Electronic Governance is an upcoming and emerging trend to
re-invent the way the Government works. When we hear the word “electronic”, the
first thing that strikes our mind is a technology driven Governance.
e-Governance related initiatives are being adopted at various levels of State
and Central Government. The focus of
e-Governance includes enhanced service delivery mechanism due to increased
attention, increased productivity and wider access of information. eGovernment
can facilitate transformation of citizen service, empowerment of citizens by
providing access to information, enable their participation in government and
enhance citizen economic and social opportunities, so that they can make
sophisticated lives, for themselves and for the next generation.
There is no doubt whatsoever that e-Governance concept is
riding high and trends in this sector are catching up and that is why we at
ITVar News are interacting with respective Vendors catering to the Government
sector to get an insight about the governments organization catered, solutions
offered and what all are the NextGen Technologies in e-governance that will be
shaping up the future of Govt. organizations.
Oracle products deliver on the critical requirement of eGov
applications
On being asked about Oracle’s offerings when it comes to
e-governance product based solutions at various levels of Government
organizations, Sudhir Aggarwal, Senior Director, Government Business
Development, Oracle India, informed that Oracle is in a unique position to
offer a complete, open, and integrated suite of solutions from disk to
applications. Oracle offers comprehensive development, deployment, and
management tools and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) solutions. Oracle has IBUs (Industry Business
Units) and subject matter experts to help create the most suitable solutions
for government customers. Oracle also has ISV (Independent Software Vendor)
solutions to support governments in building eGov solution. In addition,
Oracle’s innovative Engineered Systems , such as the Exadata Database Machine,
the Exalogic Elastic Cloud and the most recent innovations of Exalytics, Big
Data Appliance, SPARC SuperCluster and the Database Appliance offer extreme
performance. These engineered systems come assembled and debugged, with all
components factory-tuned, all failure-mode tests completed, and ready to run.
Their deployment is a lot faster and easier and significantly less risky.
Oracle products deliver on the critical requirement of eGov
applications like security, integration, interoperability, agility, access to
eGov applications through ever evolving multi-devices. Oracle Public Sector
solutions are supported by expert implementation specialists and a worldwide
partner ecosystem.
Oracle is committed to supporting governments with the next
wave of computing through their iGovernment framework. Oracle iGovernment
offers technology and tools to move beyond e-governance – to develop flexible
systems that integrate multiple functions and departments. It provides the
foundation to continue the evolution of government computing by increasing
integration across agencies, automating more complex and varied functions, and
making systems more accessible to a greater number of users.
On being asked about the NextGen Technologies in
e-governance that will be shaping up the future of Govt. organizations, he
informed, Whether they’re federal, national, defense, state or local, organizations around the world see the
ability to analyze large volumes of diverse data as an important new tool for reducing costs, improving
efficiency, and delivering more effective services to constituents. The promise of better financial
and performance outcomes, thanks to successful big data strategies helps
explain why even during times of constrained budgets, governments around the
world are eyeing investments in big data. Some of the recent Oracle
acquisitions are distinctly right fit for eGov applications like Oracle Endeca
Information Discovery is an enterprise data discovery platform for advanced yet
intuitive exploration and analysis of complex and varied data—structured,
semi-structured, and unstructured.
Likewise, driven by citizens’ rising expectations and the
fluid movement of goods, services, and citizens across regional and even global
borders, governments are being challenged to boost efficiency, share services,
and provide a single view across government departments. This demand is offset
by the need for privacy and the need for appropriate access rights to personal
data. The combination of identity management suites and SOA platforms—together
with an up-front analysis of the cross-organizational workflow to support
integrated services delivery—will support the government adoption of
identity-driven services.
‘e-ID’ is the precursor for accessing identity-driven
services. With e-ID, users are identified and authenticated using digital
documents. Depending on the application, e-ID can be used for identification;
authentication; electronic signature; and data storage, retrieval, and
transfer. e-ID is being seen as major differentiator in Socio-economic benefits
to target people with enhanced transparency and much ease. Today’s e-ID
technology supports tighter border security, protection for the vulnerable, and
enhanced crime detection.
Portals facilitate federation across multiple government
organizations. As such, they can provide a first step to integrating existing
data silos while also leaving them relatively untouched. With these portals,
composite applications and shared services delivery can begin to emerge.
Organizations can no longer hard code security inside their
applications. They need to leverage security as a service and extract security
out of their applications. Secure interoperability, based on identity
management solutions, enables substantial cost savings, streamlined processes,
and faster communication of vital information to the benefit of governments and
citizens.
Although software components for single sign-on provide
unified single sign-on and authentication across multiple government agencies
and departments, they are the tip of the integration iceberg. Several other
components necessary for e-ID–driven shared services interoperability are
required. These components must also take an SOA approach to identity because
SOA is currently the underlying infrastructure.
SAP continues to innovate and improve their Core
Applications
Taking our query forward to Mathew Thomas, Vice President -
Strategic Industries, SAP India and asking him about the Company’s offerings
when it comes to e-governance product based solutions at various levels of
Government organizations, he said, “SAP solution portfolio and strategy is
shaped by the 5 markets that we address :
1. Cloud
2. Mobility
3. Applications
4. Analytics
5. Database &
Technology
Designed to help all levels of government maximize public
value, SAP for Public Sector solutions enable governments to optimize limited
resources in public administration while delivering responsive citizen
services. From Information management to decision support systems, from service
oriented architecture to Mobility, from on-Demand solutions to High Performance
Computing- our solutions support processes across a wide range of government
functions, from accounting and procurement to case management and social
services”.
