NextGen Technologies in e-Governance

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

e-Governance, Bringing out True Spirit of Governance

The real meaning of e-governance is towards connecting citizens to government by talking to citizens and supporting accountability, by listening to citizens and supporting democracy, and by improving public services.

This way the government is looking at various egovernance ways to deliver better services to the citizens through single point delivery mechanism and involve areas like: e-citizen, e-transport, e-medicine, e-transport etc.

e-seva kind of integrated centers are a part of these initiatives from the government side. The purpose of these centres is to take over the various customer services in due course. These centers are delivering services like issue of Certificates, Ration Cards, Passports, Payment of Bills and taxes etc. moving forward, these centres have great potential in becoming one-stop Government Shops for delivery of all services.

E-Transport

As part of this initiative, the transport segment can be easily e-governed and include: Registration of motor vehicles, Issue of driving licenses, Issue of plying permissions, Tax and fee collection through Cash and Bank Challans and Control of Pollution. This is an ideal way to reduce red-tapism and encourage common public to interact with the government side on a regular basis.

Registration of property and all such procedures are a big task within the egovernance gamut of services and hence, the government machinery must act together to include this within the egov offering. E-Governing the registration and transfer of the properties and stamp duty to be paid thereon will bring substantial reduction of paper work and reduce the duplicating of entries. Further the transparency in work will increase and the overall time of process registration will reduce. As a result, the spirit behind G2C services will encompass all the services that the Government is delivering to its citizens.

With an aim towards delivering information for all, various egovernance related initiatives are reshaping the delivery of services for citizens. Keeping the citizen informed, providing him with details of Government activities. Moving forward, the government is surely showing a lot of interest and commitment towards taking the egovernance initiatives to the unconnected parts of the country.

e-Governance Moving Towards Efficient Delivery of Services

If we look at its definition, the Electronic Governance (e‐Governance) is the application of information & communication technologies to transform the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability of informational & transactional exchanges with in government, between govt. & govt.

agencies of National, State, Municipal & Local levels, citizen & businesses, and to empower citizens through

agencies of National, State, Municipal & Local levels, citizen & businesses, and to empower citizens through access & use of information.

Thus, e‐Governance is the application of Information Technology to the Government functioning in order to bring about Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent Governance.

And e‐Governance is also a highly complex process requiring provision of hardware, software, networking and reengineering of the procedures for Improving effectiveness and efficiency of delivery of services by using the information and communication technologies (ICT) like internet, mobile, etc and increasing the accountability and transparency in informational and transactional exchanges between various sources and users (e.g. Public, etc.) of information and transactions.

Thus e‐Governance is more than just a Government website presence on the internet. Political, social, economic and technological aspects determine the scope and success of existence of e‐Governance. It may include a broad range of services for many segments of society. The most common areas of e‐Governance application are electronic commerce and business regulations, taxation and revenue, law enforcement and courts, education, health and transport.

Components of e‐Governance in Today's Scenario

Government to Government communication (G2G);

Government to Business communication (G2B) and

Government to Citizens communication (G2C)

Evolution of e‐Governance

There is a global shift towards increased deployment of IT by various government agencies the world over and India is not an exception today. This took place in the nineties, with the advent of the World Wide Web. Amid an increase in Internet and mobile phone connections, global citizens started expecting and accessing more and more information and services online from governments and corporate organizations to further their civic, professional and personal lives.

This development provides us with abundant evidence of a new "e‐citizenship". The concept of e‐governance originated in India during the seventies with a focus on development of inhouse government applications in the areas of defense, economic monitoring and planning. Moving forward, various state government in India are set to move towards a better e-governance era and help the citizens gain from the IT in a better way.

Enabling e‐Governance in India, an Uphill Task

With the vastness of country and its different geographies, implementing egovernance on a national scale and size is never going to be an easy task.

The e‐Governance environment and related scenario in India has surely come a long way since its origin many years back. Over the past many years, a large number of egovernance related initiatives have been taken by the Union and the State Government

The e‐Governance environment and related scenario in India has surely come a long way since its origin many years back. Over the past many years, a large number of egovernance related initiatives have been taken by the Union and the State Governments that involved different egovernance models related with private and public partnerships. However, there are a number of challenges that lie ahead when it comes to implementing egovernance on a national scale.

