Informatics

Volume 18 No.2 | October 2009

Patron
Editorial
Dr. B.K. Gairola

Editor-in-Chief
Neeta Verma

Regional Editors
P ostal service amidst telecommunication revolution still acts as a one-
stop-shop for all postal requirements with its wide presence from metros
to far off areas. Indian Postal services help people maximize every
opportunity by backing them with reliable, on-time and value-for-money services
incessantly. Inclusion of ICT initiatives has boosted quality and efficient postal
Vivek Verma
R. Gayatri services. Various ICT enabled programs have turned the complex mechanism of
Anshu Rohatgi Postal service into more effective and customer centric. Read our Lead story to
Prashant Belwariar know more about this.
Advisory Panel In the Guest Column, Sh. Sailesh Singh, Secretary IT, Government of Jharkhand,
Dr. Y.K. Sharma shares his experience and views in the implementation of major turn key ICT
T.A. Khan projects in the state of Jharkhand. We also carry an informative interview with Sh.
Dr. Gautam Bose
Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, Secretary IT, Government of Orissa wherein he
Editorial Board discusses the successful roll out of e-Procurement system as well as various
Dr. Mahesh Chandra initiatives taken by the State Govt. to promote the growth of e-Governance in the
Dr. Shefali Dash region.
B.V. Sarma
S.B. Singh Karnataka using Open Source Digital Repository Software for storing and
Vinay Thakur retrieving High Court judgments, Rainfall Monitoring System, a transformation
WWW Version from manual to online system in Orissa, and CPIS enhancing administrative
Lokesh Joshi functions in Manipur are the highlights of our Products & Services Section.
Software Engineering as a catalyzing factor for successful government project
Print Coordination implementation is also discussed in Perspective section this time.
A. K. Aggarwal
Anita Arora In the 'From the States/UTs section', we have covered the ICT initiatives in the
State of Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. ICT initiatives in Hamir Pur District of
Circulation & Despatch
Anita Bhardwaj
Himachal Pradesh, Upper Siang District of Arunachal Pradesh, and Palamu
Jasvinder Kaur District of Jharkhand have also been talked about in 'District Informatics'.

Editorial Assistance All our regular sections viz., Technology Update, National Portal Update,
Aditya Gogoi International e-Gov Updates, Cyber Governance, In the News, and Views etc. are
there to serve your need to know what's happening in the e-Gov domain around us.

Informatics Enjoy Reading…

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We would like you to contribute to informatics. You can send your contributions directly
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on behalf of NIC
Contents
in this issue…
Lead Story
Postal Sector: ICT Initiatives at Forefront ................................. Page 4

Guest Column
Interview with Sh. Sailesh Singh, IAS
IT Secretary, Government of Jharkhand …………… Page 8

e-Gov Products & Services

- DSPACE: Computerization of Karnataka High Court …………………Page 10
- The Rainfall Monitoring System ....……………………………………Page 12
- Computerization of Personnel Information System in Manipur …… Page 14

From the States/UT

Madhya Pradesh …………………………Page 17
Orissa ………………………………………Page 24

Guest Column
Interview with Sh. P K Mohapatra, IAS ………Page 25
IT Secretary, Orissa

Technology Update
- SSL VPN Technology ……………………………………………………......…Page 27
- Hands free computing by Integrating Speech Recognization System ………Page 30

District Informatics
A profile and overview of e-Governance initiatives in the Districts of
- Hamir Pur (Himachal Pradesh) ………………………Page 32
- Upper Siang District (Arunachal Pradesh) …… .……Page 34
- Palamu (Jharkhand) …………………………………Page 36

News
- International e-Gov Updates .………………………………..….Page 38
- Cyber Governance ………………………………………………Page 40
- National Portal Update (from India.gov.in) ………….....………Page 41
- In the News (happenings from across the country) ……...……Page 42

Views
- Perspective: Software Engineering …………………………………………………….…………Page 46
- Book Review: ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development …………Page 48
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Lead Story Informatics, October 2009

Postal Sector: ICT Initiatives at Forefront

The Department of Posts has 845 to create a virtual private network
The post office in India has
Head Post Offices and 25,320 linking these offices. An expert
evolved over the decades; it has
Departmental Sub Post Offices while committee was set up to deliberate on
come a long way from physical
the remaining Post Offices are the issues related to establishment of
transmission of human emotions
located in rural areas working for few National Data Centre, which
to electronic mails. The long wait hours. The VIIIth and IXth plans saw suggested that in view of the
for the friendly postman to deliver computerization of 506 Head Post intricacies involved in the setting up
Money order has taken a new Offices and 1266 Sub Post Offices. and maintenance of a data center on a
avatar of Instant Money Order. The software package, Meghdoot, 24X7 basis, the services of National
India Post had to redesign its developed by Postal Training Centre Informatics Center (NIC) may be
services and introduce various (PTC), Mysore enabled availed.
premium services in the wake of computerization of most of the
Telecommunication revolution. In operations in the Post Offices. Initiatives Undertaken by National
the midst of this transformation; Sanchay Post; another software, Informatics Centre
the post office is still one of the computerized the savings bank
Communication Information
most trusted names across the operations in the Post Offices.
Systems Division (CISD) of NIC at
country with vast potentials Subsequently, E-enabled services
Department of Posts, Dak Bhawan
largely untapped and unexplored. such as e-Post (electronic Post), iMO
has been entrusted to provide
(instant Money Order) and e-bill Post
consultancy and guidance for
also launched. Software packages
consolidation of existing IT
have also been developed for
initiatives to harvest maximum
computerizing Postal Life Insurance
benefits. CISD suggests modalities
(PLI), Speed Post and other premium
for implementation of new
services and operations in
applications to meet the challenges
administrative and account offices.
and competition posed by the private
These applications were running
sector. Credit goes to CISD for
from severs hosted at Post Offices
support during implementation of
or at National Informatics Center,
many IT enabled postal operations
which made monitoring of different
like ePost, iMO, etc. National
applications an enormous task.
Informatics Centre has been
Further, these computerized post
instrumental for establishing
offices were isolated entities with
necessary postal network and
one or two clients connected to
inevitable infrastructure to provide
dedicated servers of web based
improved e-services.
services like iMO, ePost, etc. through
dial up connections and therefore National Data Centre (NDC) and
could not provide full fledged
network-driven services to
Wide Area Network (WAN) for the
customers. DoP
During the Xth Plan, the Department For improved ICT infrastructure,
of Posts has computerized all its NIC planned for a Data Centre at
Dr. Shefali Dash
Deputy Director General Head Post Offices and most of the NIC, Delhi, Disaster Recovery
[email protected] Centre (DRC) at NIC, Hyderabad
major Sub Post Offices and planned

4
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in Lead Story

and a WAN to connect 1318 post offices in a Closed User http://www.indiapost.nic.in. At the destination offices,
Group (CUG) with 2Mbps lease line circuits. Provision these messages are printed, enveloped and delivered
has been made for broadband/ ISDN connections to act through postmen like other letters. ePost centres,
as fall back option in case of lease line circuit failure. equipped with internet connection, computers, printers
Schematic diagrams of the NDC and WAN are shown in and other necessary equipments have been set up in the
figures 1 and 2 respectively. Post Offices, covering all the districts and major towns in
the country.
However, ePost service can also be availed of from any
Post Office. Irrespective of whether a customer is in a
metropolis or in a remote village, s/he can send and
receive ePost messages. The messages booked at Post
Offices which are not the ePost centres, are sent to the
nearest ePost centres for scanning and dispatch.
Similarly, messages received at ePost centres for areas
beyond their delivery jurisdiction are printed and sent to
concerned Post Offices for delivery. One can buy prepaid
Fig.1- DoP National Data Centre Architecture
cards from Post offices to send ePost from home also.
Instant Money Order (iMO): The iMO service enables
instant money transfer between sender and recipient
residing in India through the post offices. A customer can
send up to Rs. 50,000/- by depositing the cash in any of
the iMO centres, collect a 16 digit iMO number and
inform this number to the recipient. The recipient can
collect the money from any iMO centre by presenting the
iMO number and a photo identity proof. In this web
based service https://www.indiapostimo.gov.in/rvw,
money transaction happens instantly.
Fig. 2: DoP Network Architecture with 2Mbps leased line and
Broadband as backup Project Arrow (Post Offices: A window to the world
for Aam Aadmi): Due to the large reach of the post
Innovative Applications of the Department of Post
offices, specially in the remote and rural areas, it was felt
Electronic Mail (ePost): ePost is a printed or even that the Post offices should be enabled to open new
handwritten message of customers, scanned and vistas to the common man to connect him to the out side
transmitted as email through internet at world and be the harbinger of kaleidoscopic changes in
the lives of the common man. With this objective, the
Project Arrow was launched, initially covering 50 post
offices across the country and subsequently extended to
500 post offices. Now, in the third phase of the project, it
is being planned to extend to another 5000 post offices.
To monitor the activities, performances and the service
delivery on a daily basis, a web based system has been
developed through which each Arrow post office enters
data on the number of mails/ money orders received
every day and the number of deliveries performed on the
Homepage for ePost same day. Data from the post offices on their daily

5
 Lead Story Informatics, October 2009

transactions are extracted using a Data Extraction Tool This application has been designed with role based
(DET) in an automated process. Key Performance access control for operator, supervisor, DoP HQ and
Indicators (KPIs) are calculated on the basis of data CSO. Each role has been assigned with pre defined
entered on the website and data extracted using DET. access and privileges depending on requirements.
These KPIs are monitored regularly to take proactive
An exhaustive MIS reporting system has been designed
decisions to improve the performance of a post office.
to provide information to various stake holders as per
Postal Life Insurance (PLI): PLI was started in 1884 as their requirements.
a welfare measure for the employees of Posts &
NREGA Postal Accounting System: The ICT based
Telegraphs Department which subsequently was
extended to cover other government employees. On 24th Mobile payment system for NREGA workers were
March, 1995, the benefits of Postal Life Insurance were undertaken in 25 Branch Post offices in Orissa on a
extended to rural populace of the country under the pilot basis. In this, Identity cards as well as e-passbooks
banner of Rural Postal Life Insurance (RPLI). in the form of smart cards were issued to the NREGA
workers at the time of opening of accounts. These cards
Computerisation of PLI/ RPLI started way back in 1995 were personalized with the photograph of the worker
using UNIX systems with dumb terminals at the 23 and other account details and have a provision for
postal circles. Though this system was working fairly carrying biometric imprints. The NREGA account
well, it was necessary to revamp it to compete with the
holder presents his smart card to the Branch Post
private insurance players who flooded the customers
Master (BPM) at the time of transaction, which is read
with varieties of facilities and options. As a result, an
through the NFC reader, and after proper verification
upgraded web based system http://indiapostpli.gov.in
and authentication, the BPM performs the transaction
came into existence.
through the mobile phone. Payment of the desired
amount is made after checking the balance amount in
the account of worker with the Central Payment Server.
Once the transaction is completed, the worker is given a
printed slip with details of the transaction done. An
offline software interface is also provided to the BPOs
where GPRS signal is low. Role based MIS reports can
be generated in the system.
Many more applications, such as RTI through which
RTI application/ appeal addressed to any central
government department can be accepted at the post
Screenshot of PLI/RPLI offices which would then be transmitted to the nodal
officer of the concerned department, CPACT for Circle
Consumer Price Index (Rural): Department of Posts
level postal Accounting System, Patram for Postal
has been entrusted by Central Statistics Organization
(CSO) with the collection of Rural Retail Prices towards Account Transaction Maintenance, Freighter Mail
formulation of Consumer Price Index (Rural). CSO has Movement Tracker, Mail Monitoring system, Postal
selected around 500 commodities for collecting retail Account Current System, Web based Pension
prices every month from 1183 villages covering all Management System, etc. have been implemented in
districts of the country. Each village has been linked to the Department of Posts to streamline the work flow
the nearest head / sub post office for data entry. Data is and improve the service delivery. These systems have
collected by postal field staff and entered through user been deployed by the CISD in collaboration with Pers
friendly data entry screens on web enabled application Infotech Division and some of the NIC State Units,
for verification by the Supervisor (post master). namely, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Gujarat.

6
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in Lead Story

Future Plans insurance, money order, instant money order,

international money transfer, mutual funds,
Besides the services which are currently being offered by electronic clearance services, and electronic
the Department of Posts, many new proposals are under international money order services.
way to improve the postal services. Some of the proposed
major projects are: — Premium services: speed post, business post,
bill mail, electronic intimation of delivery,
National Address Database Management System for national bill mail, e-payment, express parcel,
India Post: The Department of Posts is focusing on media post, greeting post, logistic post, direct
creation of a National Address Database Management post, and retail post.
System for India Post wherein the information related to
every delivery point of postal services for both — Philatelic services: information regarding
residential as well as commercial/industrial locations in stamps issued by the DoP over the years.
urban and rural areas would be captured along with the Philatelic Deposit Accounts opening online by
maintenance of the standard database. A letter is handled making payment through the payment gateway
in the Postal system on the basis of address thereon. set up by DoP.
Unambiguous address is essential for effective and — Customer services: enabling customers to
economical mail sorting operations. Adoption of a provide feedback, and grievance redressal
standard gives it stability, continuity and greater system for maximum customer satisfaction.
uniformity over the geographical jurisdiction and for
long time to come. Awards and Accolades
Further, it improves the quality of mail delivery, enables ICT intervention for improved postal services has
it to be machine processed and reduces costs. An address brought many awards & recognitions for the Department
has two basic attributes; viz. one that describes the of Posts. Some of these are:
personal identification details; and the other that
— Skoch Challenger Award for instant Money
describes location identification details. The main
Order in 2007
objective of Postal Geographic Information System is to
create/integrate, maintain and disseminate digital spatial — Manthan award for Instant Money Order in 2007
database associated with the existing data of DoP. This
— Oracle e-governance excellence award for
may be initiated with providing a base map of the order of Postal Life Insurance Computerisation in 2006
1:1000 scales, which may sufficiently provide a view of
the catchment area of the Post Offices and further — Microsoft e-Governance Award for instant
demarcation of "Beat Catchment" with support from Money Order in 2006
DoP. This may be integrated further with addresses, Pin
Codes as found suitable within the project.
Virtual Post Office: It is proposed to develop a portal for
Virtual Post Office to provide postal services to the
customers on 24X7 basis. The services to be rendered
through the virtual post office are:
— Mail services: registration, parcels, insurance,
value payable posts, surface air lifting, free
posts, and services associated with traditional
postal communication.
— Financial services: banking, postal life Microsoft e-Governance Award for iMO

7
 Guest Column Informatics, October 2009

“We can leverage the expertise of NIC / NICSI in

implementing turn key ICT projects” ……
An Exclusive Interview with Sh. Sailesh Kumar Singh, IAS & IT Secretary, Govt of Jharkhand.

