinions or complaint, they can lodge complaints and grievances through their mobiles using 1967 number and 1800 tollfree. Details are also available on portal.

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EVENT REPORT 2016

SMART TECHNOLOGIES FOR SMART CITIES

Speakers interact among themselves during the session

M N RAO Executive Director, APTS

SUDHIR AGARWAL Senior Director & Head, Oracle India

Technology to enable smart cities

Technology gives you power

With more and more job opportunities getting concentrated in big cities across the world and a continuous inflow of masses from the rural areas into urban areas in search of better lifestyle, It is expected that 80 per cent of the world’s population will be residing in cities by the year 2050. This will cause huge strain on the available urban resources, including housing, power, water, etc. So, there is an urgent need for having smart technologies to increase the efficiency of city systems and reduce the resource consumption. Thus, the proceeding in this session will go with two major themes, i.e. digital interruption and digital intervention, in the context of smart cities and also as a solution for smart cities, which lie ahead in time.

How many of you believe you live in some kind of smart cities? How many of you pay your municipality tax over the Internet? How many of you can apply the passport online?

How many of you get the gas connection through the pipe and not the cylinders? My belief is that we are already living in a smart city and we have to move to the smarter ones.

Secondly, smart cities is about building blocks, which is about Internet of Things (IoT). Smart cities have different requirements and different stages of development. One has to look at the disruptive manner than the incremental one to change things. Once technology is brought in, it will give you power, neutralising a particular role. Startups will play a crucial role and there will be new business models as well.

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EVENT REPORT 2016

Digitisation is the future Smart cities are being implemented in silos. Coming back to the innovation and disruption, most of them have come from new companies. We all should be prepared as digitisation is the way forward.

Seventy per cent of the companies will not be there if digitisation is not there. In Andhra, we have been working on various projects, and startups have a huge scope too. Our work even involves innovative solutions for waste management and so on. With the announcement of 20 smart cities list recently, two are from the State of Andhra Pradesh. We are hoping to add more value to both these cities.

VIKRAM KUMAR MV Vice President-Business Development, Cisco

MANOJ AGARWAL Business Development Manager, Public Sector India, NetApp

DR C S KUMAR Transport Commissioner, Government of Odisha

Enabling services 24x7

Smart mobility need of the hour

Smart cities is about a large amount of data and one needs disruptive technologies and solutions to cater to the needs of these high-tech cities. In simpler terms, smart city means smart things or it means different things for different people.

It leverages technology across various facets of the city; be it health, transport, education or any other. It could also be a utility, but the primary thing is this will work on real time basis. Smart city enhances collaboration, which can be better brought through technologies, as it is mentioned that smart cities are all about data. Technology for smart cities must have a thoughtful consideration in defining state architecture because the quantum of it is far from what has been in the past 20 years. We have to keep an eye on technologies. For instance, cloud has become a reality and we should see how we can leverage it. It will not only minimise cost, but also improve availability and provide 24x7 services.

A smart transportation brings in a lot of awareness among citizens. We have enabled services to help students get their learning licence in college itself. Once it is there, it’s easier for them to get driving licence. We are also coming with a driving track system and issue licences online, within three to four months. We are also trying to generate report on driving and facilitate bus operators’ permits online, so that when a person applies for a permit he knows its status. Another service is GIS mapping of routes, where the passenger and the operator can know the bus routes and numbers of the services plying on them. This not just helps in smooth movement of traffic, but also helps in better controlling traffic movement, especially in big cities. With each passing day, more and more smart transport systems are being introduced.

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EVENT REPORT 2016

Rules and regulations need change

E RAVENDIRAN Commissioner, Kalyan Dombivalli Muncipal Coproration, Government of Maharashtra

It is vital to know how the government sees the vision of smart cities and how guidelines are reached. The projects have two essential categories: one is area-based projects and another is pan-city projects.

There are three criteria for these projects, namely redevelopment, retrofitting and greenfield development. Its weightage is of 80 per cent, pan city, which is 20 percent of IT solutions. When we implement such services, the government has to initiate a set of laws. Thus, we need changes in rules and regulations. Apart from changes in norms, there is also need for deployment of smarter technologies, which can facilitate city systems much better as compared to manual handling of the same.

CYBER SECURITY AND CHALLENGES

Mobile applications challenge for cloud security

C NIRANJAN Country Manager, HP

By 2020 it’s expected that about one trillion mobile applications would be available for around 100 billion connected mobiles devices.

All these are prone to cyber attacks. Initially HP was focusing only on the network and the data security, but suddenly another key element which has come up is Cloud security, because any application you have, any transaction which you try to access is over the Cloud now. So Cloud security has become crucial. When it comes to implementation for eGovernance, the key area which I recommend to focus on is the identity management because in any (cyber) attack it’s important to figure out the people who are responsible for it. Once an attack is made, how you would come out of the crisis situation needs lot of planning in the management layer.

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EVENT REPORT 2016

BYOD a threat to data security

JACOB VICTOR G General Manager, APTS

The three parameters of the data, i.e. Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability, should be ensured to secure data with respect to any cyber policy. Data can be seen in three stages - backup model, processing model or one in the transit. If we secure these three stages, automatically we will be able to ensure data security. Some of the threats visualised for the near future is BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices). Almost everyone visiting government offices and secretariat has smart phones and they are making most of the services on WiFi. Hence there is a chance of data leakage.

