Presentations were made by eminent speakers on significant
aspects of eGovernance initiatives in the country—many that are transforming
the lives of common citizens while heralding India into the 21st century
“The
use of high-definition video conferencing for remote diagnosis, such as
that by Apollo’s tele-medicine division, has extended the reach of
hospitals and medical centers to far flung areas,” said Yugal Sharma,
Country Manager, Polycom India, in his presentation through video-conference.
Sharma described how Apollo Hospitals has managed to take the expertise
of its doctors in India to remote areas in Africa. Polycom also organized
two more presentations through video-conferencing—by Vikas Nath, Advisor
eGovernance, UNDP, who gave an international perspective on Digital Governance,
and by Dr Jayant Sonwalkar, Professor-Institute of Management Studies, Devi
Ahilya University, Indore, on Tele-education.
“Specifying
appropriate power and cooling requirements for the servers to be installed
is important in the proper designing of a datacenter,” stated Prashant
Bhatia, Head–Shared Services & Application Engineering, Emerson
Network Power (India). Bhatia stressed that every e-governance project must
adopt a frame-work based approach with due importance to critical infrastructure
components like power.
“Though
change management is a big issue in e-Governance projects, seldom does it
remain on the top of the agenda for implementing bodies. Organizations need
to be prepared for, and be committed to, bringing in changes,” said
Subhash Patil, Managing Consultant, Performance Improvement, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In his presentation, Patil also spoke on his experience with change management
in Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation that effectively carried out an
eGovernance initiative as well as a GIS project.
In
his presentation, Aby Mathews, Government Industry Solutions Unit, TCS spoke
at length about various eGovernance projects implemented by TCS in the recent
past. Stating that convenience of users is of prime importance in the government
vertical, Mathews said, “We’ve had to customize some of our projects
in accordance with the special requirements of the end-users. For a project
commissioned by the Spices Board of India, we designed it to make it possible
for bidders to use the portal with very few key strokes; this was done keeping
in mind that some of the bidders may not have been exposed to the Internet.”
An
impactful panel discussion was organized at Technology Sabha on State Data
Center Implementation. The panelists shown in the picture (from L to R):
Prashant Bhatia, Head-Shared Services & Application Engineering, ENP
(India), Dr Neeta Shah, Director (eGovernance), Gujarat Informatics, K Praveen
Kumar, Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh Technology Services, SP Singh,
Senior Director, Ministry of Communications & IT, Department of IT,
Shantaram Shet, MD, Info Tech Corporation of Goa, and Bhupesh Chauhan, Senior
Business Manager-Enterprise, EMC Data Storage Systems (India).
During
his impressive presentation, Dr Shekhar Borgaonkar, Department Director,
HP Labs India showed the prototype (inset) of the new Indic language input
keyboard. This product overcomes the limitations of a QWERTY keyboard and
facilitates typing out letters and application forms in Devnagari and Kannada.
Dr Borgaonkar said that more languages and scripts can be covered as and
when there is a demand from customers. The product was a hit amongst all
the audience members.
Alok
Bharadwaj, VP-Sales & Marketing, Canon India, described how intelligent
imaging and printing products can help expedite the process of e-Governance.
“eGovernance or digital governance has one important element: bringing
IT to traditional documents,” he said. The entire document flow starting
from scanning a document in a secure fashion, to offering secure access
to documents, their modification, to printing them, and finally to managing
them are critical stages of document management workflow, he added.
Jayant
Sinha, DGM & Head (IT), Uttarakhand Power Corporation spoke on computerization
initiatives in the state-owned power
utility. Some of the key components of the infrastructure benefiting
the power consumers include Centralized Utility Approval System for new
connections, Unified Payment System, Complaints Management System through
a single window facility. Sinha mentioned that following the project implementation,
the power corporation has been able to improve its image in the minds of
the consumers.
What
started as a time-saving initiative has now become a full-scale eGovernance
project, informed Dharam Pal, Administrator, Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
When the tsunami hit the Andaman & Nicobar Islands in December 2004,
Pal was busy with the rehabilitation work. However, politicians, top bureaucrats,
and NGOs from all across India kept calling him to get an update about the
progress of the work. As a result, he built a small website, merely to free
himself for the rehabilitation work. But one by one, Pal added several services
to the site and now it has taken a shape of well-structured eGovernance
platform.
Manoj
Agarwal, Regional Manager-Enterprise, Citrix Systems, spoke on how it was
critical for the government bodies to aim at transforming their datacenters
into delivery centers. “The applications and diversity of architectures
are growing. Users are turning mobile and devices are becoming diverse and
less controllable. And when the complexity of IT environments is increasing
the budgets continue to shrink,” observed Agarwal, stating that to
ensure security, manageability, and scalability of the datacenters, intelligent
thin client computing can be viewed as an effective option by government
customers.
“Governments
around the world have the same fundamental goals, balancing the budgets,
helping citizens to find jobs, providing public stewardship, delivering
responsive education and health services, and protecting the environment.
A government body’s singular aim therefore is to create public value
through delivering financial, political and social value,” said Lakshmikanth
Sundarrajan, Regional Head, India & SAARC, Business Objects. In his
presentation Sundarrajan illustrated how government agencies can endeavor
to deliver public value through business intelligence products.