How would you describe do you attach to the role played

the significant role played by by the IT industry in a
the Department of Information potential partnership with the
Technology (DIT) in the overall government towards the
progress of the IT sector in fulfilment of this vision?
Jharkhand?
SKS. I foresee Jharkhand
SKS. The Department of becoming a major IT hub in the
I n f o r m a t i o n Te c h n o l o g y, near future. The state is blessed
Jharkhand was formed nearly with abundant natural resources
five years ago. During these and the climate is also conducive
years we have implemented large for the growth of IT. The people
number of ICT projects in sectors of the state are friendly
like Finance (Treasury & GPF), intelligent and hardworking.
Transport, Jails, Commercial Sh. Sailesh Kumar Singh The industry has to come
Tax, Registration, Municipal IAS, IT Secretary forward to establish units for
Govt. of Jharkhand. production of various ICT
Corporation, Land Records etc.
Moreover Jharkhand was among equipments. The government
does it expect from NIC in the next
the first in the country to set up SWAN will provide all the necessary support
decade. ?
(Jhar-Net). Video Conferencing & IP to them in this regard. The state
Telephony facility over Jhar-Net has SKS. The future of IT in Jharkhand is government has also established a
been successful with high utilization. bright as well as challenging. The Software Technology Park (STP) at
We have also set up a Data centre at government has established an agency Namkum near Ranchi. The industry
Ranchi where most of the applications Jharkhand Agency for Promotion of can take benefit from the facilities
are hosted. At present we are working IT (JAPIT) to technically manage provided at the STP. This will also
towards strengthening our Data various IT projects in the state. generate jobs for the youths of the
Centre for better management of e- Though there are many hurdles but I state. We do need few more good
governance projects to provide am hopeful we will overcome them in technical institutes to train our youths.
efficient and timely service. We have due course of time. NIC is our partner This will help us to meet the shortage
also established Jharkhand Space in most of the projects, which I have of IT professionals in the state.
Application Centre (JSAC) to mentioned earlier. I personally feel Has there been any initiative
leverage technology in the area of that NIC will play a major role in the taken by the government to
Space Application for the benefit of coming decade in the state. They have welcome IT Companies in
the people. The state is blessed with got a very dedicated team of Jharkhand? What are the
abundant natural resources hence the professionals and we see towards possibilities of employment in this
importance of space application them with great expectations to meet sector?
technology assumes greater the future challenges.
SKS. We some excellent IT
significance. What is your vision for the IT companies with all India presence
How does the DIT foresee the sector as a whole in the State in the which are working with us in the state.
future of Jharkhand and what role times to come ? What significance I expect more will become inclined to

8
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in Guest Column

work in Jharkhand as we move towards our goal of e- case of dreaded criminals and also saves time which has
governance in every major sector. The state government ultimately improved the disposal of cases. We have also
will be happy to work with the industry in this crucial implemented software projects developed at the state level
sector for the benefit of the people. It will obviously lead like Treasury, Commercial Tax, Land Records etc. More
to more employment opportunities in the state. over NIC / NICSI, has implemented some turn key
projects in the state like GPF etc. We can leverage the
One of the most important initiatives with respect
expertise of NIC / NICSI in implementing turn key ICT
to e-Governance in the country is the National e-
projects.
Governance Plan (NeGP). Is the Plan in line with the
expectations? What would you say about the overall NIC has designed & developed public utility
performance and progress of the Plan? software like e-Nagrik Seva & Samvad for roll out
through CSCs in the state. What role do you foresee for
SKS. The National e-governance Plan was formulated to
CSCs in the state and their usefulness & impact on the
promote e-governance on a massive scale for the benefit of
public?
the common man. The goal of NeGP is to make all
government services accessible to the common man SKS. We have established CSC's at many locations in the
locally or through CSC's in a transparent, reliable and state, which has provided greater push to e-governance.
affordable manner. We have taken NeGP very seriously Most of the CSC's are functioning, though I feel much
and are working towards its success. I believe that the plan needs to be done and there is scope for improvement,
is in line with our expectations. We are working to achieve especially those established in the far flung rural areas. e-
the stated goal. It is our determination to achieve them Nagrik Seva and Samvad are public utility software
with greater benefits to the masses. developed by NIC, Jharkhand. It has been implemented at
The DIT has successfully set up Jhar-Net (SWAN) many locations in the state through CSC's and I feel it has
in the state while has taken initiative for strengthening the potential to really bring ICT at the doorstep of the
State Data Centre. What role do you see for NIC in this masses.
initiative? You have some good private companies
SKS. Jhar-Net is one of our major achievements and as implementing projects in the state. NIC has also
various government services rolls out over it, I hope it will implemented or in some cases are in the process of
become a household word in the days to come. As I said implementing some major projects in the sector like
earlier that we consult NIC during every major project and Commercial Tax(VAT), Treasury, GPF, Transport,
their suggestions are highly regarded. NIC itself has vast Drinking Water & Sanitation, Employment Exchange
experience in Network and Data Centre Management. etc. What is your opinion about NIC and its overall
Being a national level organisation NIC does help us to contribution in the state?
implement our ICT projects in a much better and SKS. NIC has contributed immensely to the state in the
strategically cohesive manner. The reach of NICNET is field of Information Technology. NICNET has also been
up to the district level and we wish to integrate SWAN strengthened with dedicated 2 Mbps LL connectivity to
with NICNET to create a strategic synergy between them. every district of the state from NIC Data Centre located at
The state has gone for VC set up between all the Nepal House, Ranchi. The NIC district centres provide
Courts and Jails through NIC. What is your overall support to the district administration on a day to day basis.
perception and experience of implementing projects The support given by district centres especially in
with NIC on a turnkey basis? monitoring of NREGA, Treasury, Transport and recently
concluded Lok Sabha election etc. are excellent. The
SKS. NIC has a vast pool of software resources both at the
performance of most of the private companies engaged in
national as well as the state level. The VC between court
project implementation in the state has also been quite
and Jail has been implemented on a turn key basis by NIC
encouraging.
/NICSI. Under trials are produced before the court from
the jail campus itself. This takes care of security threats in Interviewed by: Prashant Belwariar

9
E-Gov. Products & Services Informatics, October 2009

Judgment Information System for High Court of Karnataka

using open source digital repository software DSPACE
Digital Collection of High Court the respective collections. It is
Judgments passed in the High
Judgments is a web-based solution, workflow-based judgments
Court of Karnataka are a rich
http://karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in publishing system. Here submitter,
source of information for many for storing and retrieving judgments approver, collection administrator or
stakeholders. There was a strong in digital form. After a judgment is DSPACE administrator are part of the
need for making this treasure released, the stakeholders like workflow.
accessible freely and effortlessly. petitioners, respondents, general
And the answer was DSPACE, an public, advocates, other judges, courts Salient Features
open source software customized etc would like to have early access to
— Metadata is fetched from the
the judgment. Therefore the judgment
for repository of Karnataka High Court information system and
in the electronic form needs to be
Court Judgments. This is the first hence, there is lot of timesaving as
made available as soon as it is
initiative in India to use open far as the Meta data entry is
released. Secondly a powerful search
source tools for handling concerned.
to help the stake holders to get the
electronic judgments. required information is the need for — DSPACE supports almost all
starting this initiative. types of file formats hence; it is
easy to recognize file formats.
In case of High Court of Karnataka,
court cases details like case number, — As the solution is web based,
case year, type, judge name,
petitioner, date of judgment etc
is already available in the court
Veena P Oak information system which is
Technical Director being as metadata for the
[email protected]
respective judgments. However
section and subject were not
been updated for old
judgments, hence provision
was made to update the same.
Technology used is, Open
source digital repository
Vaijayanti Vaidya
Technical Director software Dspace, Tomcat Java
[email protected] container, Oracle 10g database
server, Windows 2003 server.
Further District courts also can
be added as sub communities Functionality diagram of Digital Collection of High
and judgments can be added to Court Judgments

Communities and collections

Suresh Meti High Court (Community)

Senior Systems Analyst Case Ty pe (Collection)
[email protected] Judgments (Items)

10
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in E-Gov. Products & Services

multiple numbers of submitters and approvers are After approval of the approver, a handle is created for each
possible. of the approval and this is the unique id for the document
submitted. Hence a note of the above mentioned handle is
— Search based on case number, case type, subject,
very important. This helps for further editing/correction
judgment date, judge name, petitioner name,
etc.
respondent name are available.
Once a document is published in the repository, collection
— Advanced search can be used to search by any term to
administrator or DSPACE administrator only can edit it.
get desired results.
Collection Administrator
Submitter
He is the administrator for all the 65 collections coming
Submitter has been assigned the work of submitting the
under High Court Karnataka.
documents to the task pool. He is the starting node in the
workflow. There can be more than one submitter in the In case of editing of Meta data or withdrawing the
workflow. He logs in to the system using his user id and documents, which are already published in the repository,
password. There are 65 types of collections under “High he can do the needful using withdraw option. The item
Court of Karnataka community”. The submitter needs to withdrawn is not deleted but removed from public view.
select the case type from the collection list, based on the
case number and year; the system will fetch desired data Accessing the repository
from the court case information system. There is a Browse: One can reach the required judgment by
provision to enter section and subject for the judgment. browsing through the repository based on Case Type, Case
Judgment is scanned and stored in PDF format with Number, Judge Name, Subject and Date of Judgment
watermark on every page. Water mark is basically to which appears in ordered list.
indicate that the electronic judgment is only for the
reference purpose and not for any official use. This file is Search: Other way of reaching to the judgment is through
uploaded using the upload option in the system. advanced search option where one can search based on
judge name, case number, petitioner name, respondent
Once the file is uploaded by the submitter, it is listed in the name, section, subject, concerned case number or
task pool to be viewed by the Approvers. previous disposal dates.
Approver To avoid erratic outcome while browsing / searching,
Search and Browse indices have to be indexed regularly.
After submitter, approver is the next person in the
workflow who has been assigned the job of verifying the Tuning: As the size of the repository increases certain
metadata and the judgment files attached. tuning requirements arise. The Heap size of Tomcat Server
has to be set to certain adequate value. The Oracle
All the documents submitted by submitters are verified by
database server parameters like System Global Area,
at least one approver. There can be number of approvers
Number of open cursors have to be set for appropriate
who are assigned to verify the submissions. In the
values. The Tuning requirement may also depend on the
workflow of digital judgments, approvers are the domain
no. of concurrent users involved in the workflow.
experts who verifies the documents submitted against the
metadata and they either approve the document or reject For further contribution, contact
the same with appropriate reason. After approver
NIC, Karnataka State Centre
approves the document, it gets published in the collection
6th & 7th Floor, Mini Tower
and is available in the repository for search and download
Dr. B R Ambedkar Veedhi
for anybody who has access to the repository. In case of
Bangalore - 560001
any discrepancies, he can edit the same and approve, or
reject the same with a message. Edited by: R. Gayatri

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E-Gov. Products & Services Informatics, October 2009

Rainfall Monitoring System: Counting Rain Drops

Much of the information about the Collection / Compilation and
Rainfall data plays an important rainfall climatology of India is based Transmission of Data from all the
roll of indicator for monitoring on monthly, seasonal and annual stations at District Emergency
crop situation in a drought / flood rainfall data, which are derived from Control Room
year and Prediction. Prediction of daily rainfall recorded at individual — It Takes further time for Data
stations. It is of interest and Analysis i.e Daily, Weekly and
a drought like situation and early
importance to study the Monthly Deviation Reports
warning required to be issued to climatological aspects of the daily through manual calculation
farmers / public as early as rainfall distribution over the country, which needs valuable man hours
possible to face a natural which has a wide variety of rainfall
regimes. Such information is of — Frequent Data Manipulation at
calamity. Analysis of rainfall is different levels is not ruled out.
relevance for the efficient
also required for long term management of Water Resources “Counting Rain Drops” - the
agricultural planning. This needs System, Agricultural operations etc. Rainfall Monitoring System is an
a comprehensive database of the as well as for a better understanding of effort to transform the existing
Rainfall with timely collection the processes producing rainfall. manual system to a technology based
Present prevalent methods of online system. This web-enabled
from the Rain recording stations
monitoring such information utilize solution facilitates Rainfall stations to
and various analysis. enter data on the system, which in turn
manual observation and recording of
data, which is highly error-prone. gets compiled, and analyzed time-
wise and location-wise. The
Conventional Method application generates various Reports
— Collection of Daily Rainfall Data and Graphs RR / District wise. The
from Rain recording stations data may thus be made readily
geographically located in every available to any interested department
CD Block through Telephone/ / organization via the Internet.
VHF This monitoring method can not only
— Compilation at District increase the reliability, but also
Emergency Control Room improve the timely availability of
data, and hence contribute
— Transmission to
State Head HQ
CVK Maruti Rao t h r o u g h
District Informatics Officer Telephone/Fax/
[email protected]
Email
Problems
— VHF facility is not
accessible directly
from District
Emergency
Control Room to
A.K Hota
all the Blocks
Technical Director
[email protected] — Takes 3 to 4 hours Sh. Debesh Das, IT minister of West Bengal and Chief guest at Dataquest
E-Gov Summit handing over the Trophy to CVK Maruti Rao, DIO, NIC, Balangir
everyday for

12
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in E-Gov. Products & Services

significantly to the betterment of different sectors in day- — Generation of reports of Deviation from Normal and
to-day activities as well as for long-term planning. Meteorological drought class (Severe, Moderate,
Mild, Normal) and Rainfall Pattern (Excess, Normal,
To add to its credit & achievement, the application has
Deficient, Scanty, No Rain).
bagged the Data Quest e-Governance Champion, Special
Jury Award in 2008. — Rain intensity Indicator Report using Colour codes to
indicate alarming status i.e. No Rain, Very Light Rain,
Utilization of existing Infrastructure Light Rain, Moderate Rain, Rather Heavy Rain,
With the existing network infrastructure at Block & Heavy Rain, Very Heavy Rain.
District level the web based software has been conceived — Facility to Collect Temperature data.
and hosted as http://rainfall.ori.nic.in On successful
— Generation of Negative and Normal Bar Graphs for
implementation of this System in Balangir District, Orissa
Graphical Analysis.
in the year 2005, the project has been implemented across
all districts of Orissa with following Long term & short — Reminder email for Data Entry from District
term objectives. Administration account to defaulter Rainfall
Recording (RR) Station, if any.
— Data Log to keep track of changes in the updation of
Rain Data, so that manipulation of data could be
traced out.
— RR stations which are not monitored by the SRC
Office but existing in the district can be kept as
Optional Stations for recording in the application.
— Reports downloadable in Excel format for easy
analysis at user level.
Homepage of Orissa Rainfall Monitoring System Impact Analysis
— As the existing Network infrastructure is being used,
Long Term Objective
the investment is negligible and the return is in
— To strengthen the timely Data collection and multiples of investment in terms of saving man-hours
transmission procedure and Communication Cost.
— To create comprehensive database of Rainfall — Ease in Monitoring of Rainfall at RR Station wise,
— To have a proper computerized monitoring system District and State.

— Planning and decision making for Implementation of — Comprehensive Database of Rainfall of Orissa.
Agri-Based Programme by Agriculture Department, — Reduced the time and cost of communication.
Watershed Development, NGOs. — Reduced man-hours in collection and compilation of
Short Term Objective data.
— To plan for quick mitigation measures for an eventual — Web application helped in Data sharing to Govt.
Drought like situation Organizations, NGO's and Citizens as & when
required.
— To help in analysis of Crop condition and Weather
situation for early warning to farmers For further information, contact
CVK Maruti Rao
Salient Features
District Informatics Officer
— Generation of various Reports for in-depth analysis NIC, Balangir
and better management at Rainfall recording Station, [email protected]
District & State level on Daily, Weekly, Monthly basis.
Edited by: R. Gayatri

13
E-Gov. Products & Services Informatics, October 2009

CPIS : A Personnel Information System

Manipur, largely a hilly
CPIS (Computerization of State, where there is a
Personnel Information System) need to post adequate
in Manipur is a unique system employees in the hill and
rural areas in order to
designed to regulate the ensure effective
administration by carving out a administration. However,
structured database for over the years, a large
Government Employees and number of employees
were shifted / transferred
Sanctioned Posts. The system
from hill and rural areas His Excellency, the Vice-President of India Dr. Mohammad
gives details of the forms used along with their posts to Hamid Ansari & Cabinet Secretary of India with Smt
in updating employee details as the urban and soft areas, M.Budhimala Devi, Technical Director and Smt O. Shaliza
Chanu, Scientific Officer of NIC Manipur
well as office details. It also thus severely affecting
the delivery of public Objectives: The project seeks to -
provides status of updates
service by the offices / institutions
every month. It has proved to located in the hilly and remote areas. — provide accurate details of the
be a milestone in the workflow staffing pattern of the employees
Further, with the introduction of FR & including the sanctioned post in
of the administration. BM Act, 2005 and under Rule 6 of the each Government Department.
FR & BM Rules, 2006 the list of
Government employees was a — capture detail information of each
mandatory requirement at the employee appointed against a
beginning of every financial year sanctioned post,
during presentation of the budget. — update employee data on
National Informatics Centre (NIC), promotion, transfer, retirement of
Manipur State Centre was assigned to employees etc.
develop a computerized application, — check irregular appointments,
which would help state administration
overcome the difficulties stated — facilitate policy decision on
above. NIC Manipur designed & deployment, redeployment and
developed CPIS (Computerisation of transfer of employees.
Personnel Information System) to — improve delivery of public
meet the challenge. services in hill and rural areas,
Award : CPIS was
honored with the
'Prime Minister's
A w a r d f o r
Excellence in Public
Administration' -
2007-08, held on the
21st April 2009 The
Budhimala Moirangthem Civil Service Day, at
Technical Director
[email protected] Vigyan Bhavan, New
Diagram showing the benefits derived from the System
Delhi.