Challenges in implementing e‐Governance

As India has a vast geographical landscape, the country comprises of 36 states with population of over one billion. Out of this population, around 60 percent live in rural areas and rest in semi urban and urban areas. Literacy and language are immense challenges, in a multicultural and multilingual country. Following are the major challenges in implementation of e‐Governance, because of which the speed of implementation of e‐ Governance initiatives in India is quite slow. This has negatively affected the use of e‐Governance among the masses as well.

Lack of sufficient and proper planning

Leadership failures resulting in slow and patchy progress of e‐Governance initiatives

Financial inhibitors limiting the flow of investment to e‐Governance projects

Moreover in India, digital divides and choices, where socio‐economic and physical inequalities lead to differences in motivations and competences that constrain and fragment e‐Governance take‐up and fail to address particular user needs.

Keeping in mind the potential of egovernance related applications and its usage among the common masses, Government leaders in India are already starting to realize that e‐governance is the key to drive today's economy with an increased citizen participation. Providing services online is no longer going to remain optional for local and central government as demand for providing services at internet speed from the citizens has increased in the recent years.

However, the question is - How do government agencies overcome the obstacles and build a strategy to facilitate the transition to successful online or "e" service delivery for the common masses? The answer lies in equal participation from the common public. The government must address the issues at the grass-root level in order to gain the egovernance edge. And moving forward this is surely going to be a big area of focus for the egovernence sector.

Internet Interface, Changing Governance into Enterprise

Increasing usage of Internet based networks and internetworking is fast changing egovernance towards the enterprise side

The globally driven revolution in the Internet world is changing our lives in terms of the way we interact with each other, use mu

The globally driven revolution in the Internet world is changing our lives in terms of the way we interact with each other, use multiple devices, work, learn and interact within the office space of personal spaces.

These changes naturally should reflect the way government functions in terms of the organization of the government, its relationship with its citizens, institutions and businesses and cooperation with other governments.

As more and internet based applications make their foray into the world of governance, today's egovernance platforms are moving in the direction of becoming an enterprise in itself.

In addition to the above, the increasing generalization of technology access by citizen and organizations brings expectations and demands on government. At the same time, governments are also proactive in this domain and are planning new ways of interacting, improving services, optimizing processes and revitalizing democracy by spending amount on IT. Hence, just like a next generation friendly enterprise, the government segment is aiming towards delivering more interactive services to citizens and businesses through E-Governance platforms.

For this, cutting edge technologies like virtualization or cloud computing is set to lead significant cost savings for the government as well as citizens.

It entails use over the Internet of computing hardware and software infrastructure and applications that are remotely hosted. Moving forward, more and more government departments are set to go the enterprise way and enable their IT infrastructure in order to attune it towards better technological adoption which is purely based on the internet driven applications.

Disaster Recovery Riding High on E-Gov Model

Natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, wars and internal disturbances within the country could cause the E-Governance applications not only loose data, but also make services unavailable. Hence it becomes important for government to look at disaster recovery in a better way.

In order to achieve this, multiple installations in geographically separated locations with complete backup and recovery solutions must exist. This

In order to achieve this, multiple installations in geographically separated locations with complete backup and recovery solutions must exist. This could create huge problems.

And proper disaster recovery procedures must be in place and practiced from time to time in order to facilitate egovernance models. Applications and data must be redundant and should be available on a short notice to switch from one data center to center.

It is important to note that cloud virtualization technologies allow backups and restoring. It offers application migration seamlessly compared to traditional data center. Cloud helps to increase the number of resources dynamically to maintain quality of service intact even at the times of high load, which generally happens in E-Governance.

Performance with Scalability

Driving disaster recovery, the architecture and technology adopted for the E-Governance initiatives should be scalable and common across delivery channels .It is required to meet growing numbers and demands of citizens. If implemented, the E-Governance portals could become the biggest users and beneficiaries of Information Technology at a time of disaster.

 

With cloud architectures, scalability is inbuilt and hence, information stored is secured. Typically, E-Governance applications can be scaled vertically by moving to a more powerful machine that can offer more memory, CPU, storage. A simpler solution is to cluster the applications and scale horizontally by adding resources.

Moving forward, data center usage (CPU, storage, network etc), peak loads, consumption levels, power usage along with time are some of the factors that needs to be monitored and reported for better utilization of resources. It minimizes costs of the IT infrastructure for an egovernance project and application.

India's Egovernance Moving on E-Democracy Plane

With the government trying its best to incorporate technology for the common masses, the e-governance movement of the country is fast moving towards e-democracy now.

