Day 4

Reaching the common man

A panel discussion focused on the responsibilities of CIOs in any government organization or institution, the challenges faced by them and the skills required to help the common man

Panel discussion in session

The real test of any e-governance initiative lies in how successful it is in reaching the common person. A CIO should not bother about ‘e’ but how citizens benefit from his work. He has to take a holistic view of all the services that he should provide. The last day of the event witnessed a panel discussion on the role of the CIO/ IT manager in the government sector.

Prof. V S R Krishnaiah, Professor of E-Governance, Indian Institute of Public Administration, acted as a moderator. Other members of the panel included Dr K Subramanian, IT Advisor to CAG of India, Deputy Director General, Government of India, and Satyam Singh, Regional Head, Systems Engineering, Symantec.

Prof Krishnaiah stated that according to the E-Government Readiness Index, this year India's position was at 113 which had fallen when compared in 2005 (87th position). One of the reasons for this is the fact that the people handling IT in the Indian government do not have the necessary vision, knowledge, concept and skills. According to him, the challenges faced by the CIO are-increased public expectations, IT skills of end-users and Internet penetration (availability of increased bandwidth at cheaper rates and performance measurement).

Therefore, for CIOs involved in e-government projects, the new roles should be spearheading IT applications, managing transformation, ensuring the security of ICT infrastructure (Government departments face pervasive security threats) and leveraging best IT practices.

"Think big, start small and scale fast should be the fundamentals. The CIO needs to have a clear idea of what he wants, as just having an IT pilot project will not work," stated Prof. Krishnaiah.

The panelists talked about the difference between the roles and responsibilities of CIOs in the public and the private sectors.

"We do not understand the difference between 'e' and governance. We need to address the government issues with 'e', that is, enabler. Good governance should stay to help the citizen and also it is important to measure the satisfaction of the citizen," said Subramanian. He asserted that the CIO should build confidence in citizens that their government could provide good services. According to him, CIOs in the public sector has to face different risks like frequent change in technology and user (citizen) acceptability, as each person has his or her own needs and expectations.

Singh from Symantec stated that CIOs working in the private sector have the responsibility to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency, but today the definition of TCO has changed from total cost of ownership to taking cost out. TCO and ROI matter in the government too, but they should treat citizens as their customers and come up with good IT solutions.

Finally the panel asked the audience to provide their viewpoints on the role of a CIO in the government sector.

Neeta Shah, Director (eGovernance) at GIL (Gujarat Informatics Limited), mentioned that CIOs in the government sector are not technology people but they are domain experts. They do their regular work and do not have time for IT work and hence exclusive roles should be given to them.

"Executing IT projects for citizens is a difficult task. In the public sector the environment is uncontrolled that is the major problem. IT professionals need to upgrade their skills and technological knowledge frequently. Therefore a CIO in the government sector should know what he wants, otherwise solution providers see how much the CIO knows and how much he wants. The problem is when someone joins a government job, he stops learning," said Sanjay Bhoosreddy, Member (Judicial), Board of Revenue, UP.

Rahul Tewari, Deputy Commissioner Bathinda, Government of Punjab, revealed that in the government sector, nobody checks whether the IT department is working or not. On the contrary in the private sector, it is their bread and butter.

“In order to truly bring change the other department should follow a model similar to railways. There should be a separate stream for IT, just like they have steams for electrical, mechanical, etc,” said G K Maishi, Group General Manager/OAEW, Centre For Railway Information Systems (CRIS).

Closing session

After the panel discussion, Kailash Shirodkar, Chief Manager (Hi-Tech Group), BPD formally announced the closing of the Technology Sabha event by thanking all the delegates and invited them to give their feedback on how they liked the event and any areas of improvements.

Some delegates asked the organizers to increase the time for the panel discussion session and include sessions that talked about some successes and failures in e-governance.

The delegates congratulated the Indian Express Group and its team for organizing an e-governance event so efficiently. They found the presentations worthwhile and the International Data Center visit to be a good learning experience. They requested that the Group continue such sessions in the next Technology Sabha too.