14
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in E-Gov. Products & Services

— estimate budget for salaries, grant of DA etc. recruits, transfer and posting, promotion, termination,
sanctioned post etc. The details are accepted from the
Project Highlights: line departments through 13 prescribed formats which
— The Project is monitored under the overall guidance of are published at http://manipur.nic.in
the Chief Secretary, Govt. of Manipur. — Stakeholders - Roles and Responsibilty: It has 5
— Nodal officers have been appointed in each levels of users with different permission granted for
Department in order to ensure that the information is security measures. They are Super User,
received in the prescribed formats under their Administrator, Data Manager, Operator1, and
signature and seal. Operator2. Permissions are granted according to the
level of the users and the sensitivity of the information
— Manipur Public Servants' Personal Liability (MPSPL) they are handing which are as follows.
Act 2006 is enforced in order to ensure that Nodal
User Level Activities
Officers cannot manipulate or enter vague data. Super User a) Create New Users

— Updation in CPIS database is monitored continuously. Administrator a) Set Permissions to users created by SU

— Information processed through CPIS s/w is certified

by the Finance Department. Data Manager a) Entry of new sanction post details

— Notices and orders are issued to Treasuries to stop

payment of transferred/new/promoted employees
unless the CPIS is updated and the data verified. Operator 1 a) Printing of Fact Sheets for New Recruits & Left Out employees

— Employees Identification Number (EIN) is made

compulsory for getting GPF withdrawal, issuing Last Operator 2 a) Data Entry for New Recruits & Left out Employees & generate New Recruits (NR)
Pay Certificate (LPC) and opening Salary A/C.
— Storing information on monthly basis on NIC Server
even though the information is processed on daily
Web Based Application
basis to ensure security of data and facilitate its
effective management The application is hosted at NIC Manipur Web Server and
can be browsed at http://webmani.nic.in/cpis/index.aspx.
CPIS WORK FLOW The portal provides information about CPIS and
http://manipur.nic.in instructions on how to submit and update information
M AN IPU R

Passes processed
information of
using the standard formats regarding employees details,
employees & Sanctioned post etc. These formats are made available in
Submits data sanctioned posts
forms to NIC the portal itself. Govt. notification, circulars and gazette
Line Dept. NIC
notification related to CPIS are also published on the
CP IS

(1) (2)

Submits salary NIC passes processed portal from time to time.

bills to Treasury employee information &
sanctioned posts to FD

Treasury Fin(FB) & MIS

(4) FD issues (3)
Certificate of
CPIS to Treasury
1/1/2000 9

The CPIS software has been implemented under two

different setup:
— Desktop Application: The different modules
available under this application are enrolment for new Home page of webmani.nic.in/cpis/index.aspx

15
 E-Gov. Products & Services Informatics, October 2009

The database updated by the application software is

published on the CPIS web site http://manipur.nic.in to
deliver various information in the form of reports for
different categories of users. They are of two types as
given below.
12th International Conference on Computer and
Information Technology
Public Domain Reports Dhaka, Bangladesh
December 21st-23rd, 2009
I. View Profile of an employee by Supplying EIN
http://www.iccitbd.net/
(Employee Identification Number)
II. Department wise updated list International Conference on Advances in
III. List of Employees rejected by CPIS Computing, Control, and Telecommunication
Technologies, ACT 2009
Trivandrum, Kerala, India
Secured Domain Reports (for Authenticated Users December 28th 29th, 2009
only): For browsing the reports, users are required to login http://www.icacctt.com/
using their own user id and password. On being logged in,
users are allowed to view the reports based on the International Conference on eGovernment and
permission granted to them as follows: eGovernance
Ankara, Turkey
— Nodal Officers of Line Department: Category-wise March 11th-12th, 2010
number of Sanctioned Posts & Employees, no. of http://www.icegeg.info/
vacancies, no. of employees in access of S.P, Retired
or expired employees and new recruits only for the
International Conference on Information
respective department. A Nodal Officer cannot Management and Evaluation
browse information of other departments. University of Cape Town, South Africa
March 25th -26th, 2010
— Finance Budget: Finance department is allowed to http://academic-
brows the reports for the entire department as they are conferences.org/icime/icime2010/icime10-home.htm
the certifying authority of CPIS reports. CPIS reports
are used for encashment of monthly salary of 17th International Conference on
employees. Telecommunications
Doha, Qatar
— VIPs/VVIPs: Information available under this April 4th-7th, 2010
category is for monitoring and administration http://www.qu.edu.qa/ict2010/
purposes, hence reports are given at macro level only.
CPIS, successfully implemented in Manipur, is an 12th International Conference on Computer System
important & significant step in ushering e-Governance Design and Operation in the Railway and other
Transit Systems
in G2G sector. CPIS has also become a driver in
Beijing, China
reforming governance in the state of Manipur. August 31st September 2nd, 2010
http://www.wessex.ac.uk/10-conferences/comprail-
For further information, contact 2010.html
Kh. Rajen Singh
State Informatics Officer 5th Ministerial eGovernment Meeting and
NIC Manipur State Conference
Ground Floor, Minister's Block November 18th 20th , 2010
Manipur Secretariat, Imphal Malmo, Sweden
http://www.egov2009.se/
[email protected]
Incase you know of any such conferences, please write to us at:
Edited by: Prashant Belwariar [email protected]

16
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in From the States

Madhya Pradesh: Reaching the un-Reached through ICT

NIC State Centre, Bhopal was setup in (Secretariat) Connectivity, dedicated
Madhya Pradesh, the second the year 1988, to play a catalytic role Geomatics setup, Internet Data Centre
largest State of India having 50 in promoting informatics culture and (IDC), Integrated Network Operation
districts & 313 Blocks, is home providing ICT services to Centre (i-NOC), Virtual Class Room
to a rich cultural heritage and Government Departments/ (VCR) facility, etc., supported by a
has practically everything; Organizations, besides architecting & team of highly qualified IT
innumerable monuments, large implementing various e-Governance professionals.
initiatives with the best possible — NICNET/Video Conferencing/
plateau, spectacular mountain
technology support for achieving NICeMail - 2 Mbps Leased Line
ranges, meandering rivers and targeted goal of delivering efficient based Network has been
miles and miles of dense forests citizen services to the common public established within the State
offering a unique and exciting in the State. To succeed in this covering 50 NIC District Centres,
panorama of wildlife in sylvan endeavor, NIC implemented State- 16 Circle Offices & 28 District
surroundings. ICT has a vital wide network of District Centers and Offices of Forest Department for
& challenging role to play in sub-offices. Currently, DICs are availing NICNET/Internet &
operational at 47 Districts, whereas Video Conferencing facility, with
streamlining the Governance in
Centres at the remaining Districts are 100 Mbps redundant Gateway.
the State. The State is fast likely to be operational soon. NIC has
emerging as a major The connectivity has also been
also created special Centers at various ex t en d ed t o C en t r al /S tat e
destination for the IT industry important locations, i.e., State Election Offices, Passport Office,
with lot of activity on e- Secretariat (Mantralaya), State Census, High Courts &
Governance in recent years. Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Divisional Commissioners
Sabha), High Court & it's two (Jabalpur, Indore & Gwalior),
Benches, Commissioner Land Rajya Shiksha Kendra, Land
Records, Central Excise & Customs Records, 69 Post Offices, CAT
and Passport Office. Indore, National Judicial
Academy, etc. Mail messaging
services has been extended to
approximate 20,000 users of
various Government
Departments/Organizations and
Educational Institutes.
M. Vinayak Rao — Data Centre & Web Hosting
Sr. Technical Director Services - Data Centre with 18TB
[email protected]
SIO welcoming Hon'ble Chief Minister of the
SAN Storage Capacity & 25
State during his visit to State Centre State-of-the-art Servers provide
IDC services to many users with
ICT Infrastructure/Services 24x7 operation support. The Web
Hosting Services covers the
In order to achieve automation of maintenance of over 570 websites
Government processes & functions, to facilitate a greater access to all
appropriate backbone ICT interested netizens for promoting
Sanjay Hardikar infrastructure has been established in
Technical Director G2G/G2B/G2C/G2E interaction,
[email protected] the State, which includes, Internet which includes value addition for
Backbone, OFC-based Inter-Building

17
 From the States Informatics, October 2009

Excerpt of the letter from Hon'ble Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Sh. Shivraj Singh Chouhan
We accord high priority to redress of public grievances with empathy and sensitivity. Samadhan Online
was launched to achieve this objective. NIC support has made the programme effective.
Setting targets and goals is important, but achieving them is more crucial. Chief Minister Monitoring
Programme has helped streamlining the process leading to timely compilation of important projects.
Software Support of NIC provides at a glance analysis and graphical representation making monitoring
effective & easy.
Website Design & Development, Hosting, — Secretariat (Mantralaya) Computerization
Registration of Domains, Maintenance of State (https://vallabh.mp.nic.in) covers Office of Chief
specific contents on NPI, Uploading facility on Minister, Office of CS, Accounts of GAD,
Tenders INDIA Portal, etc. More than 165 Internet Departmental Monitoring System, File Movement
based Results of various Boards & Universities are Monitoring System, etc., to facilitate all Departments
being disseminated every year. of the State Government. One of the important section
— Gigabit LAN - 3500 Nodes Gigabit OFC Backbone- that is related to employees, covers dissemination of
based (Upgradeable to 10 G) structured & managed Salary Details, Loans, Advances, House Allotment,
LAN has been established at State Secretariat etc.
(Mantralaya) to support various upcoming e- — Chief Minister Monitoring Programme (CMMP)
Governance Applications, Media Streaming, High (www.mp.gov.in/cmims) facilitates comprehensive
Speed Data Transfer, Various Intranet/Internet monitoring for an effective and efficient management
Applications. of Physical & Financial Targets. Under Performance
ICT Initiatives/e-Governance Projects Management System, the Departments have to
specify the Physical & Financial Targets at the
— S a m a d h a n O n l i n e ( w w w. m p . g o v. i n / beginning of the financial year for each of the
samadhanonline) is aimed at sensitizing the officials Schemes/Works for all the concerned District Offices.
at all levels towards resolving the public grievances. It The System generates various Statistical/Detailed
is conducted on First Tuesday of every month with Reports, Thematic Maps, Graphs and PERT Charts
about 20 to 25 applications, selected carefully & for in-depth Analysis. Budgetary provisions are made
confidentially, for review by the Chief Minister in for initiating and implementing the schemes and
presence of all the concerned including the programmes. Outlays in the budget reflect a
complainant through Video-conferencing facility. commitment of the government towards realizing
This resulted in increase in disposal of cases as well as goals in the financial year.
improvement in its quality, besides effective
implementation of various welfare schemes. — Samadhan Ek Din Me - is keeping the citizen
convenience as the prime goal. The State Government
has opened SAMADHAN Kendras at District Head
Quarters to provide services through single window to
the citizens. An IntraNET based application facilitates
registration of application, uploading of documents,
processing of documents, monitoring of the delivery
of documents, etc. to facilitate monitoring and
preparation/renewal of various Certificates (like
Domicile, Caste, Income etc.) besides several other
services.
— Education Portal (www.mp.gov.in/ educationportal)
for the State has been designed, developed &
Review by Hon'ble Chief Minister during Samadhan Online implemented as a work-flow application with the

18
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in From the States

objective to adopt best-practices, streamline & of Enterprise Spatial GeoDatabase comprising of

automate various processes involved in the entire road network, habiation locations, Railways,
functioning of the School Education Sector in the major water bodies etc. for entire state.
State.
Excerpt of the letter from Chief Secretary Sh. Rakesh Sahni, Government of Madhya Pradesh
The Government of Madhya Pradesh has established an alternative system for flow information
about delivery of Basic Services/Amenities from all the villages of the State. NIC support has made
possible transfer of large & voluminous data. In-depth analysis, easy & comprehensible reports have
helped us in improving the delivery of services in remote rural areas of the State.

— e-Scholarship (www.mp.gov.in/escholarship) is an — MIS for Central Bureau of Health Intelligence

Online workflow based solution for streamlining the (CBHI http://cbhi.nic.in/ ) involves collection,
Post-Matric scholarship distribution. It involves compilation, analysis and dissemination of
automation of various processes related to receiving, information on broad range of indicators related to
processing of applications and their sanction/ health status and health services in the country. The
disbursal. system cover formats related to incidence &
— e-Forest (www.mp.gov.in/ffms) involves design, prevalence of disease, health risks & performance of
development & deployment of suite of e-Governance health systems and provides ready information on
applications (includes Forestry Works, Budget and various health indicators, which are of great
Financial Management System) for automating significance to the planners, policy makers, health
various activities/functions being carried out by administrators, research workers and others engaged
various wings/units of the Forest Department. in raising the health and socio-economic status of the
community.
— Bhu-Abhilekh (www.landrecords.mp.gov.in), a Land
Records Information System (ISO certified “G2G” — Projects Monitoring System for Madhya Pradesh
and “G2C” application) is developed and Housing Board (HBPMS www.mp.gov.in/hbpms)
implemented up to Tehsil level, to deliver excellent helps in monitoring various projects of the Board in
grass root governance within the domain of Land respect to their progress, broadly on the bench marks
Management. Bhu-Abhilekh aims to facilitate of physical activity, cost over run and time over run. It
delivery of citizen services such as ROR (Khasra) and also facilitates information on Board offices,
Khatauni. Contractors, Depositors, Financial institutions,
details about completed/ongoing projects, etc.
— GeoAmpere (Geomatics-based Application Model
for Planning Distribution of Electricity to Rural — Rate Analysis System (RAS) is bi-lingual Software
Entities) has been developed for Madhya Pradesh for generating Schedule of Rates (SOR), which
Paschim Kshetra Vidyut Vitran Company Limited involves very complex calculations and also takes
(MPPKVVCL) Indore, covering 12 Districts of the care of location dependent variables like,
State. It provides holistic view of entire Power transportation cost as it varies from one place to
Distribution Network comprising of Sub-stations another. It also allows revising the SOR, whenever
(132, 33 KV) & Feeders (33/11 KV) and facilitates market rates of basic item change.
Geomatics-based decision support, planning & — PARAKH (Basic Services/Amenities Management
management. System www.mp.gov.in/parakh ) a proactive
— i-GeoApproach (Internet Geomaticsbased mechanism to capture the information on functioning/
Application for Planning Rural Road Connectivity to availability of basic services/amenities pertaining to
Habitations (http://gismp.nic.in/GeoApproach) under 11 key Departments from all 52,000 villages of the
PMGSY is an enterprise solution (taken on J2EE State to monitor and ensure delivery of Basic
platform) on SOA architecture. It has been developed Services/Amenities to rural areas of the State. The
for M.P. Rural Raod Development Authority Chief Minister reviews the status with all
(MPRRDA). Huge efforts are made towards creation Collectors/Commissioners through VC every month.