It is important to note that the e-democracy is an effort to change the role of citizen from passive information giving to active citizen involvement. And in an e-democracy scenario the Government will be informing the citizen, representing the citizen, encouraging the citizen to vote, consulting the citizen and engaging the citizen in the Governance.

And taking the citizens input about the various government policies by organizing an e-debate will further strengthen the e-democracy. The concept of e-debate is similar to chat over the Internet, wherein not only the citizens but also the political leaders contesting the elections participate.

In a e-democracy environment, the citizens give their feedback about the various policies of the parties and particularly the manifesto of the party. The initiative further strengthens the process by enhancing the representative role, improving accessibility of citizens to their elected members and developing the capacity of elected representatives to engage in e-government.

And additionally, the elected members will also be provided with access to the local authority's Intranet and e-mail systems so that they become available online for decision making and people can easily access them.

Citizen participation is an integral part of this initiative. For achievement of the above initiative the citizen has to participate in the Government business and therefore spreading awareness becomes the responsibility of the state as well.

As an integral principle to this, elections should not be fought on the principle of what one party or other has to offer. But they should be fought on the principle of what the citizens require.

And additionally, local and regional market research programs should be carried out using the Information Systems to determine the needs of the citizens. GIS could be used as a tool to find out potential gaps in the services offered. Once all this is done, we are sure to have a solid e-governance led platform that can ensure e-democracy for the whole country.

India Should Move towards E-democracy

When we talk about e-governance in India, the E-gov efforts are directly enabled by law, but on the other hand, the Open Gov initiative is not. However, E-gov and Open Gov both produce significant advances in government transparency, but Open Gov should also produce more participation and collaboration mechanisms. E-gov and Open Gov both are “unfunded mandates” and must be implemented with existing resources in order to bring e-democracy to the masses.

E-gov and Open Gov both rely heavily on web-enabled technology adoption, but many Open Government-related technologies (i.e. social media tools) are rapidly evolving. E-gov has largely become a compliance exercise for the Chief Information Officer (CIO), but Open Gov expands the responsibility for openness outside the CIO organization.

Administration to ensure the Open Gov initiative avoids the compliance fate of E-gov, while creating a framework to make significant headway in Government transparency, participation, and collaboration efforts.

The E-government initiatives are divided into four portfolios and the lines of business: Government to Citizen, Government to Business, Government to Government, Internal Effectiveness and Efficiency, and Lines of Business.

The E-government efforts of the last decade and the new Open Government initiative share many similar goals and characteristics, the largest being that they both strive to make the state and central Governments more transparent in nature and in manner. However, they are not synonymous at all. They are different efforts that are overlapping phases in an incremental growth towards Edemocracy for everyone.

E-gov was a first and crucial step towards E-democracy. However, the Open Gov initiative is not the end-state solution. It is the most recent maturation of the Government’s growth towards Edemocracy, but we must understand that it is not the final step in this direction, however it is a very important milestone of course.

Telejustice- Gaining Good Grounds in India

TeleJustice is slowly becoming more the norm rather than the exception as more and more states adopt the modern method of providing justice at the level of under trials. Taking thousands of under trials daily from the jails where they are held to the courts and back is one of the major logistical challenge faced by the judicial system of the country. Besides the huge cost involved in the transportation carrying so many under trials, it becomes all the more risky with the growing violence and terrorism.  Beginning with Andhra Pradesh, e-trials are now being the preferred method for trying under trials in many states where there is no requirement to move the under trials.

 

Presto - one of the fastest growing value-added distributors, specializing in offering solutions based on various emerging technologies to government and enterprise customers has now commissioned the TeleJustice Project in Bihar, Maharashtra, Punjab, UP and Haryana to a tune of Rs. 7 crore, it hopes to do twice as double business to a whooping Rs. 15 crore in this fiscal through Govt. initiative & deployment projects. Presto distributes a variety of networking and security products including video conferencing solutions from Polycom which is primarily being used in the TeleJustice system.

With the Central Government having approved Rs. 1,000 crore for this project TeleJustice is fast becoming a way in EGovernance - AdminTool.

The TeleJustice system comprises of a Polycom AV ( AudioVideo ) Conferencing solution which works over internet - that connects the courts (Judge) and the under trial who sits in his jail on  a online  real time basis .  Besides being a speedier method saving a lot of time,  the benefit is that the full recording is also documented for any references at any point of time  should the under trial becomes hostile.     

According to Presto, the advantages are that the return of investment on the system cost is in 3 months flat.

Presto is looking for partnering with SIs and Channel on this aggressively.