Moving further and informing about SAP’s solutions that help
Government achieve better performance, he stated, “SAP solutions help
governments leverage their finite time, money, and personnel resources to
fulfill mandated program and service requirements on a timely basis. Where two
or more agencies share responsibility for a common outcome, these solutions can
integrate information, processes, and technology to support the active
collaboration that delivers financial returns, as well as social and political
results, to internal and external government stakeholders”.
He also said, “SAP is addressing Homeland security &
Defense, Social & Rural, Tax & Revenue, Budgeting & Accounting,
Urban Management, Public works, Utilities, Education & Health and Public
Sector enterprises”.
Lastly, when we asked about the NextGen Technologies in
e-governance, he stated, “From essentially a consumption perspective, the urban
– rural divide that exists today in Egovernance service delivery can be bridged
effectively by combining the technologies enabled by the cloud and mobility.
Hence Mobile Governance and Cloud are two technologies that have an immense
power in ensuring inclusive services delivery. But before that can happen, the
government needs to get its priorities right with respect to issues like data
protection and privacy, electronic payments and authentication of
beneficiaries. While bold steps are being taken it will be sometime before
these technologies can be fully deployed in India. Another area that is rapidly
gaining ground is the area of Real Time Situation Awareness. This requires
massive number crunching capabilities, use-case specific algorithms and
context-sensitive command & control dashboards. These technologies will
find high impact adoption in areas like Emergency & Disaster Management,
Pandemic Alerts, Fraud and Crime detection and Fiscal management besides its
obvious use in supply chain planning, demand forecasting, customer churn
analysis etc for industries. Similarly, the Government current level of
dalliance with Social Engineering is likely to intensify and proliferate. These
technologies lend itself to big-data analytics is profiling, sentiment analysis
etc”.
He further informed that over the years and even now the
stress has been on process automation and hence we have created massive systems
of record that capture transactional data. However, systems of engagement
around Governance Insight and Analytics have not developed to the same extent.
We see investments being made by the Indian Government in building modern,
real-time decision support systems.Also the federal structure of the government
has meant that little or no standardization has taken place with respect to
either process or data standards. Hence there is a huge issue with regards to
citizen data inconsistency and redundancy.
In spite of and in addition to Aadhar, today citizen data
exists in a multitude of data sources. Hence having a 360 degree view of the
citizen has become difficult unless a Citizen data registry is created which
would involve necessary data quality checks, data dedupe and responsive ETL
technologies. This concept is still very nascent in its adoption but we believe
this will become the norm once issues such as Food Security are addressed
seriously.
Hence SAP’s strategy in continuing to innovate and improve
our Core Applications – of nurturing our growth vectors like Big-data, Mobility
and Cloud ; all are in perfect congruence with the emerging technology roadmap
in the area of Public services.
Dassault Systèmes’ 3D applications, Digital Mock-up and PLM
business are being used in various Government organizations
Commenting on Company’s offerings when it comes to
e-governance product based solutions at various levels of Government
organizations, Ajay Verma, Vice President Value Solutions, Dassault Systemes
India, said, “Dassault Systèmes’ leading 3D applications, Digital Mock-up and
PLM business are being used in various Government organizations for a wide
variety of applications pertaining to the above domains. This community is now
adopting our latest innovation, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to deliver
'experiences' to their customers i.e. us as citizens. DS Technology solutions
help all stake holders as they may pertain to different spheres stay connected throughout the entire process
of either management, Infrastructure buildup etc. regardless of location, while
ensuring process consistency and compliance”.
“We are working with various government organizations,
departments, PSU’s, autonomous bodies, research institutes across various
domains in the government to help them leverage the 3DExperience platform and
deliver a superior class of products and services”, he added.
Lastly on being questioned about the nextGen technologies in
e-governance, he answered, “The examples given above are clear indicators of
how technology can help bring a different class of service level to all of us
as citizens. As more data is created with various government initiatives, data
analytics can provide an insight across disparate data sets. For example
tracking government ID’s as a way of driving the goal of financial inclusion,
does the same recipient show up in both BPL and no BPL government service
usage, in the new cash to citizen model how do we ensure traceability and
consistency. Future governments would leverage technology in these and many
more areas”.
Infosys through its services aims to help the government
entities perform more proficiently
We also interacted with CN Raghupathi, Head India Business
Unit at Infosys and asked him about the Government Organizations that Infosys
is catering to with their solutions and regarding this, he quoted, “Infosys has
recently won an IT outsourcing and consulting deal with India Post and another
deal from the Income Tax Department for its electronic TDS division. In
addition the company entered into a multi-year agreement for Business Transformation
project with Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) and is also works with other
government departments”.
Answering our next query, wherein we asked him that which
all solutions from Infosys help Government achieve better performance, he
answered, “Infosys through its services aims to help the government entities
perform more proficiently and help bring world class facilities to the door
steps of a common man in India. With an aim to fulfill this goal, Infosys has
implemented its Finacle and McCamish platforms across 155,000 post offices in
India. We also work with the Income tax department to process more than 1.5
crore applications ever year.We are working with Karnataka Government to reduce
distribution losses. In addition, Infosys has also implemented transformational
solutions across various government projects in order to increase efficiency
and productivity”.
Lastly mentioning about the NextGen Technologies in
e-governance that will be shaping up the future of Govt. organizations, he mentioned
that the world is shrinking virtually and technology is bringing it even more
closer, with this present scenario e-governance is going to be the next big
thing among government organizations. The technologies that are going to affect
e-governance significantly in the coming years are:
• HTML5
• Augmented reality
• Cloud computing
• Next generation
search
• Agile development
• Social technology
• Mobile internet
Conclusion
On a concluding note, it can be easily concluded that all
the vendors are doing their best and offering their best solution for the
welfare of our Government and are leaving no stone unturned to make this
concept of e-Governance a
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