19
 From the States Informatics, October 2009

— Bank Recovery Incentive Scheme (BRISC)

developed for Institution of Finance helps in
maintenance, management & monitoring of revenue
recoveries against Loans given by Banks under
various Incentive Schemes of State Government.
— e-ICDP (Integrated Co-operative Development
Projects www.mp.gov.in/icdp) Scheme of National
Co-operative Development Corporation are being
implemented in 17 District by State Offices of
Registrar & Co-operative Societies to support
financially and physically downtrodden population of
the State.
Hon'ble Chief Minister Inaugurating iGeoapproach
— MIS on SC Development (www.mp.gov.in/scdev)
empowers the State Government and district Security” jointly organized on 2nd April 2009 by State
Administration to monitor the distribution of IT Department & NIC to sensitize the senior officers
Scholarship and Stipend to SC students, as well as of State Government.
protection of Civil Rights cases against SC/ST for — State Education Portal awarded as the best project
quick disposal, besides assisting analysis of data in under “IT for Masses” category.
various ways.
— GeoAmpere (Geomatics-based Application Model
— RuralSOFT (www.mp.gov.in/ruralsoft) is a web- for Planning Distribution of Electricity to Rural
enabled monitoring system based on monthly Entities) developed for Madhya Pradesh Paschim
progress reports of various developmental schemes of Kshetra Vidyut Vitaran Company Limited, Indore
State Government under Rural Development, such as selected for excellence in e-Governance initiatives.
IAY, MMAY, SGSY, SGRY, MDM, NFFWP,
— 'CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards' for 2008-09 in
MPREGS, and Watershed Management etc. These
“Excellent Project Award under the best E-governed
progress reports directly reflect the progress of
Project” category, Computerization of Madhya
poverty alleviated schemes of Zila Panchayats,
Pradesh Mantralaya emerged as the winner.
besides generating various reports upto District
Administration. — 'CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards' for 2008-09
under the Best E-Governed State Category, Madhya
— RuralWORK (www.mp.gov.in/ruralwork) is a web-
Pradesh was Runners-up.
enabled monitoring system based on sanctioned infra-
structure works under poverty alleviated schemes of — 'Best e-Governed Districts in Madhya Pradesh' jointly
Rural Development Department. granted to Jabalpur & Sagar districts.
— Central Projects - NIC Madhya Pradesh is also — 'Best e-Governance District of the State' for 2008
implementing many Central level projects like, CIPA, jointly conferred to Seoni & Mandla districts.
Agmarknet, NREGA, e-PRI, PlanPLUS, IDSP, DoP, — 'Computer Society of India (CSI) Award' for 2007 for
NKN, etc. G2C & G2G/e-Services to "Child Record Information
Awards/Special Mention System" whereas "Samadhan Ek Din Me" &
“PARAKH” were Runner-ups.
The contribution of NIC Madhya Pradesh and State
For further information contact
Government in the field of e-Governance has been
recognized with prestigious awards for ICT-Services at M. Vinayak Rao
National & State level. State Informatics Officer
NIC, Madhya Pradesh State Centre
— Inaguration of iGeoApproach under PMGSY by the
“C” Wing Basement
Hon'ble Chief Minister, Sh. Shivraj Singh Chouhan
Vindhyachal Bhawan
on 29th August 2009.
Bhopal [M.P] 462 004
— Workshop on “Website Quality, Accessibility & [email protected]

20
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in From the States

Orissa: Bringing Transparency in Governance

As per the commitment of Govt. of other state, state (independent),
Orissa, a land of quintessential India to expand the base of ITES in Deputy Ministers since 1937.Web-
charm, with its natural the country, NIC Orissa State has based Assembly Question
bounties, gracefully blends the been playing a catalytic role in Information System monitors
old world splendour with the implementing effective e- questions asked by the member and
modern day developments. governance at the State and district answers given by the Deptt. This
While nature abounds in all its levels. The whole ranges of services facilitates various departments to
are offered by NIC, OSU from the capture concerned questions from
glory with unspoilt and
following centres: this web-based s/w and submit their
alluring beaches, rivers, lakes,
— State Unit at Unit-4, Sachivalay answers. Bill Information System
waterfalls, hills, forests,
Marg, Bhubaneswar captures all bill details passed on the
wildlife and a tribal culture, floor of the house including bill
which is still vibrant with its — C.M Computer Cell at C.M's introduction date, introducing
unique lifestyle. Secretariat minister, date of Bill passed, Ascent
— Computer Cell, date and bill details.
Orissa's rich artistic legacy
permeates through time into Governer's House
modern décor, without ever — Computer Cell, Orissa
deviating from the basics. Legislative Assembly
Orissa has a substantial — Computer Cell, RDC,
industrial base, comprising of a Berhampur
number of large, medium and
— District Centres at 30
small-scale enterprises.
District Collectorates
The thrust in the state is on — Computer Cell,
agro processing, aluminum Passport Office Hon'ble CM of Orissa Sh. Naveen Patnaik taking
industries, mining & review over VC
— Computer Cell, Central
Information Technology.
Excise Registration Authority (RA) office
at NIC Bhubaneswar: In order to
— Computer Cell, Board of
address various DSC related issues,
Revenue
NICCA Delhi has been pleased to
— Project Sites at different other have the RA office set up at NIC,
locations like RTOs, Finance, BBSR. After opening of this office on
Home etc. 31st Oct 2008, about 650 smart card
based DSCs have been issued to
Some of the key achievements of Government officers, PSUs, IITs,
the Centre Indian Army etc.
Orissa Legislative Assembly: The Milestones of Web casting Studio
Web-based Council of Minister S/W set up at NIC, Bhubaneswar : The
S.K Panda
State Informatics Officer provides data about the Hon'ble web-cast service of NIC Orissa offers
[email protected] Governor, Chief Minister and the a turnkey solution for an event,

21
 From the States Informatics, October 2009

bringing onsite production, hosting, and streaming to Handling & Access have web enabled modules
millions of online viewers. Major Web Casts conducted comprising of Citizen Centric Grievance Redressal
so far include Monitoring System, Kalyan Mandap Reservation
System, Marriage Registration, Birth Registration,
— Web casting of 14th All India National Childrens'
Death Registration, Holding Tax Monitoring System,
Conference inaugurated by His Excellency Dr.
License Monitoring System, Old age Pension, Employee
A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, the former President of India.
Provident Fund Monitoring System, Urban BPL.
— Web casting of Mukteswar Dance Festival organized
All the modules are pluggable to Citizen Service Centres
by Government of Orissa.
through the use of SOA and XML Web Services.
— World famous Car Festival of Lord Jagannath at Puri Presently, these modules are pluggable to other service
every year. integration software developed by SREI-SAHAJ
(developed by WIPRO), Safal Solutions (Developed by
Online Donation to Shri Jagannath Temple, Puri: The Basix Ltd.) etc. under the “Jana Seva Kendra” project
Jagannath Temple Management Committee, with the coordinated by Department of IT, Govt. of Orissa. The
approval of the Government of Orissa, has floated three package has been accepted for Citizen Facilitation
special schemes as, AMRUT MANOHI, CORPUS Center (CFC) under the GOI-UNDP “Capacity building
DONATION and GENERAL FUNDS. This G2C portal for Decentralised Urban Governance” project & “One
provides facilities for citizens to donate through credit Day Governance” facility project initiated by Revenue
card and net banking facilities department.
e-Governance in Panchayati Raj NICGeP NIC e-Procurement System is a highly secure
online tendering system portal designed to cater to the
— PRIASOFT provides the financial position of each
requirements of the Government of Orissa. It facilitates
PRI (30 Districts, 314 Blocks and 6234 Gram
online creation of tender, publishing on the web, online
Panchayats) on monthly basis under different Major
participation by the bidders, offline technical evaluation
account / schemes.
and online financial evaluation of tenders as well as
— RuralSoft addresses the monitoring of physical award of contract. The portal operates in https mode and
progress of the rural development projects security auditing has been done by two third party
implemented at the village level. The details like agencies STQC and CyberQ. The system uses DSC
cost, location and status etc. of projects implemented based login by both bidders and departmental officers
at the village level under different rural development and PKI encryption and decryption technology for
schemes are available on public domain over net. storing and retrieving the bids and all activities are time
stamped.
NIC Cell at Home Department, Govt of Orissa: The
cell provides IT based services to about 46 Sections of As on date, 8522 number of tenders has been hosted
Home department. The major activities currently worth Rupees 20865 crores in the portal. 2036 officers &
focused are: more than 5000 bidders have been trained in the process.
Successful implementation in Orissa has encouraged
— Gradation List of IPS Officers and officials of public sector undertakings like OMC, OPTCL, MCL to
Common Cadre, OSS Cadre, Steno Cadre join the e-Procurement movement.
— Photo Identity Cards of Regular employees of the Teams from World Bank and Asian Development Bank
Secretariat. have reviewed the features of NIC-GeP with respect to
— Recording and Monitoring of Court Cases etc. the international governance solutions. e-Procurement
Implementation in Orissa won the e-India 2009 (G2B)
SUBIDHA- State Urban local Bodies Integrated Data Award.

22
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in From the States

fees, recording online photograph and signature of the

candidate, automatic calculation of fees, tax, penalty etc
for different services under DL and RC, eliminates fake
issuance of DL & RC etc. Since, the project is being
executed through BOOT model, the issuance of DL and
RC by the competent authority is being carried out by a
secured Key Management Process developed by NIC.

SIO Orissa Sh. S.K Panda receiving e-India 2009 award

An excerpt from the draft ADB assessment report

specifies that
The NIC e-Tendering System and the process in use by
Orissa Department of Rural Development is a well
developed and resourced and meets all essential ADB
requirements for e-procurement including transparency
of the process, non-discrimination of bidders, equality of Hon'ble CM Sh. Naveen Patnaik inaugurating Bhubaneswar RTO
access, open competition, accountability, and security of
process. The system has well developed security, process Performance Appraisal Report (PAR) Maintenance
management, communication, record keeping and audit & Monitoring System keeps record of all information
capability and has been highly successful in meeting the relating to PAR of State Govt. Officers & Staffs in their
Govt. of Orissa Objective for adoption of best practice respective departments and of All India Services officers
strategy sourcing processes and to bring transparency in of the State. It facilitates the tracking of PARs at all stages
Govt. tender executions. in order to avoid a delay in submission or any un-toward
Tehsil Land Records Application in Orissa mishaps and timely preparation of the assessment sheet
(Bhulekh): ROR/ Certified Copy, Mutation, Query and for the purpose of DPC / Time Bound advancement scale.
Reports modules of "Bhulekh” facilitate issue of ROR Web based information sharing with the employees on
Certified Copy, Plot Index and Chumbak Khatiyan, the status of pending CCRs have brought transparency in
mutation data entry and updation, Record Correction the system.
along with detailed history report, generalized and Web enabled MIS for RWSS (Rural Water Supply &
specific query and issue of various miscellaneous Sanitation): The system facilitates the users with a Web
certificates. The Application supports Mutation process based Management Information System (MIS) for 5
workflow that enables to efficiently monitor the operational levels (viz. CE Office, Circles, Divisions,
mutation cases and faster disposal. Sub-Divisions & Sections) for RWS&S, Orissa. This
VAHAN & SARATHI: Computerisation of all the 34 application is useful in effective planning, monitoring
RTO offices in the state by implementing Smart Card and implementation of various activities of the RWS&S
based application software 'SARATHI' and 'VAHAN'. and availability of data to all concerned.
This facilitates in getting Driving License and e-Governance in Health Sector:
Registration Certificate online without intervention of
any middle man practices. 'SARATHI' and 'VAHAN' Doctors' Information System contains personal
applications accommodates all requirements of a RTO information of doctors having online updation facility.
and provides service online starting from collection of This has both administrative and citizen interface to

23
 From the States Informatics, October 2009

various queries pertaining to the data. Monitoring of the System and Micro-Level Web-GIS using Open Source
Physical and Financial Achievements made by the for districts of Orissa have been successfully developed.
districts under various Health Schemes for the “National
Agriculture: AGMARKNET portal of DMI, GOI-
Rural Health Mission” has been developed.
Information on Agricultural produces of farmers all
e-Governance in Finance Sector over the country is regularly updated in 58 RMCs in
Orissa.
— Annual Budget Information System implemented
to compile and process the Annual Budget and Vote Planning & Coordination: Plan Expenditure
on Account, meet various queries on annual budget Monitoring System to monitor scheme wise expenditure
of the state, raised by World Bank, Legislative incurred under SP, CSP, CP and RIDF to monitor project
Assembly and other departments. details received under RIDF Scheme have been
implemented.
— Letter of Credit Monitoring System implemented
to establish the control on issue and utilization of Awards & Recognitions
letter of credit and to closely monitor the scheme
The ICT progress in Orissa is commendable. There is
wise and plan wise LC position and to make the
no doubt that the projects and services implemented
accounting easier. The system prepares reports
and rendered by NIC Orissa State Unit is a boon for the
showing the Budget Provision, LC Due, Cut in LC,
Oriya people and is receiving due recognisation . Below
Supplementary effects on LC, DGS&D Deductions,
are Awards and Recognisation that is enough to prove
Improvement over previous year, Net entitlement
the fact.
and LC position as on date.
PRIASOFT -Panchayati Raj Institutions Accounts
— Teachers Provident Fund Accounting System for
monitoring Software
the Office of the Controller of Accounts, Orissa,
mainly deals with preparation of Ledger Cards and — Exemplary e-Gov project 2006
Account Slips for all the employees under Orissa — Microsoft e-Governance Award 2006
State Govt Aided Educational Institutions. The
system enables data entry for monthly Treasury Ruralsoft
Schedules along with Challans and Vouchers, Entry — Exemplary e-Gov project 2006
of Opening Balance, Compilation of Treasury
Schedules along with Challans and Vouchers, Check CCR Tracking System
List for both Treasury Schedules along with Challans — “Best e-Governance Application” State Award 2007
and Vouchers, Broadsheet generation and
preparation of Ledger Cards along with final Counting Rain Drops (Rainfall Monitoring System)
Account Slips. — Data Quest e-Gov Champion Award (Eastern
Other e-Governance Initiatives in Orissa Region) 2008

Public Health 3Tier Project Water Billing & Payment SUBIDHA State Urban local Bodies Integrated Data
System: The water tariff billing & payment system is Handling & Access
operational at the six major towns of Orissa. Besides — “Pragati Sathi” Partner of Progress Award 2008
generation and print facility of monthly bills, the system
For further information, contact
handles user payments, tariff policy, consumer
information and adjustments. Workflow concept is used S. K. Panda
to segregate the process sub tasks, defines roles and State Informatics Officer
responsibilities for each employee, and allows for NIC Orissa
effective segregation of data through uniform location Unit-IV, Sachivalaya Marg
codes, jurisdiction and organizational hierarchy. Bhubaneswar
[email protected]
Web GIS of Orissa State: GIS Based Micro-Level
District Plan districts, GIS Based Flood Monitoring Edited by: R. Gayatri

24
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in Guest Column

e-Procurement: Bridging Digital Divide

An Exclusive Interview with Sh. Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, IAS, IT Secretary, Govt. of Orissa on
successful completion of one year of Implementation of NIC-GeP in Orissa