Channabassappa,
Controller Purchases & IT, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation
showed how use of IT has
transformed local commuting for citizens in the software city. The IT implementation
also allows commuters to plan their travel within the city more efficiently
through the interactive public interface of BMTC.
“The
use of high-definition video conferencing for remote diagnosis, such as
that by Apollo’s tele-medicine division, has extended the reach of
hospitals and medical centers to far flung areas,” said Yugal Sharma,
Country Manager, Polycom India, in his presentation through video-conference.
Sharma described how Apollo Hospitals has managed to take the expertise
of its doctors in India to remote areas in Africa. Polycom also organized
two more presentations through video-conferencing—by Vikas Nath, Advisor
eGovernance, UNDP, who gave an international perspective on Digital Governance,
and by Dr Jayant Sonwalkar, Professor-Institute of Management Studies, Devi
Ahilya University, Indore, on Tele-education. 
“Specifying
appropriate power and cooling requirements for the servers to be installed
is important in the proper designing of a datacenter,” stated Prashant
Bhatia, Head–Shared Services & Application Engineering, Emerson
Network Power (India). Bhatia stressed that every e-governance project must
adopt a frame-work based approach with due importance to critical infrastructure
components like power.
“Though
change management is a big issue in e-Governance projects, seldom does it
remain on the top of the agenda for implementing bodies. Organizations need
to be prepared for, and be committed to, bringing in changes,” said
Subhash Patil, Managing Consultant, Performance Improvement, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In his presentation, Patil also spoke on his experience with change management
in Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation that effectively carried out an
eGovernance initiative as well as a GIS project.
In
his presentation, Aby Mathews, Government Industry Solutions Unit, TCS spoke
at length about various eGovernance projects implemented by TCS in the recent
past. Stating that convenience of users is of prime importance in the government
vertical, Mathews said, “We’ve had to customize some of our projects
in accordance with the special requirements of the end-users. For a project
commissioned by the Spices Board of India, we designed it to make it possible
for bidders to use the portal with very few key strokes; this was done keeping
in mind that some of the bidders may not have been exposed to the Internet.”
An
impactful panel discussion was organized at Technology Sabha on State Data
Center Implementation. The panelists shown in the picture (from L to R):
Prashant Bhatia, Head-Shared Services & Application Engineering, ENP
(India), Dr Neeta Shah, Director (eGovernance), Gujarat Informatics, K Praveen
Kumar, Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh Technology Services, SP Singh,
Senior Director, Ministry of Communications & IT, Department of IT,
Shantaram Shet, MD, Info Tech Corporation of Goa, and Bhupesh Chauhan, Senior
Business Manager-Enterprise, EMC Data Storage Systems (India).
During
his impressive presentation, Dr Shekhar Borgaonkar, Department Director,
HP Labs India showed the prototype (inset) of the new Indic language input
keyboard. This product overcomes the limitations of a QWERTY keyboard and
facilitates typing out letters and application forms in Devnagari and Kannada.
Dr Borgaonkar said that more languages and scripts can be covered as and
when there is a demand from customers. The product was a hit amongst all
the audience members.
Alok
Bharadwaj, VP-Sales & Marketing, Canon India, described how intelligent
imaging and printing products can help expedite the process of e-Governance.
“eGovernance or digital governance has one important element: bringing
IT to traditional documents,” he said. The entire document flow starting
from scanning a document in a secure fashion, to offering secure access
to documents, their modification, to printing them, and finally to managing
them are critical stages of document management workflow, he added.
Jayant
Sinha, DGM & Head (IT), Uttarakhand Power Corporation spoke on computerization
initiatives in the state-owned power 
What
started as a time-saving initiative has now become a full-scale eGovernance
project, informed Dharam Pal, Administrator, Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
When the tsunami hit the Andaman & Nicobar Islands in December 2004,
Pal was busy with the rehabilitation work. However, politicians, top bureaucrats,
and NGOs from all across India kept calling him to get an update about the
progress of the work. As a result, he built a small website, merely to free
himself for the rehabilitation work. But one by one, Pal added several services
to the site and now it has taken a shape of well-structured eGovernance
platform.
Manoj
Agarwal, Regional Manager-Enterprise, Citrix Systems, spoke on how it was
critical for the government bodies to aim at transforming their datacenters
into delivery centers. “The applications and diversity of architectures
are growing. Users are turning mobile and devices are becoming diverse and
less controllable. And when the complexity of IT environments is increasing
the budgets continue to shrink,” observed Agarwal, stating that to
ensure security, manageability, and scalability of the datacenters, intelligent
thin client computing can be viewed as an effective option by government
customers.
“Governments
around the world have the same fundamental goals, balancing the budgets,
helping citizens to find jobs, providing public stewardship, delivering
responsive education and health services, and protecting the environment.
A government body’s singular aim therefore is to create public value
through delivering financial, political and social value,” said Lakshmikanth
Sundarrajan, Regional Head, India & SAARC, Business Objects. In his
presentation Sundarrajan illustrated how government agencies can endeavor
to deliver public value through business intelligence products.
Channabassappa,
Controller Purchases & IT, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation
showed how use of IT has 
