Goa

Goan IT has a sunny outlook

Goa reminds you of white beaches coupled with friendly people and an extremely good climate that can rejuvenate you. After attracting tourists from all over the world, Goa wants to do the same with IT and has set a refreshingly different IT policy for achieving the same. Srikanth R P has the details

The term Digital Divide has always fascinated the Indian IT industry. While there have been some success stories in different states, the overall dream of ‘IT for the masses’ still remains elusive. Every state government has been trying to jump on to the familiar ITES bandwagon by announcing a slew of incentives. But there is no talk of how IT can benefit the common man living in the state.

According to Dr Anupam Saraph, information is the overriding reason to use information technolgy. Information irrelevant to the mission of a process destroys the quality of life

As Dr V Kurien, the man credited for revolutionising the Indian milk co-operative movement says, “Computers were not created to solve the problems of poverty, hence it is futile to expect that the world will be a better place if all had access to computers and the Internet. But information is power and it stands to reason that if this power is shared equitably, all will benefit.” The Goan government seems to have a taken a cue from this quote and has drafted an IT policy to enhance the quality of living of the common man.

Says Dr Anupam Saraph, advisor, IT and e-governance, Government of Goa, “Information is the overriding reason to use information technology. Information irrelevant to the mission of a process or activity destroys the quality of life. For example, imagine the mental stress of a citizen if he has to prove he is alive while claiming pension. Imagine the inability of a community to enjoy a high quality of life when the municipal authority ensures architectural plans are checked but not city resources like water, electricity, sewage disposal or road networks while issuing building permissions. Hence, unless operations minimise transaction repetition, complexity and risk, quality of life will not improve. The Goan government’s IT policy strives to enable the vision of a mission-oriented government where informed decisions can enhance the state’s capacity for quality decisions.” The policy has accordingly provided clear guidelines based on distinct time and space perspectives and therefore distinct requirements of information for those in operations, management or governance roles in government. The basic aim of the policy is to ensure that each department in the state should be working to enable a societal need and not merely provide licenses, permissions, registrations and collect revenues.

Building the basic blocks

Already at the very basic level, the government has made computers an important part of the curriculum in schools and colleges. This has brought about some amazing results. For example, Goa is perhaps the only state in India that has a record of having 100 percent of its schools computerised. Though the credit for this does not exactly go to the government—it has been made possible due to the largesse of expatriate Goans—the state’s intent is laudable. For example, the government has an active annual programme to distribute 10,000 computers to students at the class six level. This year around 3,000 computers have already been distributed. Saraph believes that five years hence, there will be at least one computer available for every four people.

Another unique concept is the Goa computers in school project (GCSP). The GCSP is a coalition of eminent people in the field of education, technology and expatriate Goans who feel the need to speed up the pace of computer education in this state. What is unique about this project is that GCSP is pushing Linux as the preferred OS for schools in collaboration with Red Hat. If the project takes off successfully, Red Hat plans to replicate it across India. Examples like this also show that Goa being a tiny state can also be a test bed for experimenting with various technologies. For example, Goa is thinking of establishing Wi-Fi access hotspots across the state to enable use of wireless devices.

Goa is also perhaps the only state to include health in its IT policy. The policy is envisaging creation of an electronic health network that can be used for systematic exchange of data between general practitioners, hospitals, pharmacies, municipalities and health authorities. Also planned is a global health network research server that will be designed to replace research journals. On an enhanced level, the government is thinking of issuing medical smart cards that would carry personal medical information.

On the tourism front too, plans are on to enhance trade by using information technology. Some of the initiatives planned are building multimedia websites for tourism promotion, fully computerised hotels and resorts, setting up information kiosks all over Goa to assist tourists and setting up call centres for hotel bookings and general enquiries.

Infrastructure

With regards to infrastructure too, Goa is well equipped. As against a national tele-density of 4.9 (Economic Survey 2002-03), Goa has a tele-density of 9.7 per hundred people. In urban Goa, this is as high as 15 per hundred people. The 71 telephone exchanges in Goa are all linked through optical fibre networks with surplus bandwidth. The combination of good infrastructure with superb climatic conditions has attracted companies like D-Link and ControlNet to set up operations in Goa. For example, D-Link has three state-of-the-art plants manufacturing products like NICs, hubs, switches and modems. Another venture ControlNet India, a company specialising in the chip design space has all its operations in Goa—right from its corporate office to its design and development centre.

Says P Sridhar, CEO, ControlNet India, “Goa could be the right choice for the IT industry. Everything is good with respect to infrastructure right from transport, telecom infrastructure to Internet connectivity. Goa also has a good supply of power that comes from both the government and Reliance-Salgaocar power company.”

R&D hub

Goa also seems to be the ideal place to do R&D work. The government has realised this and plans to position Goa as an R&D hub. Says Dr Saraph, “Goa’s location, its occupations and industry as well as its mechanisms of governance offer an excellent opportunity to the best R&D units to locate themselves in Goa. Long term players should be quick to realise the strategic benefits of Goa.” Saraph believes that an unique positioning is necessary for different cities and states. Unless this is done, IT industry will not develop and may only lead to some states having pockets of growth.

According to P Sridhar, Goa has good transport, telecom, Internet connectivity and power infrastructure

The idea is to create a Silicon Valley type of cluster of companies, which can inspire similar companies to join a specific cluster. In contrast to the distributed type of R&D centres, which are currently present all over the country, the idea of the government is to create a cluster that will have only R&D centres. If the government succeeds in this concept, it could position Goa as an ideal R&D hub for researchers, analysts and companies looking to set up operations. There is also one more hidden agenda for creating R&D clusters. The government wants to encourage more and more product companies to set up shop in Goa and effectively create an environment for R&D to flourish. Being a small state, such a proposal does not look too difficult to implement.

Challenges

With a highly educated populace coupled with excellent infrastructure, it would seem Goa is truly on the way to attract companies by the dozen as it has done with tourists. But it is still a long way off as even though Goa has registered a three-fold increase in software exports this year, its share in Indian software exports is a mere 0.15 percent. This is also primarily due to the fact that tourism as an industry has been well established and gets priority over IT.

Says Ricky Noronha of Online Productivity solutions (a local IT company in Goa), “Tourism is encouraged over IT because it is easy to understand what’s needed and also due to the fact that tourism has a long established and strong lobby in Goa. But for us, in the IT sector, no one even knows what’s required. For example, even though we have every available local government registration, we did not have any tangible finished product and were termed as an small scale service and business enterprise (SSSBE) rather than as an SSI by the state’s Department of Industries. This meant that we did not get any government subsidy as a start-up. Last year, we found a Central government notification that said that software development companies should be classified as SSIs, we pursued the matter and finally have SSI status. Even now, every time we apply to the local directorate of industries for a renewal of our SSI registration, they keep asking us for a list of raw materials that we need and the ones we have consumed in the last year with bills. This despite being registered as a software development company.” So while Goa has one of the best infrastructure in place in the country today, it can still lose out if its decision makers are not knowledgeable.

The vision to make Goa India’s truly intelligent and wired state has been well spelt out in its IT policy. Goa also has several firsts. From being the first state to fully computerise all its schools to having an IITian as a chief minister. But as anyone tracking the state of e-governance in the country knows, there is a huge difference between policy and actual implementation. Till that vision gets translated into reality, Goa’s digital dreams will remain on paper.