We congratulate you on with the help of National

completion of one year of Informatics Centre.
successful roll out of eProcurement Alongside, a Mission team was
system in Govt. of Orissa on July formed with engineers from
2009. We would like to hear more major engineering departments
from you on the mission you have s u c h a s Wo r k s , Wa t e r
accomplished. Resources, Housing and Urban
PKM: Thank you. I extend my hearty d e v e l o p m e n t , a n d R u r a l
congratulation to all the team Development department. This
members who have really worked was a massive restructuring
hard for the success of the project. In exercise and led to the freezing
fact, this was a mission mode project o f A S - I S a n d T O - B E
of Govt. of India and a major documents. With the active
initiative of Govt. of Orissa. support of the Hon'ble Chief
Minister,
Orissa, the
Sh. Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, IAS,
project got an
IT Secretary
impetus with
Govt. of Orissa
formation of
State Level be made available to bidders.
S t e e r i n g Accordingly, about 400 cyber kiosk
Committee on e- owners were trained throughout the
Procurement. state as facilitators and Government
How could you rates for bidding by various classes
p l a n o u t t h e of contractors were fixed. DIOs of
I n f r a s t r u c t u r e NIC District Units facilitated the
e-Procurement Implementation workshop is in progress requirements that tender publishing and bidding for
led to the desired departmental users as well as
Can you please brief us the level of e-readiness in a short span Tr a i n i n g t o b i d d e r s . M e d i a
initial phases of the evolution of the of time? publications & Advertisements,
project? User manuals, self-learning kit were
PKM: The major challenges were to distributed among the Bidders
PKM: Initially, we thought of make available the requisite community & deptts.
making a generic module to cater to infrastructure like computers,
the tendering process of works Internet connectivity to various DSC management being a major
procurement. Orissa Government's d e p a r t m e n t u s e r s a t C h i e f issue, NIC was requested to set up
works procurement is guided by E n g i n e e r s , S u p e r i n t e n d e n t RA office at Bhubaneswar. I express
OPWD code (Orissa Public Works E n g i n e e r s a n d a t E x e c u t i v e my sincere thanks to Dr. B.K
Department code). Process re- Engineers level offices and a Gairola DG, NIC and Dr. Y.K
engineering exercise was carried out strategy so that remote bidding can Sharma DDG, NIC for establishing

25
 Guest Column Informatics, October 2009

the RA office at Bhubaneswar. The requisite server training of bidders to use the system for online bidding.
infrastructure, back up server management etc. have For this large-scale implementation, a Project
been carried out at NIC Data center and day to day Management Unit to assist mission was formed under IT
server management is being looked after by NIC, department. NIC team, Mission and PMU members
Bhubaneswar. trained approx 1500 department users in KIIT University
campus in June 2008 and the training went for a month
What are the major initiatives you have
continuously in the first phase.
undertaken for the sustenance of this unique G2B e-
Governance system & Operational Management Piloting was carried out on 17th March, 2009 with just
aspects? two tenders in hybrid mode. Tender fees were waived off
during pilot for online bidding as an incentive to bidders.
PKM: Yeah, we are setting up a State Procurement Cell
The overwhelming result indicating 70% online bids
to act as an umbrella organization to manage all
provided the necessary inspiration to march ahead. With
procurement related issues on a day to day basis. The
this the Government notification was issued to
objectives of this Cell would be:
compulsorily do away with manual tendering w.e.f 1st
— Re-design and re-visit procedures and identify July, 2008.
redundant and non-transparent process and
You have been driving the Project from the Front
establishing best procurement practices.
and now how do you articulate factors of Success for
— Standardisation of documents and processes for such a complex e-Governance project?
procurement of works, goods and services across the
PKM: I am indeed satisfied that even the World Bank
state.
and Asian Development Bank have reviewed the entire
— Formulation of public procurement act etc. software, the process, technology etc. and given positive
It is understood that when projects of such remarks.
magnitude and complexity are planned, impediments The synergy among various officers, Technology
are inevitable. What were the major roadblocks you providers with a proactive leadership under the Hon'ble
have faced? Chief Minister brought such a complex project to where
PKM: After the development of the software by it is today. With Periodic Review, a clear understanding
National Informatics Centre the major challenge was to regarding the responsibilities of officers as well as the
sensitize Government users for tender publishing and stakeholders of the project led to its success.
I would attribute successful GePNIC (Government
eProcurement System of National Informatics Centre)
implementation at Orissa to all the members who have
contributed significantly in this project namely Sh. K.S
Raghavan and Mr. M Manivanan from NIC, Chennai, Sh.
S.K Panda, SIO, Orissa, Sh. A. K. Hota, Sh. T.P Ray and
Sh. Nihar Ranjan Biswal from NIC, Bhubaneswar. Er.
G.B Kar, Er. B. B Padhy, Er. P.K Behera, Er. B. Bala and
Er. Trinath Behera from Orissa eProcurement Mission.
Interviewed by: S K Panda
SIO & Sr. Technical Director
Orissa
Training sessions going on at KIIT

26
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in Technology Update

SSL VPN: A Technology Overview

A virtual private network (VPN) access to internal applications
In the world of distributed has been traditionally used to connect involving financial transactions,
computing, corporate branch offices to the corporate office customer details etc from multiple
applications are hosted in data over Internet as an alternative to locations such as reservation
centers located in multiple expensive WAN connections. Now it counters, KIOSKS, Cyber Café,
locations and are accessed by is also being used by individual users Public Utility centres.
many users from various to access sensitive data, to increase
mobility and online transactions. IP Security (IPSec) VPN is very
locations. To provide secure popular VPN technology which is
access to such network VPN creates a virtual “tunnel”
connecting two endpoints by being used for both Site to Site and
resources, technocrats have Remote Access. IPSec VPN can
encrypting end to end
designed Secure Socket Layer encrypt any IP traffic including
communication and protecting the
Virtual Private Network (SSL Video with multiple encryption
data from unauthorized access or
VPN), a remote access interception. There are many VPN algorithms and authentication
technology to connect private technologies such as IPSec, PPTP, options. Though IPSec VPN is an
networks over Internet - with L2TP and MPLS which are deployed accepted industry standard for
strong encryption features, to meet this requirement. IPSec and remote access, there are some
multiple authentication and L2TP VPN are used for connecting interoperability issues which make it
Remote/ branch offices to corporate difficult for mass deployment. IPSec
connectivity options for mass
network over Internet and provide VPN binds the user to a particular
deployments.
consistent network access similar to machine/laptop where the VPN
LAN. Telecommuters and mobile client S/W is installed. Secondly
users, who require seamless access to VPN clients of one vendor usually
corporate network for regular work, conflicts with other vendors. Also
usually use IPSec VPN or Client VPN clients behind Proxy servers
based SSL VPN. Clientless SSL VPN face difficulty in establishing IPSec
connection is provided to business VPN connection as some Proxy
partners, suppliers, public dealing Servers do not support IPSec or block
executives, who require partial the ports required for IPSec
communication.
Secure Socket Layer
(SSL) VPN is an
emerging VPN
technology which
allows users to
connect to the
enterprise network
from anywhere
anytime over Internet
Arpita Burman
Principal Systems Analyst
using any standard
[email protected]
Virtual Private Network Architecture w e b b r o w s e r. I t

27
Technology Update Informatics, October 2009

supports access to all applications like Http, HTTPS, client and server using the pre negotiated master key.
FTP, SSH, RDP over secure SSL tunnel. SSL VPN does The security parameters negotiated in a SSL session and
not require any client software to be installed thus are effective until the session is terminated. Whereas for
allowing VPN connection even from less trusted any new connection, new session key is used for data
network as Cyber café and KIOSKS. encryption between the client and server.
This article intends to give general overview of SSL VPN SSL VPN Architecture
Technology, architecture, functions and features.
Components of SSL VPN include SSL VPN Server /
SSL protocol Gateway, VPN users, AAA servers and Network
SSL protocol was designed by Netscape Corporation to resources as application servers.
protect only traffic generated by Web browser. This SSLVPN Server / Gateway
protocol aims to encrypt entire communication between
client's browser and Web server. SSL VPN uses this SSL VPN servers are usually hardware appliances like
concept to create a secure tunnel using SSL protocol Firewall which have a Public Interface and multiple
between the client and SSL Server and then relays the private interfaces. The SSL VPN client connects to the
web traffic to the actual servers. SSL VPN server's public interface using https protocol
through any standard Web Browser such as Internet
SSL functions in between the Application Layer and
Explorer, Mozilla FireFox etc that supports SSL Version
Transport layer using TCP port 443. SSL receives data
3 and above. All internal application servers are
from application layer, authenticate, signs and encrypts
connected to the private interfaces of the SSL appliance.
before sending to the transport layer.
Primarily there are two ways in which SSL VPN can be
Any SSL session has two main phases. designed:
— SSL Session Negotiation: It starts when the SSL — Web VPN ( Clientless SSL) : In this type of SSL
client initiates a https connection to the SSL server. VPN , users connect to SSLVPN server and after
The SSL Server responds by presenting its SSL the SSL session is established, the server redirects
certificate issued by a trusted Certificate Authority. the connection to a Web Portal which has multiple
The User accepts the Certificate and presents its own links to other internal Web Servers, FTP server,
Digital certificate if demanded by the server. Then Terminal servers etc. All user requests are received
the server and client exchange their security by this portal and relayed to the respective internal
parameters (Cipher suite) to negotiate on a master servers and vice versa. A single SSL connection is
key. This master key is used to generate session keys established between client and SSL Server and
which are used for data encryption. SSL supports connection to application is established between the
multiple encryption algorithms and are deployed as SSL VPN Server and corresponding application
per the organizations' security policies. It uses server. However it doesn't support all applications
asymmetric cryptographic algorithms to secure the which require client side scripting.
exchange of the session keys.
— SSL connection: Once the negotiation phase is
completed, the session key generated from the
master key is used to encrypt, Hash the data and
transport the data. It uses symmetric cryptography
for data encryption / decryption.
Periodically the session keys are exchanged between the
WebVPN (Clientless SSL VPN)

28
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in Technology Update

— Client based SSL: It allows users to connect non SSL Web VPN can be configured to upload files from
Web applications like Remote Desktop , Outlook FTP Servers without using FTP or SSH client at
Express, SSH Client, Database Server etc. After the user end. The SSL VPN server translates this
SSL VPN connection is established, SSL client agent application into Web-based format and relays to the
is automatically loaded and activated as plug-ins into user.
the user's machine. The SSL client is assigned a
— Network Access: Apart from tunneling Web
Virtual IP address from the SSL VPN Server. SSL
applications, SSL VPN can also encapsulate all
Client agent uses proprietary mechanism to
TCP/IP traffic and transport through the SSL Tunnel
encapsulate all non Web traffic of the client and
including the routing information. In full tunneling
transports through the SSL tunnel. Though some
mode, it can transport all TCP/IP traffic generated
functionalities of IPSEC VPN are fulfilled in Client
from applications like Outlook Express, terminal
based SSL VPN, still it cannot support some VoIP/
Video Conferencing applications. services, file sharing in the client system to corporate
network through the SSL tunnel. In Split tunneling
mode, only traffic for internal applications are routed
through the SSL tunnel and other Internet traffic is
routed through normal network connection. To
support this feature the remote client agent (SSL
Client) is activated as plug-in in the client machine
from the VPN server.

Client based SSL VPN — Access Control: SSL VPN can control the access of
remote users in granular level such as per-user, per-
Additional features of SSL VPN group and per-network through group polices. Group
policies can be configured to allow users of certain
— Authentication of SSL Client: In general SSL
group to access more resources, if they are coming
connection does not require client authentication.
from specific network i.e. branch offices and during
However for implementing SSL VPN,
office hour. However, the same user group is limited
authentication is essential to identify the users and
to few resources if they are not coming from specific
enforcing group policies. SSL VPN supports flexible
network.
client authentication methods such as X.509 digital
certificates, smart cards, username and password — Endpoint security controls: SSL VPN can validate
and two-factor authentication (e-Tokens). SSL VPN the integrity of remote client by checking weather it
also supports authentication from external servers has up-to-date patches and antivirus software, before
such as RADIUS, Active Directory, and Lightweight permitting access to the client.
Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). This is required
As mentioned SSL VPN is an emerging technology and
to integrate with existing authentication databases
vendors are regularly upgrading the features of their
for centralized management, accounting and billing.
products. However the selection of VPN technologies
— Application Translation: The latest version of SSL depends on the user's requirement. Even though many
VPN also performs as application translation which functionalities of IPSec VPN are incorporated in Client
can convert information of non Web-enabled based SSL VPN, it is not a substitute of IPSec. SSL VPN
applications. This allows users to use a Web browser is a useful technology for mass deployment for semi
to access applications that do not have their own Web trained users as customers, suppliers, temporary work
interfaces or require client software. For example, force from un-trusted network.

29
Technology Update Informatics, October 2009

Hands Free Computing by Integrating Speech

Recognisation
Government of India and State Step2. Add Reference. Procedure is
Voice reorganization and text to
Governments are providing various same for both VB and C# languages.
speech system is becoming a
kind of facilitation for the betterment In the solution Explorer Right Click
powerful tool to provide the
of physically challenged persons by on the root element and choose Add
services through ICT for the
providing them education and Reference.
physically handicapped people.
While entering to ATM counters employment, so e-Governance
application should also target this — In the COM tab select sample TTS
and just after swapping the ATM engine and holding the 'Ctrl' key
card in the reader, a greeting section of the user by providing
additional functionalities for them. select Microsoft Speech Object
voice as well as guiding
Integration of Voice Recognition Library
instruction can be heard in
almost all ATM counters, which system in e-Governance and making Step3. Imports the Speech Library
is of course a commendable step them language interoperable can In VB: Imports speechLib
to bring those physically address the challenges of this section
handicapped people to the as well as a great solution for those In C#: Using speechLib
domain of ATM user. As it is just who haven't came out from illiteracy Step4. Call the speak Method of
an innovative thought to use the to e-Literacy as they don't need to use spVoice object in the Button click
technological power of Speech any electronic gadgets. Developing event.
synthesis into a way to increase voice enable software application is
quality of service in the Banking not at all a rocket science technology. In VB:
sector, so in the same way In this article it has been outlined, Dim Voice As SpVoice = New
e-Governance services can some of the basic tricks to Integrate SpVoice()
become more reachable by the Speech Recognition and Text to Voice.Speak(text,SpeechVoic
use of this technology in an Speech feature for Microsoft .net eSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault)
innovative way.
Framework coded in both VB.net as In C#:
well as C#.net.
SpVoice voice= New
Speech API consists of two types of SpVoice();
services. First one is converting text to Voice.Speak(text,SpeechVoic
speech using configured synthesized eSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault);
voice and second is speech
Now your programme is ready to
Recognition in Dictation mode as well
Niladri Bihari Mohanty speak what ever you write in the text
District Informatics Officer as in command mode. In the quick
[email protected] box. There are lot of features in the
start we may follow examples as
API to adjust volume, rate of Speech,
bellow.
Pitch, Voice and many more which
Example for Text-to-Speech can be explored by little trial and error
conversion method by the interested reader.
Example for Speech Recognition
Step1. Create a New project using
VB.net or C#.net Step1.
Ravindra Kumar Jaiswal
Scientific Technical Assistant- B — Add a TextBox named txt_speek — Create a New project
[email protected]
and a Button name btn_sub usingVB.net or C#.net

30
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in Technology Update

— Add a TextBox named txt_rec System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