These devices don’t have MDM (Mobile Device Management), so we cannot restrict their access to different sites. That is the place where we need to examine the BYOD policy. We are going for a third party audit for all the government applications before they are put into their life.

NIKHIL AGARWAL CEO, Innovation Society, Dept of IT, Govt of AP

ANUBHAV TYAGI Senior Solution Specialist (India & SAARC), Gemalto

Cyber security a growing challenge

Data encryption: Best way to secure data

In the coming decade, a proper cyber security framework will be indispensible for any business. In the burgeoning digital age almost everyone owns advanced gadgets like smartphones, laptops, ipads, etc. and online communication has become crucial. So, it has become easy for anyone to hack passwords and cause severe loss. Even a single security attack, in the form of a virus, can damage a country’s governance. Knowing the importance of cyber security, the Andhra Pradesh government is working hard to set up a fully integrated cyber security infrastructure which will open ample opportunities for the collaborating companies. We will make some significance announcements regarding the same within next 2-3 months and the state government is expecting feedback from the industry as well. Andhra Pradesh will also develop centers exclusively for cyber security startups. The new companies can turn into really big companies who would be able to provide services even to the outside world.

Innovative ICT solutions like cloud storage need to focus more on data security. We need to make sure that security should be data-centric. The privacy of the data can be secured using encryption technology. Anybody can do encryption by downloading solutions from free websites.

But the most important part of the encryption is how one is managing the keys involved behind the encryption process.

Once you make sure that you are encrypting the data and managing the keys, such that it is isolated from the data and nobody can access the keys, your data is secured.

In 2015 alone over one billion records were exposed. So we need to change the mindset and need to give prime importance to the security. Generally, we initiate a project and we don’t feel that security is required. We should go as we build our homes. We have door and we have lockers. So that is how the project should be. There should be security at the first place.

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EVENT REPORT 2016

Technology has a role in religion, too

C KRISHNAMURTHY Chairman, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam

It feels proud to know that the Andhra Pradesh Government has been spearheading the world of technology in India, which has become the pulse to deliver the services to citizens up to the last mile. As far as trouble-free darshan of Lord Venkateshwara in Tirumala to lakhs of devotees each day is concerned, it is being implemented and became possible only with the help of technology. Not just darshan, but also real-time update of accommodation, food, transportation and other requirement of lakhs of devotees who visit the holy town each day, has been made possible because of the technology itself. So, even the religious places are drawing heavily on the newer technologies.

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN ANDHRA PRADESH (L-R) Srikant Srinivas, Innovation Catalyst, Nasscom; Nikhil Agarwal, CEO - Innovation Society, IT Department, Govt of Andhra Pradesh; and Vamsi Krishna Rayala, Chief Executive - Skillbank representing the Tirupati Information Technology Association during the session.

A long way to go

SRIKANT SRINIVAS Regional Director, NASSCOMM

In the past few years, there has been a fair amount of progress in Andhra Pradesh. But progress doesn’t happen overnight. The progress taking place in cities has also taken its own time. Even places like Hyderabad, Bangalore, Gurgaon or Pune did take time, around more than five years to come to a particular shape. So, if we are expecting a magic to happen in places like Vishakhapatnam or even Tirupati, it would be unrealistic. However, things are taking place in the right direction to some extent. The other important factor that is extremely important for the industries to come up is infrastruture - something that the industry requires and the one required as part of the social fabric). The second part is availability of talent. Both these things must be addressed. Moreover, societal fabric is extremely important.

That’s one area where we think we have to go a long way.

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EVENT REPORT 2016

VALEDICTORY SESSION

Key Speakers pose for a group photograph

Y S CHOWDARY Minister of State, Ministry of Science & Technology & Earth Sciences, Government of India

DR PALLE RAGHUNATHA REDDY Hon’ble IT Minister, Government of Andhra Pradesh

Understanding the right use of IT

Andhra to offer good governance

eGovernance is a subject, which is currently in a state of transformation. Basically, it is just the delivery of various citizen services at a much faster pace and in an efficient manner.

Most of the people from AP Government say that because of the eGovernance, they are able to monitor many areas more efficiently and effectively. Also, we deliver the citizen services to make sure that their happiness index increases. Technology is not just about using a smart phone, but it’s about how we use it to enhance our basic necessities. Our country has 95 per cent mobile users, but we don’t have basic facilites like toilet. We should concentrate on how to use technology in a productive way. Therefore, there is a need for all of us to help, and that is why volunteer organisations need to be promoted.

One thing that I have been coming across the states is that even our offices are not fully aware about right use of IT. They don’t have proper understanding and hence citizens naturally develop some kind of unhapiness towards adopting it.

Under the leadership of our Chief Minister Shri Chandrababu Naidu, IT and Hyderabad have progressed well and got a unique position. The city of Hyderabad has got international recognition. After the bifurcation, it became a huge challenge for us to rebuild the new state of Andhra Pradesh - the “Sunrise State” of India. Nonetheless, the aim of our Chief Minister is to make Andhra Pradesh one among the top three states in India by 2022, the number one state in the country by 2029 and the best destination in the globe by 2050. With the able leadership under the vision of our hon’ble Chief Minister, we shall definitely make the new State of Andhra Pradesh a number one state in the field of IT and electronics in the future. The blueprint brought by the Chief Minister involves reimaging of AP, role of eGovernance and development of IT & electronics industry in the state. The target is also to develop Andhra Pradesh as a society of global repute with a focus on enhancing the quality of life of its citizens.

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