Step2. Add Reference. Procedure is same for both VB and Dim objRecoContext As New _
C# languages. SpSharedRecoContext
AddHandler _ objRecoContext.Recognition,
— In the solution Explorer Right Click on the root
AddressOf RecoContext_Recognition
element and choose Add Reference.
Dim grammar As ISpeechRecoGrammar =
— In the COM tab select sample TTS engine and holding objRecoContext.CreateGrammar(0)
the 'Ctrl' key select Microsoft Speech Object Library
grammar.DictationSetState(SpeechRuleState
Step3. Imports the Speech Library .SGDSActive)
In VB: Imports speechLib End Sub
In C#: Using speechLib In C#:

Step4. Create the Event private void Form1_Load(object sender,

EventArgs e)
In VB:
{
public sub RecoContext_Recognition (Byval
SpSharedRecoContext objRecoContext = new
StreamNumber as Integer,Byval
SpSharedRecoContext();
StreamPosition as Object, Byval
RecognitionType as Speech Recognition objRecoContext.Recognition += new
Type, Byval Result as ISpeech RecoResult) _ISpeechRecoContextEvents_RecognitionEven
tHandler(RecoContext_Recognition);
//Get the text from the speech //received
from Microphone ISpeechRecoGrammar grammar =
objRecoContext.CreateGrammar(0);
dim word as string =
Result.PhraseInfo.GetText(0, -1, true) grammar.DictationSetState(SpeechRuleState
.SGDSActive);}
textBox1.AppendText(word)
End Sub Now the Application is ready to receive voice from the
Microphone and convert that to Text to display in the text
In C#:
box. The speech engine provided by Microsoft i.e
public void Reco Context_Recognition (int Microsoft Speech SDK although is a powerful tool for
Stream Number, object Stream Position, integrating speech Recognition but have certain major
SpeechRecognitionType Recognition Type, challenges. It is not so much efficient to work with Indian
I Speech Reco Result Result)
language and Indian accent. Many Other speech engines
{ are available which support Indian accent. Among which
//Get the text from the speech //received 'Bhasana' developed by CDAC Department of IT, Govt of
from Microphone India may be the most suitable. It has three Databases as
'Bhavna' (Emotion Database), 'Uchharak' (Language
string word =
Database), 'Anuvaachak' (Accent Database). I hope this
Result.PhraseInfo.GetText(0, -1, true);
article will give an initial boost for the developer.
txt_rec.AppendText(word);
For further information contact,
}
Niladri Bihari Mohanty
Step5. Register the event in Form Load
District Informatics Officer
In VB: NIC, Peren District Unit
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As [email protected]
System.Object, ByVal e As

31
District Informatics Informatics, October 2009

Hamirpur: ICT in the Veer Bhoomi

The presence of NIC in the district, set with IT tools, spreading computer
Hamirpur district, the “Veer up in 1989, has helped in making awareness and development/
Bhoomi” is one of the twelve tremendous strides towards implementation of numerous IT
districts of Himachal empowering district administration applications.
Pradesh. The district is Excerpt of the Letter from Sh. Abhishek Jain, IAS, Deputy
situated between 76º 18' to 76 Commissioner, Hamirpur.
º 44' East longitudes and 31º The NIC has been doing commendable work in the District with
25' to 31º 52' North latitudes. pro-active approach in implementing various e-Governance
solutions. eSoochana- an amalgam of e-Governance and right to
The tract is hilly, covered by
Information is proposed to be implemented providing various useful services
Shivalik range. The elevation to the public down upto sub-division levels. LokMitra Centres are also being
varies from 400 meters to set up in all the Panchayats to improve grass-root public service delivery using
1100 meters. The district is Information Technology.
well connected by roads from The Key Activities — Personnel MIS (PMIS): A web
all sides. Hamirpur is the based application being used to
District Collectorate manage the full details of the
most literate district in
— RefNIC: This software is used for employees and to generate the
Himachal Pradesh. The service book along with all the
computerized monitoring of the
district has the unique movement of letters and / or files necessary reports/registers etc.
identification for the majority electronically.
in the sections / branches of the
of the people serving in the office. Pehal: e-Govenance Centres
defence services thus — Schemes MIS: The DC offices To provide citizen friendly services
popularly known as “Veer receive various types of using Information Technology, the e-
Bhoomi”. demands/proposals from Governance Centres “Pehal” have
Ministers, MLAs/MPs, Govt. been set up by the district
offices and Panchayats etc. administration through the efforts of
National Informatics Centre (NIC),
requesting financial assistance for
being run under District
developmental works. It is a e-Governance Society. These centres
work-flow system covering have been setup in all the four Sub-
sanctioning of funds to their Divisions viz. Hamirpur, Nadaun,
physical & financial progress till Barsar and Bhoranj and in Regional
the scheme is fully implemented. Transport Office for providing prompt
and quality services to citizens. All the
— e-Kiosk: This touch screen based
four Pehal Centres of the district are
G2C system provides information ISO 9001:2000 Certified.
regarding history, geography, fact
files, tourist places, bus & railway Prominent G2C services under e-
time tables, vehicle registration, Governance
school results of HP, officer's — Cash Counters: Integration of
telephone no., development fees and tax collection at Single
Vinod Kumar scheme of various departments, Cash Counter (Single Window
District Informatics Officer martyrs/soldier's lists of the Service) with Issuance of Vehicle
[email protected]
district. Licenses, Vehicle Registration
and Tax Collection
32
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in District Informatics

— Vahan and Sarathi: Vahan is a workflow based wise salary scroll of each DDO. Monthly, one
application being used for issuance of Registration consolidated cheque is handed over to DDO to be
Certificates and Permits for Vehicles whereas Sarathi payable at bank branch.
is used for issuance of all types of driving licenses
Social Justice & Empowerment
related to learners, conductors and drivers.
— e-Kalyan: This software is used for the disbursement
— e-Samadhan: Grievance Redressal System: A web
of the welfare pensions to different categories. This
based role based system being used for the redressal of
software has facilities for maintaining waiting lists,
public grievances
the pensioner's details, MO generation.
— LokMitra: The pilot project was formally launched
— e-Pehchan: This software is implemented in District
by the Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh on 8th
Welfare Office for issuance of the Disability and
May 2001 in district Hamirpur and presently is being
Senior Citizen identity cards and keeps their record
extended up to the village level across the state.
and generates various MIS reports.
— Shastr: A role based on-line system for issuance and
renewal/endorsement of Arms Licenses Rural Development
— NREGA Soft: The offline/online software has been
implemented in DRDA, developmental blocks and all
the Gram Panchayats circles of the district.
— e-Vikas: A touch screen based system is installed in
the collectorate complexes which provides full
information about the various works completed or
initiated under different development schemes. It also
contains the list of the members of the Panchayati Raj
Institutions, list of MLAs, MPs with their addresses.
District Website: The official website of District
Hamirpur (http://hphamirpur.nic.in) designed &
Inauguration of Arms License Issuance System SW by
Deputy Commissioner developed as a one point source of information of the
district. It provides information about history, facts files,
culture, temples, accessibility, tourist places and citizen
Treasury Computerization
services etc. Former President, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalaam
— HPOTIS: This software is implemented in District referred to this website before visiting NIT Hamirpur for
Treasury and all the Sub-Treasuries of the district. The annual convocation and this fact was highlighted by the
bills are presented in the treasury at token section, press.
where computerized token no. is assigned to every
Video Conferencing: The NIC Centre provides Video
bills or challan. Then the bill/challan is referred to the
Conferencing services from its VC studio located in the
bill passing section. On feeding token no. in bill
Deputy Commissioner's Office. The VC is also used by the
passing section, all the information is displayed.
officers for interacting with the other district officers,
Subsequently bill is passed or rejected by the
HODs/Secretaries, Ministers and the Hon'ble CM.
DTO/TO.
— HPPDIS: Implemented at District Treasury Office For further information, contact
Hamirpur, the application is used for the disbursement Vinod Garg
of pension. The bank-wise scrolls are generated and District Informatics Officer
given to all the banks, who credit the accounts of the Bhupinder Singh
pensioners. The pensioners are able to see the pension
District Informatics Associate
details on the web portal.
NIC District Centre Hamirpur, HP
— e-Salary: This software has been implemented in all Tel.: 01972-223026
the treasuries of the district to generate the salary [email protected]
scrolls of all the employees in the district of various
departments. Treasuries are generating employee Edited by: Vivek Verma

33
District Informatics Informatics, October 2009

Upper Siang: Marching Towards ICT Excellence

NIC Upper Siang District Centre was delivery of services has proved to be
Upper Siang a newly created established at Deputy highly beneficial for the people
district with its headquarter at Commissioner's Office Building in living even in the remote areas. The
Yingkiong in the state of the year 2005 at Yingkiong to provide web-based system implemented has
Arunachal Pradesh, ICT-based services for all round
modules for issue of Scheduled Tribe
encompassing an area of 6188 development in the newly created
Certificate (STC), Permanent
Sq. km, is a mountainous district. Since inception the centre
has extended ICT-based services and Resident Certificate (PRC), Inner-
region endowed with rich
support to the district administration, Line Permit (ILP), Identity Card etc.
natural resources and
which has helped in providing Additional services like Trading
biodiversity. The mighty Siang
transparent and responsive Licence, Birth Certificate, Death
River flows though the heart
governance, meeting aspirations of Certificate, Arms License & Ration
of the district and is referred the people in the region. Cards, etc are planned for roll out in
to as the "Missing Link" - the
The District has been divided into the near future. These services will
unexplored channel that
three Sub - Divisions for better also be available to the people living
formed a link between the
administrative control. These are in remote villages and far-flung
Tsangpo of Tibet and the
Yingkiong, Mariyang and Tuting put areas. The operationalization of such
Brahmaputra of Assam.It is
up under the administrative control ICT based services has significantly
inhabited by Adi, Memba, of Sub-Divisional Officers except improved the quality of governance
Khamba and Idu Mishmi district HQ, which is under the in the district by drastically reducing
tribes who have been control of the Deputy Commissioner.
the time to obtain such certificates.
harmoniously living in the Further, Sub-Divisions are again
Related services like photocopying,
cradle of nature since time divided into 10 circles under the
control of Circle Officers. The lamination, DTP, etc are allowed to
immemorial with colourful
village is the lowest administrative make the centre financially self-
festivals / rituals like Solung,
Aran, Reh, Lossar, Dihang, unit having its own traditional reliant. Various forms for public
etc. administrative system in the form of utility services are also made
Village Council called "Kebang". available through the centre.

The major ICT-

based Projects
undertaken and
implemented by
NIC Upper Siang
District Centre are
cited below-
Jan Suvidha
Centre: A single
window point for
Utpal Kumar Ghosh
District Informatics Officer r e c e i p t o f
[email protected] Jan Suvidha Centre inaugurated by Sh. P.S. Lokhande, Secretary
applications and to Governor & Planning, Govt. of Arunachal Pradesh

34
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in District Informatics

Excerpt of the message from the Deputy Commissioner, Sh. Pawan. Kr. Sain, Upper Siang
District,Yingkiong.
We are extremely pleased to know that NIC is bringing out Informatics October, 2009 issue
highlighting Upper Siang in its District Informatics Section. From the time of its inception in 2005,
NIC has been supporting the administration in all kinds of ICT based developments in the district. We
highly appreciate the committed support of NIC District Centre in setting-up of JAN SUVIDHA
CENTRE a single Window Service Point for Upper Siang and in the implementation of other ICT
related projects in the district.
Web Site: The official website http://uppersiang.nic.in of and time taken in preparation of pay bills for over 400
the district was designed and developed by the district employees of the district. The Pay Bill System was
centre. It gives detailed information about the district recently upgraded to Version 4.0 which incorporates the
pertaining to agriculture, education, economy, forest, 6th Pay Commission recommendations.
horticulture etc. Information related to tourism, socio Extension of Internet Connectivity: Internet and its
cultural life of the people, administrative details etc. are utility has significantly influenced the minds of the people
neatly compiled. The district profile, telephone directory in this remote district of the state while its importance has
of officials and photo gallery are of special interest to the been adequately felt for the upliftment of the people in the
visitors. area. The establishment of Internet Connectivity using
NIC link was extended through LAN to many nearby
departments and offices like DC office, Information &
Public Relations, Relief & Rehabilitation, DRDA,
Medical, SSA Unit, Planning Unit, Statistics, ICDS, etc.
Video Conferencing (VC) Facility: VC facility was set
up in the district using VSAT Connectivity. The facility
has helped in bringing the district administration closer to
the state capital leading to quick reviews of developmental
schemes etc.
Training: Various technical training programs are
conducted by the centre for the staff and officers of the
district. This has led to project based capacity building and
in promoting ICT awareness among the district personnel.
Central Projects: The centre has successfully
implemented various central projects. These are as
follows:
— Integrated Disease Surveillance Program (IDSP)
— Computerization & Networking of Consumer Forum
(CONFONET)
Website of Upper Siang District — Agriculture Marketing Network (AGMARKNET)
Lok Sabha Election 2009: The district centre provided Some important central projects like National Rural
full assistance to the administration in conducting the Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and Common
recently concluded “Lok Sabha” elections - 2009. The Integrated Police Application (CIPA) are at various stages
software successfully met the Election Commission of and are likely to be rolled out shortly.
India guidelines regarding randomization of polling For Further information, contact
personnel and electronic voting machines, deployment of Utpal Kr. Ghosh
personnel, counting of votes, and finally transmission of District Informatics Officer
election results, etc. NIC, Upper Siang District Centre
Yingkiong
Pay Bill System: The Pay Bill System (APPS 3.0) was [email protected]
implemented at Deputy Commissioner's Office in the year
2007. The system has significantly reduced the workload Edited by: Prashant Belwariar

35
District Informatics Informatics, October 2009

Palamu: Putting Digital Governance at the Forefront

NIC Palamu District Centre was Assessments (ISNA) for better
Palamu famous for its tiger established in the year 1989, to service delivery.
reserve located at the 'Betla promote digital governance using ICT
for better planning and decision — Business Process Re-engineering
National Park' just 25 Km (BPR) for the services to be
support system thereby providing
from Daltonganj, the provided through PRIs.
efficient service and transparency to
administrative headquarter of its citizens. The centre has played an — Preparation of Detailed Project
the district is situated on the active role in promoting ICT culture Report (DPR) for enabling ICT.
banks of Koel river. The tiger enabling e-governance in the district.
reserve delights tourists with Website: The website
its scenic beauty is part of the http://www.palamu.nic.
in of the district
nine tiger reserves of India
provides information on
under “Project Tiger” and h i s t o r y, t o u r i s m ,
spreads over an area of more important facts, figure
than thousand square Kms & activities of the
along the northern edge of the district. The video
conferencing facility at
Chotanagpur plateau in the district provides
Jharkhand. The district is s t a t e o f a r t
bordered on the north by Son communication facility Workshop on e-PRI at Palamu

River, on the east by the for prompt monitoring

o f d e v e l o p m e n t a l s c h e m e s , Major ICT Projects Implemented
Chatra and Hazaribagh, on
organizing meetings & conferences. Successfully
the south by Latehar and on
e-PRI Workshop : Ministry of Computerization of Commercial
the west by Garhwa districts.
Panchayat Raj, GOI has chosen Tax (VAT) : A web based software has
Palamu as a pilot district for been implemented at the district
implementing ICT at the Panchayat commercial tax department. The
level. Two workshops were organized software generates various types of
in the district in quick succession as a reports for tracking the defaulters and
part of the sensitization program. The in helping the authorities for recovery
e-PRI Mission Mode Project under of dues.
NeGP holds great promise for the
rural masses as it aims at streamlining Computerization of DRDA and
the delivery of government services NREGA : The computerization of
through Panchayats. It is proposed to DRDA and NREGA was achieved to
provide ICT infrastructure with provide greater transparency to the
broadband facilities and trained administration in the developmental
manpower to all the Panchayats. schemes. A separate computer centre
Some of the activities undertaken are was established at District Rural
Anil Kumar Singh
District Informatics Officer as follows:- Development Agency (DRDA) for
[email protected] monitoring various schemes. The
— Information & Services Needs

36
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in District Informatics

NREGA software has been functional at the DRDA centre backlog entry of consumer cases. The case monitoring
for data entry and report generation. NREGA data is system records case details, judgments passed etc by the
regularly uploaded on the site http://nrega.nic.in court. Cause list is generated and are uploaded on the
Jail Computerization: Prisoners Management System website for the public.
(PMS) and Visitor Management System (VMS) software Videoconferencing Facility: VC facility, established at
was implemented at the district Jail. This software helps the NIC centre, is used by various departments for
the jail authorities is maintaining all the relevant details monitoring developmental activities in the district. Video
about a prisoner. The visitors are allowed to meet the conferencing facility between the district court and Jail
prisoners after verification and issuance of pass by the was also established for speedy trail of prisoners and has
VMS software. As a part of the jail reforms process, eliminated security issues, which existed earlier while
computer training of prisoner has been started in the shifting prisoners to courts.
district jail.
GPF-CPG Computerization: The GPF / CPF of all the
govt. employees of the district are being maintained using
the GPF/ CPF accounting software. The system maintains
the subscriber details, their contributions, advances,
refunds etc. and generates the necessary accounts with
proper check.
On line Treasury Information System: A web enabled
software - “Treasury Information System” (KUBER),
implemented in the district, was one of the earliest
software in G2G sector. The bill transaction, accounting
process & MIS reports of the district treasury is prepared
using the online software. Biometric authentication at the Hon'ble Justice , D.G.R. Patnaik, Jharkand High Court
level of treasury officer has also been introduced to make inaugurating the VC centre at District Civil Court
the system foolproof. Banks are also connected for
IT Training Centre: A divisional level computer training
processing the bills fast.
center was established in the district for training
Transport Computerization: The two modules of government officials. Many officials were imparted
Transport System viz. Vahan & Sarthi are operational in project based IT training.
the district. Vahan module takes care of registration of
Other Activites: AGMARKNET- Daily transfer of data
vehicles. The system also manages information related to
on http://www.agmarknet.nic.in from Bazar Samitees,
tax validity & fitness. Sarathi module helps in issuing
Health Sector- Mamta s/w and IDSP project has been
various types of licenses apart from driving school license
implemented in health sector, Social Security-Preparation
to the applicant. The issue of registration certificate book
of database for Old Age, Widow and Disabled Pensioners,
and driving license on smart card was launched with great
Animal Husbandry- Computerization of cattle census
fanfare.
taken up, Monthly MPR and PMGSY data entry on GOI
Arms License Computerization: Details of arms license website etc.
issued by the district administration are being maintained
For further information, contact
through the customized software. The software generates
District Informatics Officer
reports like block wise, police station wise, year wise, arm
licenses issued by the district administration. NIC District Unit, Collectoriate Building,
Palamu, Daltonganj
Consumer Forum Computerization (CONFONET): [email protected]
The district consumer forum was computerized under the
CONFONET project. The software also incorporates Edited by: Prashant Belwariar

37
 International e-Gov Update Informatics, October 2009

International e-Gov Update

Social Media enhancing G2C Service
ICT has long been recognized as a key enabler of enhancing the relationship between the Government & Citizens. Direct
Delivery of Services to Citizens in the place of their choice, time of their convenience, participation of Citizens in
Governance are some of the concepts being leveraged by democracies across the world to build better understanding of
their citizens thus developing much more enhanced relationship with the citizens. One Stop Portals, Service Gateways are
all efforts in the same direction. Efficiency, Effectiveness, Transparency are other aspects of Governance being improved
and enhanced by use of ICTs.
Since last couple of years a new set of technologies such as Text Messaging, Second Life, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia,
Tagging etc., are making in roads not only in our professional lives but our personal lives as well. Knowledge sharing,
socializing or keeping in touch with friends, colleagues & family, new technologies of Web 2.0, more commonly known as
Social Networking are making it all possible, encompassing all age groups right from school going kids to youngsters to
professionals, home makers and even senior citizens.
Web 2.0 technologies offer a huge opportunity for governments to build relationship with its citizen, bringing paradigm
shift in the process of governance. In this issue, International e-Gov Updates brings to light the countries that are at the
forefront in using web 2.0 technologies to strengthen
Government to Citizen (G2C) interactions.

e-Petitions: United Kingdom

The Prime Minister of United Kingdom has had been
receiving Petitions by post or delivered to the Number 10 door
in person. Government of United Kingdom as a good move to
make citizens keep in touch with the Prime Minister to share
their thoughts, grievances, expectations etc., has introduced
online e-Petitions.
An e-petition, a form of petition posted on a website either by
individuals or groups allowing visitors to add their details in it
to "sign" it. Citizens can now both create and sign petitions
directly on the official site of the Prime Minister of United
Kingdom at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/. In fact, this podium gives the Prime Minister the opportunity to reach a
potentially wider audience.
The system is more citizens centric where they can view the petitions either by deadline, size or start date. Citizens are free
to send petitions related to Business, Education, Employment, Environment, Government, politics and public
administration, Health, and many more.

Have Your Say: Australia

The Australian Government is increasingly using the internet to provide a channel for Public Consultations on variety of
issues concerning the nation, Prime Minister's Blog as an immediate way for government to inform and engage with the
public and create communities of interest, and also Bright Ideas e.g. Australian Youth Forum inviting citizens to provide
new ideas and perspectives on a specific subject or on any subject to assist government in developing policies and
programs.
In this connection, Have Your Say http://www.australia.gov.au/have-your-say section of the Australian government
website has been instrumental for the government in engaging directly and widely with the public in the development of
38
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in International e-Gov Update

citizen-centered policy and programs. Thus, this platform

proved to be a success in bridging the gap between citizens and
the government resulting into an all round development of the
nation.

Stay Connected:White House

The website, www.whitehouse.gov is all about the White House
and the Presidents of America. It aims at bringing government
closer to the Americans. The site is designed for optimization of
results rendering an in-depth analysis of Obama
Administration's and Government's commitment to the citizens
of America. It is an effort to expand public access to on-line
government information and services, and give the American people the "Information Age" government they deserve.
White House allows Americans to participate in the reforms of the government directly through Blogs and a slew of social
networking sites. These social networking platforms including
blogs are a stepping stone between the citizens and the White
House. The interactions between the President and the people
can be made through comments and messages received and
transferred through these sources. The site gives Americans
quicker and easier access to the wide range of on-line
information related to the White House and the Presidents of
America.

Promotion Portal: Argentina

The Government of Argentina in a move to make
administration more citizens oriented, allows a host of social
networking platforms for the citizens to share their thoughts,
grievances, expectations, and others in the official websites.
These social networking sites in return let citizens keep in touch
with the government as well as fellow citizens through the
exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question at
http://www.en.argentina.ar.
The Argentina Government aggregates a gamut of links to
government agency websites where citizens could input on a
variety of subjects i.e. Education, Science, Culture, and others.
Publication, Information, Advertisements, Notifications are
floated through social platforms to make citizens aware of all
the activities performed by the government. These platforms
are expanding the government's outreach capabilities and
ability to interact with citizens formally. Citizens in return are
actively participating in the government's move to build Argentina a great nation. Thus, social networking platforms are
enabling Argentina government for a successful citizen centric administration.

Compiled by: Informatics Team.

39
 Cyber Governance Informatics, October 2009

Cyber Governance
A look at some of the recently launched Indian Government Websites….

Department of Agriculture, Govt. of West Bengal (http://wbagrisnet.gov.in)

Department of Agriculture, Govt. of West Bengal, in its endeavour to promote and
strengthen agricultural informatics and communications recently created a very visually
pleasing website for their mission mode project ”Agrisnet”. The website promotes an
excellent interface for G2C, G2B and G2G services with well structured information. The
scope, circulars, services under Agrisnet project is categorized with quality content and
inputs. Besides, the websites gives an insight view of soil fertility management, fertilizer,
certification and quality control of seeds, plant protection, project monitoring and
weather. Trainings are also imparted on regular basis to its stakeholders for better agricultural prospects.

Department of Industries, Govt. of Arunachal Pradesh (http://indarun.gov.in)

Role of Industries in Arunachal Pradesh constitutes an important segment in the
country's planned economy. The website from the Department of Industries, Govt. of
Arunachal Pradesh, generates vital information on the District Industry Centres,
Industrial Project profile as well as various areas for Industrial development. The
homepage of the website imparts valuable information on the workflow of the
department and acts as an online web guide providing a hawk eye view on its policies,
HRD, infrastructure, funds and latest announcements. Last but not the least, the
website also provides links to different financial agencies catering to financial support
for developing the overall industrial infrastructure of the state.

Department of Drugs Control, Govt. of Delhi (http://drugscontrol.delhigovt.nic.in)

The Department of Drugs Control, Govt. of Delhi regulates various aspects of the
department from enforcement of various drugs laws to manufacturing to sales of
drugs and cosmetics. The website of the department gives detailed information
about the functioning and profile of the department. It is a user centric website
where a drug manufacturer can obtain all the details of fees to be remitted for
obtaining different kinds of drug certificates and licences from the department.
With a simple and genuine navigation interface, the site is designed to assist its
user to obtain information on zonal sales and manufacturing units operating
within the state, licensed blood banks and approved drug testing laboratories.
Orissa Bigyan Academy (http://orissabigyanacademy.nic.in)
The website of Orissa Bigyan Academy is a combined effort of devoted zest and zeal by a
group of senior scientists of Orissa. The primary aim and objective in designing the
website is to promote and popularize the ever increasing knowledge of Science and
Technology amongst the masses so that scientific literacy and awareness could be
engendered in the public domain that would serve the wider interest of the Oriya people.
The websites keeps its user abreast of news & events, seminars, workshops,
advertisements and awards received. A search engine is also present to find out the details
about Oriya Scientists and their achievements by category and name. To become an active
and life member of the academy, one can apply online.
Reviewed by: Lokesh Joshi, NIC HQ

40
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in National Portal Update

National Portal Update

Challenges always bring changes in attitude!!! With this Some of the major initiatives under the ambit of the
mantra india.gov.in is marching ahead, making lives of National Portal are:
India's citizen easier day-by-day. india.gov.in has been
recently awarded at the eIndia 2009, under the e-Governance Ø http://bharat.gov.in: The hindi version of the National
category for Government to Citizens (G2C) Initiative of the Portal.
year. Ø http://business.gov.in: Caters to every intricacy required
by the business community.
Ø http://web.guidelines.gov.in: Defines the guidelines for
Indian Government websites, which have been adopted
by DARPG for compliance in the websites of
Ministries/Departments/States.
Ø http://www.india.gov.in/cfw: Guides on the Content
Framework to be followed in order to ensure uniformity
in access and seamless integration of services for the
citizens.
Ø http://egreetings.india.gov.in: A dedicated portal to send
e-greetings for Indian festivals.
Ø http://spf.india.gov.in: Provides guidelines, standards
and architectural best practices to be followed for
implementing and operating State Portals with respect to
Ms. Neeta Verma, (STD) and Ms. Alka Mishra (TD) receiving the e- information/content, user interface and technology.
India 2009 trophy on behalf of india.gov.in.
india.gov.in is a powerful tool that not only offers citizen
Launched in 2005, india.gov.in has given a new dimension in services and information through a central point of access in
governing nations and enhancing citizen services by making cyberspace, but also offers downloadable forms, government
the process of governance and public administration much documents, Legislative Acts/ Rules, services both
more efficient and effective. transactional as well as informative through a unified and
logically central portal. Presently there are about 7000
india.gov.in is an effort to provide the Indian citizens and Documents, over 4000 Forms, approximately 1498 Services,
other stakeholders with easy online access to government 1357 Acts, 1033 Announcements, 996 Contact Directories,
benefits and assistance programs as it promotes 825 Schemes and 815 Rules published on the Portal. The
Government-to-All interface (G2A) encompassing Portal has more than 55,000 registered users and gets over 27
fundamental interaction between Government to Citizen million hits per month pour in from all corners of the world,
(G2C), Government to Business (G2B), Government to which gives a clear picture of the popularity of the Portal.
Employee (G2E) and Government to Government (G2G).
india.gov.in embraces the Accessibility standards and
The Portal has been built from the 'users' or 'citizens' evaluates the Portal on a regular basis, increasing the
perspective, rather than from the perspective of the opportunity for all citizens to access information over the
government. In other words, instead of presenting and Internet and is maintained by professionals trained in the area
categorising the information and services on the basis of of assistive and information technology. The Portal complies
government departments, information is presented in a with W3C standards of WCAG 2.0 level A. With this
manner citizens would like. This bilingual (English and india.gov.in ensures interoperability and uses best technical
Hindi) portal can be personalised by its users and follows a approach like use of mark-up language cascading style sheet,
uniform navigation style. use of scripting languages etc.
india.gov.in is India's one of the most prestigious effort and Contributed by: Alka Mishra, Technical Director, NIC
has been sculpted by National Informatics Centre (NIC).

41
 In the News Informatics, October 2009

In the News
Visit of Hon'ble MoS, Sh. Sachin Pilot at NIC-HQ
To have first hand experience of NIC's ICT-Potential for enabling IT-lead
development of social masses, Hon'ble Minister of State IT, Government of
India, Sh. Sachin Pilot visited NIC-HQ on Friday 25th September 2009.
Brief presentation about the on-going live applications run by NIC; on
nation-wide basis, was made through Video Conferencing by few State
Centres and Heads of Division of NIC-HQ. During this visit, Hon'ble MoS
had shown keen interest about those applications and suggested normative
alignment of implementation strategies, for ensuring focused output which
Hon'ble Mos Sh. Sachin Pilot presiding the
would be more relevant and meaningful for the masses. meeting at NIC, along with DG Dr. B.K. Gairola
and DDG Dr. Y.K. Sharma
Sh. Sachin Pilot was quoted saying during his visit, “Very impressive set of
people and equipment which is making us all proud of NIC. My best wishes
to the team.”
Dr. Kashinath, DDG

Governor, Himachal Pradesh, launches the Raj Bhavan

website
Her Excellency, Smt. Prabha Rau, Governor of Himachal Pradesh launched
the official website of the Raj Bhawan (Governor House) at Shimla. She told
that web portal would enable the people to access official information,
activities and important events taking place in the Raj Bhavan. The
Secretary Governor House, Sh. Bharat Khera, IAS and Sh. Rajesh Bahadur,
SIO, NIC were present on the occasion.
The Himachal Pradesh Raj Bhavan, housed in a 177-year old heritage
complex, called the Barnes Court, had been witness to some momentous
Governor Himachal Pradesh launching the website events like the Shimla Agreement between India and Pakistan signed in
1972.
The website has an exclusive collection of photographs, covering different facets of the heritage structure along with
important events that had taken place here, including the 175th anniversary celebration of the Barnes Court.
The website has been designed and developed by NIC Himachal Pradesh and is accessible at
http://himachalrajbhavan.nic.in
Ajay Singh Chahal, Himachal Pradesh

Launching of Verbatim House Proceedings in Himachal

Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha became second state in the country on 4th August
2009 which was observed as 103rd Birth Anniversary of Dr Yashwant Singh
Parmar, when Hon'ble Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh Prof. Prem Kumar
Dhumal formally launched the verbatim House Proceedings of Himachal Pradesh
Legislative Assembly (unedited version) on Vidhan Sabha website at
Launch of Verbatim House Proceedings

42
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in In the News

http://hpvidhansabha.nic.in. Speaking on the occasion, he told that the facility will make the citizens aware of polices &
programmes of the state government and also they will closely watch the issues raised by the elected representatives. He
also informed that days' proceeding will be made available on the same day or by next morning.
He also thanked all the concerned for launching this facility. National informatics Centre, Himachal Pradesh has
developed and implemented the solution to merge/compile day's proceedings and the web interface.
Mukesh K Ralli, Himachal Pradesh

VC Facility Inaugurated by the Hon'ble Chief Justice, between

Civil Court and District Jail at Jamtara, Jharkhand.
The Hon'ble Chief Justice Smt. Gyan Sudha Mishra, Jharkhand High Court recently
inaugurated the videoconferencing facility between Jamtara District Civil Court and
Jail, in the presence of Hon'ble Justice Sh. Amrashwar Sahay, Justice N.N. Tiwari,
District & Sessions Judge Sh. C.P. Asthana, Sh. Kripa Nand Jha, Deputy
Commissioner and other senior officials. At the other end, Sh. M. Hussian A.I.G.
Prisons, Government of Jharkhand was present on the occasion. He explained to the
Hon'ble Chief Justice, Smt. Mishra (L),
after inaugurating the VC facility,
Chief Justice about the e -governance project under implementation with the
support of NIC and gave other details about the District Jail, Jamtara.
The VC inauguration facility was preceded by the inauguration of the new Civil Court and Bar Association Building by the
Chief Justice. Speaking on the historic occasion, the Chief Justice emphasized that only 'Truth Should Prevail' and called
upon the Bar to help in the delivery of quick and timely justice. She also exhorted the advocates to remain updated in their
profession.
The VC facility between the Civil court and District Jail was implemented by NIC Jharkhand under the e-governance
project for the Department of Home (Jail), Govt. of Jharkhand.
Prashant Belwarier, Jharkhand

Minister Agriculture Production J&K State, reviewed

Department functioning of Districts through VC
Hon'ble Minister for Agriculture Production J&K, Sh. Jenab Ghulam
Hassan Mir along with Principal Secretary Agriculture, Smt. Sonali Kumar
reviewed district level department functioning through Video Conferencing
on August 11, 2009. He addressed all the District Heads of Agriculture from
VC Studio of NIC J&K Civil Secretariat Srinagar. All the Chief Agriculture
Officers of 22 Districts have participated in this VC Session from the Minister Agriculture J&K, Sh. Jenab G.H. Mir
addressing Districts Officers
districts itself. The VC session continued for almost 2 hours. The minister
appreciated the efforts of NIC for conducting it successfully.
Jit Raj, Jammu & Kashmir

Press Conference by the Hon'ble CM of Mizoram through Video Conferencing

Hon'ble Chief Minister of Mizoram, Sh. Lal Thanhawla had a press conference and media briefing using NIC's Video
Conferencing facilities on August 14, 2009 with media people in all the districts of Mizoram. The press briefing was
anchored by Sh. L.R.Sailo, Director Information & Public Relation. In a one and half hour meeting, the Hon'ble Chief
Minister briefed the media on various ongoing socio-economic developmental projects/schemes in the state and vision of his
government and invited suggestions from the media. The Chief Minister had one to one interaction with all districts
answering the queries of the media on various developmental aspects in the state. In the meeting Director, Joint Directors of I
& PR and Dr Vanlalzara Principal Scientific Officer, Science and Technology, SIO Mizoram and other officers were present.

43
 In the News Informatics, October 2009

It was first ever Video Conference held by the Chief Minister of

Mizoram using NIC's Video Conferencing facilities. The Chief Minister
also visited Network Operational Centre and Data Centre of NIC
Mizoram and was pleased to see the infrastructure established by NIC in
the state of Mizoram.
The VC Session was well supported by a dedicated team of NIC
Mizoram and all DIOs of State.
Lalhmachhuani, Mizoram
Chief Minister of Mizoram Sh. Lal Thanhawla attending VC

Election Module at LBSNAA, Mussoorie

Election Module was organised for IAS Professional Course Phase I
(2008 Batch) at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of
Administration, Mussoorie during 23rd - 27th March 2009. The
module was conducted jointly by NIC Training Unit and the
Management Faculty of LBSNAA, Mussoorie.
The contents of the module were Overview of Project Management,
Election Process Management, Introduction to MS Project and
Management of Election through MS Project. The methodology of
the module was Lecture, Lecture-cum-Demonstration followed by
Election Module in progress
Hands-On practice on MS Project and Group Task on Management of
Election using MS Project. The presentations were made by
individual group of Officer Trainees and evaluated by NICTU faculty.
The members of the faculty who conducted the module were Sh. Alok Kumar, IAS, Dy. Director (Senior), Dr. B. Ashok,
IAS, Dy. Director of LBSNAA and Sh. M. Chakraborty, Sh. Azad Singh and Sh. Amarjeet Singh Dutt of NIC Training
Unit, Mussoorie.
Manotosh Chakraborty, LBSNAA, Mussoorie

Hon'ble Chief Minister, Jammu and Kashmir

inaugurates CM Grievances Cell
Hon'ble Chief Minister, J&K Mr. Omar Abdullah formally
inaugurated the Chief Minister's Grievance Cell at Civil
Secretariat Srinagar on 4th September 2009 there by creating an
opportunity for the people of Jammu and Kashmir to register their
complaints through online and get details about the status and
nature of disposals.
Describing the cell an effective mechanism to entertain the
complaints of general public, the Chief Minister said that people
should receive the prompt, to the point and appropriate response SIO, NIC Orissa along with Sh. Nihar Ranjan Biswal, SSA,
receiving the Award
from the cell. “The complainant should get all information about
the status of their complaints, progress and the action taken”, he
said adding that he would personally monitored the working of the cell regularly. He also appreciated the efforts of NIC
J&K for developing & hosting of web based application for Online Registration and Monitoring of complaints on
NICNET.
The people can personally register their complaints through the Community Information Centres (CIC) available at each
block and get feedbacks about the same from these Centres.
The complaints received in the Grievance Cell shall be segregated, analyzed and transferred to the concerned departments
for reply/action taken within five days. The reminder for the pending complaints shall go to the concerned on every

44
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in In the News

Monday. The information about the status, progress and action taken shall be available on the website or can be got from
CICs or directly from the Grievance Cell.
Jit Raj, Jammu & Kashmir

NIC won Awards for 'Excellence in e-Governance' in Madhya Pradesh

Department of Information Technology,
Government of Madhya Pradesh has instituted
excellence in e-Governance awards for e-
Governance applications developed/
implemented in Madhya Pradesh. Recently
these awards were given by Sh. Kailash
Vijayvargiya Minister for Information
Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh
and Chief Secretary Sh. Rakesh Sahni.
Sh. Sunil Jain, TD, NIC receiving the Sh. Vivek Chitale, TD, NIC with the
award for 'IT for Masses' category Education portal designed & developed by NIC
award for excellence in e-Governance
initiatives Madhya Pradesh for Department of School
Education and Tribal Welfare Department, was
adjudged the best project fulfilling the objective - 'IT for Masses'. The portal facilitates the department to administer more
than 1.10 lac schools, 3.5 lac teachers and monitor the competency levels of more than 1.60 crore students. The portal also
acts as a sign-on for various process automation applications and facilitate a common platform for the dissemination of
information and collaboration between departments and agencies working for school education.The product GeoAmpere,
Geomatics based Application Model for Planning Distribution of Electricity to Rural Entities, implemented at Madhya
Pradesh. Paschim Kshetra Vidyut Vitran Company Limited (MPPKVV Co. Ltd), Indore, has been selected for excellence
in e-Governance initiatives.
Jabalpur and Sagar districts jointly received the award for 'Best e-Governed Districts in Madhya Pradesh' for developing
and implementing various e-Governance applications in districts. NIC district centre in both the districts were
instrumental in developing and implementing various e-governance applications.
Santosh Shukla, Madhya Pradesh

Three Days Workshop on e-Granthalaya and NewsNIC

Software for Automation and Networking of Libraries
organized in Punjab
A three days “Workshop on e-Granthalaya and NewsNIC Software for
Automation and Networking of Libraries” was conducted during 21st - 23rd
July 2009 at Malout Institute of Management and Technology (MIMIT),
Malout, Punjab established by the Government of Punjab. The workshop Group Photograph of Participants
was a part of 15 Days 'Staff Development Program on Library Automation,
Networking and Digitization' sponsored by AICTE, New Delhi.
The workshop was conducted for the benefits of the libraries from Punjab which are using e-Granthalaya software for
automation and Networking. The e-Granthalaya workshop attended by 29 library officers from various organizations and
libraries
The Workshop was Co-ordinated by Dr. Iqbal Singh, Librarian, MIMIT while Sh. Ram Kumar Matoria, Technical
Director, and Sh. Sushant Panigrahi, Scientist B, NIC, New Delhi conduced the workshop. The Participants were given
exhaustive training/hands-on for use of various modules of the e-Granthalaya Software.
R K Matoria, Technical Director
For latest and up-to-date news and information about e-governance activities across the Country,
Visit Informatics Newsonline
http://informatics.nic.in/newsonline 45
Perspective Informatics, October 2009

Software Engineering: An instrument for inclusive growth,

sustainable development and co-existence
Globalization and technological change things for better. And when it
Apart from software revolutions have created huge fails it means that its users are
architecture, software design demand for knowledgeable people in dissatisfied and it becomes error
and development, software various domains. Moreover there is prone. It is difficult to change and
engineering is a discipline for requirement for partnerships and even harder to use. This may happen
software developers and collaborations too. Simplifying due to the ignorance or avoidance of
managers too. They practice it complexities is another big challenge software engineering practices right
to deliver impeccable software to be tackled. Dealing with them from software development to
service by some following requires a systematic and meeting any change requirements.
some strict guidelines and professional approach. Software in itself has its inherent
applying engineering characteristics which are echoed in
Software can either succeed or fail.
techniques within process the statement by Mr. Howard Baetjer
When it succeeds, it implies that it
frameworks inorder to create as:
meets the need of the people who use
positive and exciting it. It performs smoothly over a longer “Because software, like all capital,
developments. Otherwise it period of time. It is easy to modify is embodied knowledge, and
becomes an impediment to and even easier to use. It can also because that knowledge is initially
progressive development.

Rajiv Ranjan
Principal Systems Analyst
[email protected]

46
October 2009 | informatics.nic.in Perspective

dispersed, tacit, latent, and incomplete in large do alike recognize the need for a more disciplined
measure, software development is a social learning approach to software development but they continue to
process. debate the manner in which discipline has to be applied.

The process is a dialogue in which the knowledge that So a number of standards e.g. IEEE software engineering
must become the software is brought together and standards, ISO 9000 standards, SEI-CMM, CMMI,
embodied in the software. SPICE etc have been in use. They recommend about the
application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable
The process provides interaction between users and approach to the development, operations and
designers, between users and evolving tools, and maintenance of the software that results into repeated
between designers and evolving tools [technology]. performance even with different people.
It is an iterative process in which the evolving tool itself In this context we also have a number of guidelines,
serves as the medium for communication, with each standards and frameworks. Some of them are e-Gov
new round of the dialogue eliciting more useful Standards, National Portal of India Content Management
knowledge from the people involved” Framework, Guidelines for Indian Government
Websites, IntraNIC, Quality and Documentation etc with
A systematic and constructive approach using
an objective of system approach and their pervasiveness.
appropriate methodology and technology can help. If not
Further standards for ICT applications are also in the
done systematically, it may lead to stress, mistrust, un-
offering. Regarding their implementation, idea is if a
happiness and frustration that may adversely affect
framework is complemented with meticulously designed
progress and subsequently retard our growth. Approach
in-built mechanism of finer details of rules and
to software development is frequently adhoc. Although
procedures within process frameworks, so that the
adhoc approach sometimes works for a small project but
triggering effects can ensure its automatic compliance.
does not work for large critical projects.
And it can become our day-to-day experience and that
Ideas and technological discoveries have been the will work smoothly and transparently.
driving engines for economic growth. And software has
To achieve this do we require some sort of professional
its profound impact on society and culture. We are all
governance with management techniques or practicing
concerned with our future and we do seek to answer what
of professional ethics will suffice? Whatever may be the
risks might cause the software project to go awry?
choice, it requires rooting in personal experience. Let
Change is our concern and how will changes in customer
assets be created for re-use and minimize reinventing the
requirements, development technologies, target
wheel for the needed growth and change for sustainable
computers, computing environment etc. affect
development. Let innovative leaders nurture and develop
timeliness and overall success? We must also grapple
the system but in a framework with configuration
with choices regarding methods and tools we should use,
management in place. Let the practitioners focus on what
how many people should be involved, how much
they need to do to improve the human conditions at large.
emphasis on quality is “enough”?
Let passion, compassion and mutual respect spread
Basically we look forward for a positive and progressive through system approach with progressive led
development. This is achieved by way of a discipline that developments and inclusive growth.
can scale up for large systems and that can be used
Reviewed by: Alka Mishra
consistently to produce high quality software at low cost
Technical Director
and within a specified time. Managers and practitioners
NIC HQ

47
 Book Review

ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development

ICT4D provides account of key areas The book is divided into two parts,
ICT4D is all about how
where ICTs have been incorporated Part-1 is for 'Contextual framework'
Information and Communication into development practices and Part 2 is on 'Practical application'
Technologies (ICTs) can be used concentrating particularly on health, with 5 chapters in each part. Each
to help the poor and marginalized education, governance, enterprise and chapter consists of many references
people and communities and rural development. The practical useful for further reading. The ICT
make a difference to their lives. intents of the book provide a critique enterprises and its development, E-
The book provides an of recent attempt to use ICTs in government and e-governance with
authoritative and accessible development so that those working in ICT in Rural, Health and Education,
account of the use of ICTs in the interest of poor people and the key issues in the field of ICT are
contemporary development marginalized communities can use given in reader friendly commentaries
these insights for empowerment. of relevant areas.
practice. Tim Unwin, the author
has incorporated the use of The organization and structure of the
book is shaped around practical ICTs are becoming increasingly
appropriate information and significant in making a difference and
communication technology for dimensions. Boxed case studies
provide detailed examples of issues improving the impacts of
development needs. The book development practice. However,
and initiatives from a variety of
seeks to combine theory with ICT4D projects in Africa, Asia and
countries and organizations. To
practical guidance - including understand different terminologies Latin America have not always been
both a conceptual framework for and agendas adopted in as effective as their proponents had
understanding the rapid multidimensional field of ICT4D, hoped. This book explores both the
development of ICT4D. authors have tried to provide distinct successes and the challenges facing
vocabularies, style of discourse and such initiatives and provides clear
Title: ICT4D: Information and
practical agendas in both the fields of recommendations for how they can be
Communication Technology for
ICT and development practices. For developed in more sustainable ways
Development
example, if wireless technologies for the benefit of poor people and
Edited by: Tim Unwin are to be used effectively marginalized communities.
Publisher: Cambridge in delivering rural
health services, it There are similar books available on
University Press, the topic like (i) Information &
Cambridge (2009) is important that
such people Communication Technology In
understand each Development Cases From India by
other and are able to S. Bhatnagar (2000), (ii) Information
work together Technology And Development by
effectively in teams. M. Lakshmi Narasaiah (2004)
Many people with their (iii) Information Technology and
global insights and Development by Arun Baweja (2000),
experience have etc. But this title ICT4D is the latest
contributed within this sketch on the topic published in 2009.
book. Majority of the
chapters and ideas are by ICT4D is essential reading for
Tim Unwin (UNESCO Chair everyone involved in planning,
in ICT4D and Professor of designing, policy making or
Geography at University of London). implementing ICT4D initiatives.
P.K. Upadhyay There are authenticated data, table and Information on this title is available at
Technical Director h t t p : / / w w w. c a m b r i d g e . o r g /
[email protected] figures available reproduced with
permission of ITU. 9780521712361 .